Opinions And Ramblings By Adam Kmiec On All Things Media
Tag Archive: Relationships
Why I Deleted My Facebook Account
On February 26, 2011 I tweeted, “Just deleted my Facebook account from 35,000 feet. Feels good.”
Last year, right around this time, Nielsen published a study that indicated the average internet user spends over 7 hours a month on Facebook. That works out to almost 4 days a year. And that’s just the average! Facebook users as a subset, spend 55 minutes each day on Facebook. Did you hear that? 55 minutes every day. Which works out to roughly 14 days a year. I shudder to think what the stats look like for millennials, who according to reports from many leading research firms, are basically addicted to Facebook. I’m sure that my time spent on Facebook was more than 55 minutes. When you consider the time I was spending on it for personal reasons, work reasons and research reasons, I was definitely a power user.
In short, Facebook can be a time suck. This isn’t new information. Between pokes, status updates, photos, apps like Farmville and more; Facebook, by design is setup to keep you on the site and keep you coming back. It’s been almost 2 weeks since I did the unthinkable and you know what? I still feel good. Great in fact. Not having to care about a status update is refreshing. Not worrying about my security settings and if the right people have access to the right content is liberating. Not having to ignore the countless event invite requests makes me giddy. Not getting sucked down the rabbit hole known as people’s photo albums has me jumping for joy.
Time, is the one thing we don’t get back. It’s the one currency that doesn’t appreciate. Nope, it’s finite. There’s only 24 hours in a day. Put in 10 for work. Another 6 for sleep. 1 hour for my getting ready and going to bed routine. With those 3 buckets alone you’re left with only 7 hours that are yours to enjoy. But, let’s back out another hour for miscellaneous things and another hour for your commute. So really you get 5 hours in a day to just “be.” 80% of your day is consumed by those 5 buckets of activities. Well I refuse to spend the 20% of the remaining 20% in front of Facebook.
What it all comes down to, is Facebook simply lost it’s value to me. I had a self-imposed friend limit of 150 that aligned with Dunbar’s number. Even, with that limitation, which was designed to make sure I was only investing time with people who mattered instead of simply collecting “friends,” Facebook offered no real value. The people, who’s wedding they were planning, recent trip they just got back from, engagement, party they were throwing, etc., that I was REALLY friends with, knew how to reach me to share their news. It’s simple. When I get engaged again, I won’t be letting my mom know about it via Facebook. I’ll be picking up the phone and calling her. If I move from Chicago to another city, I’ll be sending an email to casual friends, texting others and picking up the phone to share the news the people who matter most.
Facebook is a tool, similar to a shotgun, that simply let’s you aim, fire and spread your information with everyone. It isn’t laser focused at all. I’m over the concept of simply broadcasting my life to everyone. I’d much rather be selective and invest my time into the people who really matter. The other day I received some great information from my manager. You know what I did? I picked up the phone and I called the people who matter to share what happened. Sure, it took more time than updating my Facebook status, but it was quality time.
Growing up, my mom always said I’d be lucky if I could count the number of friends I had one hand. I can. And that’s why I quit Facebook. I’ve outgrown Facebook. I’m looking for less, not more.
I’m not delusional, I’ll be back. There will be some business need that necessitates coming back. There always is. It’s part of the job. It’s part of what keeps me ahead. I’ll dread that day. But, for now, I’m going to enjoy the 55 minutes I just got back in my day.
Stronger Together Than We Are Apart
Earlier today, I stumbled on to a great blog authored by Rachelle. It’s amazing who pops up into your twitter stream. Some days, I’m literally in awe of the people I’m introduced to, virtually. The first thing that drew me in to her blog was the very first post, simply titled, “What Is Marriage?”
Rachelle’s writing is nothing short of witty, fun and honest. There’s a certain amount of Penelope Trunk in her. And you all know how much I love Penelope Trunk. Her post was nothing short of brilliant. How do I know this? Because, to me, she’s captured the essence of what many of us struggle to say when we get engaged. There are two wonderful passages that I feel compelled to share.
Because at the end of the day, I finally have tasted what real love is and have not felt the desire to ask myself “Is there someone better out there?” Because there isn’t. He’s perfect… for me. I’ve never been a better me since I met him. And I want that to continue, because oh baby, it’s so just the beginning. (And if you knew me, you’d know that I spent my entire life looking for something better. The fact that I’ve found it is incredible.)
and
We bicker and argue, and we’ve fought, but we hate it. We hate upsetting the other. It never lasts. And no, we’ve never been to bed upset at one another. We don’t just say we’re sorry, afterwards either. We correct the mistakes we each made and explain each other.
The reason they stick out to me is because they hit on three very important inter-related characteristics of successful relationships (business and personal):
- Passion: Without it, why are we doing what we’re doing? Passion gets you out of bed in the morning after a late night. Passion inspires you to order flowers just because. Passion pushes you forward to succeed, because you won’t tolerate less than the best. And yes, passion, is what keeps you engaged (pun intended).
- Satisfaction: There’s a point in a relationship where you stop looking, stop taking that call from the recruiter, stop wondering if “this” is right. You have a certain satisfaction that keeps you excited, enticed, content and fulfilled. It’s the glow that people see on a face right after you get engaged or get promoted, that I’m talking about. There’s the certain grin, like a cheshire cat, that makes the world say, “I want what she/he has.”
- Effort: I remember thinking that arguments were a bad thing. After all you only argue, when you don’t agree. And if you don’t agree on a lot of things, you shouldn’t be together right? One of my mentors instilled a bit of wisdom on me that I carry forward every day: she said, “it’s ok to disagree. In fact, I encourage it. Be the devil’s advocate. Probe. Question. Challenge. But, you’ll never be able to do any of it successfully if you philosophically disagree on what you’re really trying to do.” Her point was that if you both want the same thing at a big picture level, the smaller disagreements become irrelevant because you’ll find a way to make each other happy. Funny, that it takes business advice to shine a light on personal relationship advice. I think Rachelle really hit on something when she said, “We correct the mistakes we each made and explain each other.” Man, how often do we overlook this? The explain part is the smoking gun. You need to be able to explain why something was a mistake, what the impact was, how it made you feel, etc. Otherwise, people are just reacting at a surface level.
You really should read the entire post, I’ve re-read it several times and I’ve come to the conclusion that her fiance is one hell of a lucky guy. I tip my cap to both of them.
The name of this post actually comes from an exchange Rachelle and I had on twitter. She stated that with regards to arguing, a big reason why their relationship works is because they are stronger together than they are apart. Think about that the next time a recruiter calls or an old boyfriend appears – the grass isn’t always greener. What you may find is that everything you were looking for was already there.
15 Pieces Of Relationship Advice
You never know who you’re going to meet at airports. Today I was supposed to leave on a 5:20 flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. We left at roughly 8:30. Normally this would have bothered me, but I ended up having an amazing conversation with a priest who was also on the flight.
I’m not what you’d call a spiritual person. I’ve never been baptized, but I was once married in a Catholic Church. Crazy, I know. Anyways, Fr. Alex was a young guy and we hit it off from the beginning. How could I not, the guy was on Facebook and inquired about my iPad. We got to talking and covered a lot of ground. From why he became a priest to why I love interactive marketing and his love of the Red Sox to my interest in photography.
But, what we spent a lot of time discussing was the “modern relationship” – as he termed it – and why so many relationships fail. We got on this subject because I had asked what he spent the most amount of time dealing with in his parish…which was, you got it, the modern relationship. In short, he’s seen a lot for a guy who’s been doing this for only roughly 6 years. He offered me the following advice and insight:
1. As a society we throw in the towel too quickly because we are impatient and expect instant change.
2. If couples spent as much time talking about their issues with each other as did with their friends and family, the issues would be fixed quicker.
3. The first question he asks is “what would make you happy?” Then he works back from there to help build a path for getting to what makes them happy.
4. We have too many distractions that allow us to ignore the problems. For example, cell phones, the internet, TiVo, video games, etc. He preaches the idea of having 1 hour every day where you simply talk with each other.
5. Answers to problems don’t come in the form of pills, a bottle, the bed of someone else (I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with this one, but instead of running toward your current relationship partner, many will run to an old flame or a random one. I see this on facebook all the time. The first thing someone does is friend an old flame.). They also don’t come from your support network (see #2); in fact our traditional support network. often gives us poor advice in an effort to make us feel better. Answers come from an investment in time and effort.
6. Text messages are not a substitute for real conversation. He talked about how couples might text “I love you” instead of simply picking up the phone.
7. He explains to people that you must be prepared to make mistakes and fail. It’s through continued efforts that you start to make real progress.
8. Don’t assume. To which I said right because it makes an ass out of u and me. He laughed. Good sense of humor. Don’t assume they know you care. Don’t assume everything is fine. Don’t assume they intentionally tried to hurt you.
9. Little things matter. It is the every day things that provide continuity and remind us that we are loved.
10. Too often we talk around a problem, instead of getting to the core. He explained a situation where a husband felt slighted because his wife was never home (she worked 2 jobs). Now, she felt he didn’t appreciate her efforts to help support the family financially. The real issue wasn’t the hours being worked, the real issue is he never thanked her for the sacrifices she was making and she never told him she would much rather be home with him than at work. Simple, right?
11. Material things do not solve problems, they actually escalate them because we feel guilty discussing a problem if we have been offered a gift. Many people buy gifts thinking it’s a great way to apologize, but in reality it is a defense mechanism designed to avoid the real tough conversations.
12. Forgive and forget often/don’t hold grudges. When hurt, people will do and say things they don’t mean. We lash out because we are wounded. Unfortunately, the recipient of that behavior rarely is willing to forgive (when the person is genuinely contrite) and instead holds on to these situations, aggregates them, which amplifies future situations. If you will, we roll the hurt forward which makes the next time we are hurt 2x as bad. I saw this same approach on an episode of Man vs Food, where the hot sauce from previous batches was combined with future batches, making the future batches hotter.
13. Never go to bed angry. Your head should never hit the pillow without saying what should be said.
14. It’s never too late to change your mind, apologize or fix something. He said many people believe that if too much time has passed they shouldn’t, can’t, or won’t do the right thing. This was an interesting one because what he was getting at was that time doesn’t heal all wounds like we think it does. Time is fuel being poured on a fire for most people. The more time that lapses, the less likely we are to do what is right. We become more fearful and get caught up by our own momentum forward, that we don’t realize it’s actually very easy to reverse course.
15. Stubbornness will eventually lead to loneliness. Or as he put it, would you really want to see your former better half with someone else, knowing you could still be together had you just said, “sorry?”
Relationships, casual and formal, are complex. There aren’t shortcuts to making a relationship work and like Fr. Alex stated to me, relationships are a constant work in progress, because we are people who are constantly evolving.
So, I figured since we had hit it off so well I’d tell him about my relationship problems and see what he thought. He said a lot…too much for this novel of a post. But, there was one thing he shared with me that I wanted to pass on, because it think it’s applicable to the masses:
You can not judge the next relationship by the previous one, it’s not fair to you, the previous person or the new person. Instead, you must remember that each relationship is unique and should be treated as such. That said, there is one one constant – time is not finite, you never know when your time is up, treat each day as if tomorrow will not come.
While the focus of our conversation was on personal relationships, I think all of his wisdom is applicable to professional ones as well
Well, when I woke up this morning I certainly didn’t think I’d be having a marathon chat with a priest. But, life gives you little surprises like that.
I appreciate Fr. Alex letting me take notes. About 20 minutes into our conversation I asked him if it would be ok and there was no hesitancy in his response.
At the end of our conversation, just like any great marketer, he pulled the hard close and said I should swing by his church on Sunday. Not sure that’s going to happen, but you never know.
Credit Card Relationships
I broke into the agency business young…crazy young. Fallon (at the time Fallon McElligott) took a flyer on me without an internship (unheard of back then) and basically let me grow at my own speed. I was a young and getting enormous opportunities that were well above my experience level and pay grade. While I was succeeding at those opportunities, I still had much to learn about the business, our clients, our heritage and how to be successful long term.
To say that I was getting a little full of myself might have been an understatement. Well you can imagine the size of my head when my boss (Paul Schield) invited me to lunch with our CMO (Mark Goldstein), our CFO (Irv Fish) and CEO (Pat Fallon). If the grinch’s heart grew 3 sizes, my head grew 10 sizes. We went to an old school steak house called Murray’s. This was literally your classic 3 martini place that I had read about when studying the history of agencies. Most of that studying was done on my own, since most business schools just don’t offer you any real education on how to succeed at an agency. The lunch was tasty, the drinks stiff and the conversation light-hearted. I couldn’t believe the situation I was in…20 years old, riding a rocket to the top and having lunch with the senior leaders.
When the check came, I completely expected Irv to grab it. After all, he was the finance guy, right? Imagine my surprise when the check was passed from Pat, to Paul to ME. My brow started to sweat, my hands got clammy and a nervous sensation overtook my entire body. I had one credit card to my name…and it was in MY name. It wasn’t a corporate card and I certainly didn’t have an expense account. With trepidation I opened up the folio holding the check and gulped when I saw a nearly $350.00 bill. That was basically 3/4 of my rent…and we ate it. But, then a great wave of calm overtook me. It dawned on me that I could just expense this lunch as a business expense. Paul would sign off on it and I’d get reimbursed. Sweet!
While all of this was going on in my head, the other 3 simply carried on their conversation as if nothing was out of the ordinary. I placed my credit card into the folio and signaled for the waiter to come over. A few minutes later he was back. I added the tip, signed the check and then said, “shall we.” I thought I was with it. Oyve. On the short walk back from Murray’s to the office I was starting to doubt myself. Would Paul really sign my expense report? Should I have ordered the Filet Mignon? Side note, since this experience, I have NEVER ordered a Filet Mignon at a restaurant. As I was in deep thought, Mark Goldstein pulled me aside and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “you know, you can’t expense this lunch.” My worst fear had been realized. That sinking feeling swept back into my gut. Ugh.
We walked a few more steps and then Pat gave me a lesson that to this day I hold near and dear to my heart. He said to me, “You realize, all you bought was lunch. You didn’t buy our friendship, our respect or our trust. You bought us a meal. This business, as is life, is built upon relationships. Relationships require an investment in time, effort, listening, learning and discovery. Real relationships last. You can’t manage relationships through a credit card. Too many people in our industry think they can build a relationship with clients through buying fancy dinners or taking them to amazing events. Those relationships are hollow and will never stand the test of time.”
I put quotes around Pat’s advice, because that’s how I remember it. I’m sure a few words are incorrect.
Support vs. Permission
When you’re growing up and living under your parent’s roof, you’re constantly in a mode of asking for permission. CAN you go out on Friday night? CAN you paint your room blue? CAN you have some money for new jeans? CAN your friend sleep over? The hierarchy that’s in place, puts kids in a position to ask for permission and parents in a position to grant or deny it. This is not disimilar to when you first start out in your career. You’re constantly fearful of doing the “wrong” thing (aka what your boss wouldn’t prefer…even if it’s the right thing) that you end up asking someone if what you want to do is ok, acceptable, what the client would like, what your boss would approve, etc. Unfortunately, in both cases (as kids and young professionals) this places us in position where we aren’t able to grow…where we aren’t able to build a relationship based on mutual respect.
As times marches on the dynamics of our relationships with our parents and employers/supervisors change. The defining moment for most kids of course is when they go to college or get their first job. Once you’re no longer living under “their roof” there’s less of a need to ask for permission to have a glass of wine at lunch, eat cereal for dinner, drive 600 miles to see a concert, fly to Europe, spend an unnecessary amount of money on a new pair of shoes, etc. You have your own money and your living your own life. The concept of asking for approval ceases to exist and our parents become people who’s support is requested. We want their endorsement…their validation that the choices we make are the right ones. When we have their support we feel better about the decisions we’re making. After all, if they didn’t support it, it wouldn’t be a good decision, now would it? That’s of course tongue in cheek. Guess what? We have the same evolution at work. Once we have enough experience, and more importantly, CONFIDENCE, under our belts, we’re able to shift from asking our supervisors for approval and instead we start presenting them recommendations. With those recommendations we’re looking for their support, not their permission…not their rubber stampt, not their approval. It’s such an inspiring dynamic when that shift happens. We start believing that we finally have this “job” figured out.
Support and approval are not the same thing. I don’t call my mom anymore asking for her permission to buy a new car. Instead I call looking for her thoughts, opinions, feedback and advice on what car to buy. It’s a different dynamic. With my current boss, we have a great honest and open relationship where I can present her ideas and recommendations that are 1/2 to full baked. Those ideas are presented with a confidence and tone of that says, “this is the right thing to do.” She can then shape, augment and make these ideas better. We don’t have a relationship where I’m presenting ideas looking for permission to execute them. It’s a beautiful thing and one of the things I love about my role at MARC USA.
There is no right or wrong time to make this shift from permission to support. Personally, I think we’d be better off if it happened earlier on in life than later. It’s a tough switch to make, but one that will change your relationships and career for the better.
Compatibility
Square peg, round hole…yes you’ve heard of this concept before. Too often we make decisions about where to work, who to date what house to buy, etc. for the wrong reasons. Then, we’re surprised when things don’t work out and we’re not happy. When you neglect to think about how important true compatibility is in finding happiness and satisfaction, why do we ignore it as variable in decision making?
Could it be that defining “compatibility” is too challenging, because it relies on both rationale and emotional factors? For example, take the idea of dating. Don’t we want to be emotionally compatible as well as rationally? We might start off with rationale ones like height, religious preference and age. But, then we get into emotional ones like the way you feel when you’re with the person or how easily conversation flows. Finding someone that fulfills on the rationale and emotional is no easy task. If it was, there wouldn’t be so many companies promising to help you meet that special someone.
Look at job hunting; the same concept applies. I once considered a position with Nike because I was so passionate about the brand and the company. But, then I rationally examined the situation and realized taking a 72% pay cut and 4 step title/role drop didn’t make a lot of sense. I was emotionally invested, but rationally not bought in.
In our business, we’re rewarded when we can create an emotional connection with a consumer through an ad. It makes sense since usually people are focused on the rationale benefits when evaluating a product. By connecting with a consumer emotionally we are able to complete the puzzle.
It’s an interesting proposition to consider that compatibility is not emotionally charged nor is it rationally grounded; it’s both. And that is what makes so many of us incompatible with one another.
Guest Post – Marketing Is Supposed To Be About Relationships
I’m out on vacation this week. The keys to TheKmiecs.com have been turned over to a few, select, awesome guest writers. The following has not been edited by me and is the work and effort of the original author. I appreciate the time and thinking that went into this post and hope you will too. Enjoy!
Marketing is supposed to be all about relationships. Based on this belief, it stands to reason that marketers would want to use media that has as its distinguishing feature being part of the connective tissue that holds people together. Thus the enthusiasm for social media and its ilk.
Lots of different vehicles these days are put under the heading of “social media.” Pretty much anything that can facilitate two-way communications between two or more people could be classified as “social media.” Depending on whom you ask email would technically fall into the category of social media. Depending on who else you might ask, so would the telephone or CB radio.
But the kinds of things that have the interests peaked of those who work at the bleeding edge of marketing are tools and technologies that atomizes our expressions, globalizes their reach, and localizes their targetability all at the same time.
We’ve got Twitter to micro-blog every crumb that falls from the buttered toast of our lives. We’ve got Facebook to broadcast the expression of those crumbs to the Etherverse via TwitterSync. And soon to follow will be marketers using the likes of Loopt or Google Latitude to find us where we are when brushing those crumbs from the fronts of our shirts and send us location-based messages on where to buy the bread, where to buy the butter, where to buy the knife with which to spread that butter, and perhaps where to buy the cleaning agents that can clean the shirts from which we are brushing the aforementioned crumbs.
Micro Blogging
Twitter is awfully interesting. I twitter sometimes not at all and sometimes several times a day. Most of the time, posts I read are not here or there in terms of their relevance to my life. They rarely offer a depth of insight on a given subject. But they are sometimes interesting, funny or just downright cute (one fellow I follow posts only things his kids say). Every once in a while there is a link to an article or a video or some other bit of bytes that lead me to that depth and insight Twitter, due to its character constraints, lacks.
Will Twitter hurt how we think and, thus, act, which in turn will change how we market to one another? Maybe. The structure of our language –even our syntax – dictates how we think, it forms the way we conceptualize; the means by which we articulate the world and what is in it informs what it is we think is in the world.
My concern is that the diminishment of formal structure – be it due to a lack of familiarity, willful rejection of it because of some belief that it is authoritarian or elitist, or a restriction of the characters we can write with — will lead to structure’s eradication for the sake of utility. Utility only and always without at least knowing what formal structure needs to be violated in order to achieve it leads to homogenizing, standardizing and monotonizing.
In an environment where infosnacking and reflex replaces deliberation and practiced experience, how we define intelligence and reason will become unrecognizable.
How can something like this be tamed for marketing?
Facebook, MySpace, et al
Marketers are drawn to social networks as an adverting vehicle for the same reasons they are drawn to any media vehicle: the size of its audiences and the popularity it enjoys. That does not, however, always translate into viability as a means for delivering advertising. Toilet paper, after all, is also rather popular. Certainly everyone I know uses it. But I have yet to see ads on it. This is not to equate delivery systems, but rather to demonstrate that widespread use is not a sufficient condition for carrying an ad message. There are reasons why social networking properties should be approached with care:
- Social networking is just a communication format, not a media vehicle; per se. Social networking is the first decade of the 21st century’s email. Aside from being a domain, do any of the free online email providers, even Gmail, really have a brand? Do any of them offer any specific value to marketers looking to advertising that can’t be had anywhere else? Not really. What they offer is scale (the audiences are huge) and some targetability. Certainly the kind of information available about users will lend itself to greater levels of targetability, but as we’ve already seen, the community is going to police itself against that targetability going too far.
- The relationship aura an advertiser might hope to benefit from doesn’t always really exist there. It’s a place where people allow others to be connected to them, but they don’t really have relationships there. While expanding the number of “relationships” we have, it degrades their quality for the sake of quantity. Like slicing a peach, with every cut, you lose some juice.
- Advertisers will have to compete with the brand of ‘Me’ in a social networking environment. Social networking is really a platform for self-branding. People are opening their kimonos to show off their rock-hard abs or their gorgeous breasts or the funny image they shaved in their back hair. It is an opportunity for a kind of narcissism that doesn’t ostensibly put us at physical risk. A Facebook page is like driving down the street with the radio turned up loud and the windows down; it is wearing a concert T-shirt; it is a way of advertising who we want others to think we are.
- People in marketing and advertising always like to think that the general population likes what we do as much as we do. The general population’s relationship with advertising is at best one of managed hostility, regardless of what one might say about it when the advertising message coming to him or her has been sent by their “BFF” (Best Friend Forever). Will an ensuing deluge of advertising — whether or not it was endorsed by the Lil’ Green Patch friend of a friend — be accepted?
Location Based Services & Targeting
There are as lot of GPS-type applications out there now that, with the growing popularity of smartphones, is experiencing their own surge in popularity. This has the marketing community talking about whether apps like Loopt, Google Latitude, Navteq and others can be used to serve advertising to people based on where they are.
First of all, aside from helicopter parents who might want to know what their kids are doing at every second, are these tools even valuable? Knowing my friends are near is quaint, but, if I’ve already mediated my relationship with them to the point where I’m only communicating with them by posting a note to their Facebook wall, which in turn sends an email to them to tell him or her to go to their Facebook page to read the note I left on their wall, am I REALLY going to make the effort to see them and have a beer, physically, even if they are a few blocks away?
Second, the long-held belief in advertising has been that location somehow makes advertising
a) more meaningful
b) more relevant and thus
c) more effective
But does it? Just because I’m near a McDonald’s doesn’t mean that I’m ready to eat there. Knowing where stores are is valuable, but that’s search addressable more than it is advertising. I think we in advertising and marketing overvalue the tricks of targeting. Most people have a relationship with advertising that is on average one of managed hostility. I don’t know that “adver-stalking” would endear a brand to a potential consumer. I suppose it could operate on an opt-in basis and entice purchase or trial with incentives. But I have my doubts about a marketing application.
What’s the solution to all of the above? Marketers’ least favorite form of advertising due to its lack of forced reach and potential glamour, but it is among the most effective: “Pull” advertising.
It’s what search is, yellow pages used to be, and what widgets are becoming. You approach the opportunity as one where the audience you are trying to reach reaches out to you instead of you reaching out to them, then you’ve got something here.
Jim Meskauskas
VP, Director of Online Media
ICON International
www.twitter.com/mediadarwin
About
Head of Social Media at Walgreens. Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.Learn More »
