Teams: What I Learned This Week

• If you let your idea of what others are thinking be the determining factor when you make decisions you are not doing your best work. 

• It is very hard not to find frustrating encountering situations where people inadvertently, accidentally or purposefully withhold information in order to have control and power and make them the center, dismissing collaboration in the process.

• The City of London is not the city named London.

Adaptability: What I Learned This Week

Sometimes plans are guidelines, parameters, a way to know where the edges exist, so you can adapt accordingly.

• From a recent article in Esquire about the turbulent Facebook IPO:

Top Facebook User by City
​1. Bangkok, 8.7 million
​2. Jakarta, 7.4 million
​3. Istanbul, 7 million
​Top U. S. City? No. 12. New York, 3.4 million 
​Uh ... San Francisco? No. 58, with 856,740

• Bill Clinton, during his speech at the DNC, almost doubled the length of what was originally written by effectively ad-libbing as he spoke. Let's put politics and Clinton aside for a moment and let's celebrate the person in charge of the Teleprompter as they had to keep up with the speech as it happened too. 
• Take your typical RPG game, remove the pseudo-realism and instead imbue it with stylized graphics, superb audio and a story line with simpler boundaries and you end up with the award-winning Bastion. This week it became available for the iPad and it is a joy to play.

Nothing is ever just what you think it is. 

The Quest For Perfection

I don't believe in perfection. I think there is nothing more boring than perfect. It is the flaws, the human touch, the hand-made, mind-made of things that bring us back and connects us to good creative work. But if perfection is what you seek then you better remember that perfection is not something you add at the end, like an accessory, the cherry on top. If you believe in it then you better remember that perfection is doing lots of small things, at every step of the way, exceptionally well.

A Kind Of Artless Flattery

Written in one of my old notebooks is a quote. All I can gather from the notes around it is that it came from a magazine interview. I don’t know who was interviewed or in what magazine. All I can ascertain is that the interviewee was complaining about having his or her work copied. The interviewee explained how the famous adage “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is but a portion of the whole quote, taken out of context for the benefit of those doing the copying. According to the interviewee, and this is what is on my notebook, the full quote is:

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and originality is the sincerest form of criticism.”

The quote sprang to mind last week when Madonna, stay with me, launched her new tour. 

Don’t Go For Second Best - A line from Express Yourself

During the months leading to the release of her new album Madonna was asked how she felt about Lady Gaga as it looked like Gaga was on a path to collide with her as the reigning epic pop artist. In particular Madonna was constantly asked how she felt about Gaga’s hit Born This Way sounding incredibly close to her hit Express Yourself. In one interview she famously answered by calling Gaga’s song “reductive.” 

Last week Madonna premiered her new tour, which includes a performance of Express Yourself that is equal parts cover, mashup, homage, and dismissal of Gaga’s Born This Way. Performed in front of Roy Lichtenstein-inspired graphics displayed on the largest video screens ever used for a concert and without altering the music in any way, she seamlessly went from singing Express Yourself to Born This Way and concluded by also singing the chorus of another one of her songs She’s Not Me. As if to drive the point home further during the Born This Way parts of the song the dancers are copying Gaga’s choreography. When I saw this the part of my brain that loves pop culture as much as it loves technology almost could not process the many layers of meaning and commentary that were infused in what is at the core of it a heavily accessorized performance of a great pop hook. 

I’m Beautiful In My Way - A line from Born This Way

Recently rumors have been swirling in the blogosphere that Microsoft is going to introduce a version of Office for the iPad before the year is over. This is equal parts surprising and inevitable. Not one to be left behind, earlier this week Google announced the acquisition of QuickOffice connecting Office-compatible files between mobile apps and Google’s own web services. Google also showcased new Google Maps features, a few days before Apple is expected to announce new non-Google Map functionality in iOS during WWDC. All of these facts have left the part of my brain that loves technology as much as it loves pop culture almost befuddled with what is at the core of it differently accessorized versions of the same technology.  

I Know I Can Do It Better - A line from She’s Not Me

If everything is a remix, and all creative work builds on what came before then why have I begun to feel like pop culture, technology and pretty much every thing else is collapsing on itself? Why does it feel like every one is on a quest to be the most original (re)producer? Is it that the time between original creation and remix is shrinking exponentially, where soon we will be creating the original, the imitation, the remix and the reboot at the same time?

Let’s return to the quote that opened this post. But before we do so, this is the part where I tell you that Madonna’s song Express Yourself contains an obvious sample of Respect Yourself by The Staple Singers. 

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and originality is the sincerest form of criticism.”

I needed and wanted to find the origin of this quote. I have searched as comprehensively as I can only to find no references to the full quote. It appears this version of it, the version in my notebook, is completely made up. 

Origin:

This proverbial expression dates from the early 19th century, although versions of it that paraphrased the same thought existed well before then.

The first of these alternate versions is found in a biography of Marcus Aurelius by Jeremy Collier and André Dacier, titled Emperor Marcus Antoninus his conversation with himself, 1708:

You should consider that Imitation is the most acceptable part of Worship, and that the Gods had much rather Mankind should Resemble, than Flatter them.

A nearer stab at the current version comes in the English newspaper The Spectator in 1776, written by Joseph Addison and others, 1776:

Imitation is a kind of artless flattery.

The full monty as far as this proverb is concerned was given by Charles Caleb Colton, in Lacon: or, Many things in few words, 1820:

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

Creative work, technology, pop culture, even life, is a collection of successive variations on a theme differentiatied only by defaults and taste. The key to growth is to expose ourselves to as many themes as possible, to change the defaults. Ultimately, if you have something to say the best way to say it is to make something original. 

Five days later, some things to consider about the Super Bowl

NFL:

• Has reached a saturation point with their main audience, men, football fans. The men that are going to watch football already watch football.

• The Super Bowl is an opportunity for the NFL to educate and recruit new fans, those that only watch one football game a year at parties with friends.

• This year was about reaching women and gay men and trying to retain them into next football season.  

• They used the internet and "second screen" offerings to achieve just that, educate the potential fan while enhancing the experience for the current fan.

• The game was streamed online for the first time, with some technical challenges still needed to be worked out. 

• In conjunction with NBC asked Madonna to perform the halftime show. 

• The game itself was exciting, which is not always the case.

• It was the most watched program in US television history. 

• During the last three minutes of the game 10,000 tweets were sent every second. 

NBC: 

• The beleaguered network has been lagging in the ratings with very few hits in their primetime line up.

• With the NFL, asked Madonna to perform the halftime show.

• Promoted the network's programming hoping to retain some of the massive audience. Targeted women and gay men, the most likely audiences for the shows they need to be hits.

• Began Super Bowl programming with a 3 minute long promo for the network. The promo was an elaborate musical number.  

• Heavily promoted Smash, an expensive to produce tv program about the making of a Broadway musical with a pedigree of top tv and stage talent, including Steven Spielberg, producing it.

• Smash premiered the following night to very strong ratings.

• The new season of The Voice, a singing competition featuring halftime show performer Cee Lo Green as a judge, premiered immediately after the game to the biggest non-sporting event ratings on any network in six years. 

Halftime Show:

• The NFL selects the performer with input from the network airing the game. 

• The Madonna halftime show was produced by the NFL, sponsored by Bridgestone, and employed the best of the best in the world of stage production with crews from Tribe, Inc., Cirque Du Soleil, Moment Factory, as well as Madonna's own inner circle of collaborators, including Givenchy who designed the costumes.

• Creating the show required 320 hours of rehearsal.

• The production crew had 8 minutes to get the most technically intricate stage set up in halftime show history into the field, 12 minutes and 40 seconds to run the highly choreographed performance, and only 7 minutes to take it all down.

• The performers do not get paid for the performance, the NFL covers productions costs.

• By featuring LMFAO (pop/dance), Nicky Minaj & MIA (hip hop) and Cee Lo Green (R&B) during the performance Madonna ensured she covered all the genres of music that get the most radio play and exposure. 

• The performance ended with a rousing rendition of "Like A Prayer." When originally released Madonna and the song were featured in a Pepsi commercial that was subsequently pulled from the air due to the controversial imagery in the song's video. 

• The game's average rating was 40.5. The halftime show rating was 41.5. More people watched the halftime show than the game itself. 

• The football-themed video for Madonna's new single, which she performed during the show, premiered on the web the Friday before the game. As of now it has 11M views on YouTube. 

• Madonna's new album is titled MDNA, a reference to the emotion heightening drug MDMA (Ecstasy) and also an abbreviation perfect for social media updates and hashtags. 

• The album went on pre-sale exclusively on iTunes the Friday before the game. 

• By the time the halftime show began the album was #1 in 50 countries. The biggest one day pre-order in iTunes history.  

• Two days after the show Madonna announced a world tour, with tickets going on sale around the world starting next Monday. 

• Two nights after the show songs by Madonna and LMFAO were featured on Glee. 

• For a lesson in collaboration and team work watch the halftime show again, muted, and ignore Madonna and the primary talent. Instead watch how the dancers and the many extras, all do a hell of a lot more than what it looks like they are doing. Watch as microphones get passed from dancer to dancer, costumes changed and taken of stage. How the crew, dressed completely in white with camera equipment wrapped in white so projections will reflect of them, dart in and out setting things up and removing them all seamlessly. Madonna was the performer, but the crew put on the show.

• 12 minutes and 40 seconds of air time during the Super Bowl cost advertisers approximately $85 million. 

Advertisers:

• The Super Bowl is the one time when people purposely watch commercial spots.

• Most ads were pre-released leading to few surprises during the actual game. 

• Most ads were produced using pop culture references as short cuts to relevance. They used borrowed interests, rather than create their own. 

• An M&M commercial, introducing a new brown M&M, featured an LMFAO song.

• It used to be a Super Bowl ad came out of nowhere, surprised, and created a cultural moment with the ability to make icons out of a brand almost instantly. 

• Super Bowl advertising is no longer about the ads during the game, it's about social media. 

• Coca-Cola and Acura's websites crashed during the game. 

• David Beckham's ad for H&M, close ups of Beckham in his underwear, was mostly ignored by the primary NFL audience, but of all the ads in the game it was number 1 in social media mentions.

• The only ad that was a surprise, since no one saw it prior to the game, was the expertly executed "Halftime in America" for Chrysler.

• It followed the strategy of last year's "Imported from Detroit" featuring Eminem.

• In the days after the game various groups have referred to it as an homage/ripoff of "morning in America" as well as showing support for Obama's campaign. 

• Apple's "1984" is considered by many one of the best Super Bowl commercials ever, and even though Apple did not advertise during the game it didn't really have to. Once the game ended, with the Giants winning, all you could see was a sea of people, players, managers, crews, holding up their iPhones taking video and pictures of the moment.

Audience:

• Many, many people watched an exciting game. 

• Fans of football where thrilled by the game, mildly amused by the advertising and did not really care for the halftime show.

• Non fans of football got to see an example of what makes football so exciting, were mildly amused by the advertising and really enjoyed the halftime show. 

• With the exception of the Patriots and most advertisers, it seems every one was a winner.