This document discusses how incorporating humor into business can benefit workplaces and companies. It provides examples of companies that have successfully used humor to motivate employees and foster creativity. Specifically, it finds that businesses that encourage humor also encourage risk-taking, focus on solutions over mistakes, and create a more relaxed and collaborative work environment.
Have these items printed professionally and keep your company and wallet stocked at all times. Promoting yourself as a professional can go a large way in becoming a successful consultant.
The Rise of Micro Storytelling: Twitter, Instagram, Vine...Gael Guillet
How internet is changing the rules of storytelling? Through a simple mashup of concepts and quotes I tried to show how social medias such as Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Vine, Tumblr, Reddit and more force us to master the art of getting to point. What I call the trend of micro storytelling. Original post here http://goo.gl/MbqgMV
The Storyteller's Secret: 3 Keys to Mastering Storytelling to Win Hearts and ...Carmine Gallo
Why do some ideas catch on and others don't? Inspired by his new book The Storyteller's Secret, bestselling author and master storyteller Carmine Gallo reveals how some of the most successful TED speakers and business legends use storytelling to win hearts and minds. Find out more about The Storyteller's Secret and download a free chapter at storytellerssecret.com.
10 Tips for Starting Out In the Advertising IndustryDouglas Kleeman
A few things I've learned along the way during my time as an account planner / strategist / copywriter / interactive hybrid of sorts -- presented to the smart advertising students at the University of North Carolina. Presenter notes not included so some slides may not have too much context. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
Have these items printed professionally and keep your company and wallet stocked at all times. Promoting yourself as a professional can go a large way in becoming a successful consultant.
The Rise of Micro Storytelling: Twitter, Instagram, Vine...Gael Guillet
How internet is changing the rules of storytelling? Through a simple mashup of concepts and quotes I tried to show how social medias such as Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, Vine, Tumblr, Reddit and more force us to master the art of getting to point. What I call the trend of micro storytelling. Original post here http://goo.gl/MbqgMV
The Storyteller's Secret: 3 Keys to Mastering Storytelling to Win Hearts and ...Carmine Gallo
Why do some ideas catch on and others don't? Inspired by his new book The Storyteller's Secret, bestselling author and master storyteller Carmine Gallo reveals how some of the most successful TED speakers and business legends use storytelling to win hearts and minds. Find out more about The Storyteller's Secret and download a free chapter at storytellerssecret.com.
10 Tips for Starting Out In the Advertising IndustryDouglas Kleeman
A few things I've learned along the way during my time as an account planner / strategist / copywriter / interactive hybrid of sorts -- presented to the smart advertising students at the University of North Carolina. Presenter notes not included so some slides may not have too much context. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
In this personal talk, writer and copywriter Sidney John Vollmer talks about a very well known fear of the creative industry: the fear of being forgotten.
He’s not concerned with dented creative egos or campaigns going unnoticed. He’s worried about why we work, about the legacy of our culture and how we can make sure we preserve our knowledge and creativity for future generations.
Simply put: we can still connect with the ancient Greek through their marble statues, but even something simple as watching your childhood VHS-tapes has become an enormous hassle.
What should we as creatives do against this Digital Black Hole we’re collectively creating? What responsibility do we carry for our (often ephemeral) work, for ourselves and for our future generations?
You’ll leave this talk with a new perspective on some possible 21st century duties and rights of both you as an individual and of the creative industry as a whole.
We introduce a new mobile system framework, SenSec, which uses passive sensory data to ensure the security of applications and data on mobile devices.
SenSec constantly collects sensory data from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers and constructs the gesture model of how a user uses the device.
SenSec calculates the sureness that the mobile device is being used by its owner.
Based on the sureness score, mobile devices can dynamically request the user to provide active authentication (such as a strong password), or disable certain features of the mobile devices to protect user's privacy and information security.
In this paper, we model such gesture patterns through a continuous n-gram language model using a set of features constructed from these sensors. We built mobile application prototype based on this model and use it to perform both user classification and user authentication experiments. User studies show that SenSec can achieve 75 accuracy in identifying the users and 71.3 accuracy in detecting the non-owners with only 13.1 false alarms.
In this personal talk, writer and copywriter Sidney John Vollmer talks about a very well known fear of the creative industry: the fear of being forgotten.
He’s not concerned with dented creative egos or campaigns going unnoticed. He’s worried about why we work, about the legacy of our culture and how we can make sure we preserve our knowledge and creativity for future generations.
Simply put: we can still connect with the ancient Greek through their marble statues, but even something simple as watching your childhood VHS-tapes has become an enormous hassle.
What should we as creatives do against this Digital Black Hole we’re collectively creating? What responsibility do we carry for our (often ephemeral) work, for ourselves and for our future generations?
You’ll leave this talk with a new perspective on some possible 21st century duties and rights of both you as an individual and of the creative industry as a whole.
We introduce a new mobile system framework, SenSec, which uses passive sensory data to ensure the security of applications and data on mobile devices.
SenSec constantly collects sensory data from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers and constructs the gesture model of how a user uses the device.
SenSec calculates the sureness that the mobile device is being used by its owner.
Based on the sureness score, mobile devices can dynamically request the user to provide active authentication (such as a strong password), or disable certain features of the mobile devices to protect user's privacy and information security.
In this paper, we model such gesture patterns through a continuous n-gram language model using a set of features constructed from these sensors. We built mobile application prototype based on this model and use it to perform both user classification and user authentication experiments. User studies show that SenSec can achieve 75 accuracy in identifying the users and 71.3 accuracy in detecting the non-owners with only 13.1 false alarms.
Quiz Medley : The Edge BizTech Quiz (April 2015) + Pyaasa Gunda : The Indian ...Tamal Dutta
As my co-quizmasters lost the complete sets, I am uploading my contribution of questions for two quizzes I had hosted over the last 12 months :
1. The Edge BizTech Quiz (April 2015)
Quizmasters : The Disco Fighters (Tamal Dutta, Baneswar Sarker and Anirban Roy.)
Venue : Techno India, Salt Lake.
2. Pyaasa Gunda : The Indian Entertainment Quiz (December 2014)
Quizmasters : Tamal Dutta, Baneswar Sarker, Sayantan Guha and Archisman Das.
Venue : Presidency University.
Livin' The Dream... What Though The OddsAMAMichiana
If you want to live life and love your work to the fullest, you can live your dream if you make it happen. This presentation was shared by author Chris Stevens, founding principal of Keurig Coffee Inc., at the Michiana Chapter of the American Marketing Association’s monthly luncheon on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2014.
The goal of Mr. Stevens’ presentation is to inspire marketers and others to pursue their passion, whether they are entrepreneurs or “intra-preneurs”―or want to be. Chris has done both and will share lessons from his own career for marketers and nonmarketers alike.
The Top Ten Digital Campaigns of 2011, not the most viral, or the most downloaded, but the most startlingly original and effective promotions for brands, big and small, including Jello-O, KLM, Granata Pet Food, Intel, and Tampon. Enjoy!
Running With The Big Boys / ADI 2015 / Louisville, KYMartin Pazzani
The former VP Marketing for Smirnoff, Jose Cuervo, Black Velvet, Famous Grouse, Highland Park, and many other brands -- now a member of the craft distilling industry -- gives advice on effectively competing as a small craft distiller in a world of giant, global, mega-brands.
Spikes Asia Creativity Festival 2013 - Insights and InspirationsElva Wu
Here're some insights and observations of the Spikes Asia Creativity Festival 2013. I attended the Spikes Asia Young Marketer Academy this year, it was a truly fruitful and inspiring experience which triggered me to organise my thoughts and gather all the amazing stories together in one deck. And crazy enough, I also started a blog - creativecurations.wordpress.com, which is still at the infant stage and looking insanely ugly at the moment, but the whole purpose was to bring these inspirations forward, to explore further, dig deeper and think bigger, writing seems to be the most effective way to do it. So this deck and my blog are completely dedicated to my own learning, but if occasionally someone finds them an interesting read, I'll be over the moon.
Lectures 15 and 16: Learning From The Masters, Storytelling, Worldbuilding, ...Fahri Karakas
Art Description/Synopsis:
In this class that is designed as collective performance art, we review some of the biggest names in the landscapes of entertainment, creativity, and business.
From space to magic, from basketball to fashion, from animation to computer games, from film music to architecture we have a trans-disciplinary tour of storytelling and creative careers.
We have a lot of puzzles. We have a series of exercises in asset creation and imagination.
In one of these exercises, you will have the opportunity to practice screenwriting, world-building, and storytelling.
However, the main actor in all of this experience (the connecting thread/anchor) is a squash.
Contents:
Review of Last Class
Puzzles: This week in review
Puzzles & Improv Adventures
Workshop: Heroes of Entertainment & Imagination
Exercise: Six Adventures and Six Challenges
Exercise: Screenwriting, World-Building, and Storytelling
Workshop: Creating Assets
Exercise: You are a Super-hero
Key Takeaways
Here are The Squash articles:
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/7-brainstorming-exercises-and-7-lessons-inspired-by-a-yellow-squash-9f9e0df3f236
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/what-a-yellow-squash-can-teach-you-about-creativity-3ea5e26cb28a
Welcome to the Program Your Destiny course. In this course, we will be learning the technology of personal transformation, neuroassociative conditioning (NAC) as pioneered by Tony Robbins. NAC is used to deprogram negative neuroassociations that are causing approach avoidance and instead reprogram yourself with positive neuroassociations that lead to being approach automatic. In doing so, you change your destiny, moving towards unlocking the hypersocial self within, the true self free from fear and operating from a place of personal power and love.
16. BUSINESSES ARE NOW LOOKING FOR
NEW APPROACHES
An Office at Google
• Humor consultant John
Morreall advises
businesses on how to
make employees “like”
to come to work.
• It is fine to decorate an
office or pin up
cartoons, but really, it i
much more complex
than that.
• They find ways to make
their employees WANT
to come to work.
• Offices should be fun to
look at and to work in.
• But there’s more to it
than that.
16
18. MOTIVATION: PROFIT VS. PURPOSE; LEVELING THE HIERARCHY
(e.g. Internet, Wikipedia, Skype, Facebook, Google, Southwest…):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=relmfu
18
19. Businesses which encourage
humor also:
• Take initiative and
risks.
• Do not worry about
making mistakes.
• Spend energy on
solutions.
• Shoot for total
quality.
• Focus on
opportunities.
• Do not worry about
breaking things.
• Try easier, not
harder.
• Stay calm.
• Take responsibility.
• Experiment.
• Smile.
• Have fun.
19
20. 20
To Accomplish These Goals,
Companies:
–Flatten the organization by reducing
levels of management.
–Allow workers more discretion in
making decisions.
–Foster creative thinking.
–Accept employee attitudes,
emotions, and suggestions.
–Encourage teamwork and
collaboration.
21. Administrators’ Views of Humor-in-
Business :
• A sense of humor makes businesses more creative,
less rigid, and more willing to consider and embrace
new ideas and methods.
• In a survey of 737 CEO’s, 98% said that humor was
important in the conduct of business.
• They therefore gave preference to people with a
sense of humor.
• Soft skills are better predictors of success in
management than are hard skills.
21
23. More Support for Humor
• The director of human resources at Sun Microsystems watches
for how long it takes an interviewee to laugh or to find
something funny
• She says that humor is very important in their corporate
futures.
• One business created a “Grouch Patrol.” Whenever they see
someone with a sour expression, they respond by making a bat
face.
• This involves pushing the tip of their noses up, flicking their
tongues in and out, and making a high-pitched “Eeeee” sound.
23
25. When Humor “Bubbles-Up” from Employees,
There Will of Course Be Lots of Variety.
• Practical jokes we’ve recently heard:
– Putting foam packing bubbles in the cubicles of colleagues who
are absent.
– A boss going on a three-week trip, and coming back to find real
sod rolled out in his office just to prove that “grass does grow
under your feet.”
– A door-decorating contest on the cruise ship taking 12 of their
outstanding employees to Mexico, in which winners had photos of
their faces superimposed on pictures of jungle animals.
– Their slogan was “Where the Wild Things Are.”
25
26. At our local BEADS GALORE store an
employee made this sign for the window.
“UNATTENDED CHILDREN
WILL BE GIVEN TO THE
GOBLIN KING”
APPARENTLY, SHE WAS
TIRED OF REARRANGING THE
DISPLAYS.
26
27. 27
Other Examples of Workplace Humor
• A debt collector sent out a letter reading, “We appreciate
your business, but, please, give us a break. Your account
is overdue 10 months. That means we’ve carried you
longer than your mother did.”
• A business manager, who made a really bad mistake,
wore a T-shirt with a large red bulls-eye on it when he
went to a meeting about the problem.
• A large IBM sales team improved their record 30% when
they formed a pick-up orchestra and recorded their sales
in fun ways, e.g. by blowing a horn, smashing a gong.
28. More Examples
• Esther Blumenfield and Lynne Alpern told about how four
women conspired to get even with a male co-worker.
• At meetings, he would routinely drop his pencil on the floor so
that he could bend down under the table and look up their
skirts.
• One day before a scheduled meeting, they used a magic marker
to print on their kneecaps: H I (space) R A L P H.
• The CEO of a large Canadian bank appears in a monthly
corporate video shown to all employees to discuss recent
issues and plans.
• A hand puppet appears and begins poking fun and asking him
embarrassing questions about recent problems. 28
31. Cartoonist Scott Adams draws “Dilbert”
cartoons which explore these business-
related themes:
• Downsizing
• Heavy work loads
• Micromanagement
• Humiliatingly small cubicles
• Accelerating pace of change
• Corporate gobbledygook
• Management fads
• Cruel bosses
• Annoying colleagues
• Red tape.
31
33. Adams encourages readers to send in their true
stories. They are often published on the Business
pages of newspapers.
A management expert at
Apple Computer said,
“There are only two
kinds of companies,
those that recognize
that they’re just like
Dilbert, and those that
don’t know it yet.”
33
34. Once employees incorporate humor in their
daily lives, it seems natural to extend humor to
their customers and potential customers.
• Volkswagen introduced the VW Rabbit into the U.S. with a
10-second commercial showing two rabbits looking into
the camera. One is saying, “In 1956 there were only two
VWs in America. . .”
• At a California traffic school named Lettuce Amuse U, the
teachers are comedians. They use humor to relax
students.
• One teacher explains that an extra reason for keeping
your baby safe in a backward-facing car seat is “If you
get rear-ended, you’ve got a witness.”
34
35. Before a three-day-weekend, the State
Highway Department uses humor by putting
lighted warnings on major highways:
35
37. The Arizona Republic gives away umbrellas
covered with reprints of their comic strips.
Our foot doctor incorporates the anti-fungus
toenail gang to tell us to turn off our cell phones.
37
38. Connections between Humor
and Advertising
• They both require brevity.
• They open people’s minds to enable
them to have a new viewpoint.
• People get involved in processing the
message, and therefore remember it
longer.
38
39. An Advertisement for Coke (Coca Cola):
THE HAPPINESS MACHINE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=lqT_dPApj9U
39
40. Match the Slogans with the Products
• The beer that made
Milwaukee famous
• B. O.
• Say it with flowers
• When it rains, it pours
• Snap, crackle and pop
• Nature’s spelled
backwards
• Good to the Last Drop
• Rice Krispies
• Schlitz Beer
• Serutan
• American Florist
Assoc.
• Maxwell Coffee
• Morton Salt
• Lifebuoy Soap
40
41. Creative spelling made these names memorable and
helped with trademark protection.
Some Early Examples
• Kwik
• ReaLemon
• Reddi-Wip
• Ry-Krisp
• Krispies
• Tastee-Freez
• Toys “Я” Us
• U-Haul
More Recent Examples
• Aspercreme
• Dunkin’ Donuts
• Haggar Expand-o-matic
• Kwik Kopy
• Playskool
• Sominex
• Whataburger
• Wolverine Durashocks
41
42. The Staying Power of Brand Names
Nineteen of the twenty-two companies that owned the
leading American brands in 1925 still own them.
• Campbells in soup
• Del Monte in canned
fruit
• Gillette in razors
• Ivory in soap
• Kellogg’s in
breakfast cereals
• Kodak in film
• Nabisco in cookies
• Sherwin Williams in
paint
• Singer in sewing
machines
• Wrigleys in chewing
gum
42
43. Why did Band-Aid, Kleenex, Scotch Tape,
Thermos, and Zipper become common rather
than proper nouns?
Think of other
examples.
These are relatively
older products.
These are “benchmark”
products.
But today advertisers
work to “protect” their
names so that consumers
will look exclusively for
their products rather than
for the imitators.
43
45. 45
James Twitchell, used his own kind of humor
to criticize America’s market culture. He wrote:
• “If Greece gave the world philosophy, Britain gave
drama, Austria gave music, Germany gave politics,
and Italy gave art, then America has recently
contributed mass-produced and mass-consumed
objects.”
• He added that our materialism is a kind of
spiritualism, but instead of looking at the next life for
our rewards, we are looking for “The Nike swoosh,
the Polo pony, the Guess? label, and the DKNY
logo.”
46. Are we influenced by ads?
• People say that they don’t pay much attention to ads.
They just tune them out, believing they have no effect.
• In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels said that the secret of
propaganda is that “those who are to be persuaded
should be completely immersed in the ideas of the
propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being
immersed in it.”
• This is where humor comes in. If we are amused or
laughing at a commercial or a program, our defenses are
down and we are more likely to want to buy whatever is
being shown.
46
48. Products are our friends.
• Alcoholics joke that Jack Daniels is their
constant lover, while smokers feel that
cigarettes are their friends. People are twice
seduced, first by the ads and then by the
substances.
• “Infiniti is an automobile; Hydra Zen is a
moisturizer, and Jesus is a brand of jeans.”
48
49. Even ten-year-olds are being turned into
COVER GIRLS.
• Each girl at this
weekend celebration in
Louisville brought her
“American Girl” doll.
• All the girls were
photographed and put
onto a “fake” cover of a
local magazine.
• What parent could
resist buying it?
49
50. Commercialization teaches people to be
shoppers.
50
Women are
especially targeted.
Why do teenage
girls shoplift more
often than do
teenage boys?
51. 51
Which of the following
statements are gender marked?
– A woman’s place is in the mall.
– But I can’t be overdrawn! I still have some checks.
– He who dies with the most toys wins.
– I’m spending my grandchildren’s inheritance.
– Nouveau riche is better than no riche at all.
– People who say money can’t buy happiness, don’t
know where to shop.
– Shop ‘til you drop.
– When the going gets tough, the tough go
shopping.
53. 53
We will conclude with miscellaneous “Laws of
Business” developed over the years:
• MURPHY’S LAW: “If anything can go wrong,
it will,” extended to “When left to
themselves, things always go from bad to
worse,” and “If anything can go wrong, it will,
and even if it can’t it might.”
• O’TOOLE’S LAW: Murphy was an optimist.
• DAMON RUNYAN’S LAW: In all human
affairs, the odds are always six to five
against.
54. MORE LAWS . . .
•THE PETER PRINCIPLE: Each employee tends to rise
to their level of incompetence.
•PETER’S COROLLARY PRINCIPLE: When people are
doing well they will be promoted, which means that
everyone not upwardly mobile is incompetent.
•MARSHALL’S GENERALIZED ICEBERG THEOREM:
Seven-eights of everything cannot be seen.
•PAUL HERBIG’S PRINCIPLE OF BUREAUCRATIC
TINKERTOYS: If it can be understood, it’s not yet
finished.
54
55. 55
THE FINAL RULES OF
BUSINESS
• RULE NUMBER 1:
The boss is always right.
• RULE NUMBER 2:
If the boss is wrong, see Rule
Number 1.