First things first. The pictures I took at Coffee with my new phone didn't come out well. Actually what I mean is they came out fine but people just looked bad. You're all nice people but indoors early in the morning with a camera phone, it's a crap shoot.
So instead I did a Google image search for 'i need a picture' and took the first image that came up. (Woah, I just tried it again and it came up second).
There it is. WTF? It's a consumer submitted video for TreeHugger.com and Seventh Generation's Convenient Truth Video Contest. So if you fancy getting lectured to about consumer consumption by a pipe cleaner, check it out. Wow, talk about irony. Is this karmic retribution for Coffee Mornings' consumer marketing jabber? Who knows.
Back to coffee last Friday. We were joined by Ameet, Jennifer, Monique, Dave, Anoud, Erin, Melissa, Ken (of the Pure Thinking blog. He wrote his own coffee recap here), and newbies Joe and Tommy.
Joe just moved to town and is looking to land in a corporate communications or marketing role of some sort (Joe, leave a comment with any other details or contact info if you like).
Monique is a planner at McClain Finlon, and she let everyone know that they're hiring. So if you're a planner looking for a home check 'em out. I believe Sarah Miller is the head of planning over there. I've never met her I know she's trying to make it to coffee one of these days.
Tommy has worked for some time at Comedy Works helping them to operate and expand their business and he had some really interesting perspective on comedy as an art and as a product. For example, a good comic should have you laughing 4-5 times per minute. I never really thought about that. But it is a product and it's got, well I guess, metrics. He also talked about the ratio of practice material versus tried and true material. In a 15 minute set there may be 2-3 minutes of experimental stuff. If you err on the high side that's 20% experimental. Putting stuff out there to see if it sticks. You can see where I'm going with this...
What if brands allocated 20% of their ideas / product innovations / media spend to purely experimental stuff? Things that might polarize. New ground. It's not unlike a regular innovation pipeline, but just put out there with the rest of it all, not researched in test markets and groups. Just as there's nothing quite like a live audience in a comedy club, there's little to truly replace really going for it with a product launch in the real world.
Anyway, Tommy was also kind of segmenting comics among comics versus performers. Dane Cook, for example, he considered a performer. I'd probably put Robin Williams and maybe Bill Hicks in that category after watching a clip that Craig posted. On second thought, I think Hicks may be in a category all his own!
Incidentally, he's also a comic (performer?) himself. Tommy, you've got to let us know the next time you're on stage. I promise not to throw rotten tomatoes.
Ameet was sharing some thoughts from a presentation he recently attended on innovation by Tony Ulwick (Download the ppt here). It makes the case for devising solutions that meet unmet consumer needs.
A few other topics came up but that's all I've got time for now. Anyone have anything to add?