I can see a firing in your future!

The state of the U.S. economy is beyond dismal at the moment and with the downturn, job cuts are following suit. With Starbucks closing 600 stores across the country, 12,000 employees are bracing to lose their jobs.

And, with a job loss comes the inevitable goodbye to the company you once poured your blood, sweat and tears into.

The NYTimes.com article, Dear Valued Worker, You’re Fired reminds us of how to handle getting fired:

1. It’s okay to cry (but you may not be permitted to stop by the bathroom and wipe away your smeared makeup on the way out)

2. There’s no need to ask every question on the spot (but do make sure you get someone’s contact information)

3. Don’t get defensive or argumentative (oh, really?!)

The pros agree that if you’re in charge of the firing, it’s best to avoid using the word ‘fire’ altogether. The winning phrases are, “It’s time for us to part company,” “I need to let you go,” or the uplifting “It’s time to help you succeed elsewhere.”

The bottom line: No matter how you sugarcoat it, you’ve still been fired.

As CNet reports today, Hollywood and YouTube may be edging towards their own version of Pax Romana. Meanwhile, beyond the learned walls of the law courts and Google’s battle with Viacom, we here at Social Cache have been scratching our heads over Viacom’s position.

Obviously Viacom is up in arms over what it argues is copyright infringement whenever one of its artists’ songs are used in a user-generated video. Their lawyers are even arguing that in most cases they want to set aside the notion of fair use. That in itself is ridiculous as in a lot of circumstances Viacom has stepped over the edge of copyright boundaries. In 2007 Viacom sent YouTube 100,000 takedown notices! And as this video from the EFF points out, many of those videos that Viacom had asked YouTube to remove, were not infringing anyone’s copyright.

We ourselves received a takedown notice and had a video removed from YouTube. The video was of one of our numerous snowboarding expeditions to Mt Hood and it included a clip of a song by the group White Zombie. We could have argued that under the law if we had used the music for parody, for comment, for criticism, for news reporting or for non-commercial use then we’d be in the clear. In this instance it was the latter - non-commercial use. We couldn’t be bothered, we weren’t that attached to the video and anyway, like millions of other folks, we put up videos at an alarming rate. Here’s our latest.

So here’s the Nemo and Social Cash POV. By removing our video Viacom denied thousands of people the pleasure of hearing a White Zombie song. One of its own artists! And no money was changing hands. One solution - Viacom should provide YouTube with a license from a roster of its artists who agree that their music can be used in a video for non-commercial use. In return YouTube provides its users with a simple license that allows users to add music from these artists to their amateur videos for non-commercial use for a small fee of, perhaps $3.00. Now Viacom and its artists get a share of this revenue, YouTube users won’t receive takedown notices, and Viacom can go a long way to recouping its, no doubt, millions of dollars it is spending on these lawsuits.

You’re welcome. Let me know why it won’t work….

Meanwhile over at MySpace, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has a business that’s built on the backs of thousands of unsigned musicians. Who is looking out for them?

Q. How do we reach these young people? A. You don’t, you wait for them to invite you

The social media folks and their blogs have been buzzing lately over a story that seems to have come from Deloitte but perhaps was more widely circulated by the WSJ. Josh Catone at Sitepoint drilled down further into the story from where it got picked up by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb.

Both Josh and Marshall have great points and their posts are a good read. Marshall’s post had the most provocative headline - Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds. I thought I’d pick up the story there - A Waste of Money. Companies have a bad habit of throwing money at everything that moves, especially if it looks like “something we should be doing.”

Here are my thoughts distilled from my own writings on the subject and insights borrowed from Josh and Marshall’s posts:

Here’s an extract from my essay ‘On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.’ - To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Read the rest of this post here.

With that thought what follows is:

Businesses can not “build a community” however much money they throw at the idea. They merely need to look outside of their own walls, find the influencers who are already championing their products and join the communities that already exist.

Businesses can not attract “visitors” as measured in traffic to their sites. People who enjoy their products will be talking about them elsewhere in other communities. See above.

Businesses have to realize that having a Facebook page for their products makes them look ridiculous and could actually harm the brand. See my post about Spraychel and “her” Facebook page brought to us by the folks behind I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter®

It is the way of businesses to make predictions about their market. They should not invest in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology, unless they have discovered a clear market need.

Positive word of mouth marketing by online communities that enjoy a businesses’ product is a far better metric than the ratio of visits to the corporate web site or its community.

Online communities led by influencers that champion a businesses’ products are doing just that, championing the products not the corporation that brought them to market.

So what should businesses do? Here’s a list that I have reworked to address businesses as it was originally written with rock bands in mind.

They should:
01. Run a blog to which actual company members post regular updates.
02. Ensure that the blogosphere is alerted to any new and breaking news or important posts.
03. Offer early access to special offers and discounts for their customers loyalty.
04. Give away free samples of their product.
05. Be active in their customers online communities.
06. Never push unwanted messages to their customers.
07. Ask their customers to interact directly with their product, for example through competitions and giveaways.
08. Allow the sharing of their products amongst a community.
09. Work closely with influencers.
10. Embrace radical transparency. Openly discuss their problems with their customers and allow negative comments to remain on their blogs.

That’s the top ten; number 11 in my list would include - have dedicated staff working on your company’s online communication 24/7.

Read more of our thoughts on Social Media here.

I love coincidences. Or maybe I should say that as you spend your waking time fully immersed in your daily activities you should deliberately give some of that time over to your subconscious, then there would be no such thing as coincidence; we would just call it awareness.

I posted my summer reading list recently and mentioned that I am buried in E.O. Wilson’s wonderful intellectual adventure ‘Consilience; The Unity Of Knowledge,’ in which he argues just that, the need for unity of knowledge - a common system of knowledge. Today in the New York Times I read an interview with Dr. Wilson and, not for the first time in his career, he is challenging common wisdom. He is arguing that the gene is not the only level at which natural selection acts and because he has new data about the genetics of ant colonies now believes that natural selection operates at many levels, including at the level of a social group. Interesting; what does this mean for all you social media advertising gurus?

He argues that we have long been conditioned to believe that natural selection favors only behaviors that help the individual to survive and leave more children. His studies of ant colonies, a passion of his for many decades, suggest otherwise. He says there is another level at which evolution operates - social groups. He suggests that we may have genes that underlie generosity, moral constraints, even religious behavior, that benefit a group at the expense of the individual. He will be working on these theories for his next book. I can’t wait to read it.

So what genetic code could Dr. Wilson possibly unravel that would explain the human proclivity toward having “feelings” for inanimate objects? Cars are cherished, protected and nurtured like family members. Ships are regularly christened with female names and referred to as “she” or “her.” Houses, cities, buildings, mountains - this urge to have “feelings” for inanimate objects is the same urge that drives humans to want to save the Earth; it is a controlling urge and is a by-product of Christianity.

All of which brings me to the brilliant Spike Jonze and his Ikea ad. [Full disclosure - Nemo and in particular our creative director, Mark Lewman, have deep ties to Spike.]

The ad works from a simple premise; play on our emotional attachment to inanimate objects - in this case a desk lamp that is discarded. In the first second, as the woman leans in to turn off the lamp, we hear a click of the switch or is that maybe a goodbye kiss ? The lamp is then dumped outside alongside a trash bag. It’s raining… How do we feel as the piano tugs at our heartstrings? We should feel nothing, it’s a ridiculous situation, but in many people it may trigger deep human responses to abandonment. That illusion is shattered by a man with distinctly Scandanavian/German overtones to his accent, who berates us for having such stupid feelings.

Spike spent exactly one minute reminding us, if we are really watching and tapped into our subconscious, that the human need to control other animals and inanimate objects is foolhardy and doomed to failure. It won’t stop us buying new desklamps though.

Other than an elongated literary adventure through Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Border Trilogy,’ reading ‘All The Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Crossing’ and ‘Cities of the Plain’ in the summer of 2005, followed in 2006 by reading McCarthy’s masterpiece, the aweful ‘Blood Meridian‘ [and I use aweful by way of its true Middle English definition - "Filled with awe, especially: 1. Filled with or displaying great reverence.",] I’m not inclined to reading novels. McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ and ‘No Country For Old Men’ were both outstanding and Martin Amis turns out great work but I prefer non-fiction; currently I am buried in E.O.Wilson’s ‘Consilience’, re-reading Robert Wright’s ‘The Moral Animal’ and am halfway through John Gray’s ‘Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern’ having finally finished his ‘Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans and Other Animals’ for the third time. This summer’s less than light reading list just grew by two - the Amazon package today contained John Gray’s ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death Of Utopia,’ and ‘Heresies: Against Progress And Other Illusions.’

Otherwise I’m keeping an eye on the Madonna - Guy Ritchie marital farce.

An oil rig off the coast of California

Here in Portland I am seeing signs that the price of gas is making a difference in how people get around the city. Bus ridership has spiked, there are less cars on the road during the commuting hours and bicyclists seem to be everywhere. Yesterday as I walked my dog along the banks of the Willamette River, I noticed far more sailboats than the motorized variety. Maybe the price of gas is making Americans think twice before getting into the car? Maybe.

I carpool to the Nemo warehouse and it’s still a drag to see that of those cars that are on the road I’d guess that 95% of them are occupied by only the driver. And don’t get me started on the hypocritical Prius owners who fly past at speeds that exceed the legal limits. And on Sunday’s the Hillsdale Farmer’s Market is filled with people buying fresh, locally-produced organic food while the parking lot and the surrounding streets are crammed with their cars. None of this makes sense. If you’re concerned perhaps you can leave a comment on their blog.

It seemed that once gas went through $4 a gallon and the $100 fill up entered the public’s economic equation we’d see a marked change in the way we would use our energy. Unfortunately that’s really not the case.

Portland is one of the more environmentally-friendly and green cities in North America. If we can’t break the automobiles stranglehold on our city then what hope for other cities that are less friendly toward buses and bicyclists? Portland has also shown strong support for ending the war in Iraq. If we disagree with the Iraq war, and the inevitable future Middle East wars that will be fought over oil and water resources, what will we Portlanders do at home to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

I argue that if we are unwilling to drastically reduce our gasoline use then it is hypocritical of us to oppose off-shore drilling in California and drilling and exploration in Alaska. We simply can’t have our cake and eat it.

Today, President George W. Bush plans to lift a presidential ban on offshore drilling to combat soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on the high cost of gasoline.

Who will stand in his way this time?

Related Post: I’m Sick of the Co-Opting of Green