Josh Chambers

The Stories We Carry

It was a cold, December evening in Uptown New York. My newborn daughter had just been rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and, having not eaten in 12 hours, I was outside the hospital grabbing food for my wife and I (my daughter is good to go now). Walking, or perhaps wandering, the sidewalk in a daze of paradoxical emotions – pure joy and pure fear – I suppose the only word for what I was feeling was “broken.”

I looked up to find a typical New-Yorker-in-a-suit barreling towards me. Had I not jumped out of the way he probably would have walked right over me. My first reaction: “Jack ass. If you had any idea what I’m going through…”

Then it hit me: What if he’s going through the same thing? What if he is rushing to the hospital to visit a loved one? Rushing home for a birthday party? Rushing to a friends house who has just called him in desperation? Furthermore, how often do I do the same thing? How often do I barrel down a street unaware – and mostly uncaring – of the stories unfolding around me?

Every one of us carries a story.

Man do we in the advertising industry forget that (myself included). We call huge demographics of people “consumers” – as if their reason for existence is to consume. We convince ourselves that if we craft the right message it will be an unstoppable force in someone’s day. And we so often forget/ignore that at any given moment our “target” might be a new dad who just watched his newborn being taken to the NICU.

These are real people we’re talking about. Real people that can’t always be summarized in data points; real people who often make decisions not based on how we want them to feel, but how they already feel when they encounter our work.

Anyhow, I’m just pondering how this thought changes my every day, how it changes my work. I could write about the need for multiple touch points, the importance of understanding need-states, the role of timing in messaging, how mobile can help, blah blah blah; but I’ve decided to start small and not overtax my small brain. I’ve decided that a good place to start after all this pondering is to ensure that how I speak and write recognizes – or at least doesn’t blind me to the fact – that every one of us carries a story.

“Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so he is.” Publilius Syrus

Being Better than Good

This has been on my mind lately…

We as advertisers/marketers/creatives have a unique gift to influence people through our work. Therefore, I believe we have a responsibility to ensure we’re influencing people to do the right thing.

This goes beyond the client, beyond the project, and begs the question, “Is this helping or harming others?”

The creative industry (not just advertisers – if you build a website, you’re guilty too) too often promotes over-consumption, encrouages a damaging addiction to consumerism, and promises a false happiness through material wealth that we’ve seen fail people over and over. And yet, we get in a room, hammer out an idea, talk ROI, talk strategy; but rarely do we stop and ask if we should be promoting this idea, this product, this company, this paradigm.

It’s somewhat cliche to say, but with power comes responsibility. If we really do have the ability to influence others more than the average joe, it’s inexcusable to use that gift without first understanding the impact.

This Just In: Reading the Whole Thing Actually Helps

We’re developing into an intellectually lazy and selfish culture thanks to search, 140 characters, and RSS. But are the tools really to blame? Nope. Perhaps the tools are just a manifestation of a culture suffering from T.A.D.D. (technological attention deficit disorder), or perhaps we’re just misusing them. I suppose that’s somewhat of a moot point now; however, how we choose to behave and use the tools (vs. being used by the tools) can still be healthy.

You might be suffer from T.A.D.D. if…

• You only read the titles of blog posts
• You only read the first and last sentence of each paragraph
• You’re incapable of reading anything longer than one page
• You read a research document and you mentally snapshot the graphs, and proceed to use those stats in your next conversation
• You delicious dozens of articles/posts daily, and never review them
• You quote Tweets as facts without checking the associated links
• You find others frequently asking you, “Did you have a chance to read the whole email?”
• You regularly read subject headings of emails, and “forget” to read the rest
• You delete voicemails before listening to them (although…voicemails really are the worst thing on earth)

What are the consequences of T.A.D.D.?

• You misquote things regularly – even though you have no idea you’re doing so
• You rarely get the full picture (on much of anything)
• You overwhelm and immobilize yourself under a mound of data snippets
• You never let your brain fully process an idea
• You kill meetings because you didn’t read the whole email, and start a debate about something that was already addressed
• If the author is a client, friend, or coworker you inadvertently tell the author their time isn’t as valuable as yours
• Books hurt your brain, eventually shaping you into one, shallow, person
• You can’t truly tackle, understand, and help bring change to complex problems
• Your ideas will be about as long-term oriented as your information consumption habits
• You become impatient far too easily — mostly with other people

Clean up your blog reader (hopefully I make the cut!), unfollow some people, read a book, read the whole email, pick up a reputable magazine, and stretch your brain, show some discipline, show others you care by not asking questions that were already addressed, and truly learn about a small handful of meaningful topics vs. frantically learning a little about a lot.

If you’re wondering how the internet really is affecting culture, check out the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Back in Gear…

I have a music blog, I have a work blog, and I’m way too busy. So, I thought it made since to begin blogging on the personal blog again.

A few years ago I had a blog specific to digital marketing, but I got too busy to maintain it. Well, I loved it and it helped me clear my head…so here we go again. I have no illusions of this blog gaining much popularity; but that’s not what I’m after. This is about me carving out a space to process unfiltered thoughts on branding, marketing, leadership, corporate culture, and digital-anything. Thoughts that help me clarify my views, and hopefully trigger something in your brain along the way.

Please bear with me as I work to put a design I’m proud of around this, and flesh out the content and functionality a bit. While this will hopefully be a bit more articulate than the nightstand notebook, I promise nothing.