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

Posted via web from Josh Chambers’s Posterous

I wonder if this will actually take off…it does seem like an excellent blend between a print magazine and digital.

Photo Credit - Dominics Pics - Flickr

Picture a block of row houses. Each house is exactly the same. Two houses are destroyed on either side of another house. Suddenly, the remaining home stands out. It is separated, on it’s own…unique. Or is it? It’s still the exact same house. Nothing has changed.

But, it’s tempting isn’t it? Proving a point by disproving another. Building an argument by tearing down another. Attempting to make myself look better by making someone else look worse. Leading a ‘movement’ based on what another movement is doing wrong (think “primaries”). Pitching an idea based on how bad all the other related ideas are.

It doesn’t work. It’s unsustainable. You still end up with the same old house, and all your energy was spent creating rubble.

People follow someone who stands for something. People follow when they’re inspired, when there is a vision to latch on to, when they know their destination.

People don’t follow someone who only stands for the opposite of something. Sure, they may follow for awhile, but it’s unsustainable. Eventually the followers become disillusioned. They get sick of not having a destination, and they get sick of rubble. Not to mention that people just get sick of negativity…of always hearing how wrong everyone/everything else is.

Regardless of your political views, from a marketing perspective Barack Obama managed to be about something, whereas his opponents manged to be about a whole lot of what they weren’t about.

When planning, I find it a worthwhile challenge to force myself to build and pitch ideas by casting a vision, showing a destination, and being about something. If I’m trying to prove something’s worth, I try to do it without disproving something else’s worth. It can be hard, but I believe it makes my ideas much stronger. I believe that if my ideas are good, they should stand on their own two feet.

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.