Mar
31

Anyone who is a CEO or is thinking of becoming a CEO should read this.

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweat, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary founder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.”


Mar
27

A colleague of mine was posting something on Craigs List the other day and this was the Captcha code that appeared. It may seem totally arbitrary now, but I assure you, its contents mean the world to me.

A colleague of mine was posting something on Craigs List the other day and this was the Captcha code that appeared. It may seem totally arbitrary now, but I assure you, its contents mean the world to me.

Mar
26

This young lady won a new Cadillac yesterday. Last August, I was at lunch with friend and client Brad Brotherton, who owns Brotherton Cadillac in Renton, WA. A few weeks earlier, he had given me an assignment to come up with some really unique ways to use social media for his dealership. He wanted to make sure the ideas not only promoted his dealership, but also helped support the numerous charities he’s involved with. I had an answer for him that day. “Brad, let’s give away a new Cadillac on Twitter,” I said. Long pause. Two bites of sandwich. Wash it down with a big gulp of Coke. “I’m still listening,” he said. In the photo above sits college student Elizabeth Miller, who’s Twitter entries into the Brotherton Cadillac Race For A Ride Charity Drive won her a 2011 Cadillac CTS. She tweeted in support of the Moyer Foundation, the winning charity in the Twitter contest. Her lucky tweet was one of tens of thousands of tweets and millions of impressions generated in support of five amazing Seattle charities and Brotherton Cadillac. Nology Media learned a tremendous amount about social media contests during this campaign, and our incredibly hard working team had some nail biting days and weeks from October through February. In the end, all five charities obtained a measurable boost in their own social media efforts as a result of the contest. Elizabeth walked (drove) away with an amazing new car. And Brad Brotherton will go down in history as the first auto dealer ever to give away a new Cadillac on Twitter. Not bad.

This young lady won a new Cadillac yesterday.

Last August, I was at lunch with friend and client Brad Brotherton, who owns Brotherton Cadillac in Renton, WA. A few weeks earlier, he had given me an assignment to come up with some really unique ways to use social media for his dealership. He wanted to make sure the ideas not only promoted his dealership, but also helped support the numerous charities he’s involved with. I had an answer for him that day.

“Brad, let’s give away a new Cadillac on Twitter,” I said.

Long pause. Two bites of sandwich. Wash it down with a big gulp of Coke.

“I’m still listening,” he said.

In the photo above sits college student Elizabeth Miller, who’s Twitter entries into the Brotherton Cadillac Race For A Ride Charity Drive won her a 2011 Cadillac CTS. She tweeted in support of the Moyer Foundation, the winning charity in the Twitter contest. Her lucky tweet was one of tens of thousands of tweets and millions of impressions generated in support of five amazing Seattle charities and Brotherton Cadillac.

Nology Media learned a tremendous amount about social media contests during this campaign, and our incredibly hard working team had some nail biting days and weeks from October through February. In the end, all five charities obtained a measurable boost in their own social media efforts as a result of the contest.

Elizabeth walked (drove) away with an amazing new car.

And Brad Brotherton will go down in history as the first auto dealer ever to give away a new Cadillac on Twitter.

Not bad.

Mar
23

Frames

I was in Los Angeles last weekend visiting someone who’s going through some stuff. Actually, it’s more than some stuff, but the stuff is beside the point. This person has a friend in LA who I’d never met in person before, but who invited us over to his apartment to relax and talk.

The apartment is situated near the ocean in Santa Monica. Once our car was parked in the underground garage, the owner walked to the elevator and pressed a button with the letters ‘PH’ on it. 

I’d normally be drawn to the fact that the apartment number has a PH on it or that it’s in a great part of LA, or the fact that, for an apartment, the expanse of the entryway would match the size of a decent hotel room. But I wasn’t.

The frames were the first thing I noticed when the double doors opened. Dozens of frames, covering several walls from corner to corner. He and his wife have a family. They’ve been together for decades. They’ve raised several beautiful children, all successful and bright. A grandchild followed.

The contents of each frame tell a sliver of their story. The story of a parent who left the world too soon. The meeting of a man who would one day be called President. The first dances at a wedding. Where a kiss took place after a walk on a beach. The pride of watching a child graduate from college. The twirls of kids on some green grass against a yellow sun. I saw it all through these frames.

We take lots of pictures these days. A camera is never very far away. But most of them never see a fraction of the light it took to produce them in the first place.

All these frames got me thinking about how easy it is to move a relationship from stranger to acquaintance - shake a hand and ask how they’re doing. The stories behind the images on his walls, however, made me feel like a friend. Maybe that’s why he had us into his home in the first place. To catch a glimpse of his life through the frames that made it. 

Mar
22