There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.
Hare ran down the road for a while and then paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, "How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?"
Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking, "There is plenty of time to relax." Then his cell phone rang.
It was his sponsor. “Get off your ass, Hare.” Said he, “Surely you are aware that they are making hares faster then we can sponsor them. And, by the way, I think I saw a cheetah in my boss’s office just last week.”
Hare ran back out to the track, nearly running tortoise down as he passed him in a blur.
Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until…he got an instant message from his sponsor…
“DPLY CONCERNED HERE.” It said. “YR LK OF PRGRSS VIOLATES YR CNTRCT. RUN R WE SUE.”
Tortoise continued in his steady pace, secure in the knowledge that his strategy would work in the end. He hadn’t traveled twenty feet before he was served with his papers by a clever chameleon, who just a moment ago had been a very credible rock.
“Slow and steady wins the race.” Tortoise protested, speaking slowly and steadily.
“I’m sorry,” Pronounced the race organizer, a woodpecker with a determined beak. “Only sponsored animals are permitted on the course.”
Tortoise, though he descended from a long line of successful racers, was forced to find work in the restaurant business. After a painful adjustment, he did finally achieve a modicum of success, as a soup.
Hare crossed the finish line with his cell phone ringing.
“I’m sorry to say this,” said his sponsor, as if he was not sorry to say it at all. “Cheetah is in, you are out.”
“But I won!” Protested Hare.
“Yes,” said his sponsor. “But you are not married to my boss’s sister.
After that, Hare always reminded himself, "Don't brag about your lightning pace, for Well Connected won the race!"
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut is Dead
Sad. Kurt Vonnegut is dead. I remember how much I identified with him and with his characters, who were little more than quizzical dust particles on a cosmic breeze. In fact, their lives felt like my life – and by that I mean the life of a member of the TV audience – buffeted about through time, moods, and all manner of inanity.
I was born in 1962. The first long-running TV series I remember was the Vietnam War. It was presented as a farce, with mortal consequences. I lived in a working class neighborhood, with an assortment of immigrant and second and third generation Catholics, fighting people, among them a former Hitler Youth, many still working out pathologies from WWII. I knew I would one day have to decide whether to go to war or evade the draft. A monumental, life and death, kill-or-be-killed-or-don’t-kill-and-be-imprisoned-or-exiled-existential decision that I needed to be prepared for by the age of eighteen. I knew I would face this decision alone.
No doubt, this is what made Kurt Vonnegut’s characters and his world so attractive. And the rest of TV too, in the age before the remote. One was transported through time, the object of events, never the subject. No life and death, kill or don’t kill, live or die, right or wrong, character-defining decisions need really be made. In the end we are just the pawns of space-time anyway. We are merely the abused audience for a cosmic joke told for no particular reason by no one in particular.
I fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut in the early 70s. I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut. My first short stories weren’t much like his, but the protagonist who is little more than a hapless witness to insanity certainly was there.
By 1984, Vonnegut had made a serious attempt at suicide, and my own crippling anxiety had sidetracked my nascent music and writing careers.
Part of the cure involved ceasing to see myself as a Vonnegutean anti-hero. Though I never was forced to make that life and death decision about going to war, due to the elimination of the draft in the early ‘70s, I still needed to face up to what I believed and what I would give my life for. And little by little, I discovered that it did matter, and that people could and did make a difference.
Vonnegut himself was no Billy Pilgrim after all. It takes fierce will and an almost insane commitment to become the kind of writer and figure that Vonnegut was. He was actively, aggressively, assertively himself despite every kind of discouragement the world has to offer and in spite of all enticements too.
C.S. Lewis said, “We read to know we are not alone.” At a time when I felt very much alone, I discovered Vonnegut. Though his world became an anchor that I ultimately cut loose, or at least learned to put in perspective, at one time it was a lifeline.
And through Vonnegut, I fell in love with writing. Short sentences. Little words. Wit in the juxtapositions. He lit a fire in me – a fire to connect. I now use it to pursue a career he would have hated, but that I absolutely love.
So it goes.
I was born in 1962. The first long-running TV series I remember was the Vietnam War. It was presented as a farce, with mortal consequences. I lived in a working class neighborhood, with an assortment of immigrant and second and third generation Catholics, fighting people, among them a former Hitler Youth, many still working out pathologies from WWII. I knew I would one day have to decide whether to go to war or evade the draft. A monumental, life and death, kill-or-be-killed-or-don’t-kill-and-be-imprisoned-or-exiled-existential decision that I needed to be prepared for by the age of eighteen. I knew I would face this decision alone.
No doubt, this is what made Kurt Vonnegut’s characters and his world so attractive. And the rest of TV too, in the age before the remote. One was transported through time, the object of events, never the subject. No life and death, kill or don’t kill, live or die, right or wrong, character-defining decisions need really be made. In the end we are just the pawns of space-time anyway. We are merely the abused audience for a cosmic joke told for no particular reason by no one in particular.
I fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut in the early 70s. I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut. My first short stories weren’t much like his, but the protagonist who is little more than a hapless witness to insanity certainly was there.
By 1984, Vonnegut had made a serious attempt at suicide, and my own crippling anxiety had sidetracked my nascent music and writing careers.
Part of the cure involved ceasing to see myself as a Vonnegutean anti-hero. Though I never was forced to make that life and death decision about going to war, due to the elimination of the draft in the early ‘70s, I still needed to face up to what I believed and what I would give my life for. And little by little, I discovered that it did matter, and that people could and did make a difference.
Vonnegut himself was no Billy Pilgrim after all. It takes fierce will and an almost insane commitment to become the kind of writer and figure that Vonnegut was. He was actively, aggressively, assertively himself despite every kind of discouragement the world has to offer and in spite of all enticements too.
C.S. Lewis said, “We read to know we are not alone.” At a time when I felt very much alone, I discovered Vonnegut. Though his world became an anchor that I ultimately cut loose, or at least learned to put in perspective, at one time it was a lifeline.
And through Vonnegut, I fell in love with writing. Short sentences. Little words. Wit in the juxtapositions. He lit a fire in me – a fire to connect. I now use it to pursue a career he would have hated, but that I absolutely love.
So it goes.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Health, Wealth & The Pursuit of Happiness.
Check this out: http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2006/07/nparticle.2006-07-28.2448323827
What we have here is something new. Something potentially important. It's the first ever "global projection of subjective well-being." In other words, it's a worldwide happiness map.
Check out who's happy and who's not.
Now let's get into why. It turns out the factor that correlates most strongly to happiness is HEALTH (.7). Close behind are WEALTH (.6) and access to EDUCATION (.6).
As you'll see, here in North America, we sit in one of the world's great oceans of subjective well-being. In addition, our population is aging as baby boomers begin to reach retirement age. What is emerging is an increased focus on HEALTH and WEALTH.
At DiMassimoGoldstein, we've increased our focus on health (MaxMD and GoSMILE , among others) and wealth (various financial services brands).
We believe that by putting the customer first, by focusing on the customer's satisfaction, we can help our clients give customers what they want so the customer will give the client what the client wants. That's how brands emerge today. Sounds simple, and it can be. But that doesn't make it easy. It takes courage, skill and clarity of mind along with that rare ability -- listening -- to get the corporate and career agendas out of the way, and put the customer in the center.
Then it takes the best of social science and human insight to answer the question, "What does the customer really want?"
And great ingenuity to deliver it across all channels and fundamentally in the product or service itself.
When we do that, we're delivering more happiness to more people. Jeremy Bentham would approve. Mom would also be proud.
Cheers,
Mark
What we have here is something new. Something potentially important. It's the first ever "global projection of subjective well-being." In other words, it's a worldwide happiness map.
Check out who's happy and who's not.
Now let's get into why. It turns out the factor that correlates most strongly to happiness is HEALTH (.7). Close behind are WEALTH (.6) and access to EDUCATION (.6).
As you'll see, here in North America, we sit in one of the world's great oceans of subjective well-being. In addition, our population is aging as baby boomers begin to reach retirement age. What is emerging is an increased focus on HEALTH and WEALTH.
At DiMassimoGoldstein, we've increased our focus on health (MaxMD and GoSMILE , among others) and wealth (various financial services brands).
We believe that by putting the customer first, by focusing on the customer's satisfaction, we can help our clients give customers what they want so the customer will give the client what the client wants. That's how brands emerge today. Sounds simple, and it can be. But that doesn't make it easy. It takes courage, skill and clarity of mind along with that rare ability -- listening -- to get the corporate and career agendas out of the way, and put the customer in the center.
Then it takes the best of social science and human insight to answer the question, "What does the customer really want?"
And great ingenuity to deliver it across all channels and fundamentally in the product or service itself.
When we do that, we're delivering more happiness to more people. Jeremy Bentham would approve. Mom would also be proud.
Cheers,
Mark
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