“Cross Section of the Mainstream” via Lynn Greer

Sometime last year a group of people came together with the single-minded purpose of bringing a little piece of TED magic to Greenville.

Been under a rock? Haven’t heard of TED? You’re gonna thank me.

The TEDx Greenville team is an eclectic and interesting group. And like a lot of volunteer groups it was made up of really busy people. There were some hiccups and starts and stops early on, but I am so impressed with what this small team has put together in such a short period of time. Many, many people played a part in pulling this off including a great list of sponsors, but I have to give a lot to credit to these super bright and shiny folks, who took an idea and super sized it:

Marc Bolick, Brenda Laakso, Susan Sebotnick, Aaron Von Frank, Peter Waldschmidt, and Philip Whitley.

You, know…it’s easy to get discouraged when working with a large committee and these folks never did.

Check out all the details here. From what I hear, there are only about 45 seats or so left. So if you are in the neighborhood, come on. We’ll have some fun. Believe it!

BTW, here are a few of the TEDx Greenville Team’s favorite TED videos:

It is our humanity and all the potential within it that makes us beautiful.

Instead of trying to exterminate a problem, why not use the momentum of that problem to your advantage?

Often times we make decisions, assumptions, and even statements that we want to believe are based in a “hard fact” or a tangible reality when in fact we are being influenced in ways that we are completely unaware.

Now take a minute and share your favorite TED video with me and why. Come on. Spread some remarkable ideas on this Monday morning.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. —  Peter F. Drucker

If there is one thing I’ve learned in life it is this:

Change is a constant.

There’s been in a lot of changes here at Brains on Fire in these first few months of 2010.

First of all, I really think the economy is loosening its death grip a bit. We have three new exciting relationships/projects that have come our way in the last two months. All amazing folks with fun and interesting challenges. We are super excited to pour our hearts into helping them grow.

I have this saying that I repeat a lot.
We want to:
Create Positive change in the world.
Make money.
And have some fun.

Those things are happening. We’re feeling pretty lucky these days. I’d love to hear your take on the turnaround.

And more good news, we are actually hiring again. Just hired the super smart Alexis Bass to be our full time Colonial Williamsburg community manager. She will also help with strategy and insight.

Her most recent experience is as an account planner with Saatchi & Saatchi x leading strategy development on Proctor & Gamble. She was also on the WalMart global customer team while there. We can’t wait for her to get started!

And one last item of change. Spike Jones has left to pursue other opportunities and adventures. We all wish him the very, very best.

Sooo… because of that change, you’ll be seeing some brand new faces and hearing some new voices on the blog in the coming weeks and months. That will be fun.

Change is good.

Believe it! We do.

Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life. — Alvin Toffler

Photo via me, Eric Dodds.

What would your gut reaction be if someone asked you why domestic automaker market share has declined over 25% in the last 12 years? Lack of quality? Lack of innovation in green technology? Inferior manufacturing capabilities? Horrible gas milage? Those were my reactions too.

But it turns out there’s a difference between my perception of whose cars have lasted longest of the people I know, hot environmental topics in the media and what car-buyers actually wanted in the vehicles they purchased over the last decade.

Quite simply, people wanted cooler-looking cars.

Woah…what? It’s true. In a recent study from Virginia Commonwealth University, researchers found that, though other variables were important,

“The positive impact of a restyling dominates the other determinants of demand and accounts for the secular decline in domestic market share. A complete restyling on average has a ten times greater impact on market share growth rate than even a 10 percent reduction in relative price. Furthermore, manufacturers would have to double relative advertising expenditures to achieve an effect comparable to a complete restyling.”

And one of the researchers, Professor of Economics George E. Hoffer, makes this point in a related video:

“…re-styling dominates everything else. People like to say well, the Americans haven’t been green, the Americans haven’t been on the safety frontier, the Americans haven’t had the quality. We find, really, that’s not very important.”

Gut check. Quality, green-ness, gas milage - important, but not MOST important. Popular rationale in purchase decisions usually take a back seat to the emotion that drives the final choice. And as the study shows, if you can’t find that desire, you’ll have to drain your advertising budget to sell a product that people just don’t like as much.

HUGE, BIG OL’, GIANT CAUTION AHEAD: There’s about to be a whole long list of horn-tootin’. So if you’re averse to that sort of thing, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled blog posts tomorrow.

On the webnets earlier this week, I ran into Ground Zero’s site, which is a one-pager that is part history/part brag sheet of their accomplishments. I love it. And it really got me thinking about what Brains on Fire’s would look like. Especially in this new world where so many people can claim expertise, but when you start digging, there’s no substance there.

The below really started for myself. Just to get it all down on paper in one place. Then I thought I’d share it with the team here. And then I thought, “what the hell,” and am posting it for everyone.

Brains on Fire was formed in 1998 when the best design group around came together with the best strategy group around. We wrote and illustrated the Red Ribbon Book, which President Clinton used as a backdrop for his war on drugs. One guy in our group volunteered to work for free until we could pay him. After we rebranded it, a federal savings bank sold for the highest premium of its kind - ever - at the time. A national engineering firm had double-digit growth. A national placement firm grew 558%. A shipping logistics company grew 35%. A regional landscaping company grew revenue 26%. A construction supply company grew when their entire industry sank. We got our name from the founder who was ranting and raving after he heard and idea he loved. He said, “That really sets my effing brains on fire!!” When we created the packaging for a new line of tools in a big-box hardware chain, they did 10x the sales they projected. We’ve had several offices, one of which really pissed off our corporate neighbors (sorry, Michelin), one of which was in city hall and the current one which is in a century-old underwear factory. We’ve been recognized 11 times in the past 5 years for having among the top 100 most effective and creative rebranding efforts in the world. Our design work has been featured in 3 prominent books (one of them published by HOW) in the past 3 years. We took one of the smallest tobacco prevention budgets in the entire nation and created one of the largest teen smoking rate drops in the nation. It also got a gold EFFIE and bested the TRUTH campaign, which outspent us literally hundreds of times to one. We’ve worked with companies on main street and those that weigh in on Wall Street. For insight, we delivered dry cleaning in Atlanta. Participated in all-night scrapbooking crops in LA. Mowed lawns in Florida. Hung out with engineers in Omaha. Built guitars in Durham. Worked the big-box sales floor in LA. We created a movement that doubled sales in key regions, increased mentions of their company by name 600% and still generates R&D, fan marketing and PR ideas we could have never thought of 3 years later. It’s also been written about in 5 books in the past 2 years, including NY Times best-seller, Groundswell as well as The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited and Secrets of Social Media Marketing. Our case studies get presented around the country and around the world – by people that aren’t us. Other firms also use them to pitch new business ideas. We speak nationally and globally on design, movements and long-term word of mouth marketing. Our blog is in the top .01% most read and linked to in the world. We’ve been named one of the top 3 WOM companies in the business – by our peers. We’ve always been between 20 and 30 people – that’s all we’ve ever needed.

And….done. Hopefully it’ll inspire to put yours down on paper, too.

Will good news spread as fast as bad? Has our current state of economic woe been amplified by social media?

I’ve been rolling this question around in my head a lot lately. And actually had an interesting email exchange with Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu over at prconnections. I asked her if she was aware of any study on the subject? My poking around finds lots of debate on “will the economy affect social media”, but none that I can find on “will or has social media affected the economy”.

Here’s her answer to my question:

“interesting idea…

I’m not aware of any research, but it’s an interesting question: if information moves faster now, does it also accelerate the speed of events? I know it does in PR, where crises happen almost instantaneously now… but many are also quickly forgotten, because the attention switches quickly to something else (though the Google scars remain).

However, when you’re dealing not with opinion, perceptions, and information, but with money and assets… I’m not sure if things work the same way!”

Her point is very valid. But no one denies that emotion and perception plays a part in the ups and downs of the Stock Market. And I know, the stock markets woes don’t drive all other economic woes. But I do wonder, has anyone else been thinking about this?

Wednesday Spike sent out this on twitter:

And it was retweeted all over twitter-ville, I have to admit just seeing it pop up again and again – as Zane said, made my shoulders relax a bit.

About ten days ago this showed up from someone at Best Buy:

If that doesn’t seal the deal for you: how about these two really smart guy’s opinion. Okay, unlike Spike they are not pronouncing it over, but they do say it’s going to be over sooner than we think. Now I don’t know them from Adam, but they look smart and have that Stanford University thing going for them.

Need more proof. That guy with the sandwich board in NYC got a job right before Christmas.

So what do you say? Let’s start a movement of loud and proud believers. And do what Libby says: