Here's to a great 08

There's no question in my mind.

2008 will be much better than 2007.

Has to be.

The girls and I just put together our resolutions for the coming year. It is quite an exercise to explain the concept of "resolutions" to a four-year-old. The nice thing is that going through this process tonight has reminded me of the power of simplicity and the importance of periodically taking stock.

I've certainly got a ton of things I can do professionally to make me better at what I do. It's nice that I've just had my annual performance review to give me a clear report card. But, for my youngest, I just needed to boil down the concept to its essence.

"We're just trying to do something to make ourselves better people, honey."

That's it.

The action needed to realize this promise can be large or small, but in the end, we're aiming for improvement. In many ways, this is a tidy parallel to what we're doing for our clients. We're asking customers to do one thing. That's it. Right?

As I turn the page on '07, I am glad to see a fresh slate before me. 365 open blocks of time to clarify and simplify. 12 months to take both large and small actions with a goal of improvement.

2008 will be much better than 2007.

There's no question in my mind.

Of Ants and Humans

Carl Zimmer reported in the New York Times over the weekend that scientists have a better idea as to why ants and other swarming animals can work so efficiently. Turns out, according to Iain Couzin, a mathematical biologist at Princeton and Oxford, that there are a series of trails ants leave and rules they follow which keep them from moving in a chaotic manner. Zimmer summarized the findings by stating that:

"[These] rules allow thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism."

Couzin and his colleagues tested their theories of chemical trails and behavioral "norms" using mathematical and computer models. They discovered that among these , and other swarms (birds, fish, locusts), each individual has to regularly choose between its desire to move in a particular direction or to follow the group path. A small number of leaders can turn the swarm by changing the input and that entices the rest of the group to "spontaneously come to a consensus and move in the direction chosen by the majority."

Brainless animals.

If only it weren't being found to occur in our species as well. Couzin has found in recent experiments that humans make eerily similar unconscious swarming decisions -- influenced by a small group of leaders, we tend to follow a path because of popularity.



Is that why The Blair Witch Project was successful? Does that explain The Tipping Point with empirical proof?

Seems to me to have a great deal of implication on behavior when it comes to marketing. That's also why I subscribe to the opinion that we should be helping our clients to be noticed for the right reasons with a small, influential audience. I think it was Seth Godin who said we should be creating marketing that is remark-able.

Getting noticed for energy and excitement will capture the attention of the leaders and the swarm will soon follow.