Victory Day

by Adil Dhalla (@CreativityKTR)
Although it’s unfortunate that The Creative Club won’t be meeting today for the first time in three months, I consider it a milestone that we’ve existed long enough to be impacted by a holiday. From that perspective, I look forward to us not meeting on Labor Day Monday…unless of course we’ve killed the recession by that point, in which case we’ll all move on to new things.

Because we don’t need a specific topic for the purpose of leading the discussion at The Creative Club, I thought I’d throw out a few ideas that have come out of collaborative discussions with people recently. I’ve learned a lot more from people sharing, but I’m not writing a book here so I’ll just provide a vignette of the type of ideas that people are developing now. In respect of their privacy, I won’t give them love publically but will definitely share this with them so they can add to the ideas if they desire to in the comments section.  But certainly, thanks to all the people who have helped us along the way. Everything has counted.

Auto

The big three’s problems are well documented and multi-faceted. One potential solution to alleviate the issue with inventory surplus is to apply a “just in time model” to car production rather than pumping out products to dealerships who can’t give away cars right now if they wanted to. The JIT model is probably best known by Dell Computer’s application of it – build it based on the consumer’s demands and preferences in real time so you don’t keep stockpiles of goods that are constantly declining in value.  I understand how this affects labor so perhaps they can just start applying this method to select lines of cars. Asian cars are built better and that fact is enabling their sales to outpace NAs, so I think the real commitment now should be towards the quality of cars we produce rather than the quantity of them. How have consumers defined ‘quality’ today? Affordable, gas friendly, green focused automobiles. Invite environmentalists (and other stakeholders of course) to be a part of the process so we can find that delicate balance for auto and earth and strive to just keep one or two models for test driving purposes at a dealership.

Advertising

I’ve heard a lot of grumbles about Google’s ‘power’ and while I share some concerns (speaking of which, if anyone wants to make a fun web series loosely regarding Google and our ownership of content, I have a script to share), I think we really need to recognize and respect the Google model. They started as search engine and kept pushing out new features because they afforded themselves the opportunity to experiment while the majority of the online world was thinking unsophisticated about advertising (think pop up ads).  In an email I was looking at in Gmail today, I noticed this snapshot of ads on the side:

What I really like about this is that although I’m not searching (the number one reason why advertising and Google work), the ads are incredibly responsive to my content. The email in question was regarding the Obamas so it’s fascinating that the first ad was in Persian but to me this reflects Google’s recognition that the internet is a global world which cannot be monetized with ads that have no relevance to people.  Sure, not everything is for me but that’s why they provide a few options and all of them have relevance or at least perceived relevance. The amount of sites I go to that the ads collectively serve no purpose other than butchering the design, is uncountable.  So my advice to those in media and advertising is to really get good at ensuring that your ad scheme is always producing value for your intended audience.  Not really an idea, but just a benchmark for how we should be thinking.

Unemployment

Have you noticed how saying your job is ‘recession proof’ is now considered an asset worth mentioning? That’s a clear signal that a lot of people are looking for work or insecure about their situation.

There’s no shortage of advice out there on how to land a job, which is all very dandy, but if you’re out of work and hungry you should contribute voluntarily to something that you’re passionate about even if it’s only for a half day each week. You can spend the remaining 4.5 work days doing the resume thing (and let’s be honest, that’s really hard to do consistently anyway) but all it takes is a few hours to do ‘good’ for your community and yourself by volunteering.  Having purpose and creating change will keep you fresh and motivated (forget chicken soup for the soul, we need booster juice for the mind) and also provide the critical opportunity for you to network and get your foot in the door.  I’m not saying going to a ‘start your own business’ meetup isn’t valuable, because it is, but if you volunteered with Junior Achievement you would derive many of the same benefits and play a role bettering your community. It doesn’t take much.

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Adam and I are going to explore Toronto today with a camera to start determining how My City Livesis going to work. Our hope is to get a demo by the end of the week and I’ll be sure to write about the full idea when we’ve got something to show you. I suppose in the meantime you could follow me on Twitter for updates but truthfully I’m not consistent with it and I don’t have the time to update our Facebook page. It’s downright embarrassing but I’ll share it anyway. Trackbacking back to the unemployment solution, we need help so touch base with us if you’d like but otherwise, we appreciate your readership and various contributions.