Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

I read the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell while on the beach, and I have to admit, his concepts are still churning in my conscious and subconscious. At least I'm thinking about thinking without thinking.

(Try saying the previous sentence five times fast).

Gladwell is a brilliant storyteller, and uses catchy narrative to illuminate what he calls “thin slicing,” the ability to pull together mounds of information instantly to make quality decisions, rather than mulling over mounds of analytical data.

The benefits of this type of thinking is situational, Gladwell shows, including the often positive outcome of trusting gut instincts, yet revealing the darker side of human snap judgments, often made irrationally with subconscious stereotypes.

Gladwell also pointed out an interesting corporate oddity—a high percentage of CEOs in the United States are extremely tall.

It’s a book far too complicated to break down into neat formulas, and in the end, it settles somewhere in the subconscious, a place, Gladwell says, we should all pay more attention to.

A Whole New Mind (Play)

"Play." In the conceptual age, Pink writes, having a bit of fun is crucial to keeping work and life interesting and balanced. Divided into one part games, one part humor, and one part joyfulness, Pink makes a case for the three dimensions of "Play," including his own personal visit to a "laughter club" in India.

We all need a break. In one hour, I'll be boarding a plane to celebrate a week of "Play" on the beach.


Enjoy your 4th of July holiday!
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This is the sixth blog based on A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books).

A Whole New Mind (Empathy)

According to Pink, “Empathy is the ability to imagine yourself in someone else’s position and to intuit what that person is feeling. It is the ability to stand in others’ shoes, to see with their eyes, and to feel with their hearts….Empathy is a stunning act of imaginative derring-do, the ultimate virtual reality—climbing into another’s mind to experience the world from that person’s perspective.” (159)

Recently, a client approached us about creating a video for a once popular singer who had fallen from fame and was launching a career comeback with a new book and CD. We had to create a plan to tell his story—the X factor was this—we couldn’t use footage of his interview until the conclusion of the video.

Our challenge was to visually connect viewers with the singer’s story. The result?


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This is the fifth blog based on A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books).

New Creo Commercial

We celebrated our expansion into new industries by launching a fun, tongue-in-cheek spot about why we started Creo Productions—cubicle life was draining our creativity.

Who knew fluorescent lights, corporate coffee makers and Soduko could make a commercial?

The Real World

The Harvard Business Review has an interesting article entitled “Viral Marketing for the Real World.”

Everyone wants their video to be viral. What’s interesting about this piece is the authors’ suggestion to combine traditional media (TV, online, print advertising) with a viral component, creating a platform that exponentially grows—if the media has enough appeal to justify showing it to friends.

It’s this kind of thinking, to combine what exists and what’s emerging, that will develop today’s most effective communication approaches.

Will video save books?

Every few months, a woman down the street has a used book sale. Her husband, once an avid book collector, is now stricken with MS, unable to manage his massive collection.

This old house is filled with endless shelves, and apparently, there's more. Each sale brings fresh books, and each time, I walk out with a paper bag crammed of classics.

And I think of how many new books are published each year--most estimate an upwards of 175,000+ in the U.S. alone. How can authors and publishers respond to a flooded market?

This article on CNET talks about how publishers are using video, asking the question, "Can video save the book-publishing star?"

Publishing is an industry we love, and continue to bring alive with video.

Social Networking

A recent study found that 70 percent of 18-34 year-olds use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Even more, many of those surveyed said they use social networking to learn more about products and services.

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe said this, "Smart marketers know how to tap into the passion and energy of individuals who care about their products to vastly multiply the impact of their campaigns."

Video taps into passion. And social networking? Let's be friends.

S&S Paves New Road

Simon & Schuster announced the launch of their video site today. Below is an excerpt from a Publishers Weekly article.

Simon & Schuster has teamed with the Internet video company TurnHere Inc. to launch a "book-centric video channel" that will promote S&S authors and their new books. Bookvideos.tv will begin in early June, and the videos will also be available at SimonSays.com, YouTube and the authors' own Web sites. Though S&S has produced videos to promote its authors in the past, the venture with TurnHere represents a stronger and more formal commitment to using video to market authors. S&S will create videos for at least 40 authors, including Mary Higgins Clark, Kathy Reichs, Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz, Jennifer Weiner and Zane.

Sue Fleming, v-p of online and consumer marketing for S&S's adult publishing group, said the company is drawing more heavily on video to promote authors, based on reader feedback. She noted video's ability to "replicate, for the digital age, the critical and time tested word-of-mouth excitement that comes from talking about a good read."

This is a huge development for those of us working with video in the publishing industry. The digital age is changing the way we communicate, and video will continue to expand into new industries that were once unthinkable.

Is your industry ready for the video revolution?

Better yet, are you ready to lead your industry?

The New Big Three? Or Two? Or...?

News of Microsoft and Yahoo!'s crumbling plot to join forces to steal web-giant Google's lunch money has been the hot topic on today's techy playground.

Google celebrated the failed merger by eating a second helping of Terabytes, further increasing its market share.*

*Not true.

A Whole New Mind: Symphony (and Sufjan)

Pink’s element of ‘symphony’ is “the ability to put together the pieces … to see relationships between seemingly unrelated fields … to invent something new by combining elements nobody else thought to pair.” (130)

Pink uses the example of real life symphonies to explain this “big picture thinking” skill. An amazing example of ‘symphony’ I experienced this Spring was watching Sufjan Stevens and his nine-person crew perform. If you’re not familiar with Sufjan, he’s an eclectic indie musical genius.

Late at night after the show, I wrote:

Sufjan has discovered how to tell old stories in new ways. The music is unmethodically tight and complex. The storytelling is unusual and entertaining. The video is a welcome additive. The costumes are wildly eccentric. Sufjan is an experience.

He’s captured what Pink is getting at: Sufjan’s made the banjo cool again and rock stars out of band geeks. The irony is overflowing with justice.

This clip of Sufjan leaves much to be desired (in A/V quality and for the rest of the song), but I found it on YouTube from the actual show I saw Sufjan at.



In video, we see ‘symphony’ all around with the development of new media. YouTube, MySpace, blogs, video iPods, cell phone video—the list goes on.

And the type of people Pink and others believe are the best visionaries?

Poets.

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This is the fourth blog based on A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink (Riverhead Books).