The Power of Simplicity

Quiet. Solitude. Peace. Purity. Simplicity. Beauty.

Important words. Words that are at the core of each one of us. As persons. As professionals.

And again, as individual persons first.

Whether our role in life is as a business professional, a medical professional, an artist, a teacher, an athlete, or a politician, a government employee, a student … one pervasive need is simplicity.

A very inspiring video of a 7-year-old Texas girl and young gospel singer named Rhema Marvanne singing a simple rendition of Amazing Grace gave me a moment of reflection this morning before I began a busy day, followed by a busy weekend, in a busy month, in a busy life.

The purity of the song and the quiet acoustic presentation of the music itself helped remind me again in my own personal life – and in my business life – to get to the core of the message, get to the baseline, drown out the noise, stay focused, and remain grounded.

Solutions, results, and success will follow.

Quiet, solitude, peace, simplicity, and beauty will follow.

I’ll leave you with that simple message today and with this moving video.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to share your comments in the section below.

This post is dedicated to a new friend, T.C., who works passionately and importantly to find the baseline message amidst the noise and mentors many in pursuit of that goal.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook Fan Page.

Feel free to join the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook page as well for regular updates on excellence, creativity, management, leadership, motivation, marketing, and corporate communications.

It’s Contagious.

I love the new definition of contagious these days. Not medically speaking, of course.

For many businesses, the trend du jour is to be perceived as different, bold, edgy, creative and fun — and to have your message spread with a mind of its own.

The goal is to have your message reach potential eyes, ears, fingers, computers, ipods, ipads and mobile phones as quickly and as broadly as possible.

Undoubtedly, there are many an ad agency and product company who woke up this very morning hoping that someone on their staff would have a simply genius idea today. And they hoped that idea would result in a print ad, tv commercial or online video that in turn would then spark a contagious flurry of viral proliferation throughout every social media medium.

The Old Spice – If You Have It – commercial continues to have its own afterlife on the internet for instance, long after the actual spot aired on tv.

The ideal scenario is to have the germ (ahem, I mean concept) eventually disseminated across Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Hulu, MySpace, Google and Bing, etc. The inspired graphic, the 30-second tv spot or the one-minute video would catch the imagination of the public and in a nano-second, we would see the idea-as-a-finished-product then proliferated across the world’s airwaves and web-ernet with immediacy and ‘contagious’ enthusiasm.

An example in point: the Roller Babies viral video produced by Evian cleverly spread the product’s targeted message across the internet through subtle fun.

Instead of virus symptoms being the topic reserved for doctor offices, we now spend time talking about viral basics in our conference rooms. We analyze an idea for success fundamentals such as message clarity and visual creativity. We probe ideas for elements of uniqueness, factors of fun, the possibilities for success, and hopefully, the potential for a full viral outbreak.

Last year’s amazing public singing debut of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent swept through social and traditional mediums with a vengeance. Companies dream of a similar word-of-mouth success.

This new world of viral thinking has added a whole new world of fun and energy to business.

In essence, we have a new vernacular for successful marketing and advertising. And the word contagious now enjoys a whole new reputation.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook Fan Page.

Feel free to join the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook page as well for regular updates on excellence, creativity, management, leadership, motivation, marketing, and corporate communications.

The Google Parisian Love commercial might just be the quietest, most creative, classiest, memorable spot of this year’s Super Bowl.

Super Bowl XVIV is now history – and the hundred-plus $2 million commercials have had their 30 seconds of glory – or not.

Part I of this casual look at the impact of Super Bowl commercials ended with the thought that perhaps this annual advertising ritual reflects who we are at this point in our history and perhaps also helps sew the very fabric of our culture. After tonight’s commercials, I am reflective.

Are you as well?

I don’t recall as intense of a pre-Bowl ad frenzy as this year. What impact has social media played in the global grassroots conversation about the good, the bad, the ugly commercials? How much Twittering, FaceBook posting and blogging was going on during the game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints? There might not be a definitive answer to those questions, but there is no mistake that Bowl viewers were anticipating some daggoned good ads to complement the four quarters of passing, tackling, whistle-blowing, chest-butting, touchdown dances, and on-screen animated scrimmage line drawings.

One of the most humorous 30 seconds in the game actually was part of the ‘real’ game, and not during the commercial breaks. The second half began with a mound of scrambling of 250 – 300 lb. men grabbing for anything that felt like loose pigskin. You had to laugh.

But I digress. There were definitely some good commercials as well during the 2010 Super Bowl including:

- Volkswagen’s Punch Buggy ‘That’s Das Car’ spot;

- the Doritos spot where the young boy warns his mom’s date to keep his hands off his mom and off the little boy’s Doritos;

- the Coke spot in which a sleepwalking man in the deserted outdoors opens a fridge and opens happiness;

- the Simpson-themed Coke commercial, again with the open happiness theme;

- the E*trade spot that added a young girl to the voice-over toddler conversation this year;

- the artistic Kia spot highlighting the company’s great car finishes.

For the consumers who wanted to have a say in which commercials they thought were the strongest, there were many options this year, including the MSNBC.com online ballot.

And not to be out-done by a competing network, CBS had their own website-driving concept.

Have you voted yet? Which was your favorite commercial in Super Bowl 44? Which commercial was your least favorite?

And… if you didn’t catch the Part I blog post of And Let the Annual Advertising Ritual Begin – The Super Bowl vs. The Super Bowl Commercials, you can find it here.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook Fan Page.

Feel free to join the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook page as well for regular updates on excellence, creativity, management, leadership, motivation, marketing, and corporate communications.

I am one of the millions who look forward to the annual Super Bowl Football Game, but I will confess that I am not a pro football game fan.

I am however, a non-carded-but-nonetheless-still-certified Super Bowl Ad Connoisseur. (now, there’s a cool Twitter #hashtag for you.)

There are numerous statistics out there to prove that the annual Super Bowl ad-watching frenzy has now reached almost epidemic proportions. AdWeek columnist and marketing expert, Pete Blackshaw tweeted this same fact on Thursday, February 4. “Most Super Bowl Viewers Tune in for the Commercials,” he tweeted. Pete (@pblackshaw) used a recent study by Nielsen to back his claim.

There are many of us out here in the arm-chair-watching crowd who feel that the four quarters of football activity Sunday, February 7 are in reality, the necessary skeletal frame on which the guts of the competition are really tested, aka, the awesome, creative annual commercials. My apologies of course to the professional players who will be competing this coming Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV.

Nielsen found in a recent survey that 51% of the (90 million +) Super Bowl viewers “enjoy the game’s ads more than the action on the field.” Source: NielsonWire.com – January 20, 2010.

The Super Bowl night is frankly an advertiser and marketer’s dream. It is like watching the Emmy’s. The Academy Awards. It might even beat the finale of American Idol. Or the last episode of the last Lost.

The cost for one of the Super Bowl ads is no hiccup. According to msnbc.com, the cost of a 30-second spot for Super Bowl I in 1967 was as low as $37,500. Twenty years later, a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl was $600,000. This year, it is reported that CBS is asking $2.6 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot. (Source: www.msnbc.com)

There is no doubt that major corporations have been sequestered behind iron-clad, double-bolted doors creating this year’s blockbuster Super Bowl commercials. And the unveiling is just a little more than 24-hours away.

No doubt too, the post-game viral afterlife of these Super Bowl commercials and the inevitable social media traffic (via blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook posting) can be considered priceless.

And so I ask, “Coke, Pepsi, Annheuser-Busch, CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com, Doritos, Apple, and E*Trade — what will you perennial favorite Super Bowl commercial producers show us this year?”

Given the nation’s economic woes, the world’s focus on the plight of Haiti, and more, I wonder, will we see a litany of comedic 30-second spots — or will advertisers wow us with themes of sentimentality, the outdoors, or the memories of youth. Perhaps we will see a theme in the commercials for high-tech, light-flashing, fast-moving 30-second vignettes (similar to many of last Sunday night’s Grammy Award musical routines.)

Your thoughts? What do you think this year’s Super Bowl XLIV commercials will be like?

Will there be any commercials that make advertising and marketing history?

Yes, advertising history – like the unforgettable, dramatic Apple commercial introducing the MAC computer, against an eerie backdrop of a prison-type setting, the sound of rhythmic, marching feet, and the visuals of bald-headed, blank-staring men and women garbed in grey-prison-type uniforms moving in robotic symmetry?

Apple\’s 1984 Macintosh Introduction Commercial

TV commercials mirror our culture and yet, at the same time, they help sew the very fabric of our culture.

Note: Part II of this blog post will be available Sunday evening, February 7 …. after this Sunday evening’s entertainment.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook Fan Page.

Feel free to join the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook page as well for regular updates on excellence, creativity, management, leadership, motivation, marketing, and corporate communications.

Courtesy of the Flickr photostream of tomt6788

Excellence Exemplified … quietly

Two events in our own family lately have me reflecting today on the power of individual people in the world around them. One of these family events will be written about another day. The second event though is the focus of today’s post – the death of a special person this week – an aunt (M. B.) – who, simply said, exemplifies excellence.

When I began writing Simply Said blog posts, I knew that I wanted to write about the people and things that inspire me. In-turn, my hope was to inspire readers. My focus would be on excellence in business, in creativity, in marketing, in communication, in leadership – and I’d like to add – life.

There are people in my own life who I could name in a nano-second who define for me ‘the best’. The best CEO. The best corporate executive. The best marketing mind. The best social media trend-setter. The best professor. The best political leader. The best friend.

The most creative musician. The most talented artist. The most Renaissance-like thinker. The most charismatic personality.

To me, M. B. characterizes the impact that one person can make in the world without headlines, clamor and fireworks. Her quiet, understated beauty of spirit evolved throughout her life into an inimitable power that radiated to those who came in contact with her. The person who met her on the elevator at work. The colleague who sat next to her in the office. The person sitting next to her on the bus. The children in the neighborhood. The women and men in her community. Her friends. Her family.

With my marketing hat on, I could say that ‘M’ was the epitome of the concept of viral marketing. She touched a person, a life, a day. That person was then calmed, inspired, loved.  That life was then left changed. That day was then left whole. The chain had begun. That chain of events would continue. Then multiply. And spread … virally.

There is a magic that some people can bring to the world just by the simplicity of being who they are. ‘M’ was this type of magical person with an engaging heart and giving soul. An excellence that so many of us aspire to model.

M. B.

Excellence and Beauty

Small woman. Beautiful heart.

Deepest soul. Giving soul.

Laughing smile.

Twinkling eyes.

Tender hands. Warm spirit.

Quiet power.

So very missed.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing page.

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Photo from the Flickr photostream of Rickydavid

Dreams… and a belief that we can do anything.

Let me set the stage by sharing that this has been a special week in our family’s lifeline. Some recent family milestones have me in a reflective space – about life, and business, and relationships, and creativity, and energy, and well… life.

Life itself, and our spirit, our motivation, our feeling of our place in the world – can be challenged by the upswings and the lulls; by the always-changing events of our small circles; by the decisions of corporate and government leaders; and on and on. But I am convinced that, ultimately, the moments of personal decision and personal courage determine our personal happiness and our personal success.

Our oldest son, B, became engaged last Saturday night to his awesome girlfriend, R. Another son, J, married his long-time, special girlfriend, MB, in early June. Our daughter, L, took a courageous, life-changing step this fall and moved back to the Midwest from her beloved New York City to make a difference in this part of the country. And a fourth child, T, graduated from college in late August as a mature-beyond-his-years young man ready to set the world on fire (editor’s note: I think he will.)

These scenarios no doubt mirror stories in your own life and in those of your family, your friends, and your colleagues. I am wondering how we can all tap into these magic times and hold on to ‘the positive’; hold on to ‘the energy’; hold on to ‘the contagious spirit.’

Important choices in our lives require preparation, sacrifice, observation, determination, creativity, and a willingness to believe in a dream. The young people described above have had to set their sights on a goal and stay steady – despite setbacks, sadness, negative influences and influencers, disappointments, and naysayers. They believed they could … and they did. They believed in the goodness of another person. They looked for the beauty in another person’s soul. They listened to others’ ideas. They looked for positive leadership and they chose to become positive leaders themselves. They believed in the power of knowledge and the need for personal discipline. They believed in their ideas and their vision for what ‘could be.’ They believed in ‘who they were’ and that ‘they could’ when others thought ‘they couldn’t.’

I’d like to bottle that type of belief, enthusiasm and spirit in a bottle – and sprinkle it on those who live to be negative. Spray it on those who live by the mantra, it can’t be done. Shake some of that magic on those who say I could never do anything like that because my boss won’t let me. Scatter it over those who remain silent because they believe no one would like my idea, so why even say it. Dust it over those who could become something so great – even in their own circle (office, neighborhood, network, city) – but remain stuck in the glue of indecisiveness, negativity, or misdirection.

Have you ever noticed that we are drawn to personalities that radiate energy? We seek out people who are filled with a positive spirit. We want to have the people with the can-do attitude on our team? We can name the people in our lives who stand out because they have a smile in their own soul and they are willing to share it with others. We want to be near others who have ‘life’ in their eyes and they glow with that light.

Photo from the Flickr photostream of Amelia PS

The newly-engaged, the newly-married, the newly-moved, the newly-hired, the newly graduated – their lights are shining. Their spirit is contagious. Their excitement is infectious.

I believe that you – and I – can each believe more that ‘we can do it.’ Anything. You – and I – can each share our own inner glow more with those we work with, live with. I believe that you – and I – can recapture a dream that lays dormant – and give it wings.

And, I am not going to wait until tomorrow. You?

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing page.

Feel free to join the Lincoln Maly Marketing Facebook page as well for regular updates on excellence, creativity, management, leadership, motivation, marketing, and corporate communications.

Note: Today’s Simply Said blog post is dedicated to B, R, J, MB, L, and T because each of you believed and you share your own light with all who are lucky to be around you.

I watched perhaps the best Halloween film of all time (and no, it wasn’t Halloween I or Psycho-Version IV or SabreSaw I or MyTeethWillBiteYouBad or I’ve Got Your Back-Literally).

No… I think perhaps one of my favorite Halloween movies of all time is Mel Brooks’ version of Young Frankenstein.

For 90-minutes-plus, we get to sit back and enjoy simply-silly-sublime scenes created again and again by hilarious character portrayals, crack-up antics, and ingenious scripts filled with clever double-meaning quips.

In a film filled with home-run sound-bites and visual unforgettable moments, there is one blink-of-an-eye shot that I think I had missed previously. ‘The shot’, while funny, has also stirred a visual level of meaning for me today, and ‘the shot’, and for me, its double meaning, is one that can be easily missed. ‘The shot’ has had me thinking of my own oftentimes low-level of creativity and energy at the end of a day, and definitely, at the end of a week.

‘The shot’.

Picture if you will, the beloved hump-shouldered, head-covered, cape-ensconced, bulging-eye Igor (yes, and his name is pronounced eye-gore) dutifully setting off in the dark of the night to complete his eerie mission at the Brain Depository – i.e., secure a brain for the ‘monster.’

On the door leading into the Depository, Igor spies the message:

“After 5 p.m., slip brains through the door.”

Igor - from the Mel Brooks film, 'Young Frankenstein'

How many times have I felt like I needed to send my own Igor out on a middle-of-the-night mission to make a withdrawal from the Creativity Bank, take a quick loan from the Idea Depository, or perhaps pull down just the juiciest fruit from the Best Brain Juice Orchard?

How many times have I needed my brain to be alive, sparked, glowing, and blue with energy?

And yet, alas, my brain was as dry as desert dust.

What ideas have I tried to get my own brain recharged? Plugged-in? Buzzing? I’ll share some of my own ideas, but I’d love to hear some of yours as well.

My Top Five Ideas for Generating Igor-level Brain Cell Action

(*qualifier: these are not-scientifically-proven ideas, nor are they recommended for all readers … especially suggestion #4 for those on a no-sugar-low-fat-intake-sad-life diet.)

1) Take a long walk in a spot where no one knows me, without an ipod, singing to my own music, and of course, in a place where no on can hear me.

2) Doodle. Yep, I have some colored pencils on my desk that I pick-up and ‘draw’ on plain white paper. I am not an artist, but I love the simplicity of the non-defined scribbles (oops, I mean, images) on ‘a clean slate.’ The colored pencils remind me of that youthful six-year-old creativity before I found out that (again) shucks, I am not an artist.

3) Warm up the cup of green tea I sipped in the morning, and throw in a second (hmmmm… sometimes a third) tea bag.

4) Eat chocolate chips. I learned a long time ago that it takes too long to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch … per the directions on the back of the Nestle bag of chips bag … thus, a handful of chips is often the creative vitamin I find I was needing when I hit my own 5 p.m. ‘wall.’ (note: that wall does not always occur at 5 p.m. It has been known to appear as early as 6 a.m.)

5) Close my eyes. This fifth idea for generating creativity juice is often the first, and/or the last, and for me, many times, the best personal tip to find that obscure spot within my brain to ‘get going.’

What are your own top ideas to jump-start your creative juices?

And, while you are thinking on that question… here is my own Trick-or-Treat treat for you… a clip from the Young Frankenstein film (with the oft-used-oft-imitated-but-never-truly-imitated ‘Walk this way’ line.)

A short video clip from the favorite Mel Brooks film, \”Young Frankenstein\”

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, or Facebook. And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing fan page.

Life can be gray. Our minds can feel gray. Our creativity can seem bland. Dead. Gray. Our imagination can just seem zapped. Gray. Our energy fizzled. Our motivation zero-ed. Gray.

Good marketers and good leaders know this. Smart marketers and smart leaders however, go beyond ‘just’ the knowledge of the impact of color in their campaigns and projects. Instead, they work tirelessly until they have found ‘just’ the right message, great graphics, the ideal team, and … the perfect… colors.

Photo from the excellent Flickr photostream of ahannink (Alyssa Hannink)

Exciting colors. Blends of colors. Exotic colors. Branded colors. Eye-popping colors. Soul-stirring colors. Product-identifying colors. Product-selling colors. Team-inspiring colors. Heart-moving colors.

Successful businesses capitalize on the knowledge that color is indeed a key element to customer response. Think for a second about Apple® brand. In addition to product innovation, the calways-creative company uses color to feed their product brand buzz. Take for instance, the ipod commercials.

Ipod commercial

Color – and the absence of it – affects not just business, but our own personal lives. Did anyone ever ask you if you were having one of those ‘gray days?’ Interpretation: an absence-of-energy-and-life-and-spirit-type of day? What better way to motivate ourselves than by adding color to our lives? Colorful activities? Colorful surroundings? Colorful people? Colorful ideas?

How can you add color to your own life? And to your own career? And to the task on your to-do list at the moment? And – which colors will you add?

Color inspires creativity. Adds fun. Creates pizazz (or maybe we should say, pez). Seriously. A dynamic viral marketing tool for the Pez® product has been the creation of popular, consumer-generated, colorful, edge-cutting Pez® videos. Pez fans seem to love the colors and the fun concept of the product.

PEZ fireworks video

Colors create a ‘blip’ in our radar from the time that we are in pre-school. At the earliest of ages, we learn our name, our ‘letters’ and… what else? Our colors. We learn those colors creatively – in books, through songs, and in artwork. The beloved children’s character Kermit sang his own identifying lullaby to our children for years, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” And to help stir your own colorful (creative) juices, I’ve included two more fun ‘color-themed’ videos.

\’I am Red\’ Video

\’Color Pants\’ Video

Personal and business inspiration can come from a potpourri of rainbow colors or from a single color treatment. Sometimes, it is the simplicity in a visual message that can produce the strongest response.

Color branding is key for many of the world’s top-ranked products. The branded single color of red is unmistakable in many of Target®’s commercials. How often have we watched a one of that company’s TV spots, with nary a mention of Target® until the final slide? Yet, we knew from the outset, that this was going to be a Target® ad.

Target\’s \’You Say Good-buy\’ Commercial

Colors are sensitive. They are individual. They are chameleon-esque. While one shade of blue creates a feeling of calm in one person, that same color can spark energy in another. I once saw a tv documentary on the seemingly endless and ongoing consumer research and tweaking that is expended to find just the right color mix – and shades of that right color mix – for the inimitable – and immensely successful – iconic Google® logo.

(from the source: http://www.google.com/logos/logos09-1.html)

Color speaks across cultures. Its language is absolutely universal. Its allure crosses over generations. Across demographics. Through political barriers.  And color speaks to all of us.

\’Happy Birthday COLORS\’ by colorstv\’s

How have you seen color impact your life? Your business? Your marketing efforts? And again, how do you add color to your own life?

My wish for you is that you have days filled with colorful rainbows. May you appreciate the pallette of colorful personalities and ideas among your collegues. May your life path lead you on yellow-brick roads. May you heart be filled with blue-sky mornings and red-sky evenings. May your own imagination be sparked by autumn’s orange moons. May you find that even if you move to other countries, you find your way back to the green, green grass of home. May you dance through life with blue suede shoes, red dresses, and brightly-colored polka-dot ties. And may your challenges find solutions that bring each of you CANDY LAND®-colored successes.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing fan page.

I love creativity. I thirst for examples of it. … just like some folks crave a concert with their favorite band, or yearn for an exciting football game, or can’t wait for their next vacation.

And, I find energy from creativity. In meetings. On billboards. In marketing campaigns. On palettes. In the board room. On the dance floor. In the studio.

I love the viral effects of creativity. One example spawns more inspiration.

More ideas. More excitement. More color to our worlds.

Imagination and originality can inspire even more inventiveness and an attitude of “We can do that.”

Here’s a thought. According to dictionary.com, the definition of begets, is to produce as an effect, for example, “A belief that power begets power.”

Yes, creativity ‘begets’ more creativity.

Creativity is freeing. Contagious. Explosive. Fun. Pulse-stirring. Mind-jogging. Finger-snapping. Smile-breaking.

And … as we see in the examples below… creativity can reach from your head to your toes. Indeed, it can be toe-tapping.

Splash Dance –

A spontaneous, fun, and very creative public dance on Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, organized by the Fine Arts Fund.

watch?v=EW58tCXeb80

White Nights –

A timeless example of creative genius by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines.

watch?v=haBZCrBHMm4&feature=related

Lindy Dance Finals –

Some fast-moving, swinging-ly creative dance performance clips from the 2006 Lindy Dance Finals.

watch?v=myJj0mNNe1Y

Mozart –

A fun performance of a Mozart piece on a giant floor piano at a toy store.

watch?v=wxwgC8tSglk&feature=related

Michael Jackson –

What can I say? Plain awesome dance creativity and talent that has indeed spurred more creativity and originality.

watch?v=-tqYUTjQIc0

Flawless –

An original, finely-synchronized performance by the dance group, Flawless, during the finals of Britain’s You’ve Got Talent.

watch?v=dG8i9ymWaVQ

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

If you liked this post, please share it on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

And, I’d be honored if you would like to follow me on Twitter @JoanneMaly or visit the Lincoln Maly Marketing fan page.

Hmmm…. the weather…. and business.

How do these two apparently separate categories relate? And, how does the weather tie-into a blog post reflection on inspiration, innovation, and creativity?

The weather can of course provide us with an always-safe entry-point topic when we find ourselves at a networking meeting; when we are chatting with a potential customer; or, perhaps, when we need a buffer conversation before a meeting begins.

Actually though, the weather is a lot like business … and life.

Weather is global and multi-demographic. In fact, weather is possibly one of the purest examples of a multi-dimensional product. Weather transcends language, cultures, generational differences, sex, intellectual abilities, academic degrees, professions, left and right brains, and even Myers-Briggs personalities.

But, for a moment, I’d like to go one step deeper and explore how the weather resembles the challenges – and the rewards – of our own creative paths.

Would you agree that we all have droughts of energy, inspiration, motivation and direction?

And, then there are rainy days – or worse yet, a complete rainy week. These weather elements can indeed tax our patience and drain our creative juices.

On the flip-side though – if we think positively – these same rainy days can also offer a sense of quiet, rhythm, and calm that can be perfect for nurturing new life, new ideas, and fresh buds of creativity.

Can you recall one of those exciting, don’t-happen-often moments when you had a lightening-bolt, aha brainstorm thought. Or, better yet, a lightening-storm moment.

Seconds like that stand out in each of our memories. If we can capture the power of these episodes, they could perhaps result in the launching of an innovative new product, defining a new campaign, and even determining our own future.

No doubt too, we can all relate to those mornings that we walk outside to start our day and we abruptly face a sea of fog.

These days are not totally unlike those mornings when our brains seem filled with their own mental haze and, try as we may, we too have zero visibility and little direction. We persist though, knowing that we have to find a way to work through the grey mist. We’ll quickly grab an extra cup of cappucino with a dab of cinnamon and nutmeg, or (foregoing any diet resolutions) we munch on a rich, chewy, double-chocolate brownie before our first meeting (and yes, it is ok to have a brownie for breakfast.)

Then, there are of course rainbows – and rainbow moments.

Have you ever been in a meeting when the ideas start percolating and then one suggestion literally feeds off the one before it? The energy can be so positive, that we could almost swear that we can taste ‘it’. Allowing and encouraging a full-color-spectrum of original ideas can, in fact, add to the very color of our company. Absolutely, creativity and positive energy is contagious. We can experience our own multi-colored, panoramic, inspired – and inspiring – creative phenomenon.

Many of us can relate as well, to those days when it seems that we have been dealt with a hurricane-force workload. We can begin our day with an organized, quiet schedule that then, quite literally, blows apart with unexpected tasks and must-do’s. We’re then confronting a tornadic force that needs to be reckoned with immediately.

We can be beaten-down by the forces of the winds upon us – or, we can choose to see these times as opportunities for more creative approaches to weathering the storm.

There are occasions, too, that I can remember in my own career and life where I ended the day with a complete brick wall – and, at the same time that I needed to be thinking of a ‘new and awesome idea’ for a client’s Marketing Plan. My brain cells might have been churning, but I was only ending up with a grey, blank night sky. However, after some sleep and brain cell ‘rest’, I would wake up at 4 a.m. with my own sunrise – fresh thoughts and new ideas.

Literally, it was a new day – filled with energy, vibrancy, and color. These sunrise mornings are a good reminder too – for business, and for life – that outstanding sunrises often follow dark, dreary evenings.

And, likewise, if we can continue to think positive, even bitter winter days filled with ice and snow don’t have to be negative, dead, non-motivated days. Instead, winter weather actually adds a crispness to our thinking.

Cold, challenging days demand an extra sharpness to our routine. They force us to tread carefully, to plan thoughtfully, and rise to the challenge.

So… how do you weather your own weather challenges? How have you encouraged creativity in yourself and your team despite the gray periods – the cloudy weeks? How has a storm within your own life resulted in new insights?

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box below.

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Today’s Simply Said blog post is dedicated to B and R.