Capability

Fear Of A Pony Planet

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Let's face it, you've probably heard about My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. If not, you've been missing one of the big new phenomenon on the Internet. Whether you're aware of it or not, I like to take time to explore it, because it tells us a lot about marketing, the Internet, and geekyness.

Yes.  My Little Pony.  The offspring of the merchandise-laden shows and toy lines of the past is hip.  Yes, I'm serious here.

I could go into a detailed analysis of how a remake of a classic merchandise–based cartoon became a hot and hip new thing but that's been done elsewhere: Check KnowYourMeme.com.

Instead let me summarize what I've found:

  • The merchandise-heavy property of the past gets revived, and Lauren Faust, the talented woman behind things like Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends redoes it.
  • The show is produced with good animation and a good voice cast.
  • Some criticism of it gets the show attention, as does Faust's witty and smart rebuttal.
  • it gets attention on 4chan.
  • It explodes across the internet as it's actually a pretty good show.

This is pretty interesting.  Yet, I am also afraid.  Not that my Christmas gift buying is going to be Ponycentric.  No, there's more.

My fear? Now, or in the future, some not–quite genius in marketing is going to look at this and try to duplicate. Needless to say, he or she will screw it up because they won't “get” just what happened.

Let's be honest, marketing is an odd profession to be in.  It's a mixture of research, psychology, luck, and strategy.  It's not predictable. It is, at times, filled with bullshit – and I know people in marketing who will agree entirely with that statement.  Though maybe they're bullshitting me.

So, let's be honest, would you trust a random marketing team to "get" the new My Little Pony Phenomena?  I wouldn't–with all due respect the people and know the work in marketing. I would dread to see what many marketing teams would do trying to understand 4chan or hip animation or the value of controversy.

I would admittedly be amused to see the disasters they'd probably create, but I'd also feel sad about it.  Kind of.  Anyway, it wouldn't be successful.

Let's be honest–unless you "get" a phenomena, marketing it and promoting it is often a shot in the dark. Sometimes I think many marketing efforts succeed just by outspending and carpet-bombing people mentally – and in the age of the internet that may be harder to do strategically.

This is why geeks like yourself are important.  This is why I want you to think of what you can do in marketing, or working with marketing if you're not in it.  Because you'll "get" it.  You'll understand, instinctively, what happened, what didn't, and how people's minds work – because you're a geek.

If you're in gaming, in media, in publishing, in anything remotely geeky, you're aware of not just your profession, but various geeky trends – since you're out there experiencing them.  You may just be the one to point out good ideas – or at least shoot down bad ones- because you really understand them.

You bought the games, saw the movie, or are watching the ponies.  You know the memes.

Maybe you can help out people in marketing.  For that matter, maybe you've got a good career there . . .

– Steven Savage

Second-Class Formatting?

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Yes, once again I'm going to talk about my Amazon Kindle. No, this is not a case of me going on how great it is, how much I love it, ad nauseum. You've probably had enough of that as it is. Instead, I want to share an insight on the nature of e-books that I didn't notice until I began using the Kindle so much.

What have I noticed? I've noticed that, despite many of the e-books I'm reading coming from professional print sources, some of them have distinct formatting errors on the Kindle. I'd say easily two thirds of the books I've read on the Kindle have noticeable formatting problems, some of them quite distinct and incredibly annoying, such as unclear graphics, oddly placed titles, mashed words, and more.

It's as if Kindle books get a kind of "second-class" formatting.

Somehow, I don't think I'm alone in experiencing odd, strange, and outright painful formatting problems on books I'm reading on the Kindle. I'm quite sure other people are experiencing this as well; all those people on my daily trains reading Kindles doubtlessly are experiencing questionably–formatted books too.

So unless I'm the unluckiest reader in Amazon–land, everyone is experiencing formatting problems with their Kindle books now and then. So why aren't we complaining?

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Despite All Your Rage You Can Leave The Cage

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Are you a lab rat?

Chances are good that if you're in America, in these troubled times, your state is probably engaged in some kind of experiment.  It might be the changes in Florida () or Wisconsin's cuts (and the weird statements on the National Guard), or California's cut-and-confront budget.  You're probably seeing a lot of very experimental things.

I've ranted on this before – we're seeing a lot of social and financial experiments in the Great Recession.  Some of these are legitimate, a great deal seem to be ideology over practicality.  The thing is they're being done.

After talking to friends in different states, I've come to two conclusions about this:

  1. If you aren't paying attention to your state and local budget you're missing a lot, and could be blindsided by some very nasty surprises.
  2. You should have a backup plan in case whatever experiments going on in your state/city/location fail miserably.  Or in short, where would you move if all the geniuses making budget decisions screw it up.

Be careful.  Apply all those geeky relocation tips we've discussed here over the years.  Right now it's a pretty unsure time, and that ideal city or state you live in now could end up being the site of a failed experiment.

This applies even to me.  I love California and Silicon Valley, but I like to have a backup plan or too.  I just don't want to USE them.

– Steven Savage

* Bonus question – what's the inspiration for the post title?