Success speaks for itself - let it do the talking for you!

There's a rather ironic downside to how much social media have changed the way we live and work, and that is the increasingly common usage of such media for rather shameless self-promotion and marketing. Now, of course, as I have addressed before, the pervasiveness of social media is such that it has made it almost impossible to ignore, particularly if you do happen to be a marketer!

The thing that I find both humorous and extremely annoying is how various individuals and entities that are anything but marketers, somehow concluded that the existence of social media was sufficient reason alone to commence seemingly endless (didn't I say shameless?!) "marketing" of themselves. Self-promotion is the new deep, the next hip, and you have to be on the bandwagon if you are gonna get anywhere fast. 

Unfortunately, it is nowhere near as easy as that, otherwise all the cool, young marketers who actually did grow up with social media, and know how to use them without reading the guidelines and help sections, would be mega rich and in early retirement, already. It's not because social media exist that it is justifiable to commence chest-beating self-promotion and then force feed it down the virtual throats of your network on a daily basis. There is a massive difference between using social media, and using social media well.  Or even between using it and using it correctly.

Sadly the masses have swallowed the Kool-Aid, and it is now considered totally normal to see basically anything imaginable on social media, and in business the neophyte marketers think it makes them look good to continually tell us how great they are - if they ram it down our throats long enough, even we will start to believe the gibberish in the end - is that the mantra? Again sadly, for them, it simply doesn't work like that. But unlike classical marketing of yesteryear, which had a price tag attached to it, social media are free, so then we should take advantage of its never-ending opportunities to shout our name out. Right? Wrong!

The nanosecond that you feel the need to tell others how successful you are, because they don't seem to know that yet, is already a nanosecond too late. You are already too far gone, I'm afraid. How many truly successful people in business are known as successful because they never tire of telling everyone, versus those we know as successes because essentially their success is their voice and it spreads fast? I am pretty certain that it is the latter group who stay top-of-mind for the right reasons, and the former are those we like to switch off at every opportunity.

You know, these are lessons we all learnt in high school, right? While there might have been a (usually shrinking) small audience for the athletic guy who was always talking about his football last Saturday, and how bigger he was than his classmates, well, the smart girls eventually tired of it and went after the nicer guy who built his own computer. Or, when some girl who was always dressed in the latest fashions, and often bragged about how wealthy her parents were, guess what, the boys raced away in droves and headed for that cute intellectual type with the square glasses and her unique dress sense. 

Why? Well, the point is rather simple and it doesn't change when we grow up and it doesn't change in business - no one likes a big mouth and no likes a show-off! Success speaks for itself, and one doesn't need to overdo the marketing of it. Word of success tends to spread very fast, and it's often better to hear it from a third party who heard of it first, and then you actually feel like offering congratulations when you run into that other person or company representative. 

What's even worse, and is immeasurably more annoying, are those entities that are continually spouting about extremely small or even insignificant (in a news sense) events or progress, imagining that social media will somehow turn them into champagne-popping moments in our minds. "Wow, another success at Company X? They are unbelievable, how come they are doing so much better than we are?!" The short answer is often that they are not - they just talk about themselves more and are in the business of creating an image; one that almost certainly looks quite different from the inside than looking in from the outside. 

Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing inappropriate about disseminating big news in your company, but the key is the word "dissemination"; neither boasting nor shamelessly milking it as as an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. Everyone appreciates a degree of taste and restraint, and it's amazing how much more people are willing to listen when you do have something of import to say. What the chest beaters don't seem to realize is that people switch off, and walk away, in the face of overly aggressive self-promotion. If they ever took the time to check on those who unfollow them on Twitter or their blogs, they would know that. 

For those who swallowed the social-media-for-business Kool-Aid, it is simply untrue that one must post something on Twitter or Facebook every day, and if you've got nothing creative or interesting to say, that you go to default and start talking about yourself and how cool you are. It is completely normal in any active business due to a combination of being busy and nothing of note actually happening in a given week, that you don't say something on Twitter. Audiences are more sophisticated than people think, and I am sure we all prefer to see something really cool once a week on Twitter, than a barrage of comments and replies to other tweets that essentially say nothing. It's all just blah-blah-blah. About me-me-me. Or even me-myself-and-I!

Let success speak for itself, and let the voice of success spread the word around your network. It's a very loud and penetrant voice, it carries far and it very nicely does the work for you while you get onto the next task. By all means announce the news on your various social media channels and press releases, but then zip it and get on with it. Let others talk about it, and write about it. That resonates way more in the end, and people will be all ears the next time something big happens. 

Whereas, for the blowhards, that shrinking audience eventually leads to an inevitable end - at best, they are talking to a few sycophants who by definition hang off their every word and cling to them (usually because they want something), or at worst, they are actually talking (only) to themselves. People got so sick and tired of the non-stop self-promotion that it actually had the opposite effect, and it turned marketing into a mechanism for repulsion. 

A chemoattractant converted into a chemorepellant? Boy, even I wasn't aware that social media had the power to do that! :)

World peace AND releasing his music are none of their business - anymore!

Hello again, pop figures, and as part and parcel of our ongoing music series, as well as the multi-part commentary on the pop icon known only as "Morrissey", we come to yet another piece that is related to this year's release of "World Peace Is None Of Your Business" - it's Moz's tenth solo album and like basically most of the rest, it is not insignificant. 

Rather surprisingly, WPINOYB comes as a double CD set comprising almost twenty songs, and sounds somewhat unexpectedly fresh for an artist of such, errr, maturity! For sure, the "old" Morrissey is there, with the usual sociopolitical agenda quite well to the fore, and his lambasting of societal mores and norms quite nicely in place. If you listen to "Kick The Bride Down The Aisle" for even part of the song, you will get my drift!

"She just wants a slave, to break his back in pursuit of a living wage 

So that she can laze and graze, for the rest of her days 

Write down every word I say...."

You can probably get the idea from those words alone, and you know, I am not gonna say that they are totally inaccurate; I suspect that they might be right on target on more than a few rare occasions. Why? Simply because I have seen real living examples of it, and it doesn't help us men to sleep at night knowing there is another species living among us - one that schemes against us, and plots to sentence us to a lifetime of hard graft, while being observed from grassy knolls, where said species "lazes and grazes". 

Boy, I better quit while I'm ahead before a mob gathers in protest, but it's all Morrissey's fault, as usual! He would probably hug me, as a consolation for the abuse I would take in supporting his stance on the ancient ceremony of (un)holy matrimony. So yes, old Mozzer is alive and well, and kicking, and this new work finds him in typically rebellious form and in equi-typically fine voice. I am not gonna go as far as to say that it's a masterpiece, not least because what pop musician can still produce a masterpiece at the grand old age of 83?! He is 83, right?!

There are plenty of reviews out there, by those whose job it is to do such things and with the time to discuss each song in detail - sadly, I don't! So I will leave that to them, and cut to the chase. The part of this work that really got to me much more than I anticipated was the material on CD2 - on it's own it could easily have formed half of an entirely independent album by His Miz. While the previous CD1 contains more of his trademark barbed utterings (both musical and lyrical), I feel that CD2 is something of a departure and dare I say it, might even be some of his most commercial material ever - there are one, two or three true pop hits sitting modestly in the six song selection. 

There is a trio of songs that falls in sequence, and I went from thinking "Wow, that's cool!" to "Holy f**king moly!" by the end of it, and went directly back to repeat them again. We are of course talking about "Drag The River", "Forgive Someone" and "Julie In The Weeds". These are three examples of ol' Mizzery's awesomeness when he is firing on an all cylinders and his true understanding of pop music and love of alternative pop get combined into something unique that can only have come from him - and impossible to imagine coming from Johnny Marr, by the way. 

All I had to hear was "Julie, lie down, in the weeds and see, something new, something new" and I was hooked - the song bursts forth from some obscure scratchy buzzy sounds into an accordion-laced pop gem that is quite irresistible. Even those who want to resist it and say it's not hard enough to be a Moz song, will fall by the wayside. I was in shock - a Morrissey song with accordion, what the hell is going on? For me, it is His Miz's equivalent of "Cherry Bomb" by John Mellencamp and I never thought it would be possible to say that about a Morrissey song - ever! 

It should be #1 in the British charts, but of course it won't be. Not least because, yes, once again, the artist known as the Big M finds himself without a label, even though his deal with legendary Capitol Records (via Harvest) was apparently for two releases. In some ways the Big M just cannot help himself, and he found reason to criticise Capitol's head honcho Steve Barnett for the lack of any videos to support the release, among other reasons. I gotta admit, if I had taken in an artist at the end of his recording career, one who is notoriously difficult to work with and please, by the way, and he/she then turned round and put me down after releasing the album? I doubt very much whether he/she would have access to the building any longer, never mind spending serious cash on them.

It all just underlines that not only was Morrissey always more of a solo artist than a band member, but that he should have decided early on to have his own record label handling just his releases, so he could retain control. While he has been very willing to take record company cash in the past, he has railed against them having control and shows little appreciation for their investment in him. In some ways, this is not a sin for an artist, it simply emphasises they are and should remain artists, and have nothing to do with the business world. 

Ah, but there's the rub - we like the tons of cash, but we don't like those who gave it, and we may even end up resenting them for it. We love the recording studio, but hate those who paid for it. But business is business, and you can't have it both ways. In a fashion, his cantankerousness for the business end of making music reminds me of Van Morrison, historically, but Van knew when to let it go and let the businessmen do their thing. He was the artist and musician, and they were involved in making money from it. Simple, but not so for Morrissey. 

I could say that natural selection and evolution has taken its course, and this latest dumping by a record label should signal  the end of the man's recording career - time to retire, old boy. But I will not and cannot say that! Why? The most overwhelming conclusion that I derived from WPINOYB is that this artist is not ready to retire, and sounds primed for much more to come - he clearly is at his very best when in front of a microphone in a recording studio, as this recording shows. If he could just go in and make the records, and then zip it, he could have a very long career still ahead of him. Ah, but then that wouldn't be Morrissey, would it, and we love him warts and all. Rave on Steven Patrick Morrissey, rave on thy holy fool. 

On that note, this holy fool is due for some terrace time, i.e. chaise longue time, -but only after a serious infusion of my Bolivian Black Magic dark chocoroast coffee beans! Signing out, that's it from me on this glorious late summer Sunday morning! Kevin Mc

Megalodon returns to terrorize (and entertain) us once more!

This recent video of a great white shark half as long as the boat it was attacking near Cape May on the South Jersey coast was fascinating, and was surely reminiscent of a cinematic experience that seemingly touched us all - "Jaws". These fearsome creatures have a way of getting under our skin very easily, not least due to the certain death that this huge mouth represents! 

This video got me thinking of a TV event that is rapidly becoming as key a part of summer as the beach itself - we are of course talking about "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel! In 2013, we went right to the top of the marine food chain as they brought in none other than, wait for it, yes, Megalodon! It's one thing to be on holidays in early August, but another thing entirely when one realizes that it coincides with "Shark Week" - a very happy coincidence!

It was a real thrill that they decided to kick it off with then newly surfaced evidence of Megalodon cutting a boat in half off Cape Town in South Africa, and physical details showing that it could not have been a whale slapping onto the top of the boat; rather, this boat was cut in half from the bottom of the boat, ripping it apart, and no doubt that the four bodies spilling out of it fell right into some extremely frightening dentition. 

Speaking of dentition, fossil remains of Megalodon teeth have documented that they were often as long as seven inches in diagonal length, which gives you a scary idea of the size of the animal. It is estimated that this giant of the seas grew as long as some 60-70 feet in length, making it unquestionably one of the most dominant and foreboding vertebrate predators that ever existed. Of course, it is believed that Megalodon became extinct 1-2 million years ago, and the great whites that remain today are simply smaller relatives of it - but who knows?

The boat that was torn apart in April, 2013 did not provide any answers other than that it was struck from beneath by something huge that could only have been going after it in a predatory fashion, and given the sheer size of Megalodon and its capacity to bite a whale's tail off, well, a large boat in dark water could appear to be the form of a whale to a hunting monster such as Megalodon. 

Look down the gullet of this monster and tell me you don't think it could bite a chunk off a small boat and cause some serious damage! Megalodon was a fierce predator and had it evolved onto land, well, I am not sure we would be here today. The experts say that even Tyrannosaurus rex would have been no match for Megaladon, well, apart from being a perfect match on its dinner plate beside a fistful of salad in the form of a few lush trees!

Sadly, the documentary that summer Sunday night provided no firm proof that Megalodon still lurks deep down in the unexplored virgin territories of the lowest ocean floors, but that's the way it should be. Something that is a combination of classified as extinct and an urban (marine) myth should be frustratingly hard to find! We haven't found the Loch Ness monster either, yet we all know it's down there, somewhere, right?! And the lads of "Finding Bigfoot" talk about ol' squatchy as if he was their next door neighbour, so he has to exist, right?!

Scientists discover new species all the time, and even have found living fossils of species believed to be already extinct, such as the feared giant monster octopus species that mythically terrorised mariners through the ages, but actually existed! What if a very select few Megaladon still roam the ocean floors, surfacing to grab a great white for a snack now and then, or on the very rare occasions that their hunger becomes desperate due to lack of food, they surface and tear down whatever looks big and tasty enough?

Well, we won't know today, that's for sure. Only time will tell, and as scientists, of course we all need physical proof of the existence of Megalodon, but given some of the strange occurrences and sightings on radar, there appears to be something huge down there that we don't understand. We are prone to hate sharks, perhaps in part due to their ferocity and reputation as total killing/eating machines, but as humans I also think we are programmed to find their very faces to be the physical representation of pure evil. It's en evil, twisted, dangerous face with the coldest eyes in nature, and historically man has simply wanted to kill it. 

But we have come to understand them better and there is a very refreshing new tone to shark fishing contests in the US today - they catch the sharks, weigh and measure them, then return them back to their home. Now that's a huge shift in our ongoing evolution with these remarkable (and remarkably scary) creatures - who knows if it will come back to bite us some day, quite literally!

You can't beat some evolutionary entertainment, and "Shark Week" always provides that in abundance! It brings whole new meaning to the expression "sleeping with the fishes", which people on that boat above would be doing now if that beast had gotten its way! On that note I shall return to the solidity of my terrace planks, and sip a Californian Chiller Triple Espresso Dark Chocolate iced coffee, while staring out into the cityscape and seeing killer sharks everywhere. 

They are real, too, but sadly in the city they come in humanoid form! ;)