Ever since I got it last week, I have been spending way too much time on Grand Theft Auto IV (thanks in large part to my girlfriend being out of town).  In fact, the playing time counter in the game just makes me feel guilty whenever I look at it.  But all kidding aside, I just stumbled across this amazing side by side comparison on Flickr of pictures from the game and real life pictures of New York City.  I knew the guys at Rockstar were damn impressive…I just didnt full appreciate it till i saw these pics.  No wonder the game did over $500MM in sales in the first week.

Great insight from Hugh MacLeod on Twitter:

Brian Morrissey over at Ad Week wrote a great article on “Building Brand Through Community.”  In it he talks about how companies like Zappos, Yelp, and Etsy have built their brands through the power of their users instead of relying on massive advertising spends.  What makes the article so informative is that Morrissey talks as someone who understands New Media.  The reason is that Morrissey is a writer that really gets the new world of journalism.  For instance, he is extremely active on Twitter, bringing a transparent view to how goes about story writing.

Now back to the article, my favorite quote comes from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, who says:

We think our brand is going to be different because we want people to feel there’s a real person they’re connecting with, whether it’s when they call us or through Twitter or any way they come in contact with us

Frankly I wish more brands would think like this, my own brands at P&G included.  Connecting with your consumers shouldn’t be scary.  It shouldnt be something that just happens in focus groups or other pre-arranged “research”.  It needs to be every day in a world where you open your brand to your community of users.  You invite them into the process and let them know a real person is behind the brand.  Customer Service needs to be one of the top marketing strategies of a brand today.

And you know the best part?  Customer Service costs nothing to do it right.  All it takes is a Brand Manager (or Assistant Brand Manager if necessary) monitoring the brand on Twitter and on blogs.  And if done right, this small investment of time will pay amazing dividends for your brand down the road.   Imagine that, something that costs nearly nothing and can result in legions of loyal brand advocates.  Show me a TV or Print ad that can accomplish that.

When you are promoted to Brand Manager at P&G, one of the first things you do is head off to a week long Brand Manager College.  At mine I received The Leader’s Compass, a book that talks about writing your Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP).  A PLP is a written statement of ”what you believe in”, or as the title says, the compass you use to guide your decisions.  I never imagined how powerful of a tool this is for a manager until I actually sat down and wrote my own.  We all have beliefs that guide us and impact how we treat people and situations.   But I’d argue that many of us couldn’t repeat those beliefs on the spot.  And even more important, I would bet that none of your team members could repeat your beliefs based solely on your actions.

That is where a Personal Leadership Philosophy comes into play.  It forces you to sit down, put pen to paper and state what you believe in.  It’s amazing how much thought you put into this.  It’s almost as if once you write it down, it is permanent and you have to uphold those words.  The impact is exponential once you share it with your team.  Sharing your PLP builds trust with your team.  And from trust, you start to build the foundation for a truly great team.

So with that in mind, I thought I would share my PLP here.  It has been a year since I wrote this down for the first time and I’m proud to say I am doing a pretty good job of living up to them (at least I hope!).  I’d love to what you have to think.  Have you written your own PLP?  What would be on it?

Dave Knox Personal Leadership Philosophy

Rules I Live/Work By:

• Be passionate – James Michener wrote that “The master in the art of living pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing.  To him he’s always doing both.”   The best teams live this same way in my opinion.
• Don’t be afraid of failing – Nothing great was ever accomplished without taking a few risks.  A strong team won’t fail in the end…but it will fail along the way.  It will be these missteps that ultimately lead to success…success that would not have been possible without the wrong turns along the way.  So fail good-naturedly and learn from our mistakes.
• Be a cultural anthropologist with a finger on the pulse of culture – Be a sponge of learning about technology, entertainment and culture.  Learn what makes others tick and where things are going in society.
• Have a childlike curiosity for learning – Gordon Gecko had it right in the movie Wall Street when he said that information is the most valuable commodity in the world.  And the best way to get information is to act with childlike curiosity by constantly asking “why?”  You never learn if you don’t ask.
• Work hard, play hard, have fun – If you’re having fun, the job becomes that much easier.  Take time to grab lunch away from your desk.  Have drinks with you co-workers.  Play your music in the office.  A great culture can only exist if the environment and people encourage it each and every day.
• See the potential in everything – Too many people take the easy way out by saying something has been done before and didn’t work.  Innovation is a process and begins with you building on an idea by saying “Yes, and…”
• Take the time to be a Good Samaritan – Always be there to lend a helping hand, whether it is to a co-worker, organizationally or someone from another company that has a question about P&G.  Sadly it surprises people when you go the extra mile.  You’ll feel good if you can help someone out and on the plus side, you never know when that favor will be returned.

What I Ask:

• Respect the time of others – Everyone we work with is busy…don’t think you have anything more going on than anyone else.  Being on time to a meeting means you are there before it begins, not walking in the door as it starts.  And this applies to interacting with everyone including vendors, agencies, and even a random outside company.  Same principle applies for responding to e-mail…don’t let things slip through the cracks because you don’t think it is a priority.   And finally (and most importantly), this applies for our family and personal lives.  We need to respect the time of each other and the personal priorities every sets for themselves.
• Don’t lie…don’t make excuses…don’t cheat – If it wasn’t right in Kindergarten, it still isn’t right now.
• Be upfront with each other – It is always best to get things out in the open instead of letting them simmer unsaid.  Along those lines, be open about your personality and ask your team to help you overcome your weaknesses.  For instance, I know I can be a little too strong willed at times and need my team to call me out when it happens!  None of us are perfect and we need the help of friends/teammates to help us get better.
• Be decisive – Our training and experience has resulted in a “gut” that it is usually pretty dead-on.  If your gut tells you it is the right thing to do, then make the call and be decisive.  There is nothing worse than debating for the sake of debating when someone in the room has the problem already nailed.  And keep in the mind, that person in the room with the best gut isn’t necessarily the highest ranked person either.
• Be each other’s best advocates – Our team needs to advocate for each other at all time.  P&G is a place when a strong reputation can snowball into better things and if we have each other’s backs, our team will come out on top every time.  Another part of this is always supporting each other to the outside world (P&G and likewise).  We can disagree all we want in our offices, but when it comes to outsiders, we should appear to be one team supporting each other.

Everyone knows that marketers, especially Proctoids like myself, love a good acronym.  Rohit at Influential Marketing created a new one today: OSG.  OSG stands for One Sexy Graphic.  As he writes, OSG means two simple things:

1. Metrics that are easy to analyze and act on
2. Metrics I can show to my boss to explain what I’m doing

I love this….now if only someone could deliver this for all the different areas of my work.

Busy week and slow posting but here are some blog postings that caught my eye:

• What is digital and what is traditional?: The lines are forever blurring.  Digital will soon be everything and everywhere.
• Is your brand sticky or slippery?: I have been meaning to point out this post for a while.  Too many brands focus on being sticky for their digital strategy.  The point here is that you should focus on being a little bit of everywhere….be slippery.  Brilliant concept
• Not using TweetScan to manage your brand?  Think again:  Story of how Disqus had a powerful PR moment from monitoring TweetScan
• Customer Service - The most powerful branding tool ever: Simple idea…powerful application
• Cool Jobs for anyone looking: Method - Brand + New Ventures Analyst, Potbelly Regional Marketing Manager (Dallas & Midwest) 

David Armano of Logic+Emotion delivers yet another amazing presentation, this time on Micro Interactions + Direct Engagement in Web 2.0.  He is consistently one of the best bloggers out there, thanks in large part to how he graphically showcases concepts.  Check out the latest:

Just came across the latest Internet Trend report by Mary Meeker, courtesty of TechCrunch.  The rise of Social Media as highlighted in the report is outstanding.

Lately there has been some good discussions about other companies acting like Venture Capitalists, especially ad agencies.  Personally I have major concerns if an agency starts acting like a VC, especially if they are investing in New Media companies.  The potential for conflicts of interest are huge.  First, theses agencies need to be media-neutral.  I need to trust my agency is making a recommendation that is best for my brand…not because their agency stands to profit through my support of a business they have invested in.  Second, they are funding those investments based on fees I paid them and then potentially profiting off media buys I make.  That makes me really uneasy.

However, I do think the future of the agency model could be in Shared IP and equity.  I have no problem with an agency working with a new/small brand and taking an equity stake instead of normal fees.  I think this is a great win/win since the brand saves money and the agency gets tremendous upside based on their work.   But if this new brand is a media property that the agency can then pitch to other clients, I get concerned,  My agency’s neutrality goes out the window and I end up feeling like my agency pimped me out.  Not a good place to be.

Now the people I do think have the right be investing in new media companies are the brands themselves.  A media buy from an established company like P&G can end up making a company.  I think back to the small buy I did with Secret on MySpace.com back in 2004.  My counterpart at MySpace said that because of that deal and the media coverage we generated from it, he ended up getting over 50 calls from major brands who before wouldnt even return his call.  Think if instead of a media buy, P&G had made an equity investment in MySpace?  We would have ended up with a major return on our money when MySpace sold out to News Corp.  Plus, many start-ups could benefit tremendously from the brand building knowledge that a major CPG could bring to the table.  Plus it has an employee benefit because marketers could take a “broadening assignment” to go work at the start-up for a year or two.  They would get a chance to scratch their entreprenuerial itch without leaving the CPG company.  That is a major HR win to keep top talent happy.

Now obviously there are drawbacks here.  First, CPG companies aren’t experts in the world of VC investing but that could be solved by partnering with a leading VC.  Second, a company like P&G investing in a company could potentially keep competitors from buying media on that site.    Third, almost all major CPG’s are publicly traded companies and VC is a hit or miss industry.  But then again, technology companies like Dell are publicly traded but they have been investing in start-ups for years now (though Dell Ventures did close after a few years).

The way I see it, there is tremendous upside for a major CPG company to partner with VC’s in the start-up game….but tons of downside if our agencies are acting as the VC’s instead.

The best from the blogosphere this week:

• New blog discovery - Decker Marketing: As I was reading Brand Autopsy, I can across two mentions of Decker Marketing including 193 Marketing Ideas and 9 Guerilla Marketing Thoughts.  In a short time, I’ve become a big fan of this blog.
• Blogs vs Social Networks: Just caught this through a tweet from David Armano
• The Future of Advertising is Design: P&G puts a huge focus on design but we still have a long way to go to get everyone to embrace it
• Fred Wilson - A Lot Has Changed In A Century, But Not Everything: Communication overload.  I know the feeling.
• Social Media Basics for Marketers: Pretty self explanatory but a great read
• Second Life - Don’t Call It A Comeback: Second Life was all the buzz last year and it looks like # of hours spent on the site have been surging the past couple of months.
• MySpace Self-Serve Platform:  Interesting comments from Ian at Deep Focus
• Does Your Advertising Agency Get It?:  Great discussion and one I am torn on.  Traditional agencies are doing their best to learn Social Media but many dont get it.  What scares me is so many brands have such absolute trust in their agencies, that they let them try social media even when they shouldn’t.  This results in failures and bad social media marketing that turns off consumers.  Lets all promise not to do this!
• Seven Types of Highly Effective Corporate Blogs: Love the simplicity on what works (and what doesnt) with corporate blogs.