Recent Articles
- Word of Mouth via Toaster
- Defining Good Writing
- We need your help.
- Stories vs. Slogans
- Is All of That ‘Noise’ a Bad Thing?
- Nostalgia, Mad Men and Emotions
- The End User is Not the Only User
- Hello (and some photos) From Chicago
- 6 Things Food Trucks Can Teach us about Social Media
- The things that make us happy. And human.
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Friday Fun: BOF-style
Posted on January 6th, 2012 by and currently 4 commenting.
Words of wisdom from the insides of a fortune cookie to all of us in the year 2012
Time for a little Friday fun…Brains on Fire-style.
A few months ago, Alexis brought a little white board to the office. It sits on the counter in our kitchen area. Once a week, someone will wipe the board clean and write a new question. The rest of us spend the following days anonymously answering in erasable marker below. We’ve learned a lot about each other – although oftentimes without knowing exactly whose answer we’re reading. Everything from childhood pets to celebrity crushes, signature cocktails to “Bucket List” dreams.
The board currently lists a plethora of our 2012 resolutions. I thought I’d invite our blog readers to join in the fun – with a slight spin. This morning during our creative huddle, the team started pondering what it would be like if we could make a resolution for someone ELSE.
Enter you.
If you could make a resolution for someone else (anyone!) – who would you choose? And what would the resolution be?
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Merry Christmas from Brains on Fire
Posted on December 22nd, 2011 by and currently 3 commenting.Suits for the men, dresses for the ladies. Put on your best Sinatra, baby…the Brains on Fire Christmas theme was 40s this year.
Happy Holidays from all of the Pirates in the Firesphere.
Hotness.
Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.
All in a days work.
Dangerous designers.
Lovely ladies of Brains on Fire.
The Boss.
Stirred, not shaken.
Enjoying the roof.
The Amidons.
Stairway to heaven.
The Hammond Gang.
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Brains on Fire Thanksgiving
Posted on December 2nd, 2011 by and currently 4 commenting.We decided that one Thanksgiving wasn’t enough, so we prepared a feast for our work family, too.
You’d be surprised at what you can do with a microwave.
Yes, we had salad. But only just a little bit.
Hungry?
How about now?
The feasting table.
Storming the spread.
The Family.
We can’t express how thankful we are to work with each one of these amazing people every day.
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Touch points: Give ‘em something to talk about
Posted on October 19th, 2011 by and currently 9 commenting.
Tiny touch points
Let’s talk about touch points.
There is a lot of conversation going on about touch points out in the great, big world of the interwebs. People telling you how to do them. Why to do them. Where to do them. How to outsource them. (Really? Really!?) There are graphs and charts and calculations estimating touch point ROI. There is advice on how to reduce the cost of your touch points, how to speed them up and get them in front of more eyeballs.
And while (much of) this is fine and dandy, I take a much more simplified stance on touch points. It’s less science, more art. It has far less to do with calculations and 20 point bullet lists, and much more to do with surprise and delight.
Every touch point is an opportunity to start a conversation.
Google and you will find that there are thousands of sites listing nearly every possible touch point you could ever hope to employ for your marketing purposes. I often suspect, however, some of the best examples are (literally) right under our noses. Baristas have been doing an amazing job with touch points for quite some time, simply by working with what they do and love – in order to give their customers a remarkable experience. With just a little extra care and effort, they elevate “good enough” to “wowza” – and you better believe it not only gets people smiling, it gets them talking.
A few weeks ago, I received a pack of mini-cards from Moo.com (courtesy of Klout.) The set I received has dozens of designs with clever messages and drawings on one side, contact information on the other. When contact info alone would have been good enough, the cards took it up to wowza. With messages like “I like my artsy with a little fartsy,” images of jars with beards and, my personal favorite, an illustration of a pair of underwear claiming “I have the worst job in the world,” they became an instant hit. We spent a good 15 minutes crowded around my desk, selecting the just-right card for each person. If you walk around our office, you will find them displayed – like teeny, tiny works of art.
What I enjoyed even more, however, were the touch points Moo.com employed before the box ever arrived. Upon placing my order, I received an e-mail from “Little Moo,” assuring me he was going to keep an eye on things and stay in touch throughout the process until my order arrived at my desk. When a simple confirmation e-mail would have done, they wowza-ed it up – and it has kept me smiling and talking about it long after my order shipped.
A final though on touch points. They don’t have to be fancy or expensive. They just have to be meaningful. A couple years ago I ran into a local photographer at the Farmer’s Market. After a brief conversation, I asked for his business card. Instead of plucking one card from his pocket, he pulled out a stack. Each card had his contact information on one side and one of his photos on the other – each one different. He fanned them out, text side-up, like a deck of cards, asking me to choose one at random. Whatever photo was on the back would tell me something about myself, he assured me.
I plucked a card from the stack and flipped it over to examine the photo on the other side. (It was this.)
That business card has a place of honor in my home. It has been with me through three moves. It continues to elicit questions from guests. When “here’s my business card” would have been good enough, the photographer gave me something remarkable to remember. And you better believe I’m still talking about it.
>>>Your turn to chime in: What touch points have captured your attention lately? What do you think makes a touch point effective vs. ineffective?<<<
ps: Looking for more touch point examples? You may want to check out this previous post for a few ideas from Method, Virgin Airlines, TOMS and Hell Pizza.
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Break the Circle (Guest Post from Dan Holm)
Posted on October 11th, 2011 by and currently 4 commenting.This guest post is from our awesome friend (and client) Dan Holm of Outback Steakhouse.
It’s amazing how unanticipated life challenges typically end up becoming the moments you remember most and are most grateful for once they’re over.
Last Friday, an unexpected crisis came soaring in my wife and I’s life when we learned that our unborn baby (known as baby #3 as this will be our third) had a rapid and irregular heart rate that required immediate hospitalization and treatment to bring the rate down to a “normal level”.
Once the shock of the moment passed, we had the opportunity to meet with a pediatric cardiologist who diagnosed baby #3 with Atrial Flutter. Which basically means that the baby’s heart was stuck in a fluttering circle in the top 2 atriums resulting in a rapid heart rate. In other words, this “circle” caused the heart to beat twice on the top and only once on the bottom.
While the cause of Atrial Flutter is widely unknown, the solution is fairly simple: break the circle by slowing down.
Slowing the heart down isn’t as easy as it sounds, but through medication, prayers and ongoing monitoring it can be done and the circle can be broken.
I know by now you’re probably wondering: why should I care about some guy and his baby that I’ve never met and how does this apply to me and my business/company/firm/etc.
After countless heart ultrasounds, doctor consultations, 5 nights in the hospital and the ongoing sound of my baby’s heart beat pounding in the background I came to several realizations that we all need to be reminded of. So, here it goes:
4 lessons learned from the Beat of a Heart:
1. We all need to slow down.
I know it can’t just be me who is moving too fast. We all need to stop, slow down and think about what is actually going on.
“Why does this work, right now matter?”
“Should I be spending my time more efficiently on a project or initiative that’s going to have a greater impact?”
“If I just stopped for 1 second and looked from the outside in, what would I see differently, what would I change?”
“How can I make more of less?”
2. Life is a miracle, every beat matters.
We’re so busy – - we forget that we’re even breathing. Take a moment today to appreciate that your eyes are open, you’re breathing and your heart is pounding.
Not only is our life a miracle, but so is our business. Be grateful for your customers, they are your heartbeat. Every single one of them matters.
3. When you give love, it comes back to you.
The bottom line of life is that people just want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
What my wife and I saw these past 5 days wasn’t just a miracle, it was a team of doctors & nurses who “all wanted to be a part of something bigger than themselves” – saving a friend’s life.
It’s amazing what a little love can do. Sure it’s a doctor’s “job” to save lives, but it means so much more when they care about the life they’re saving. Now, it’s something bigger. Something real. Something they can believe in.
How? How do you make people care about something? Start, by loving them.
The pediatric cardiologist that we first met left his house at 9:30pm on a Friday night just so he could talk with us and give a diagnosis. He didn’t have to do that. And, my wife and I knew it. So, we told him how much we appreciated him going out of his way. After we told him ‘thank you’ we’re almost positive his head fell off his shoulders. It was obvious that no one had ever thanked him for his work before. This small gesture of love and appreciation resulted in “above and beyond care” that we’re convinced we wouldn’t have received otherwise.
You can do this too. Thank your customers. Give them love. It will come back to you.
4. Breaking the Circle creates freedom.
You know what saying I hate? “Let’s think outside the box”
What does that even mean?
If we want to be effective and innovative we need to do more than just think. We need to act.
It doesn’t seem to me that we’re stuffed inside a box. I think we’re all stuck in a circle that desperately needs to be broken.
We’re in a routine. We don’t like change. And, we just keep going faster and faster, taking on more and more.
The problem with a circle however, is that you’re not ever going anywhere. You’re a hamster on a wheel.
We need to break the circle. We need to escape our mundane routine and start to act differently.
The only way to break it, is to slow down. Once we slow down enough we will be able to evaluate and exit. Then, the freedom will come. Our mind will be clear, we will look at things differently.
And maybe, just maybe our heart will start to pound to the beat of a different drummer.
How will you slow down this week?
