Brains on Fire

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  Looking Up and Moving Down…Stairs!

  Posted on September 1st, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 2 commenting.

  It’s been a big few weeks at Brains on Fire. We’ve met a handful of great new people, have already heard great stories from people who are reading the book, got a team on the ground getting dirt underneath their fingernails with some Insight work, and Geno got a new tweed jacket in the mail.

  If that’s not enough Firesphere awesome-ness for you, we’ve got another piece of exciting news: Brains on Fire is moving the creative spaces our Pirates work at to the lower deck! You read that right. Things have been getting bigger and better around here, so we’re bringing the whole crew together, re-designing our office arrangement and buckling down for an amazing second-half of 2010.

  To celebrate the twenty-five-foot vertical adjustment, I thought it would be fun to invite you into our little moving adventure - follow my feet through the office as I transport a box downstairs and encounter a few obstacles along the way.

  (PS - No employees, footballs, dolls, chairs, or metal pipes were harmed in the making of this video.)

  Tags: Brains on Fire, Eric Dodds, Eric Whitlock, Firecam, Greg Ramsey, Justin Gammon, moving, photography, Slice of Life, stop motion, zach suggs
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  Lesson Eleven: The First Post - It’s About People, Stupid

  Posted on August 31st, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 6 commenting.

  It’s good to be back on the blog. You know, I really miss being here when things get busy - but you’re looking good, as always, and we’ve got some exciting stuff happening around here. And with that, we’re off:

  If you’ve been following the Firephere over the last few months you might have heard that Brains on Fire has been furiously thinking, typing, editing, sketching and publishing a love story. And that story happens to be inked on the pages of a book we’ve named after the state of mind we seek for ourselves, our clients and our kindred spirits: Brains on Fire.

  You can learn plenty about the read (and where to get your hands on one) over at the Brains on Fire book website (1), but today I want to talk about how the love story is going to live beyond words and letters on a page.

  When Robbin talks about writing the book, she is adamant about saying that ‘we’ wrote it - not her and the other people with last names printed on the binding - but all of us:

  When I say “we,” I don’t just mean the four authors you see listed on the cover. “We” represents an army of believers. It’s the people who comment on our blog. It’s the courageous clients we serve. It’s their customers. It’s everyone who sends us a resume or a love note. It’s our employees and extended tribe. It’s people who catch a vision and inquire about our services. It is all of us who are learning and changing the way we think about the work we do in the world. (Phillips, Cordell, Church, Jones ix)

  - Robbin Phillips, Courageous President

  And because so many people inspired the book, we want to continue to re-write the way we do marketing, together. From page 169:

  Igniting movements is hard work. It’s building with people, not tools. Our belief is simple…we’re all in marketing grad school. We’re not experts. Frankly, there are no experts yet. And that’s why we’re all in this together. There are more lessons to learn, more stories to share and more movements to ignite…So join the Brains on Fire movement at www.brainsonfire.com/lessoneleven. Let’s write the next chapters together. This is the beginning, not the end. (Phillips, Cordell, Church, Jones 169)

  So what is Lesson Eleven? It is a collection of real life stories - a movement-maker’s journal. Real stories from you, real stories from other marketing do-ers, real stories that we discover, share and hope will change the way we think about marketing.

  

  So here it is - the first story of Lesson Eleven. And it is based on the opening line of our love story:

  It’s about people, stupid.

  ——————–

  While the medical issues that define our age are many, leading physicians say that childhood obesity poses a gigantic threat. (2) This isn’t the place to discuss the many causes or many proposed solutions, but I ran across a story the other day that serves as a wonderful example of why people are so important. (3)

  Dr. Maureen Black and her associates at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have studied childhood obesity and the ways that people are targeting the problem. They discovered that group health education for inner city Baltimore kids is easily found in school and church settings, but noticed that learning in the place where a majority of health knowledge should come from, the home, is rare.

  Their solution? Pretty simple. Build one-on-one relationships between healthy college students and overweight children, facilitating life learning and mentorship that takes place in the child’s own home. Says Dr. Black,

  These were very active sessions. The mentors were not just talking to them. In every session they had food, and they often made the food together in the child’s home. The mentors took the children to the corner store or to a nearby fast-food restaurant to learn about healthy choices. They visited the skating rink or went hiking in a state park to learn the importance of being physically active. (3)

  The results are pretty remarkable. After only 12 mentorship sessions, the children in the study who were paired with a mentor (there was a control group) experienced a 5% decline in rate of obesity, while those who weren’t experienced an 11% increase. After two years. That’s right - the lessons that the children learned in a personal relationship of only 12 meetings produced changes that lasted two years.

  People are so important, so central, because they are the main ingredient of what makes a movement long-lasting. How?

  It comes down to trust. And people don’t trust your company; people trust people. People they know. People who’s recommendations they seek out and have faith in. People don’t buy your company, product, or service first, they buy people first. (Phillips, Cordell, Church, Jones xiv)

  The childhood obesity example shows that while lots of factors can help (group education, removing soft-drinks from schools, etc.), the hard work of actually getting involved in someone’s life can produce extremely compelling results. Relationships are the lifeblood of any marketing effort that is going to last. And they make the work you do in the world truly meaningful.

  ——————–

  Stay tuned - we’ll have another edition of Lesson Eleven next Tuesday and some great stuff coming up on the blog.

  • (1) You can learn more about the Brains on Fire book and where to get your hands on one at www.brainsonfirebook.com.
  • Phillips, Robbin, Greg Cordell, Geno Church and Spike Jones. Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print.
  • (2) You can read CDC coverage of stats and consequences of childhood obesity here.
  • (3) You can read about Dr. Black and the mentorship study here.
  Tags: book, Brains on Fire, Brains on Fire Book, childhood obesity, Clients, firesphere, Kindred Spirits, Lesson Eleven, long lasting, Marketing, Movements, people, relationships, sustainable
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  Firecam and pictures: Brains on Fire in the Recording Studio

  Posted on August 18th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 2 commenting.

  For this year’s FIRE Sessions, Cordell pulled a little surprise out from his sleeve, and that surprise happened to be a full staff performance of David Bowie’s “Changes.” While a few of the pirates here are gifted with beautiful vocals, the rest of us were in need of an auditory guide on stage as we were belting out the 70s chorus. So we headed up to Williamson Evans to fire up a few condenser mics and see how handy the producer was with pitch control in Pro Tools.

  The result? Lots of fun, lots of laughs, and one awesome David Bowie performance.

  Enjoy a few scenes from the making-of:

  Video lovingly cut but the intern, Suggs. Final Cut ain’t so bad, is it?

  

  Need a mic, anyone?

  

  Cramming isn’t just for college, and I think we had a few people who wished they’d studied more before the test.

  

  Justin tickling the ivory.

  

  This studio has the gear and the chops to use it.

  

  We think Ramsey has a secret desire to be a honky-tonk country music star.

  

  Mic’s, headphones, here we go…

  

  Jack looks so confident, and Dodds and Ramsey are trying figure out how the man of steel does it.

  

  Work hard, play hard, and sometimes both.

  

  The magic happening.

  
  

  Tags: behind the scenes, Brains on Fire, FIRE Sessions, Firecam, Pictures, recording studio, singing, Slice of Life
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  Picture Blog: Brains on Fire Through Intern Eyes

  Posted on August 13th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 5 commenting.

  So, we shed a tear when we said goodbye to our last intern, Elizabeth (she was really, really awesome), but we’ve saddled-up a new young-gun and we’re excited that he’s gonna be around this fall. His name is Zach Suggs, and he hails from the mountains of North Carolina. He did a short stint in Fort Collins, Colorado (yes, he spent some quality time at the New Belgium Brewery), but somehow his loaded Subaru wound up in little old Greenville. Aside from being super-smart, Suggs has got some photo (and Photoshop) skills, so we asked him to snap a few pics around the office. Here’s the first batch, but look for more soon.

  

  Suggs’ new place on deck.

  

  You’re child is going to be absolutely gorgeous, Megan!

  

  Yours truly, probably coming back from the coffee pot with some fresh caffeine.

  

  Our good friend Amy Taylor sent us a little package with some goodies.

  

  Is she scared of a monster-ringed man? Is there a secret message written on his palm? And Justin, where in the heck do you find all these crazy monsters?

  

  A packaged arrived in the mail…

  

  What? Brains on Fire hardcover book copies?? Everyone’s in quiet awe.

  

  And celebrate the love story of the Brains on Fire book.

  Tags: Alexis Bass, amy taylor, beth delong, book, Brains on Fire, Brains on Fire Book, Cathy Harrison, culture, Eric Dodds, geno church, Greg Cordell, Greg Ramsey, hard cover, Justin Gammon, Megan Byrd, monster, package, photography, Photos, Pictures, ring, Shannon Kohn, team, toys, zachsuggs
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  A Quick Thought on Purpose, Not Profit

  Posted on August 12th, 2010 by Eric Dodds and currently 9 commenting.
  

  Dodds showing off some plastic. Photo via the new intern, Suggs.

  The other night I had a conversation with a friend about marketing, and he asked me a really good question.

  “It seems like there are so many companies out there just trying to peddle me a product - so how do you explain how what you do is different from what they do?”

  A great question, and more challenging from a non-marketer with little frame of reference for the industry. After a few minutes of hard thinking, here’s where I ended up:

  “At its fundamental level, my job at Brains on Fire is to develop meaningful relationships between companies, their employees and their customers.

  There are lots of marketers out there who do simply pedal products, and that’s why you see endless new waves of advertising and other promotions - they have to keep  providing cheap entertainment for their customers to retain interest.

  And that’s the easy route - it’s easy to have a one night stand - but anyone who’s ever been in a committed, long-lasting relationship knows that it takes lots of time and hard work, and that the payout isn’t necessarily immediate.

  It’s no different for companies: long lasting relationships with customers takes time and hard work.

  So, I submit that the reason you feel like so many companies are peddling you a product is because they are. They are more interested in the short term reward of your wallet than they are in the work of an actual relationship with you.”

  Today, I’m thankful to work with a group of people who value the purpose of building relationships over entertaining for short-term profit.

  Tags: Brains on Fire, Conversation, customers, easy, hard, long-term, products, profit, purpose, question, relationships, short term, short term profit, sustainable, Work