They’re building New Fantasyland and signs like the one above are posted all around the construction area.  They remind me of the signs that Facebook puts up around its office and at its hackathons:

In some ways, Walt was the original Zuck.

At around 15 or 16, during one summer at Imagineering in Burbank, I attended at meeting about Animal Kingdom.  It seemed so far fetched that Disney would build and maintain acres of wild animals.  I vividly remember thinking there wasn’t a chance this would happen. Twenty years and two kids later, I road the safari vehicle through the Florida savanna for the first time and was literally blown away by what had been built.  Walt had this vision that even the most incredibly big and grand ideas could be brought to life, and that thread and belief continues to live on in Imagineering today.

The one ride that had no line was Carousel of Progress.  It was one of Walt’s last personal creations and is a rotating theater that takes riders through 5 decades of an animatronic family’s life beginning at the turn of the century (almost exactly when Walt was born).  The lead character and narrator, Rex, looks surprising like Walt, and marvels from decade to decade about the amazing changes he’s witnessed: in-home electricity, cars that don’t require cranks, appliances, etc.  (The attraction was last updated in 1994, with lots of references to virtual reality, so today it’s more museum piece and tribute than anything else.)

The show tracks largely the technological changes that Walt had witnessed personally from 1901 till his death in 1966.  He had personally seen the electricity, appliances, and television come into the home.  He saw the invention of the modern automobile, robots, and early computers.  Raised in this environment and exposed to this rapid and dramatic invention, almost compounding each decade, nothing seemed impossible.  If you had seen the invention of these things, you could imagine building Disney World and even have an even grander vision for EPCOT than the grand vision that was actually achieved.  You could also create a company and culture on a path to do even bolder and bigger parks in the years to come.

It was great for the kids to see the characters, and it was great for me to reconnect with the grandness of the Disney vision, and the massive operational complexity that surrounds the parks and all the resorts. It makes you realize that even the most enormous of visions can be accomplished when you begin with an idea and plug away a day at a time with a great team.  Walt got this fact, and he got better than anyone that it all begins with an idea.  The most apt quote of his, the one that I always remind myself of when thinking about beginning a new task, problem, or team project is the beautifully put:

I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse. – Walt Disney

Aspiration in advertising is about great creative that stands on its own, and has all the best qualities of editorial content – a voice, a point of view, and a larger purpose. It’s work that is worth sharing.

This philosophy has stuck with me and defined the key elements of my thinking around branding and advertising since I saw Lee Clow in the documentary Art & Copy talk about his work for Pedigree. Clow said, “Hey, you can be more than just a pet food company. You can aspire to loving dogs rather than just feeding dogs.”

In recent decades, it seems like we’ve lost our way and started to assume that advertising was a necessary evil, that nobody would willingly consume or share advertising.

Paul Adams of Facebook explains, “Marketing, for the last 50 years, has been about interruption, and it’s basically a race to the bottom. All these guys are trying to come up with more and more creative ways to interrupt people. We have a finite amount of information processing, and that’s not going to change in our lifetime.”

50 years back is the right demarcation. It was the golden age of great, as opposed to interruptive, advertising. The legends of that era: Wells, Ogilvy, Doyle Dane & Bernbach, and later Clow inspired and helped us aspire. They made ads you actually wanted to read or watch, that you remembered, that you sought out, and shared.

Clow’s defining work for Apple stands on its own as content that has had a larger purpose and been shareable for decades. (1984 and Think Different). The ads have influenced culture, making Apple’s aspiration to creativity something that continues to be passed around in culture.

Fortunately, the massive shift in the media business is creating a huge opportunity for a new golden era for advertising. On the social web, consumers have more control, and advertising that isn’t engaging is simply ignored, much less shared. It means we all need to up our game to stay relevant.

And it’s the aspirational messages that are shareable that work the best to explain what a brand stands for and hopes to achieve, as evidenced in our latest study with GE on Social Brand Lift.

Super Bowl commercials are perhaps one time a year when content-driven creative is most on display on television. My personal favorite from this year’s group was the Best Buy ad, which focused on mobile apps and technology and their startup creators. Like Clow’s Pedigree or Apple ads, the Best Buy spot is about what the devices allow us to do, as opposed to focusing on features. The Best Buy Brand aligns and aspires to entrepreneurship and invention.

E*Trade continued its tradition of great creative that stands on its own as content.  Yet again, this year’s talking baby entertained us as he chatted with his father about the rising cost of tuition.   The message is conveyed and worth watching, as opposed to just a bland call to action. E*Trade gets to the point and reminds us of their financial services, but does it through a story line that’s relevant to a tough economy.  A young father that wants to “give her (newborn) everything” considers this in the moment just after delivery, looking through the nursery window. It’s a spot every father has been in; it’s relatable and endearing, and then made novel, bizarre, and funny through a conversation with a talking baby who has a deep voice.

The web is an even better forum for this kind of great creative because brands can be “always on” publishers and utilize social to spread their messages. What’s more, the creative possibilities on the web to tell a story are much wider and varied than a 30 or 60 second spot. Great creative can be refactored into discreet pieces and packages of images, text, and videos that brands can communicate and modify in real time as people react on the social web.

When I see great creative, be it historic or on the Super Bowl, and I think about the power of the social web, I’m highly optimistic. Because great content-driven marketing can spread through word-of-mouth across the social web, produce unprecedented amount of earned media, and engage and inspire consumers like never before.

Teaser rates in mortgages have become controversial because they impact such a huge portion of peoples’ incomes.  I wonder if teaser rates in less costly products and services slip by, simply because most people don’t check their credit card bills that closely.

Either way, I haven’t seen a good behavioral economics discusion of teaser rates, and if any reader has one, please leave it in the comments.  My hunch is that people are unaware of the rate change, and I imagine that recurring-billing is a key component of teaser rate success.

The overriding issue is that most restaurants take reservations yet require no deposits.  Also, while some restaurants track no-shows and deny future reservations, most do not.  Reservations are effectively a costless option for reservers.  The same is true of reserved parking spots, haircut appointments, and seats of varying kinds.  No one really needs to reserve a chair at the pool or beach.  If everyone just sat in a chair when they needed one or parked when they needed a spot, in most cases, the system would work much better – first come first serve.

I’m well aware that this is not always the case.  In our own business, there is an importance to brands running specific messages and engaging in specific social exchanges on days of product launches and tune-ins.  The same is true of a host of appointments for medical, tutoring, etc.  And reservations are especially important for high demand events like movie premiers and new restaurants, where the risk of showing up to a “sold out” situation is high.  With that said, I think the pendulum of reserved versus spot market is unbalanced, and most businesses use reservations to their disservice.  In most cases, I find first come and wait till available to be take far less time than anticipated.

I recently finished reading the great new behavioral economics book, Thinking Fast, and Slow by  Noble Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman.  I can’t help but think of reservations in terms of the kind of behavioral experiments often performed to show how child behavior is mirrored in adults.  When my 3 year old, Edie, has a playmate over, she is often playing with Toy A, while simultaneously refusing to let her playmate enjoy the use of Toy B.   Edie is busy with Toy A but wants to keep Toy B “reserved” should she desire the use of it.  How different is this from an adult out at a meeting who wants their parking spot back at the office “reserved” should they need it?  Or the bather who has a specific chair in the shade “reserved” for if and when they finish swimming.  In the vast majority of cases, they are plenty of parking spots, toys, shade, seats…

Space in commercial office buildings is leased on a dollars per square foot per year basis.  So you often see space quoted like: $25 a foot; 2,000 square feet.  Such a lease would be $50,000 a year, paid monthly in advance for $4,167.  A security deposit of several months if also required, just like when you’re renting a residential apartment.

However, these numbers are not as straight forward as they might appear.  The quoted square footage often differs from what is called the “usable square footage.”  That 2,000 square feet often includes: mechanical areas, support beams, and common areas – space you cannot actually use.  In New York (I’m not sure about other places) it is often measured to the external wall, or curtain, of the building.  Where you can stand and the curtain of the building can be a few feet.  A good broker or building owner will often give you a usable number – or you can have an architect or contractor economically measure the space.

Another number that is not straight forward is the annual rent.  Depending on the state of the space, the building owner will often offer to build out the space to your specifications or grant you a “tenant improvement allowance.”  For example, if the space if very raw, on that $50k/year lease, you might be granted $15,000 dollars to construct your conference rooms, bathrooms, etc.  Depending on the landlord you either submit receipts or have them billed directly.  Having the owner do the work can often be easiest, and offer the least exposure, since you don’t need to get reimbursed.

Terms of leases are at minimum, typically, 3-5 years.  (An alternative would be to sublease space, that is, lease space from someone holding a lease with the building, for a shorter period of time.)  In each of the years of the lease, you’ll probably see a percentage increase in the rent defined.

If you’re a growth company, you want to take a space that gives you some room to grow.  With that said, too much room to grow, and you’re wasting money on square footage that you don’t need.  If you grow more quickly than anticipated, you have a few options:

1. Often the best option is to look for more space in the building.  Ideally, you’re in a building with numerous tenants; this creates a high likelihood that space is continually freeing up. It may seem inconvenient to have space on floors 3 and 11, but ultimately, in Manhattan,  at a certain size, you’re going to be on multiple floors.  Closer together is better, so you can use stairs, but ultimately an elevator ride to another floor isn’t the worst thing.  For years before buying the entire building, Google was grabbing space at 111 8th avenue in this manner.  I often would go from floor 4 to 15, or 4 to 6, etc.  This often even involved switching elevator banks. They even took two floors in the building across the street on 9th avenue (Chelsea Market)
2. Move to a new space and sublease your existing space to a new tenant.
3. Ask and receive an early termination of your lease from your landlord.

In leasing, you also want to think about who pays for and manages air conditioning, hours of freight elevator usage, bike access, etc.  These concerns and arrangements often require some ongoing management.  There will always be plumbing, heating, internet connectivity and other associated issues even in a small space.  So be prepared to have the kind of ongoing maintenance needs and issues that one has in maintaining a house.

In closing, the big difference in real estate between NYC and out West is that you can’t just grab buildings.  As I watched Google expand in Mountain View there were always nearby buildings freeing up that could be used to expand the campus.  In New York things are vertical and often have much tighter inventory.  Thus, it’s best to be in a building that’s of decent size and has lots of tenants that have leases continually freeing up.

Each lease and real estate need is a little unique, so please leave questions or thoughts in the comments, and  I’ll answer.

We’re sick and tired of picture-perfect babies and flawless models. Why do we love YouTube videos so much? Because they’re imperfect, amateurish, and the people in them remind us of us.

This is why, in places like Whole Foods, we’re seeing more and more Brussels sprouts and tomatoes still tethered to their stalks, many with dirt still clinging to the roots and leaves still hanging from the stalks.

I’ve believed for months now, that consumers like their branded content, rough, quick, and organic feeling.  Instead of releasing one perfect, polished commercial about a car, release a lot of iphone videos showing behind the scenes factory construction and road tests.  People appreciate and want REAL.

We even want simulacrum REAL.  My 20 month old got baby jeans that came pre-ripped with holes in them; my wife explained they are cute because they look like worn adult jeans.  Real and rough is a cultural aesthetic as much as it’s a sensing for the closeness to the unpolished real.

Real and rough is also more functional.  I download all my iPad movies in Standard Definition, instead of High Definition.  You typically want to download  a video the minute you are about to leave your house or hotel.  HD takes too long to download, and I either I can’t tell the quality difference or don’t care.

Real content, content that is rough and “discovered” is far more exciting for users to engage with and share – not unlike the way blog posts are more real-time and interesting to comment on, as opposed to sending a letter to the editor of a magazine or newspaper.

It’s the same reason why Facebook messages, has sought to move away from the formality and distinctions between email, chat, sms.

I think we’re moving towards a less formal more “real” age in our marketing and tools; social works especially well with this aesthetic.  No one wants polish, they want real.

Both of these chain clothing store just opened up all across Manhattan ,offering cheap and stylish clothing.  I bought $9.90 jeans from Uniqlo than seem just as good as the $100 ones I’ve bought from other places.  My Joe Fresh $19 button down shirts look cooler and feel more comfortable than the shirts I’ve bought at quadruple the price from the legacy shops.  You can add to this group H&M.

Whether the materials in the higher priced items are of finer quality or will last longer is irrelevant.  The way I live my life, most clothes never reach their natural healthy life expiration date.  And, frankly, I’d prefer four different shirts for the price of one.  For kids clothing, the point is even stronger.  Nothing avoids stains.

I just think something radical is happening in clothing.  It used to be that cheap clothes were crap and expensive clothes were good.  I think what we’re beginning to see is that cheap clothing can be great and stylish, and expensive clothing is ridiculously priced.

You think that only digital markets can be disrupted and then you look at something like lettuce in a bag.  Clothing is being completely disrupted right now.

In the data space, we at BuzzFeed also subscribe to photos and news from sources like the AP and Reuters.  We also license Comscore.

These databases add up to thousands of dollars a month in overhead.  They’re costly but until now there wasn’t really an alternative, and then it occurred to me, we’re beginning to see the Internet decentralize these databases.  We already see SellerCrowd beginning to fill the role of  the ad buyer database.  Rather than rely on an in house team to manually update contact info, SellerCrowd does this in real time pinging the wisdom of the crowd.

In similar fashion, it has always been my belief that Piictu (disclosure: I’m an investor) would become a crowdsourced version of AP or Getty images.  When a major world event happens, you can see the crowd reacting through images on Piictu.  No need to buy an expensive photos database.  Want to see Halloween around the world?  Go to Piictu.

We’ve seen Airbnb disintermediate room rentals.  I think in similar fashion we’re beginning to see professional data get disintermediated.  If I were an investor, or an entrepreneur looking for an idea, I’d scan the sectors where lots of information is being rolled up, databased, and then sold to the other side of the buy/sell equation.  I’d then look to crowdsource this info and give it away or sell it for a radically cheap price.