Can You Live in That Moment?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Matt

Welcome to 2012!

It’s Monday, January 9, and the last bowl game of the 2011 college football season is about to wrap up this evening – Alabama versus LSU. I am a huge fan of college football, so it’s only fitting that I kick off my first blog post of the New Year with the transcript from one of the best football halftime speeches ever. It happens to be from the movie – “Friday Night Lights.” In Coach Gain’s words – “Can you live in that moment, as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart?”

May 2012 be a brilliant year for you, one where your reach for perfection is measured by how you live moment by moment with “clear eyes and love and joy in your heart.”

Happy 2012!

Coach Gaines (Friday Night Lights Halftime Speech): VYN4jnA8fKs

Well it’s real simple: You got two more quarters and that’s it.

Now most of you have been playing’ this game for ten years. And you got two more quarters and after that most of you will never play this game again as long as you live. Now, ya’ll have known me for awhile, and for a long time now you’ve been hearing’ me talk about being perfect.

Well I want you to understand something’. To me, being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It’s not about winning. It’s about you and your relationship to yourself and your family and your friends.

Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down, because you told them the truth. And that truth is that you did everything that you could. There wasn’t one more thing that you could’ve done.

Can you live in that moment, as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart?

If you can do that gentleman then you’re perfect.

I want you to take a moment. And I want you to look each other in the eyes. I want you to put each other in your hearts forever, because forever’s about to happen here in just a few minutes.

I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to think about Boobie Miles, who is your brother. And he would die to be out there on that field with you tonight. And I want you to put that in your hearts.

Boys, my heart is full. My heart’s full.

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Creativity and design can change the world!

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Matt

Are you a creative person? Do you believe that through creativity and design, you can positively impact culture, the world, peoples lives? Not sure? Here are three documentaries available on DVD that cover a broad range of creative topics from advertising and how it influences us to typography and how it affects our lives to the creative process in designing products that we use everyday:

1. Art & Copy – Released in 2009, this documentary gives you glimpse into the advertising world and some of the most influential creative people in advertising that have impacted consumers during the past 50 years.

2. Helvetica – Released in 2007, this documentary explores the way typefaces, “fonts” affect our lives – especially one font – Helvetica.

3. Objectified. – Released in 2009, this documentary explores the product design process and the creative people behind products that we use everyday from toothbrushes to furniture to tech gadgets.

Intrigued? Looking to be inspired? If so, I would highly recommend that you check out these three documentaries and explore the power of creativity and design for yourself. All are available on amazon.com. Enjoy!

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Transformative Experiences.

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Matt

As Director of Marketing at the University of Michigan, a primary focus for me involves providing creative ideas, strategies and solutions that will advance the global brand for U-M.

In a large and decentralized organization like U-M, it takes a team effort across the institution. This team includes marketers and communicators that come from our 19 schools and colleges and various business units like undergraduate admissions, financial aid, student services, etc. who work together to move the institution forward toward common branding and marketing goals.

The Communicators’ Forum at the University of Michigan is an opportunity to bring hundreds of our key marketers and communicators from around campus together for a time of relationship-building, networking, and education around important branding, marketing, and communications topics for our institution. It provides us with an opening to learn and grow together as a group. This internal group represents an extremely important audience to me. Like any audience that we are trying to reach and influence, I have to provide transformative experiences in order to gain impact and have influence.

For me, bringing hundreds of our key marketing and communications people off campus to spend a morning in an incredible environment like the Google offices in Ann Arbor was the perfect transformative experience. Not only did we have the experience of being in a really cool, high-energy space like Google, we also had the unique opportunity to meet with and learn from leading Google experts from around the country. They enlightened us on where the web is going and what we need to do to continue to meet and exceed the expectations of the many external audiences that we are trying to reach through digital communications.

My challenge with the next Communicators’ Forum – try to top the last Communicators’ Forum at Google. The bar has been raised. The expectations have increased. I need to deliver another transformative experience at our next Communicators’ Forum in June. Sounds like a familiar challenge that we all deal with day in and day out in the wonderful world of higher education marketing. Have any great ideas? I would love to hear them. Thanks!

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Inner Landscape of Beauty

Posted on November 28, 2010 by Matt

For Krista Tippet fans (NPR – Being) a replay broadcast this weekend on the Inner Landscape of Beauty and Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue Bennacht (Blessing) This is an awesome show about life, leadership, creativity, imagination and beauty. Definitely worth a listen if you get a chance – http://bit.ly/eUvO9y.

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The Power of Repetition.

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Matt

In the book Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer, authors Max Sutherland and Alice Sylvester ask these questions – “Why is it so difficult to be introspective on advertising and how it influences us?” Their conclusion – as marketers, we too often look for the major effects of advertising – that super bowl ad that stays with us for a lifetime. That “ah ha” moment that makes an emotional connection with us as consumers. Not that making an emotional connection is bad, as marketers we all strive to do that with consumers. But, Max and Alice recommend that what we need to do as marketers is measure the more subtle effects of advertising, the minor effects that are not as obvious but are more characteristic of the way effective advertising works over time.

They equate the advertising process to watching our children grow up. As parents, we often don’t notice the physical growth that our children are going through each day. Occasionally though, over the course of a given year, we may notice small changes that are happening with them. The punch line – determining how much your child has grown in the last 24 hours is like evaluating the effect of being exposed to a single ad.

It is through the process and power of repetition, that small increments will add up over time. Eventually these repeated small increments can produce major perceived differences between brands and products in the minds of consumers. From day-to-day though, we are rarely aware of the process taking place.

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Teaching philosophy – ask better questions and tell better stories.

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Matt

A couple of months ago, I was speaking with Dr. Wally Metts who chairs the Department of Communications and Media at Spring Arbor University. He described his teaching philosophy this way – “To help students ask better questions and tell better stories.” I love that philosophy, and it pretty much sums up my role as a marketing professional – to ask great questions and tell great stories.

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Incredible story on Urban Prep Charter Academy in Chicago.

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Matt

On Friday night ABC World News ran an awesome story about Urban Prep Charter Academy in Chicago – www.urbanprep.org. The high school has been open for only 4 years, and all 107 students from their first graduating class have been accepted to college. As entering high school freshmen 4 years ago, only 4 percent of them could read at grade level. Here is a link to the story - http://bit.ly/azD0Y6

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Leading and managing teams.

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Matt

My life, my focus and my passion centers on this concept: that we can impact culture through the development of creative ideas and creative communications. While the road to developing creative solutions begins with passion, it also requires a rich set of skills, knowledge and unique experiences. In most cases though, if you want to change the world, if you want to impact culture in a positive way, it also requires a high functioning team of passionate, committed individuals, working together and moving forward together toward a common goal. I believe Margaret Mead’s quote sums it up pretty well:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

In my experiences in leading, managing and participating in teams, I’ve discovered a number of variables that lead to the success of a team. Below are five team attributes (from the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) that I have tried to use in some form or another in building and maintaining high performing teams.

1. Trust - In the context of the team, trust and confidence must exist around our intentions, our mission, our goals and objectives. We need to be willing to be vulnerable with each other, to be open to input and feedback from each other, and recognize that everyone on the team has something to contribute.

2. Constructive Conflict - I believe that all strong teams and any good relationship for that matter, the ones that last over time, require constructive conflict in order to grow. This is true in marriage, parenthood, friendship, and the workplace as well as with high performing teams. Demonstrating and teaching the emotional intelligence to embrace opposing thoughts and constructive conflict is important to the health and productivity of the team.

3. Commitment - There needs to be a common commitment to achieving the end goal. There needs to be clarity and buy-in from every member of the team. That doesn’t mean there is always consensus and certainty. However, at the end of the day, the team needs to be moving forward together toward that common commitment.

4. Accountability - Goals and milestones need to be tracked, and the team needs to be willing to hold each other accountable for achieving those goals. We must hold each other to a higher standard.

5. Results Oriented - We need to embrace the collective results of the team. It should be an unrelenting, collaborative focus on specific objectives and clearly defined outcomes. The team needs to be achievement and results oriented as a team, not just as individuals.

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Volkswagen demonstrates how to do cause marketing that works.

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Matt

Through a series of short “social experiment” videos that were uploaded to YouTube, Volkswagen is demonstrating how to both positively impact their brand image and change the world at the same time. The concept behind the videos is that you can change peoples’ behavior for the better by making it fun. They call it the “Fun Theory.” One of their videos was viewed over 1.5 million times in 4 days. I see lots of applications for this in the educational arena from a marketing perspective and a social cause perspective. How about you? Check out more info at – http://bit.ly/43pIcO

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Tribute to Hal and Arlene Dorf from Northern Michigan University.

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Matt

P1050844Last week I had the opportunity to attend a special tribute event for Hal and Arlene Dorf at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan. Hal was a former professor of mine in the College of Business at NMU, and this event was put on to celebrate the impact that Hal had on students, staff and friends during his teaching career at NMU.

I am realizing as I get older, and occasionally reflect back on my own life, that there are key moments in my past when someone special came along that was able to change and reshape my life and my perspective on how I should live my life. The perfect person, the right person, the needed person at that right moment who had the ability to change the trajectory of my life in a very positive way. Hal and Arlene have been those influential, special people in my life. They both came along at a significant moment in my college career at NMU that changed me forever.

As a teacher, Hal lived the dream that all teachers wish to live when they start out their careers. He also represents the outcome that all teachers dream of having when they come to the end of their teaching careers. Educators want to make a positive difference in the lives of their students. They want to know that they’ve had that kind of impact. So, it’s especially nice to witness students returning to NMU after many years to show their gratitude and give moving testimonies about their experiences together and the inspiration this teacher, Mr. Dorf, has been for them. Hal has had a significant impact on so many students’ lives over the years, and I am just one of many.

There have been many times since graduating from NMU that I have been asked by different people to describe a teacher from my past (secondary or post secondary) that has had an impact on my life. And the teacher I describe first is Hal Dorf. What did Hal do for me? He gave me confidence. He challenged me to step outside of my comfort zone. He taught me about the world, and encouraged me to get out there and to see it, to experience it, and to live it firsthand. He inspired me. He taught me not just through words, he taught me through actions. He taught me how to be a better human being. He taught me grace. The lessons he taught me about thinking about and looking at the greater picture beyond our little corner of the world are ones that Tiffany (my wife) and I are now giving to our children. So Hal’s influential message is far-reaching beyond the lives of those of us who had the honor of being his students. We are extending that message to our families, our own students and clients, our co-workers and our friends.

Hal and Arlene, on behalf of my entire family – my wife Tiffany, my daughter Lauren and my son Brian – thank you for being there for us and for me. Thank you for living a life of impact on so many.

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