Who is Farhan Lalji?

During my last job, at a design agency in London, we had a pool table. At 530 everyday, almost like clockwork, 2-4 of us would go and shoot some stick. It was a great semi release, we would end up talking about projects or developments in the world of technology more often then not. When we moved offices and ditched the pool table a large part of me felt that was a mistake, but I couldn’t articulate why.

At Yahoo! we have pool, foosball and ping pong tables and though I rarely get the chance to play these days it’s good to know they’re there. I’ve had some good conversations about life, work, philosophy and politics around these tables. One of the best times I’ve had at Yahoo! has been when we went out to play golf in the middle of Soho, not only was the golf fun but in winning the closest to the pin competition I’ve been inspired to play more golf. There was also some great work-related conversation that evening in a relaxed non-traditional environment.

And then I read about the Google Games (hat tip: Brad Feld) where students from MIT and Harvard came in and played various physical, mental and just plain fun games. Great recruitment technique if you ask me.

Last week I came across an article in the London Business School Business Strategy Review regarding the role of play at work. It’s weird but I’ve always felt that having a playful outlet was important to being able to work effectively. And this article makes that case.

If/When I start my own company I think play will play an important part in recruitment, engagement and strategy. If for no other reason then the fact that its fun and we spend way too much time at work not to have fun there.

I was flipping channels while on the bike this morning and caught a bit of GMTV’s interview with Madonna. They discussed her collaboration with Justin Timberlake – really digging that song by the way – and her career and other stuff. Just after the interview they mentioned that GMTV had the UK exclusive of the new video and would be playing it in its entirety on Monday. The interview’s on the GMTV site, but since you can’t embed it here’s the link.

Later this morning I’m checking through my feeds and Jason C has a post with the video embedded. This post has the video too after the cut.

What the hell is the point of having a “regional exclusive”? Some people still don’t get the fact that the web is international and that releasing something in one market and then waiting months if not years to release the product in another market is pointless.

Companies need to get better at global releases. Customers are already consuming internationally organisations need to catch up.

Anyway, it’s still a cool song and video, can’t believe Madonna’s nearly 50?!

Jason Fried over at SVN pointed an article on why the internet won’t be nirvana by Cliff Stoll from 1995. In it Stoll makes the point,

“Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople”.

That really got me thinking about salespeople. Could there be a more unauthentic role in capitalism then that of the traditional salesperson? I get shivers just when I hear the word.

But the internet is changing the sales perspective. No longer is it a person who goes around knocking on doors or cold-calling people. Everyone is becoming a salesperson.

I think in part it goes back to Umair’s point about interaction; everyone can interact with a product at a minimal cost. And then if you add the fact that sharing information has become super cheap and easy too, well then everyone becomes a potential salesperson.

By talking about NCAA basketball on my status on Facebook, by adding a bookshelf widget, by writing about 37signals on my blog, by adding feedback on a book on Amazon, by… you get the point. I’m a salesperson and so too is everyone else on the web. So if everyone is a salesperson 2.0 then no one needs to be a traditional salesperson and a salesperson is no longer needed. Finally, no more shivers.

Henry Blodget and Kara Swisher have two great videos on Yahoo!’s Tech Ticker.

On the first they’re discussing the mentality of Google’s founders in comparison to other founders. Their DNA and how they’ve moulded the company in their own image. Basically, how they’ve kept it authentic.

My take, well duh, authenticity and value people, authenticity and value!

Second one is looking at how a lack of innovation has ended up biting Dell in the behind. You have to invest in research and think long and convince the market to understand the value of research. HP, Apple and Google do this well, the list of companies who don’t is too long.

Enjoy the videos embedded below.

I read a great article on Evan Williams, creator of blogger and twitter in Fast Company over the weekend. Immediately, the word authentic came into my head and I can’t get it out of my head. I started thinking about companies and things I like and found overall there was a sense of authenticity among them all. But authenticity isn’t enough, there needs to be a genuine market for what someone is trying to do.

Authenticity is the difficult one to nail, how do you know if someone is authentic or not. Personally, I think it boils down to motives and passion. If someone is passionate about what they’re doing and has clear good motives they are likely to be doing something with authenticity. I’m sure there has been other academic research into keeping it real, but here’s my contribution.

I decided to put together a 2×2 matrix, showing authenticity and value. I believe people and organisations can fit in to one of the four boxes depending whether or not they offer a valued good or service and whether or not they act with integrity and genuinely i.e. authenticity. So a company can be successful, but if their not authentic I believe their success won’t be sustainable.

I’m not going to say where I think certain companies and individuals fit in this 2×2, but feel free to play along at home.

News from the blogosphere hit one of my favourite tv shows today, ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption – I say TV show, but I listen to the podcast here in the UK. The news was that Greg Oden(GO), a basketball center with the Portland Trailblazers, had publicly endorsed Barak Obama on his blog. The post was followed by over 170 comments (mostly positive) and a bunch of other blog posts like this (mixed results).

Both hosts from PTI were giving GO dap – i.e. credit –for taking a political stance and being vocal about his political leaning. I was born during the later stage of a time when many athletes were thought leaders, to a certain extent, in the US. On PTI Michael Wilbon rattled off the names Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and basketball players like Bill Russell, Bill Walton and Bill Bradley (who’s now in politics, not just talking politics in the locker room) who were all vocal about their political beliefs. Before these athletes there was Jackie Robinson, the black power salute at the Olympic Games, and other acts of politics and sport mixing. Whether you agreed or disagreed with these athletes you had to respect their strength in character to discuss their views. Some, like Ali, even suffering financially and reputationally (yes I know it’s not a word, don’t care) because of their views.

Today, I can only think of one other athlete, the Canadian 2 - time MVP of the NBA - Steve Nash, who also has made his political views known on occasion and has suffered some backlash for some of his views.

Personally, I think there’s too much money in endorsements for professional athletes today, and an athlete today can suffer significant financial set backs by saying the wrong thing or upsetting the wrong person. Being like Mike meant drinking Gatorade, wearing Air Jordans and buying into Brand Jordan not believing in some of the things that Mike believed in. Being like Tiger means wearing an expensive watch or investing a mutual fund or whatever else Tiger’s associated with. I’d love to see GO’s stance to be seen as a new trendsetter, one of athletes speaking their minds.

Maybe I’m a little partial to this as I’m reading Obama’s Dreams of my Father right now and I like the fact that he comes from a diverse background, something I can really relate to. Not to mention that I think he could do a whole heap of good for America’s reputation across the world and… well this wasn’t meant to be a political post so I’ll stop there. Maybe I’d feel differently if GO had endorsed McCain or Clinton on his blog. Don’t know, can’t say. But I like it in this case.

So Google’s the biggest brand in the UK as well as the world (pdf 800+ kb). To me this signals a huge shift in advertising.

I think Umair nailed it when he wrote about interaction being so cheap that building a brand through traditional advertising is no longer necessary.

For new technology products interaction is dirt cheap, even free, for traditional products access to these products is cheaper but information about the product is so accessible that if you have a crap product people will not only know they’ll tell other people.

We – technologists, marketers etc – need to focus more on creating phenomenal experiences and less on advertising perceived benefits through ads. If you focus on building great experiences the brand and the market come cheap, just ask GOOG.

In a nutshell interaction is becoming cheaper so the investment in the brand promise doesn’t have to be high, as people can just interact with the brand. Simply genius in my opinion. UPDATE - now embedded.

More from Umair on his blog post.