Proposal #8 - The New Killer App: Authenticity by Jory Des Jardins

The New Killer App: Authenticity by Jory Des Jardins

Calvin is a soft, technologically oriented man in his 50s whom I befriended at a personal development conference, and whom I consequently worked with at a media company that catered to the news and views of Silicon Valley. I’d gotten to know Calvin on a personal level and was quite surprised, the first time I visited his corporate office, at the bells and whistles he liked to use, or just collect. There must have been three Blackberries on his desk, four cell phones, two servers (one for his personal use, he later explained), two desktops and a laptop.

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Like a lot of techie dweebs Calvin had something that, unlike his gadgets, he couldn’t acquire on eBay. He had a blog and maintained it every day, typically in the middle of meetings, from his laptop, or Blackberry; any way that he could.

Everyone knew Calvin had checked out of his job a long time ago—that the only reason he woke up every morning was to surf on eBay for bargains or post to “his little Web site.” But Calvin was a hot commodity, the guy you would go to when you wanted to score a meeting with some poobah at Apple or Adobe. These mucky mucks blew off us sales types, but when Calvin called they cut out of meetings, or if they couldn’t talk, they always called back.

I often had to broker sales through Calvin, even though he wasn’t in sales, because the contact refused to talk to anyone but him. I would often write notes to him during teleconferences with potential customers, listing instructions to help move along the conversations. He never followed my instructions, but he did close deals. It didn’t matter what Calvin was requesting of them; it seemed that as long as the words came from him, they were gold. Once, when I’d asked Calvin to accompany me to an offsite pitch meeting, our general manager quipped, half-joking, “Make sure he’s wearing a clean shirt.” Still, there was no question that Calvin should attend.

There was something powerful about this man who eschewed appearances. Calvin had a secret IN, and no one thought to question where it came from. He seemed to know more than where a person worked or his position in a company. He knew that some VP I wanted to get a meeting with had a longstanding feud with our company for an article we produced touting a competitor’s new product release.

“How did you know this?” I told Calvin, thinking he’d read it somewhere in Information Week.

“He told me,” Calvin said.

Calvin also knew who was disappointed with the events we put on, which speakers tanked, what the word on the street was about our newly launching event in Amsterdam. Yet he never polled, surveyed or hired a marketing team to find this out. Nor did he ask. They simply told him. And in return, he told them things that he knew about hot products, open jobs, must-see demos. Despite all that he was told, it seemed the debt of information owed him was always greater. Not like he was keeping track; that was my observation.

Fast forward a year. I’m no longer working with Calvin, but I’m bored in my new job and wanting a career change. In a previous life I wrote for magazines and wanted to freelance again, but the thought of starting up the old engine of 80 pitches a day seemed daunting to me. Plus, when I wrote professionally, editors often tweaked my original ideas so many times that creating an article seemed more like origami than like personal expression. I’d gotten into a rut of making my work marketable but not unique, and certainly not worth a second look.

I met Calvin for lunch and told him of my dilemma. Surely he knew someone in his vast and powerful network who could help me find a new job. He didn’t give me quite what I was looking for, but, as I was to discover, he gave me more than I ever thought I needed: one of his portals to success.

“Why don’t you start a blog?” Calvin said.
“That’s so Valley,” was my retort. “I want to get back into publishing.”
“A blog will get you back into your writing, and you can test your content on people, see if they bite.”

I started my blog with the most commercial of intentions—to make it back to the dog-eat-Manolo Blahniks PRINT publishing world. Reading my first few posts feels like being on a first date, enduring someone who’s strategically charming and excessively careful. I picked all-too-obvious subjects, namely Reality TV shows on MTV (Incidentally, I wrote a post about the pathetically sad show “Surreal Reality” the first weekend my blog was in existence; it’s still the largest generator of traffic on my site). Mission seemingly accomplished.

And yet my mission wasn’t accomplished. I felt like my blog was a one-sided conversation. I received very little feedback, except from my Mom, who, as anyone who reads my blog knows, stamps every post I write with some comment exclaiming how proud she is of me. I had to remind her that blog comments weren’t email messages, that other people actually READ what she wrote. Calvin told me that I needed to be patient. Hell, he had set up an aggregator blog, one that required no work on his part, and, over an incubation period of three years, now received daily traffic in the thousands.

“Just think of how much more traffic you’ll get just because you try,” he said.

I wanted thousands! I wanted adoration. I was, you could say, like every other freaking product marketer on the planet, TRYING too hard. This realization was the beginning of my shift to messaging Authenticity.

I didn’t suddenly decide one day to be authentic. I had simply given up my need to be “on,” to sell myself. If I went to my computer feeling shitty, then goshdarnit, I’d let the scant few who happened to bump into my blog know it. Instead of trying to produce content, I simply translated the thoughts, the impulses that were already there. Initially this was a painful process; I would question myself, “Did I actually have that thought, or was that thought thunk in an attempt to be authentic?” But the more I wrote, the less I cared. The Web suddenly became a transparent medium through which the contents in my brain—the chatter, the anxieties, and, lo and behold, the OPINIONS became filtered, intact. It was around this time that I generated readers.

Fast forward: Blogs are no longer the awkward adolescents of the Internet. They have grown out of their A cups, and, not coincidentally, they are getting a second look by the big jocks on campus. The J&Js or the Mitsubishis of the world don’t quite get these Beelogs, but they notice where the crowd is gathering, and they don’t want to look like they are on the outside. Some of these companies take the whole thing quite seriously. No blog gets posted without prior approval by the PR director and marketing VP. This is company bidness, afterall. We can’t trust someone to just think up a lot of shit and stamp it with the brand.

It’s quite sad, actually; so much money will be spent on professional copywriters, consultants and focus group facilitators, and they won’t earn a penny back for their efforts. They’ve ignored the central tenet of blogging: Be Authentic. Yes, spell check is not a bad thing, but no one gives a rat’s ass if you included the service mark next to your product name, or if your service is toll-free. That’s what Web sites are for. Blogs are meant for everything else creeping between the lines. They are your STORY. What was missing in the founder’s life that made him decide to start up his widget company? How many all-nighters did you spend deciding to add glitter to the packaging? Did anyone order pizza? What about you can I relate to? THAT is what makes people BUY your product, if not with cash, then with heart and mindshare.

As I mention in a post in my blog series, The Battle for Authenticity, we are approaching an interesting time, one where the cream is rising from the Lactaid, where REAL is being recognized and set apart from the overanalyzed, the lacquered, the cosmetic, the mediocre, the fat free. Still, there remains the majority of messaging, and a growing faction of those who suspect there’s something to all this authentic stuff, but who really haven’t felt the pain yet of not being authentic. Typically they won’t get it until they feel it where it really hurts, in the personal realm of their lives, not because sales are down.

Todd: The rest of the post will tell the story of how I slowly developed my authentic self in the corporate world, made sense of it, and established more loyalty and respect for my work through transparency, candor, and authenticity. I’ve written two blog series that I can incorporate into this one on finding that authentic voice and then applying it to my career. Or I can develop all-original content. I will also incorporate other examples of authenticity, both inside and outside of the business realm and show how they relate to the average reader’s quest to merge the personal with the professional—even if they don’t know they want to do this yet.

This will be like a guide up the corporate ladder, where it’s not how much you SPIN, but how much you SHARE, that earns you points in the New, New, New economy.

Comments

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Wow Jory! This is spell-binding. You've got my vote.

[Dan Oestreich]

Wow! Perhaps it seems transparent to you, but from my humble vantage point your writing, Jory, is just exquisite. Thank you for doing something out here that has a real, human, personal edge to it, both sharp and soft. To me the measure of the artist is whether someday you want to meet them. You certainly passed that test with grace and finesse.

[Joy DJ]

This is quite simply...AMAZING, Jor. I've read it several times...I've enjoyed it that much. I'd be feeling twinges of guilt by now saying this, but I've read the other posts....and feel the pressure is off...thank God! -Mom

[Jille]

What a fabulous post. "It’s not how much you SPIN, but how much you SHARE, that earns you points in the New, New, New economy." The new gift economy that Dave Weinberger wrote about. And let me add one of my favorite quotes by Agatha Christie of all people.
"As life goes on it becomes tiring to keep up the character you invented for yourself, and so you relapse into individuality and become more like yourself every day. This is sometimes disconcerting for those around you, but a great relief to the person concerned."
Could it be that you become more authentic when it becomes too tiring or boring to be anything else?