Brad is not the only important individual I’ve neglected over the course of the last year due to mounting obligations in my life, but it was especially painful to learn of his death. He knew he was dying, but he didn’t and shouldn’t have had to disclose this detail when he reached out to me. With this unfortunate event in mind, and compounded by the fact that I’ve neglected to nurture the many relationships and personal needs and duties as a happily married man and father to a beautiful young daughter, I have decided to resign from my position as the new media strategist at Yum.

My last day is June 13, though I remain a loyal fan, consumer and advocate for Yum’s efforts to make the world a better place. The decision to leave my role was a very difficult one to consider and negotiate, but I know I’m doing what’s best for my family and personal health.

If there are inflection points in life, one of them for me was the winter of 1998 when I got to know Brad and the many people and experiences I encountered while studying and living in Mexico. My time then and there changed my life for the better. Ten years later I find myself at another important inflection point that considers my personal character, and my needs as a father and husband.

I’m not sure where I’ll end up next in these next steps of my personal and professional journey in life, but I am certain the right path will reveal itself. I will truly miss the outstanding people, experiences and learning opportunities afforded to me by virtue of being part of the Yum! Brands organization, though I look forward to a new chapter in my life in which my priorities and perspectives match my personal values, virtues and needs. I couldn’t be more thankful for my time with this incredible company and its people, but I look forward to dedicating my remaining days on this earth - as ephemeral as they may be - to making a positive difference in the lives of those that surround and remain most important to me.

“What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.” - Che Guevarra, The Motorcycle Diaries

If you’ve been trying to get back in touch with me and have been affected by my ‘unavailability’, I would love to share a coffee/beer/conversation sometime in the next few weeks as I consider my next steps. I look forward to contributing again to the world that has afforded me such incredible opportunities to learn, grow and share. While I attempt to figure out what’s best for me and my family, I remain committed to accommodating any request to discuss ideas, opportunities and your needs of me as a friend/colleague/business partner.

Thanks to all for your support and understanding of my decision to hit the reset button on my priorities and planned contributions to the world. I look forward to sharing the experiences and conversations that will transpire in the near future.

My first order of business in this transition: I’m making time to treat my mom to lunch.

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With SO many other thought leaders and wisdom available in other places, I reluctantly choose not to add content to this blog on a regular basis. Scour my blogroll for some fascinating ideas and insights from others who dedicate the time and resources to share their brilliance.

Me? I’ve resolved to remain active in twitter to share and learn on a regular basis. Follow me there for my thoughts and contributions: http://twitter.com/nickhuhn.

peace out-

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Some valuable lessons I’ve absorbed at SXSW so far:

• Among others, Henry Jenkins from MIT and Jason Fried from 37 signals encouraged us to fail forward. Nothing has to be perfect out of the gate. In fact, most things start small and improve with collaborative and iterative feedback cycles.
• Twitter is by far the best communications tool I’ve ever known. For the past few days I’ve used it to enable logistics, to broadcast noise, to filter noise, to break the ice, to LOL. Metcalfe’s law is in full effect here; critical mass achieved and then some.
• While freedom may cost a buck-0-5, it also means different things to different people. MySpace is beautiful because it enables relatively unbounded self-expression; MySpace is hideous because most people have “bad” taste.
• No amount of free alcohol can turn off the feeling of having a swarm of bees in my externally hyperstimulated yet strongly introverted personality.
• What wins ballgames? Defense.
• Playing with legos will never cease to be fun.
• What’s the difference between a revolution and a civil war? The perspectives and objectives of the winner.
• Standing in line with friends has been just as much fun or more fun than the parties.

Some unfortunate things I’ve observed at SXSW so far:

• Smartypants people that boast of their smartypantsness can be really #$%#$& annoying.
• Saying ^&*$, *$%^, @#$%, and ^&%@% makes you and what you have to say to an audience that much f*cking cooler
• When speakers say “social media isn’t a one-way conversation like me speaking to you right now” while hundreds twitter and/or liveblog commentary based on their every syllable, it makes them seem a bit out of the loop.
• Even the most independent of thinkers can be pattern-thinking members of a mob. it’s human nature; let’s accept it.
• “Intermediate” sessions were typically painfully pedantic.
• For a web-themed conference, there’s been an egregious waste of paper.
• Making fun of other people’s failures is a universally humorous exercise that seems to transcend any situation.
• Prevailing theme of many speakers: ‘Adapt to the changing rules of the game. Or die trying.’ I still don’t see too much deviation from consensus. I want to see others that zig when everyone else zags.

Some general observations and related experiences outside of the panels:

• Smorty71 is certifiably one of the best guitar hero players in the world. (video soon)
• I do not aspire to be an influencer or gain notoriety. If it were to happen I would only hope that it were as ephemeral as it were insignificant.
• Signal-to-noise ratios seem to vary by listener preferences.
• I absolutely love my Louisville peeps (@earwood @jasonfalls @melissaking @nikkikey @smorty71 [@richardmcinnis honorary]) and I don’t regret hanging with them for most of my time here.

SXSW has been an incredible and elucidating experience. It’s great to converse with so many like-minded people and have access to some of the greatest interactive / social media champions who are all doing their part to change the world as we know it. Each moment seems to yield value and interesting perspectives, and I enjoy immensely the energy and excitement that fuels the “revolution” in marketing and media.

I wonder though if it is truly a revolution or only a realization of the obvious: people talk, people listen, people form and share opinions. To me, the true power of social media is illustrated and proliferated at an accelerating rate thanks to the new tools and platforms that changing technology and pervasive self-publishing provide.

If I come back next year, perhaps I will share a lot more than I consume.

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Marketing a product, idea, or whatever ‘viral’ ‘microsite’ for which your client wants to use to social media to ‘increase awareness’ only works as well as your efforts to sell lemonade would have when you were a kid.

{{diddly-doot, dream sequence}} So you spent all morning mashing hundreds of lemons into deliciously sugarfied juice, making pretty posters to hang on the neighborhood stop signs, and even got a nice comfy chair to sit in while you waved and screamed at the passing cars. Dozens, no, hundreds of neighbors and passersby see your lemonade stand, honk at your cuteness and a few even make time to buy a refreshing glass.

After your long day of hawking the citrus grok, your mom comes outside to help you tear down and revel in your success as a budding entrepreneur.

Mom:”So how’d it go today? Sell a lot of lemonade?”

Kid:”OMG mom! Like a bazillion of people came by and waved and honked and a ton of people said they’d come back to buy a LOT later on cuz they didn’t have their wallets on them.”

Mom: “So exactly how much did you sell?”

Kid: “Well, not much since this busy intersection doesn’t let most people stop to actually buy the stuff. And the rain kinda sucked. But like SO many people saw us and honked.”

So flash back to the present… {{doot}} this analogy reminds me a lot of what I’m observing as more and more marketers attempt to embrace this new-fangled-social-media-magic-pixie-dust to enhance the spread and velocity of any sort of message.

For far too long, traditional marketers and advertisers have gotten away with using hollow but hard-to-replace metrics like impressions and awareness. When we apply empty metrics like those to the childhood lemonade stand, we’d jump with glee at the 87% awareness at that busy intersection and even doubly so at the tens of thousands of impressions we may have received that day. The more sophisticated and refined analytics that can be applied to social media marketing initiatives, however, tell a story that most marketers might not want to hear:

Something about your efforts might really suck: your location, your timing, your message, or - gasp - maybe even your lemonade.

Is there a correlation between awareness, impressions and increased sales? Absolutely! But the days of listening to, “half of my marketing budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half,” are far behind us. New tech and tools provide us elucidating insights into data-driven interactions, conversions, and subsequently customer loyalty. Tech-based media also allow these campaigns and relationships to be measured and managed more effectively. A significant hurdle associated with tech/social/new media, however, remains the scary proposition of what messages can be enabled and propagated rapidly. No one wants to hear that their lemonade sucks.

We all agree that social media offers no panacea for marketers. Here’s what it does do:

• Technology accelerates the consumption and spread of media.
• Conversations and multi-channel media are not new or unique. Technology, however, makes our interactions more transparent, transportable, and enduring. And therefore more influential and authoritative.
• Technology provides new ways to interact with people that may have otherwise never found you.
• Technology-based media both initiates and perpetuates the conversation among and between individuals and people that represent brands. As in other areas of life, follow-through is often more powerful than the first impression.

If your marketing efforts indicate abysmal redemption / conversion / loyalty rates, maybe you should look at the way you’re making and selling your lemonade. More posters and honks aint gonna cut it, junior.
To put a bow on all this, I’ll summarize by suggesting to both marketers interested in social media and little Louie the lemonade mogul:

• Understand that your lemonade better taste good. So good that people gush about it or chime in when others are.
• Understand that some people won’t like your lemonade no matter how hard you try. How will you accommodate or otherwise satisfy these people?
• If you really want to sell some lemonade, you should probably do more than slap up signs and hope that awareness and sales maintain a positive correlation.
• Understand that only a small portion of your customer base is loyal enough and excitable enough to actively engage with your product in socially influential way. i.e. You don’t want BIG numbers, you want meaningful interactions.

The most successful purveyors of lemonade might use word-of-mouth marketing (testimonials, brand ambassadors, guerrilla marketing) to make sure their product breaks through the clutter no matter where they are situated. Interconnected masses can surely drive rapid and extensive awareness, but it is the personal - or trust-based - relationships that create engagement.

For instance: I love all my Sony stuff. So much so that I’d consider myself a Sony bigot of sorts. But I won’t be caught dead playing a ‘viral game’ or responding to an ‘innovative’ video ad unless it engages me in precisely the same way Sony products make my life easier, faster, and more enjoyable. Sony will have nailed marketing with social media when they send me an opportunity [not an 'ad'] that invites me to recruit my friends into the Sony family in exchange for some exclusivity, exceptional value, or genuine entertainment. Presently, I am only passively enamored with my array of Sony gear, quietly waiting to buy something else I think it cool. But that won’t happen until I become actively engaged with the brand again.

What are you doing uniquely to sell your lemonade? How are you deriving benefits from listening and responding to your customers and fans? Media are inherently vocal and social by definition - remember to take advantage of that.

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Harper’s vocab seems to expand every day; she continues to blow our minds while keeping us perpetually entertained. There is a distinct possibility that she’s inherited a wily recessive gene known as extroversion… Harpie, you’re the bestest. More on my youtube channel…

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1) because I don’t want my data to be portable.  Retrievable and secure, yes, portable: no.

2) when will PHR become part of the discussion?  The last thing I want is someone (or some company) delving into health records.

That’s all the time I have to dedicate to the post, sorry.  While I understand its merits and benefits, I just think data portability will come back to bite us in the ass in the way that offshoring spawned new lows in abysmal customer service.

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1. I was a director of the the TV studio back in high school.

I was pretty busy with working at PJI before/after school every weekday, but I found one extracurricular activity that I thought would be quite interesting. WSTX is St. X’s closed-circuit TV studio/station on which school news, sports and related drivel were communicated every Friday. Along with my good friends, Joe, Dallas, and Keith, we spiced up the programming to include segments such as the Disco Brothers and Nick’s Mo Betta Weather that aimed to entertain rather than inform. The Disco Brothers - Travois and Angelo - visited various locales with video gear and 70’s duds in tow to ‘pick up chicks’ and just plain boogie, so we had fun getting booted from the mall and other venues once or twice. In my Mo Betta Weather segment, I endeavored to talk about anything weather-related as long as it wasn’t about the actual weather. My forecasts typically read, “For this evening, I’m calling for a significant increase in darkness and a decrease in light.” Other times I explained how “tornado” was Spanish for “tornado” and when we took “a look at the national radar” I cut to a still image of a satellite dish. WSTX was never the same and purportedly maintains our refreshing comedic flava to this day.

2. I got mugged by the cops in Mexico.

Mugged. By uniformed cops. In a cop car. While visiting Oaxaca, Mexico. They stole the equivalent of $80 (like 2-3 months salary for them) and left me prostrate on the sidewalk. Thankfully some German tourists helped me back to the hotel. It was one of many reminders during my extended stay in Mexico to never take for granted the liberties and rights we have in the U.S.

3. I don’t love the 80’s.

Aside from E.T., U2, hypercolor, the California Raisins, and Michael Jordan, there’s not much about the 80’s I particularly enjoyed. Those Molly Ringwald movies? Never seen em. All those old songs my friends still sing along to? Never heard em. Apologies to nineteeneightiesophiles, but I spent most of the decade lost in books or the fascinating worlds and experiences I created while outdoors with my best friends and neighbors.

4. I maintain a repertoire of several ‘voices’ and ‘characters‘

Utterz has yet to experience the joy of my ‘alternative personalities’ including: Bill Dexter, the warshin machine repair man; Simon the socially-awkward and overly articulate geek; or Earl Greenburg, retired typewriter salesman from western Tennessee. Among a handful of other colorful people, these characters and their unique personalities were conjured up impromptu-style from the depths of my schizophrenic mind and may or may not have been provoked by the consumption of fermented beverages. In another life, I would have been Hank Azaria. I’ll record the personalities and post them when I find time; no worries.

5. I’m a terrible student

Well, not terrible, per se, since I’ve typically earned good grades; terrible in the sense that I rarely studied or ‘followed the directions.’ The vast majority of my academic career was spent with both of my thumbs and index fingers firmly plastered to my forehead in a big W shape. I recently read this fascinating perspective on high achievers, gifted learners, and creative thinkers and I laughed out loud as I understood how my brain really functions. I wish that sort of insight from my educators was available when I was younger; something tells me I would have changed schools for sure rather than just thinking about it. With my daughter’s genetic makeup, I’m sure she’ll skew further into ‘creativity’ so that was good info to know when she is accused of being “special” [in the derogatory sense] like I was.

6. I frickin love Rally’s burgers and fries.

If given the choice of Rally’s drive-thru vs. a Morton’s steak feast, I’d choose Rally’s 7 out of 10 times. Morton’s is the ish - don’t get me wrong - but Rally’s is an occasional guilty pleasure despite my knowledge of how nassty it is.

7. I’ve tried to leave Louisville several times

Every time I’ve tried to leave for greener pastures, be it NYC, DC, China, Europe or elsewhere, some force majeur catapults me back to Louisville before it’s too late. I can’t explain it and it has driven me absofrickinlutely nuts a few times, especially as disconcerted as I sometimes find myself with this city and its challenges. I guess someone is reminding me that I have some unfinished business in Louisville.

8. I loathe the fact that I am connected to a computer for 12-14+ hours a day.

In 1995 I was barreling toward a career as an architect, engineer, or some other tech-related field, but after spending a summer learning what those jobs were like, I decided that I absolutely could not sit at a computer for the rest of my life. So, I switched gears entirely and chose to pursue a liberal arts education with the explicit intent to avoid the use of PCs in my job. I hated the very idea of “liberal arts” at the time, but I at least knew it would expose me to topics other than math and science and IT. The challenge of focusing on all the right-brain crap I ‘hated’ would certainly keep me more interested and entertained than spending time on the left-brain stuff that I knew I could already handle. I’m just a big wad of useless knowledge across both ends of the spectrum at this point.

Despite my aversion to pooters, I can’t seem to get away from them. Honestly, I look forward to a new and totally different career someday - one in which the use of technology is minimal. There are plenty of other ways to create and contribute, eh?

Hopefully this self-absorbed tripe has been of some value to someone. Thanks for the exercise in self-reflection, Falls!

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• The iPhone: I resolve to support Flash and Activesych. And I’ll quit crashing so damn much.
  
• The FCC: I resolve to embark on massive PR campaign that explains the 2009 DTV imperative. Crap, I shoulda started a while ago if I’m really going to avoid massive backlash from the red states.
• Ron Paul: I resolve to prepare “told ya so” remarks for my nomination to the Federal Reserve board of governors later this year.
• Mark Zuckerberg: I resolve to get over my ego and recruit a real CEO to run my business so I can get back to tinkering with my social networking platform.
• The Blu-ray / HD-DVD pissing contest: I resolve to just give up and realize that at some point this year I will be rendered irrelevant when a new multimedia A/V component is introduced. The new device from Apple/Sony/Amazon will let me download wide varieties of HD and multimedia content onto a massive solid state drive.
• Yahoo!: I resolve to do something noteworthy, valuable, or innovative or face the unpleasant prospects of being a MSFT acquisition.

I hope these resolutions by proxy are taken into consideration. As for me: I resolved long ago not to make resolutions, but I’ll definitely make more of a difference in 2008.

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Besides, there are a lot of cool, innovative, and/or otherwise ‘developing’ projects I’m a part of that while I’d <3 to discuss, I can’t yet release the felines from the burlap. You’ll find the remnants of my snacks and other seemingly pointless pursuits in the several feeds attached to my profilactic.com profile.

Wish me luck as we seek treatment and recovery options for the terrible affliction and recent onset of H.O.E.S.

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Play. Offs.

Not only is it best for fans and teams, it’s best for business. College football is still one heck of a ‘game’ that could benefit from redefining its ‘preferred outcome’.

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