Vender vino

I bought the book on Groucho Marx’s life written by his son, Arthur Marx.

And I’m having a great time –a really great time because I have good memories of the Marx brothers’ films as the most hilarious in the history of cinema.

 This book is making me laugh a lot, and if I read it in a public place I guess people must think I’ve gone crazy. Not really. I have not gone mad, or no more than I was before starting the book.

This book is making me understand that this man, Groucho Marx, not only was a funny person in his films, but also was he in real life –a funny guy that amused those around him. Not so his wife, as that man was not perfect and his sexist humour was very strong even if we consider than it was done in the 30′s.

At some point they start making movies for majors filmmakers. And they were lucky to meet Irving Thalberg. The Marx Brothers had spent many years representing their crazy sense of humour in theatres. And they were accustomed to working with scriptwriters. They would go to different theatres trying a script in many different environments and polishing the whole scene until reaching Broadway. In the meanwhile the work changed so much that not even the writers themselves recognized almost a word of what they had initially written.

 When the Marx Brothers put their work in the cinema world, they managed to convince Thalberg to work with their own writers and continue the trend that had worked for so many years. First, a script, then go on tour with the main ideas of the film to measure the reactions of the audience and analyze which jokes work better in order to make the necessary alterations in the time of filming and editing. This was done in “Night at the Opera” (memorable) and some more. Thalberg died and Hollywood studios tried to discipline the Brothers by eliminating the trial and error process. In some way, they killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, because the Marx Brothers would never be the same in the world of cinema.

The Marx Brothers’ success came from a previously planned work that would be refined through trial and error. All sketches that seemed spontaneous in their films were just the result of many rehearsals while touring around.

 I do not know how films are made nowadays. I think they do not follow this process, although recently some producers are taking about the advantages of Social Media to detect what is going to work on scripts and what not.

 We have talked about the many advantages provided by the Social Media and we hardly ever mention the probability of pre-testing an idea. Testing and trying directly through this procedure is infinitely more reliable and cheaper than any market research carried out with the technologies previously used. This single reason makes it worthwhile to enter Social Media.

Let us follow the Marx Brothers. Let us be brave and try and try. Let us learn from our mistakes.

Imagen de: bibliotecanestor.blogspot.com

This post in Spanish: Aprendamos de los hermanos Marx. Probemos, probemos.

I saw The Social Network on the cinema. I liked it a lot. And I mean a lot, a lot! I liked how they recreated the atmosphere of a successful dot-com company.

The film has scope for intense debates in several different areas, but in this post I’d like to focus on the importance of Mark Zuckerberg’s helpers in making a success of the project.

In the movie, a close friend of Mark’s, Edward, helps him at the beginning and stumps up $18,000; and Mark behaves rather badly towards him – his best friend! In any case, I think that even if Edward hadn’t helped him with the money, Mark wouldn’t have had any problems finding someone else.

Then there are the giant twin rowers from Harvard, who hire him to design a web page. Mark was thinking about a similar idea, but something about the twins’ idea makes something click in Mark’s head. The twins’ idea also helped him, though it was only a matter of time before he found the way.

Then there’s Sean Parker, the creator of Napster. He was someone who could think big and who upset the music industry quite a lot. He didn’t earn a single dollar doing that, but he did create the biggest all-time stir in the music industry!

When he meets Sean, he realizes that what Sean’s saying to him is just what he needs to hear. He’d have managed to carry on without Sean, but of all the people he comes in contact with, Sean is the most influential – because he makes him realize how big and fantastic his project is.

All of the above is just to say that an idea can be as fantastic as you like but it’s not worth anything there’s no one there with the ability, energy and motivation to make it a reality.

This week I heard a really good saying, which is also short, wise and true: “Experiment and you will triumph” ,from Pilar Jericó in EBE.

What does one need in order to experiment intensely? Motivation! And motivation comes mainly from the ability to see your success.

I don’t know if I’ve convinced you, so here’s another example:

Christopher Columbus made four trips to America, and I suppose that one would have had to be very daring and adventurous to join up for the first trip. I also suppose that that it would have been much easier for someone to join up for the second, third and fourth trips, knowing that the first was a success.

The tools we all have available to work with in Social Media are mostly free. Many small and medium sized companies decide to go into Social media without any support from professionals with experience in the sector. At the most they might give the job to an intern or to some other employee with little or no experience.

Y sin embargo ningún gran anunciante se plantea entrar en Social Media sin estar asesorado por una buena agencia de Social Media. ¿Son tontos los grandes anunciantes? ¿Se gastan el dinero de forma innecesaria? Yo creo que esos grandes anunciantes han entendido que para tener éxito en Social Media es imprescindible tener muy buen producto o servicio y ser muy buenos comunicando por Internet. Considero además que la cualidad que más valoran en la agencia que contratan es la de saber que la agencia tiene muy claro qué pasos tiene que dar para conseguir éxito en Social Media, porque ya lo han hecho en otras ocasiones.

Funnily enough, no large company gets into Social Media without hiring one or more professionals. Are these large companies crazy? Are they throwing their money away? I don’t think so. I think that they’ve realized that to be successful in Social media you have to have a good product or service to start off with and be very good at communicating over the internet. I also think that the qualities they value when hiring professionals is that they have a proven track record of similar successes in the past.

As Sean Parker said to Mark: “I don’t need to imagine what success will be like if FaceBook succeeds. I don’t need to because I already know! I lived it with Napster. Let me show you the way to heaven”

I’m not Sean Parker, and I didn’t create Napster, but what I’d like to say to the Wineries out there is  “You want me to show you how to succeed?”

Here’s another well-written post on the same subject: Sobre la red social

Related posts:

Necesito jugar más finales como ésta. Cuenta tu historia a través de Social Media.
Howard Hughes era un gurú de las nuevas tecnologías.
La primera regla del liderazgo: auténtico, original… Película sobre la vida de Bob Dylan

This post in Spanish: ¿Me dejas que te enseñe el cielo? La red social, o sea Facebook.

I’ve just been to see a movie that I really enjoyed: George Clooney’s latest offering, “Up in the Air”. When I came out the cinema I felt like going over the stories and talking about them in detail with somebody. And there were a lot of stories. The movie has been nominated for a number of Oscars, and rightly so. I think it’s the best movie that Clooney has made yet. He’s still on the ball, and he knows how to act convincingly, whether he playing a winner or a loser. He’s still got far to go.

But, more interesting than Clooney’s acting skills, is the plot and the stories the characters tell.

They talk about all the crises that are happening in the world in 2010; about the economic recession and how there are some companies that see an opportunity there and set up a business. Though in this case, it’s a genuinely reprehensible business.

And about how these companies go over the top trying to apply new technologies to their services. The whole thing is so grotesque that it turns into a caricature of where new technologies could lead us, if we persist in believing that they can be used indiscriminately for everything in our lives.

I myself, a firm believer in new technologies, recognize that there are limits. I believe that people are more important than companies, and that there are limits that we shouldn’t and mustn’t overstep. Machines are people’s slaves, not the other way around.

In this blog, I try to teach the wine sector how to use the Internet more efficiently.

But what I like best about the wine world, is the stories that lie behind each wine and each winery, is the traditions, the diversity, the personalities, the different ways of making wine, the exaltation of certain senses that modern society tends to dampen down, etc. 

There are more and more people who approach the world of wine (like the world of classical music for example) as a counterpoint to daily stress, information deluge, dumbing down of the senses, and general rushing around. The wine world helps us escape from this crazy world we live in, especially in the big city.

I’m all for new technologies if they help us spread this philosophy and way of life. I’m not interested in them if they’re used to convert wine into something globalized like CocaCola, or Gin or Vodka.

Nor am I interested in the idea of wine competing with long drinks or cocktails. They are two completely different things, and there is no need for any competition there.

The successful use of the internet by wineries does not lie in the indiscriminate use of new technologies; rather it lies in knowing how to use them in order to improve and enhance their presence and relationships with consumers, without losing any of the mystique and uniqueness inherent in the wine world.

Post in Spanish: Up in the Air. La tecnología al servicio de las personas.