Business
Look to the media
Marshall McLuhan (February 27, 1962, age 50). TV!
Every family’s got a drop-out, magazine’s like Life are in trouble, the auto industry is veering out of control, the textbook industry and our schools are being completely overhauled. Why do so few people see that these things and a great many more are directly attributable to the impact of TV!
TV is not the first medium to have entirely reshaped society and it will not be the last. But in many ways it is the most obvious. The book escaped me for years. I caught on to TV in seconds.
Me (February, 2010, age 57). What if he’s right?
Marshall McLuhan’s observation about TV suggests the connection between the rise of the internet and the decay of newspapers.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! In Atlanta where I was early last month for a conference, the 5 star hotel I stayed in (thanks to the special deal the American Economic Association was able to arrange for its members) did not supply newspapers for its guests, as the big hotels do in Toronto. Their thinking being, I imagine that their guests would rather be on-line or in front of the TV. In Montreal the English language newspaper The Gazette is given away outside metro stations to commuters in the mornings and in the afternoons, but few appear to want to take a paper. Increasingly, the front page of the Gazette has become a showcase for advertisements, colour pictures and teasers about blogs and on-line stories. Some days, like last Monday, the lead story no longer leads on the front page.
The French seem to be lagging in the abandonment of the newspaper. The leading intellectual newspaper here is called Le Devoir. What English language daily would call itself Homework?
Are you more likely to get your news from TV, on-line, or from a newspaper? When the newspaper disappears, where will the radio morning shows get their stories?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
The Montreal Gazette, February 1, 2010.
Lucky, I’m so lucky
Marshall McLuhan (December 1968, age 57). I’ve got this thing about the number 3.
My new agent Matie Molinaro is working out splendidly. You wouldn’t believe the liberties people were taking with my radio interviews and TV and film appearances. She is making sure my good name is protected and my wish is her delight. An arrangement in which I assure you I delight. For instance, Matie didn’t bat an eye when I asked her to make sure that when she enrolled me in ACTRA that my membership number was divisible by three. You see, I am a firm believer that the number 3 and numbers divisible by three are lucky. If they’re not then why am I so lucky?
Me (January 2010, age 57). The rule of 3.
There is no doubt that Marshall McLuhan believed that the number 3 and numbers divisible by 3 are lucky. He arranged his life to surround himself with these lucky numbers. For example, he had 6 children, the Coach House, the home of his Centre for Culture and Technology was at 39A Queen’s Park Crescent East, and there are 33 chapters in his best selling Understanding Media. Not surprisingly, his rule for determining whether a book is worth reading is to peruse page 69 – a number divisible by 3 both in whole and in its parts. If that page is enlightening then the book is worth reading.
Superstitions are notoriously difficult to shake. If 3 and numbers divisible by 3 are so lucky, and Marshall McLuhan surrounded himself with them, then you might well ask: Why was he so unlucky when it came to his health, suffering from repeated strokes, a brain tumor, and, in the last 18 months (a number divisible by 3) of his life, aphasia? The answer, of course, is that but for the presence of 3 things would have been much worse.
How superstitious are you? If you are superstitious how much effort do you make to insure the Gods are on your side? Is it just a coincidence that this blog closes with 3 questions?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Matie Armstrong Molinaro. “Marshalling McLuhan,” in Marshall McLuhan: The Man and His Message. Edited by George Sanderson and Frank Macdonald. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum, 1989, pp. 81-88.
Isn’t that amazing! (How it all began)
Marshall McLuhan (March 31, 1956, age 44). We’re in the money!
The deal is signed! Bill Hagon, Murray Paulin, and Marshall McLuhan are now, officially, a consulting partnership named Idea Consultants. We’ve got a letter head. And we’ve got ideas, boy do we have ideas. For instance: see-through diapers – no more sniff, pull, and peek; a hose you hook up to the exhaust of the family car to kill pesky front-lawn rodents while you eat your dinner; or, my personal favourite – how to sell beer to dentists – tell them it’s better for the teeth than soft drinks. All we need now is a client. And unless tight-fingered Toronto University gives me a raise, it’s clients we need. The last time I counted Corinne and I’ve had acquired six kids to feed. Poetry is fun, but it’s not paying the bills.
Me (January 2010, age 57). Pitching the impractically practical.
Idea Consultants was a business disaster. They unsuccessfully pitched lunch-sized beer cartons to the J.Walter Thompson advertizing agency. They advised a vice president of Colgate Palmolive that the company needed to develop products that in the age of conformism appeal to the individual. (The principle of reversal.) He may have been interested but now that they had told him the idea didn’t think he needed to pay them for it. Life and Holiday magazines both rejected Idea Consultants’ pitch of some kind of in-store display case to promote their magazines. Life just said no. Holiday added the idea was an old one, but not a good one.
As a business Idea Consultants is most remarkable for two things: (1) the number of remarkably creative ideas the partners generated; (2) their failure to sell any of them. The true mark of an Idea Consultants’ idea is its impractical practicality. For example, their notion that underwear should be dyed a delicate shade of urine yellow, the establishment of a summer holiday retreat for hay fever sufferers, head lights for lawn mowers, and a gasoline-motor powered pencil sharpener.
And yet ideas do emerge that anticipate products that would appear 20 to 30 years in the future: devices such as: the video-cassette and DVD, aluminum soft drink cans, and pre-recorded audio guided tours. Who knows, perhaps there is a future for urine-coloured underwear. Boomers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your dignity.
Which of these Idea Consultants ideas do you think is the best of the worst? Who else in business history was as creative and as unsuccessful as Marshall McLuhan was with Idea Consultants?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, pp. 168-171.
Isn’t that amazing!
Marshall McLuhan (August, 1973, age 62). My contribution is an h!
Just got off the phone with Cousin Ron – Dr. Ron Hall, now – who you will remember is a biochemist at McMaster. Idea Consultants is back in action. These long hot sweaty dog days of summer have been a positive inspiration to us both. Ron has done the leg work. They say genius is 99 per cent perspiration. So perspiration is a good thing. The problem is it stinks. Ron came up with the science part of the solution. Don’t mask the smell with perfume or deodorant. Keep the good part of the sweat -those amazingly communicative pheromones. Get rid of the stinky part. Ron wanted to call his bio-chemical product “protex.” As in “pro-tection” and “tex-tile” – protect the fabric. But I added, if I must say – and I will – what Corinne told me was “the distilled essence of genius.” I convinced him to add one little letter to the name which will spell all the difference in the world: the letter “h.” We will call it “Prohtex.” Get it? “Proh-ibit” and “tex-tile” – as in prohibit [the bad sweat on] the fabric. Well perhaps not everyone will get it. But when they do we’ll be rolling in it. Or rather they will. Must run I feel another idea coming on. This could be the big one.
Me (January 2010, age 57): Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea
I don’t know exactly what happened when Marshall McLuhan and his nephew pitched one of the big companies like Johnson & Johnson. But I’m sure the brand guys dined out regularly on the story. It is a wonder that the writers on “Madmen” don’t go more to the life of McLuhan for inspiration. As you might expect nobody in the business world wanted to buy this idea. Perhaps business people today might be more interested, providing that is that the product does not prove to have unwanted and fundamentally deal-breaking side-effects, for example the attractions of the sexual attention of people you don’t want to be sexually attentive. (Tomorrow I’ll take a look at more of McLuhan’s amazing business ideas that business kept on turning down.)
Was the name the problem? Or was it the product? Say that it worked, would you use a product that kept the good sweat –sent the chemical messages of attraction – and got rid of the bad – the stinky part?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
W. Terrence Gordon. Marshall McLuhan: Escape into Understanding, 1997, pp. 268-269.
What’s in the cards?
Marshall McLuhan (1969 age 58). The solution to life’s problems
My son Eric and Eugene Schwartz tell me that The Marshall McLuhan DEW-LINE Newsletter is selling like hot cakes. I send them stuff when I can and they send it on to my subscribers. Great idea that the Distant Early Warning (Card) Deck. Worked that one out several years ago. Eric put it together from my notes and Eugene came up with the cracking idea to charge the subscribers an extra $5 if they want to get the deck. The card deck is a technology for delivering creative solutions to life’s problems. I call it The Management Game. Actually Games. Here is how to play the simplest one: Take any card. On the card is an aphorism. Relate the aphorism to your current hang up. I drew the 5 of clubs. The aphorism reads: “since life is short our faces must be long.” My current hang up is my health. Nothing seems the same since that brain surgery in November of 67. Well, as Corinne says I must take each day as it comes. Is that my solution, or is that my problem?
Me (January 2010, age 57). Playing a different game
The distant early warning or DEW line was a 1950s cold-war radar alert system Canada and the United States built in Northern Canada in the 1950s. The system was designed to give Americans and Canadians a heads up if Russia attacked by sending planes or missiles over the Arctic circle. McLuhan liked to announce himself in speeches as a voice from the DEW-line. That is he had to come to warn of dangers ahead. But in naming his card deck – which if you live in Montreal you can see on display at the Canadian Center for Architecture until February 25th, 2010 – after this famous piece of cold-war technology, McLuhan misleads. The name doesn’t quite fit. The deck says you can find answers for your hang-ups or problems by contemplating the aphorisms on the cards. Yet the DEW line was not a system for finding solutions to a problem (say nuclear attack), but a system for knowing whether you have a problem (look there’s a bomber!).
Let’s play McLuhan’s Management Game differently. Instead of calling “to mind a private or corporate problem as you shuffle the cards,” as the game suggests, and then picking “a card and … [applying] its message,’ let’s shuffle, select a card, look at the aphorism, and only then decide whether in fact we have a problem.
The card I’ve drawn for us all is the 4 of spades: “When all is said and done more will have been said than done.” Sounds like a call for action. I know what I’m going to do. (Tell you about it on Tuesday.) What will you do?
(Look next week for the announcement of a winner to our classify Marshall McLuhan contest.)
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Readings for this post
Marshall and me, Reading Marshall McLuhan’s Cards, December 3, 2009
Marshall and me, What’s Marshall McLuhan’s Stuff Worth, December 4, 2009
Speed up!
Marshall McLuhan (May 1959, age 47). Producers are now consumers
I just got back from Winnipeg. Didn’t have time to visit my first alma mater, The University of Manitoba, as I was too busy informing the Winnipeg Ad and Sales Club about the new business rules in our electronic age. Here’s the short version, everything is moving so fast in our electric age that the only way to get ahead is to speed up. The alternative is obliteration. Winnipeg was shaking its head in collective dumbfoundment. Can’t really blame them. Looking around on the corner of Portage and Main, I’d be tempted to draw the conclusion that the world is slowing down not speeding up! Sometimes not seeing is believing.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Marshall McLuhan on how to speed up
The great speed the business world is moving at is an idea that everyone in business today agrees with and without hesitation. Even, I would hazard a guess in Winnipeg. Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about speed are still worth thinking about today not because McLuhan offers a brilliant solution as to how to live at hyper speed. His solution is to trade places with your complement. Whatever role you perform there is a complement. For example the complement of teacher is student. The complement of producer is consumer. The complement of writer is reader. By switching roles you are in effect moving at very high speed. For example, by becoming consumers, producers are able to anticipate shifts in demand.
How fast does your life move relative to your parents and grandparents? What do you do to deal with the speed of change at which you live? What is your complement? Can you put yourself in the position of your complement?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987, pp. 252-255.
Speed Limits, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 20 May to 8 November 2009
The power of the artist
Marshall McLuhan (Summer 1968, age 57). You can give Mailer a compliment but he hasn’t the wit to accept it
That chat I had with Norman Mailer on the CBC’s TV program, “The Summer Way,” is still on my mind, largely because despite the title of the program, “Meeting of Minds,” there was so little meeting of minds. Here’s how it went. I’d make an observation. (Violence is necessary to the formation of identity.) He’d say he didn’t like it. So I made another observation, (the new electronic environment has abolished nature) and he’d say he didn’t like that and so it went. I don’t have a problem with his liking or not liking my ideas. But I don’t think liking or not liking is productive. In fact I’m convinced it’s counter-productive. Liking and not liking, which is so often masked as truth-seeking interferes as I said yesterday with just observation of the world.
I decided to try a new tactic. Norman, I said, you will be delighted with this – the artist is the only one who is able to face the present and see it for what it is. He alone has the ability to tell us what is happening. Poor Mailer was not delighted.
Me (December 2009, age 57). Marshall McLuhan: Artist or scientist?
At this point, the moderator of the meeting, Ken Lefolii, stepped in and asked McLuhan whether he thought of himself as an artist or a scientist. McLuhan’s answer was no, he didn’t think of himself as an artist or a scientist. He said he rejected these categories as unhelpful, fragmenting, nineteenth century devices, and in particular he implied they were not helpful for thinking about him as an observer of the unfolding electric 20th century world. McLuhan’s answer then in effect was “I refuse to be lumped in a category.”
But of those two boxes, artist and scientist, he seems to fit most easily into the artist category. Scientists he said are in the matching game. Matching ideas about the world with evidence of the world. Artists are in the breakthrough game. Looking for new patterns in the world. McLuhan tries his hand at the matching game in his observations about media. For example, radio is visual, TV is tactile and children who watch TV look at the world from an average distance of 4’6”and therefore are hunters not readers. But this science is not the science you met in High School. The matching is often difficult to separate from assertion.
What category would you place yourself? Artist or scientist? What about the people closest to you? Family, friends, colleagues? Should businesses be in the matching game or the breakthrough game?
Cordially, Marshall and Me
What’s Marshall McLuhan’s stuff worth?
McLuhan (November 14, 1968, age 56). “The victor belongs to the spoils”
You will find the aphorism “The victor belongs to the spoils” on the 8 of clubs in my DEW-LINE card deck. The deck is a technology I invented some years ago to quickly produce creative solutions to puzzles by playing the management game. There are in fact four games you can play: let’s play the first one. “Take any card. Relate the aphorism to your current hang up.” My card is the 8 of clubs and my current hang up is money. You see a year ago I had what the English would say was “a bit of bad news.” I had an operation to remove a brain tumor. Hurt like hell and cost a fortune. The operation was in New York City. I survived. But haven’t felt much like myself ever since. What with their poking around my brain for 22 hours and those damn drugs they say I have to keep taking. Can’t seem to match names up with faces and a lot of stuff I know I should know – dates, books, characters, plots – for the life of me I can’t remember. On top of all that everyone says I need to make as much money as I can while I am a top celebrity. Question is, how does the 8 of clubs aphorism relate to my hang-up?
Me (December 2009, age 57). Okay, Let’s play
“To the victor goes the spoils” is the way the original proverb reads. Marshall McLuhan plays around with this to get “the victor belongs to the spoils.” The question is what controls what? Do victors possess the spoils, the money, or do the spoils, the money, actually control or possess them. If the latter, which is the message on the 8 of clubs, Marshall McLuhan would be well advised to spend less time worrying about money, or rather let other people continue to use his name (the McLuhan brand as people now say) to make money, and spend time on the preservation and growth of his intellectual reputation.
How much money was involved? Who was cashing in? Consider the year 1967 before it all went bad with the brain surgery. Marshall McLuhan had won a $100,000 Schweitzer chair at Fordham University. At that time a Professor of English literature, which is what McLuhan was, earned a salary of $14,000 a year. $100,000 was big money. Today adjusting for inflation $100,000 would be worth something like $500,000. Of course this sum did not go all to McLuhan, others got a part of it. For example, McLuhan hired his colleagues and friends at Toronto Ted Carpenter, Harley Parker, and his son Eric McLuhan to be his research team to help him teach a course called “Understanding media,” and do some projects. And that was part of the problem. Marshall McLuhan was now a business, an industry. What was good for the business was not always good for Marshall McLuhan.
Challenge: Try Marshall McLuhan’s Management game and tell me how it goes.
Cordially, Marshall and Me
Reading for this post
Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: the medium and the messenger, 1989, p. 227.
Tom Wolfe, “What If He’s Right,” reprinted in The Pump House Gang. 1968, pp. 163-166