How ironic. If Facebook was a country it would also be the fourth poorest.

But the nuanced performances of Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey, along with a brilliant storyline, turn this into a deeply real exploration of the nature of true love and happily ever after.

I’m a new fan of Amy Adams after seeing this star-making performance. Adams plays Princess Giselle, who falls in love with Prince Edward (James Marsden) and they are to be wed the next morning in the fictional land of Andalasia. But the evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) isn’t quite ready to turn over her crown, so she pushes Giselle into a magic well to send her to a place “where there is no happily ever after” – New York City.

In Act One, Princess Giselle runs into several mishaps in New York and ends up soaking wet, perched on a billboard for Palace Casino, which she mistakenly believes is the Prince’s castle. She falls off the billboard, but luckily single dad and divorce lawyer Robert Philip (Patrick Dempsey) catches her. He takes her back to his nearby apartment only to dry off and to use the phone, but his cynical heart lets in a little of Giselle’s radiance and, when she falls asleep on the couch, he lets her stay the night. The next morning, the cynical Robert tries to get Giselle onto a plane or bus back home, and Giselle continues to spread her Disney-Princess spunk. This climaxes in a musical number in Central Park – “That’s How You Know”.

In Act Two, Princess Giselle is chased by Prince Edward who has bravely jumped into the well and is looking to save her, and one of the Queen’s minions, looking to poison her and finish her off for good. There are a number of silly sequences involving attempted poisoning, which are thwarted by Giselle’s best friend, a chipmunk named Pip. Prince Edward finds the Princess before the minion does and Act Two ends with Edward and Giselle leaving together to return to Andalasia, while the now smitten Robert looks on heart-broken.

In Act Three, the evil Queen comes to New York herself to finish the job. This all comes to a climax at a ball, where Robert and his girlfriend, Nancy, are spending the evening, and Princess Giselle coaxes Prince Edward to attend as their final adventure before leaving New York. The two couples meet just as the master of ceremonies announces that it’s time for the King and Queen Waltz, where a man asks a woman other than his date to dance. Edward asks Nancy leaving Robert and Giselle standing awkwardly. Robert pauses, Princess Giselle blushes. Robert asks her to dance and Princess Giselle demures.

The dance scene is remarkable and triumphant, due to the nuanced and restrained performances of Dempsey and Adams, aided by breathtaking camera work. They begin with restrained faces, which slowly thaw into longing as Robert begins to sing aloud with the words of the song “So Close”, which crescendos into enthusiastic and uninhibited twirls and openly adoring gazes as their true feelings cannot be held inside any longer. Watch the video.

Sadly, the dance is aborted when Nancy crossly cuts back in and Edward and Giselle leave the dance floor. Robert and Nancy resume dancing woodenly. Just then, the Queen arrives with fatal magic to eliminate Giselle once and for all. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I will say that it ends with true love’s kiss.

The reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are very good with 92% of reviewers giving it a positive rating. But for me, I thought this was worthy of an Oscar award. I found much deeper meaning in this film’s quirky contrast of fairy tale and reality: important messages about true love and happily ever after.

1. Who saves who? In fairy tales, the prince in shining armor saves the princess. But in real life, the prince and the princess actually save each other. While damsels may be in distress, princes are in distress too. In Enchanted, Robert starts out saving Princess Giselle on a wet and rainy night. But Giselle saves Robert from finishing his life with a cold and cynical heart that doesn’t believe in true love. In real life, princes need rescuing too.

2. Happily ever after. In fairy tales, happily ever after just happens. In real life, there are conflicts and barriers to overcome. But facing those challenges together is the only way to be happy forever after. In Enchanted, Giselle and Robert must both face the evil Queen’s black magic before they can be together. To not face the danger would mean never living happily ever after. In real life, you can’t have happily ever after without facing some tough times and re-committing yourself to each other. Happily ever after is earned.

3. Finding your true love. In fairy tales, the roles are clear: the princess is lovely and pure but the victim of an evil oppressor. The prince is handsome, noble and brave and he saves the damsel. Then they get married and live happily ever after. But in Enchanted, that fairy tale ending blinds Giselle to the real possibilities around her. Although Edward and Giselle fit the molds, they are not right for each other. True love is discovered in the most unlikely places and people. In real life, true love is messy and unpredictable. You just have to follow your heart, don’t expect things to be predictable. The person you fall in love with may be much older or younger than you, much richer or poorer, a different nationality, have different moral values. None of that matters. When you love, really love, you are connecting on a much deeper level than your social or ethnic circumstances.

I watched this movie feeling I was not watching kitschy entertainment, but an important message about the complex meaning of happiness and true love’s kiss. And I came away refreshed, knowing that life is not a fairy tale. It’s so much better.

While there, I discovered this great keynote by Guy Kawasaki. I’ll be honest, I’m not a big Guy Kawasaki fan after reading his rather thin and rambling “Reality Check”. But I loved this session called The Art of Innovation

Guy’s advice is right on the money – focus on a niche, be driven by your passions rather than an end goal, and don’t take advice from the naysayers. Following are his 11 lessons

1. Make meaning (not money) – build a great product that changes people’s lives. Money is a result of that.

2. Make mantra – let you business be driven by a meaningful 2-3 word statement of your purpose, not the 60-word jargon-filled mission statement

3. Jump to the next curve – how do you put yourself out of business? That’s the next curve. Aim for that curve, not just 10% improvement.

4. Role the DICEE

• Deep – many features, not just the core features
• Intelligent – anticipate what the user needs (eg. a flashlight that takes 3 different size batteries)
• Complete – not just the product, but the support/channel/maintenance, etc
• Elegant – don’t have to read the manual, just works
• Emotive – generates passion

5. Don’t worry, be crappy – ship, then fix. Don’t wait until it’s perfect or the market will pass you by.

6. Polarize people – don’t try to make everyone happy. Aim to make some people VERY happy even if you piss off other people. Great product polarize (eg. Harley-Davidson)

7. Let 100 flowers blossom – you can’t know what will work and what won’t. So try everything and stick with the winners.

8. Churn, baby, churn (similar to the Bozo principle, his rule #11) – don’t let the Bozos grind you down. Everyone, even the experts, say “It can’t be done. It won’t work”. Ignore them and do it anyway.

9. Niche thyself – focus on products that are unique and high value to a specific audience

10. 10/20/30 Rule – when pitching to a VC (or selling anything) keep it to 10 slides, 20 minutes (use the other 40 for Q&A) and 30 point font size

Not only are these great insights, but Kawasaki packages them in a memorable way using metaphors and picture words that make them stick. A great example for thought leaders to follow.

See the video here

Many businesspeople have stars in their eyes when you gently intone those magic words “Social. Media”.

One of the things I’ve learned is that people are eager to be fooled that there is a quick fix. Dangle a promising benefit in front of them and they will swallow any evidence and statistics you throw at them. Robert Cialdini, in his book Influence, shares an example of some hucksters selling Transcendental Meditation at a seminar that promised everything from inner peace to the ability to fly through walls. At the end of the seminar, an expert in the audience stood up and demolished all of their statistics and evidence. No matter, audience members paid $75 to join the program anyway. They didn’t want facts to spoil their dreams of a transcendent life.

Another example, this video trumpeting the Social Media Revolution. There’s no doubt that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, etc) are going mainstream and pose a promising new channel for businesses. I’m personally excited about the possibilities for developing deeper customer relationships and reaching new markets quickly and at low cost.

Everything Old is New Again

But social media isn’t necessarily more promising than other technologies that are now mainstream, like email, cell phones and iPods. Remember, it’s called social media for a reason – it’s a place to hang out with your “social” network, not with store brands and hucksters. And even if social media are promising channels, they will quickly become very crowded channels as happened to email.

Still, many businesspeople have stars in their eyes when you gently intone those magic words “Social. Media”. And they’re willing to accept any statistics uncritically that prove the existence of this promised land. That’s why so many people are gulping down this video showing up on YouTube and now being Tweeted and blogged (including here) into everyone’s consciousness.

But there are problems with the statistics in this video, which are at best only half-truths

• Facebook added 100 million uses in nine months. Actually, Facebook had just one million users 10 months after its launch in Feb 2004. It took 4.5 years to reach 50 million users. But the video cheerfully picks one nine-month period of rapid growth and then compares it to the length of time it took TV to be adopted by 50 million users from launch. Not a fair comparison.
• Online students do better than traditional classroom students. Online students tend to be older, employed and more motivated than younger students which explains the difference
• There are 200 million blogs. Fine, but what’s the average readership of each blog? 10 close friends and family?
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of three small countries. Fine, but 95% of Twitterers have less than 100 followers.
• With 250 million users, Facebook would be the fourth largest country in the world. That would make it the fourth poorest country as well, with $265 million revenue in 2008; about $1 per citizen.

None of this is to say I’m not also excited about social media and how it transforms marketing and market research. But I went through this hype cycle before in the 1990’s when so-called experts were crowing that if you weren’t online by 1995 you’d be out of business by 2000. That’s right: Out Of Business. Hucksters tend to exaggerate the urgency of a trend and the gullible are eager to believe it.  

Gartner has even put a framework around this phenomenon called the Hype Cycle. Products start out normal enough, then go through a period of over-exuberance until they reach a Peak of Inflated Expectations before crashing into an abyss of Disillusionment and then regain their feet and start crawling forward to some realistic possibilities.

This hype is nonsense, but it serves a useful purpose. It drives investments in the new paradigm faster than if people went about it sensibly. In the nineties, it contributed to a rapid expansion in our natural supply of website designers and search-engine consultants. It certainly fattened my pockets back in the day. And it led to a huge boom and bust cycle in Silicon Valley that reverberated across the U.S. stock market and the world economy. This lead to massive unemployment in 2000-2002 and devastated retirement accounts. So the hype wasn’t all bad, was it?

I was working 60-70 hour weeks – in the office at 8 am, out at 7 pm but still checking email at night. My days were stuffed with email and meetings. My only productive hours were after 11 pm when the kids were sleeping and my colleagues were off email.

In February 2008, I was on a flight to Biloxi, Mississippi to conduct focus groups. I had no access to email, was just contemplating life when a thought popped into my head: “If you had to design the ideal life for yourself, would this be it?“

I pondered that question, then decided No. I’m basically sacrificing everything for a steady paycheck. Then the second question popped into my head “what’s your ideal life?“

I realized I wanted, in no particular order, 1) more time for self-study and exploring my own interests, 2) more time for health and family, 3) more intellectually demanding work, 4) a chance to make what I was worth, not maxed out at the salary level offered me, 5) to run my own business. Then the third question popped into my head “what’s stopping you?“.

I realized it was fear – fear of leaving safe employment with a desirable Fortune 500 company and risking it on my own. But after weighing things, I realized that the only way to get what you really want is to have faith in your abilities. You can’t steal second base and keep one foot on first.

So I left Microsoft on July 4, 2008 – my Independence Day.

A year later, I know I made the right decision. Things are better than I could have planned – I have plenty of work, I’ve lost 20 pounds, I drop my kids at school and pick them up. I’m even writing a book.

I love what I do and look forward to every day.

But the ads won’t switch Google users over. Here’s why.

Search engines are like credit cards

Most people in the U.S. have multiple credit cards, including both Visa and Mastercard. When you purchase something, you could whip out any of your cards. They are sitting in your wallet, side-by-side. If you pay your balance off each month, there’s really no difference.

But you probably have a favorite card. Why? Because mentally it’s not worth the extra effort each time to decide “Hmmm…which card to I feel like using today?”. It isn’t worth rubbing two brain cells together so you just select by habit.

How did it become your favorite? There’s lots of possible reasons: maybe it had the lowest interest rate, maybe your other card was maxed out. Whatever. You started using it for a good reason. Now, you just don’t want to decide each time so you stick with the same card.

Making decisions is hard work. In practice, we try to avoid making decisions. We take the same route to work every morning. We get the same haircut. We order the same thing at the restaurant. How painful is it when your spouse says “what should we eat tonight?” Ack! Decisions!

Search engines are like that. Two shiny pieces of plastic – Bing and Google – snuggled up together in your wallet. You need to locate something on the web. Both, that morning, equally lie in front of you. Which do you choose? You choose the one you chose yesterday.

But! The ads say it’s a “Decision Engine”!

I know. The ads make you think Bing has the better search engine because it’s a “Decision Engine”. That will last about three minutes after you run to check out Bing and see that the results are not that much better than Google’s. The feature that lets you preview a webpage before jumping to doesn’t give you enough information to decide whether to jump to that website. It’s the same Live search engine with a few bells and whistles.

And so, consumers will feel disappointed. They won’t have time to form new habits. They’ll go back to doing what they were doing before.

So far, the results look promising: Bing (formerly Live) jumped to 12.1% of all search pages returned, up from 9.1% two weeks ago. A whopping 3% increase in market share. I’m sure Google execs are quaking in their Birkenstocks.

Is this the start of an upward trend? Or just a blip on the radar? My opinion: it’s a blip. The ads will naturally drive curious visitors to check out Bing. And I’m sure they will even win a few converts, not so much because the search results are better, but because the image on the search page changes each time and looks pretty snazzy. But there’s not enough that’s better to hang around for.

The myth of better

It’s a strange thing. People need to feel good about what they’re doing. They don’t want to hear that Google and Bing are just as good. They WANT to believe they are using the superior search engine.

There’s a cool blind search engine that will PROVE Google, Bing and Yahoo all return similar results. But the consumer mind isn’t logical. It doesn’t like indecision. It likes confidence and it likes to feel it has made the “right” decision. And so it is opposed to any evidence that says they’re really about the same. Consumers hate that. They want to believe there’s a difference so they can go back to making habitual decisions.

There’s a long history of great ads that increase liking for a product, but don’t change habitual behavior.

Great ads don’t change behavior

MasterCard began running its award-winning “Priceless” ads in 1997. You’ve seen the Priceless ads, right? How much do you think these ads, which everyone knows and have been parodied more than almost any other ad in the world, moved market share? Come on, guess.

MasterCard’s market share has increased to 31% in 2008, up from about 25% in 2000. A success you say?

Perhaps the ads had something to do with their success. But in the credit card industry, huge swings of market share come from the number of banks who are issuing your credit cards. In fact, banks are so important that in the late 1990′s both Visa and MasterCard blocked their 7,000 issuing banks (most banks issue both) from also issuing American Express cards. While MasterCard’s market share was increasing, Amercian Express market share declined to 12% from 20%.

If you really think about it, would the Priceless ads make you grab your MasterCard instead of your Visa when you’re shopping at Target? Habits are not that easy to change.

And that’s why the ads won’t work. People already think they’ve found a superior search engine. They are willing to let go of that belief if you can show them it’s better. But they don’t want to go back into decision mode. If what they see at Bing.com doesn’t convince them right away, it’s painful to remain in a state of doubt for long. They will revert to what has given them comfort for the past five years.

How to beat Google

Microsoft needs to target specific types of searches. Notice how Wikipedia has become one of the most popular websites because it’s perfect for certain searches – when you want to get a quick briefing on a subject like World War II or the Swine Flu. You know Wikipedia is a good starting point. Wikipedia didn’t try to compete with Google for all searches – just a certain type of search.

So what is that certain type of search Microsoft could compete on? How about education? Educators want their students to be safe online and are always cautious about letting them stray too far on the web. But what if there was a version of Bing for educators, where teachers could log on in their search for classroom resources. They could rate which websites they found valuable, and for which subject and for which grade level. Other teachers could search based on those criteria. And school districts could program their browsers so students could only access the pre-approved websites. This would solve an important problem in education.

Anything that is educator-approved is also safe for children and families, and so this collaborative approach to reviewing websites by trusted education professionals would also create a safe search engine for families and home schoolers.

So, I love the creative ads. But history shows people can love your ads and still use your competitors’ products. If Microsoft would make the worthy investments to create a search engine that leads you to family-safe and student-safe websites, now that would be Priceless.

An open memo to CEO’s

Your employees’ productivity sucks. The employees’ morale sucks. The bigger your company, the more it sucks and the more millions of dollars you are wasting each and every single day.

You know their productivity and morale sucks. HR shows you the charts. You have special committees “looking into it”. You have huge budgets allocated to team morale events and the annual picnic. And still their productivity and morale sucks.

But the solution is simple, really. It’s called the NENM Zone.

9 – noon: The NENM Zone

Look, the solution is very easy, Mister CEO. You must declare the time before 12 noon a NENM Zone: “No Email No Meetings”. That’s right. From 9 am – noon the company policy should be to let people put their heads down and actually get work done. Give them three straight uninterrupted hours to think, be innovative and get into a state of complete immersion with their work.

From 9-noon, the only communication allowed is via phone and only for urgent items. People may even build stronger relationships if they actually talked through problems instead of trying to solve complex problems through email.

Let them fritter their afternoons away on email and meetings. At least they got some work done.

A great side-benefit? People can drop their kids off at school and work from home in the morning. And they can drive into work at 11:30 am and beat the traffic jams. If you have one of those big Fortune 500 companies, Mister CEO, you might even solve the problem of traffic jams for everyone else.

Why the NENM Zone will improve morale and productivity

One way to unleash creativity, as well as happiness, is to get into a state of “Flow”. This is a state of being completely immersed in a task, so that time flies by and you become unaware of yourself. Software developers can often happily type out code for hours and hours, working through meals, because they have gotten into a state of Flow.

The NENM Zone works because no-one in your company is giving your staff time to get into a state of Flow. Here’s a typical staffer’s calendar.

Do you see what your people are doing all day? The are in meetings. And not just one long productive meeting, but several short meetings scattered randomly throughout the day and the week. And do you know what they do when they aren’t in meetings?

Email! You see that empty space between the meetings? When a meeting ends, that’s when your employees answer email (the email they didn’t answer during the meeting). They probably get 100-200 emails a day. And do you know what they do when they aren’t answering email?

They are working on their PowerPoint decks! That’s right. You can’t have a meeting without a PowerPoint deck.

So when does the actual WORK happen? The actual strategic thinking and innovation? It happens late at night, when the email flood ends and your employees are supposed to be spending time with their families.

Are they getting into a state of blissful and creative Flow? No, they aren’t. Why aren’t they? Because 100% of their hours are available for interruption.

The Answer is So Simple

Your staffers need someone to take charge and make their offices a place where they can be both motivated and innovative. You want that too, don’t you? It’s very simple. Email all your employees and say “New policy: 9 am – noon is our NENM Zone”.

Try it with one team and see if it improves morale and creativity. Then expand it across an entire division or entire company. You may start a trend that has a profound impact on innovation and competitiveness.

See “The Tyranny of Email” manifesto by Ole Eichhorn for a software engineer’s take on low productivity caused by email and meetings.

Do you know this old chestnut: Words only form 7% of our communication, tone forms 38% and body language 55%. Presentation experts often use this statistic to emphasize the importance of body language, and it’s spread like wildfire throughout the communications profession.

Well, it’s untrue. Anyone who teaches this is an amateur.

If it was true, no-one would say “shhhh!” in the movie theater.

We’d spend more time watching Brazilian television.

No-one would be annoyed by mimes.

It’s simply untrue that only 7% of our communication is words. Next time you hear anyone claim this, ask them to explain this again, but without words.

7% of EMOTIONS are communicated with words

Albert Mehrabian says on his website that his 1971 research findings are frequently quoted out of context. Mehrabian’s study investigated how we communicate feelings and attitudes toward others, especially like-dislike, and found there are three elements: words, tone of voice and body language.

But they don’t all convey emotions equally and we sometimes convey conflicting messages, such as when your spouse opens her birthday present, pulls out a cluster of socks, and says with a tight smile “Oh…I…LIKE them!”. When the emotional cues conflict, Mehrabian’s study arrived at this formula

Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking

So, our spouse conveys liking with her words, but disliking with her halting vocal tone and gritted teeth, leading to that sinking feeling that we should have purchased the diamond earrings instead.

What does this really mean?

• Proactively manage your vocal tone and facial expressions! I know you already know this, but do you do this? These two elements set the tone for communication because they influence the amount of liking you convey. What are you doing to make sure you’re setting the right tone?
• Consider the impact of adding non-verbals to your email communications. We communicate liking with smiley’s and terms like LOL and ROFTL because they convey a joyful vocal tone and body language.
• When you’re communicating an emotional message, like confidence that the economy will recover, be aware of your non-verbals. Do they also say confident? If not, the words won’t have the intended effect.

To be fair, though, there is a correlation between liking and message. People react positively to others who like them, and are more likely to accept your message and want to act on it when they like you. So your non-verbals play a role in supporting or discrediting your spoken words. But are words so unimportant that only 7% of the message is contained in them? The answer is a confident, relaxed and happily smiling “no”.

See this excellent blog article by Mark Lee of the UK Tax Advisor Network for a more thorough discussion of Mehrabian’s research and its correct interpretation

Also see this superb article by Olivia Mitchell, who is starting a movement to stop the spread of this addle-brained myth.

Dell just introduced a sleek new PC for the affluent market – the Adamo. The website is gorgeous; it looks more like a website for jewelry or cologne or headshot photography. But can Dell, the miserly manufacturer of barely-usable PC’s, really succeed with a prestige brand?

If Apple is the cool young hipster and Microsoft is the stuffy old suit, then Dell is surely the haggard and inept maintenance man. Can Gomer sell style?

It depends. Many companies have tried, and failed, to introduce a prestige brand. The problem is the prestige brand gets weighed down by the parent brand, like a hot air balloon attached to a rusty old dump truck. The balloon cannot soar. Examples abound:

• Hyundai and Kia are trying to go up-market and sell low-end luxury cars. But they cannot shake the “cheap car” perception
• Wrangler, with the $15 WalMart jeans, tried to sell $190 jeans at Barney’s. No success.
• Holiday Inn tried to go up-market with Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza. But business travelers thought it was too expensive for a Holiday Inn.

In order for the Adamo brand to succeed, Dell needs to strip out all the Dell branding and let Adamo become its own brand. That’s how these prestige brands became successful

• Lexus is a successful premium brand because it is NOT associated with Toyota, the practical and reliable Corolla salary-man car. Lexus even has its own dealerships, separated from the Toyota dealerships.
• Audi also enjoys an upscale image, because any association with Volkswagen is carefully removed

Although we’re in the grip of a recession, people with money are still buying luxury goods. The hardest hit is the economy segment of the market. Adamo gives Dell an anchor in the market segment that isn’t floundering. And they will be successful, if and only if they carefully distance the Dell brand name and let the Adamo brand lead.

For now, the Dell brand is still a little too prominent on the Adamo. I hope they get smart fast on that.

But the most important thing is Dell knows how to win. Just like the Steelers in the 2009 Super Bowl. You don’t bet against a team that knows how to win. And you don’t go from a college kid building computers in your dorm room to CEO of a global computer business without knowing how to win. Take a look at how Dell is moving quickly to capitalize on the popularity of netbooks. Rather than cannibalize full-size laptop sales, netbooks are likely to open new markets for additional PC’s in the household, and accelerate adoption in emerging markets.

And that, dear friends, is why I’m bullish on Dell.

You can’t do great things if you automatically say “I can’t” to something that’s hard. It’s more accurate to just say “I won’t”.

Can you sing a song, clap your hands, snap your fingers, play the guitar, and the xylophone and the drums, and sign backup and tamborine all at once? You can’t?

Or you won’t?

How many ideas did you think of? How many new, untried ideas did you think of? How many ideas will you try to think of next time? What do you think would happen to your career if you solve the problem other people can’t?