Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

CAMP ORGANIC 13: Mike Hudson, Participant

I went to Camp Organic 13 toward the end of July. There's a lore around this company about Camp. Lives touched, careers altered, etc.

All I could see at this Camp was that the City of Las Vegas was hotter than almighty hell. And the hotel was packed with treetop basketball players from around the world in town for an Olympic warm up that I couldn't watch. I held out hope that this might be something awesome.

Shane Ginsberg (aka Mr. Camp O) took the stage and said what makes this company special, basically, is Camp Organic. I looked at myself. And I looked at the couple dozen other Organics in a rather plain conference room in Las Vegas. Here were people from finance, from IT, from HR, from creative, from all offices. It looked like every other company meeting in the conference rooms nearby.

I hate to admit it, but I was growing skeptical within the first 10 minutes. But within 48 hours, however, I had forgotten I even had a room at the hotel. I'd made lifelong friends with my team (A, Kim and David = best). And I nearly CRIED for the plight of a girl named Britney.

Camp stayed with me for weeks. And it popped up in unexpected places.

Instead of just being sleepy on a trip to San Antonio, a woman and her grown daughter discussing where to sit on the plane was now fascinating. Processes at the rental counter were now ripe for a rethink. And why was I driving to Austin just for a cup of coffee?

Yikes. I was starting to scare myself. Was I now different? Was this a home run, a single win or a pennant chase? Had Camp changed my life?

I was too close to my team, to our project, to our presentation to really analyze what happened. A lot of lessons simply vanished into thin air as time wore on. But months later, I realized that something was indeed different. I still felt for Britney. And, furthermore, it didn't feel like we were just selling people stuff.

The raw energy from the experience faded. The steady drumbeat of workaday work resumed. The Dodgers lost to the Phillies in the NL Championship. We watched the economy collapse. And we elected a president. And the folks who organize this hootenanny invited me back to be a counselor for Camp 14.

CAMP ORGANIC 14: Mike Hudson, Counselor

Now, instead of a mind full of fuzz and anticipation, I'm gambling with Shane and the other counselors the night before and chuckling about what the teams are about to go through. I wonder if my team would get what I got out of it. But I also wondered, what would I get out being a counselor?

Turns out, being a counselor is a lot like being a Camper...except you can't really participate in creating the final product. You can motivate and guide. You can challenge and question. But in the end, it's like standing by watching a chef reach for a bag of cement instead of flour. And then watching them try to work around that misstep. Brutal.

At times, I thought I might lose people or even a whole team, but they all fought on. They worked through the night. They hit roadblocks, had fights, took notes, freaked out, got too cocky, drank coffee, drank Red Bull, climbed furniture, ignored bits of genius, embraced bits of lunacy, debated, stared blankly, wrote furiously, some giddy, some miserable...but they all kept doing it. And they all crossed the finish line with chins up motivated at times by nothing other than the efforts of those that came before them.

It was one thing to go through it myself with a team of three others. But to watch that same conference room full of people all take the journey from passive cynics to empathetic advocates was something different altogether. They took different paths. And some of them didn't even buy it in the end. But like I said...they all did it. And they did it for no other reason than that they were Organics.

And then it kind of sunk in...what Camp means. Why it lingers. Why it haunts. Why is what we do different from what other firms do? Why do I actually feel something for this company?

As I'm prone to do, I look to baseball. And I let my mind drift to the image of Tommy Lasorda addressing the team. The windbreaker. The hardbitten face. The cletes. And that logo on his hat.

It's a group of players listening. The team has worked so hard just to get here. But baseball is a game where the best pitcher, the best hitters and the best manager can still get bitten by a squad that just had a career day. So who knows what awaits. And nerves are jumping.

Tommy's voice booms: "What's that say on your jersey? That says Dodgers."

"You can go the world 'round and say that and a guy in Russia even knows what that means. Dodgers. You...are Dodgers. That means something.

"Try telling someone in China you're a Yankee, they'll ask what state you're from. Or tell a woman you're a Padre, she'll say, 'Nice to meet you, Father.'

"But Dodgers...we play baseball!"

We're the kind of people who stay up all night, who fight and bicker, who fly to Vegas, who stay in smoky clubs we don't want to be in, who got to malls, who watch people on planes, who come together from our jobs as accountants or techs or project managers or design, who jump on stage with a handful of notes and an idea, who move clients with insights, who question everything, who keep working and working and working - we do all this just for a chance to feel something about other people in the hopes that we will rise above simply selling people stuff.

So what'd I learn at two Camps? I guess I'd sum it up by saying that now whatever project, or client, or trip, or interview or itty-bitty piece of content I'm working on I know there's something about being a Dodg...err, Organic, that sets it apart.

Mike Hudson