March 2011
1 post
4 tags
6 Tips for Freelancers
Wanted to share a couple of thoughts that began as an email thread.
My #1 rule of freelancing:
Freelancing is it’s own profession, and it takes time to learn, maybe a year. That’s on top of the marketable skills that you already bring to the table.
Here are the other things that I think I have learned in the last year or so as a freelance strategist for various agencies, design...
February 2011
1 post
Super Bowl XLV - Eminem for the Chrysler 200
Superbowl Ads offer an amazing window into the public consciousness, or at least what advertisers and advertising agencies believe that the public should care about.
My favorite commercial, by far, was Eminem for the new Chrysler 200. I have never understood why US automakers don’t make more of a big deal about buying American, and I thought this spot struck just the right balance between...
June 2010
1 post
India is Having A Moment
(L to R: Kal Penn, Nikki Haley, Aziz Ansari, Bobby Jindal)
Not since Apu stormed these shores in 1990 have we seen such a surge in Indians in the popular consciousness. I’m talking about Kal Penn on House (and later in the Obama White House), Aziz Ansari on Parks and Recreation, Bobby Jindal back to national prominence in New Orleans, and most recently, Nikki Haley as GOP candidate for...
February 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Making Sense of Chat Roulette
Is Chat Roulette a milestone in Web history or is it destined to become a footnote that will be forgotten as fast as the Winter Olympics?
A quick recap of the site (and you should definitely visit Chat Roulette yourself): a Russian teenager named Andrey Ternovskiy has created a simple interface that connects your webcam to a random series of strangers from across the world. You or the stranger...
October 2009
1 post
EVB/Facebook Connect Juiciness
I have no idea what this has to do with contact lenses or eye exams or whatever the hell this is for, but as an execution it’s awesome:
http://thegreatbernie.com/
Full Screen Video Really nice retro cinematography So-so use of Facebook Connect data
August 2009
5 posts
Building a Profitable iPhone App
This is one of the better and more to-the-point presentations on building a successful iPhone app that I’ve seen. A few highlights
Exposure is crucial: it pays to make the Top 100 /Top 25/ Top 10 apps lists, by an order of magnitude
The App store is designed for maximum turnover, so the best strategy is a burst of maximum exposure, knowing that downloads are going to fade. Price cuts can juice...
Latest Guilty Pleasure
Cobra Starship!
Diversity Days
Race is a topic on everyone’s mind again with the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, the beer summit, and (Justice) Sonia Sotomayor’s “Wise Latina” comments, which by now may have even become a catchphrase like “Black is beautiful”.
Here at my advertising agency we coincidentally had a “Diversity Job Fair” where a number of woman- and minority-owned...
Thoughts From Comic Con
I attended my first Comic Con this year and came home wanting more. If I have one impression from the show, it was how incredibly diverse the offers are. From comic books (duh) to toys to LARPers to anime to costuming to movies, what holds the whole thing together nowadays. It’s about fantasy and an escape from the mundane.
Nothing encapsulated this better than a long conversation I had...
A Navy SEAL and the Power of Self Possession
I was down in LA last week listening to a former Navy Seal talk about what it takes to be a “Tier 1 Operator”- an elite Special Forces soldier who does the most dangerous counter-terrorism, insurgency, and behind-enemy-lines work. I’m not the kind of person who closely follows the military or knows a lot about soldiering. But man, was this guy impressive.
He is working as a...
July 2009
2 posts
Designing The Future of Medicine
My mother-in-law is on the outer edge of the boomer generation. At 65 give or take, she just had double knee replacement surgery. Even five years ago, knee surgery was considered so invasive that you would never do both knees at once. Now here she is goign to a specialist clinic, the Center for Joint Replacement in Fremont that’s basically a factory of new knees for seniors. She was in...
All But Discipline
I was in the habit of blogging *every day* at Organic. Yesterday my wife asked me if I might enjoy blogging more regularly again, and I found myself making the following excuses:
(1) No one blogs anymore, all the conversation has switched to Twitter.
(2) It’s too late to start a new blog. Either you have a readership today, or you don’t.
I think there’s some truth to both...
May 2009
1 post
Cafe Press + American Idol
I love Cafe Press. Not necessarily as a place to buy stuff, mind you, but as a fantastic expression of the cultural zeitgeist. I love seeing people’s creativity (and plagiarism) and the capitalist drive at work. No event is too minor that some entreprenurial type hasn’t thought to stick it on a T-shirt.
I nearly worked with Cafe Press when I was at Organic. They have gone through a...
February 2009
4 posts
Amazon Kindle 2.0 = Fail
Amazon’s big annoucement is out today- a redesign of the Kindle. On the face of it, this is a story about the power of design. While Tim Brown of IDEO singled out Kindle 1.0 as an example of poor design (sorry Bob Brunner/Ammunition) that in turn hobbled adoption, Kindle 2.0 is a Frog Design re-envisioning, basically Mac-ifying the form factor with rounded buttons and a slimmer profile...
Does SNL/Pepsi Threaten Traditional Agencies? →
I'm Calling the Next American Idol
It’s Adam Lambert.
He’s got the looks, the personality, and the kid can sing.
This notwithstanding (and maybe because of) the minuscule coverage he has received so far on Season 8. You could tell when he walked into his first audition that the judges loved him already. He has a very timely pansexual quality- think Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy.
The only potential snag: can he be...
Pepsuber Meta-Advertising
I love SNL (lately- and it’s only tolerable on Tivo), I love Will Forte, and honestly I think the most out-of-the-box and therefore effective Superbowl ad was Pepsi’s three-part riff off the MacGruber sketches.
Very memorable, and I love the nudge-and-a-wink “we know that you know that you’re being advertised to”. Peter Arnell calls it...
January 2009
8 posts
Unfriend Me!
As usual, Crispin Porter’s latest campaign has tapped into something deep in the pop culture zeitgeist. I don’t mean to trivialize it- they are genius at the frivilous- it’s just hard to know whether that the same thing as effective marketing. I’m talking of course about Whopper Sacrifice.
Today’s NYT takes it to the next level of analysis- what does it mean to...
Recruiting Mandates for a Recession →
Male Bonding
Few things are more fascinating to me than trends in popular culture. The latest trend to bubble up- “bromances”. Honestly I think the beginning of the trend (in recent times) was Brokeback Mountain, even though the most recent incarnations (MTV’s Bromance, TNT’s Trust Me, Dreamworks’ I Love You, Man) are all about two straight guys who, uh, happen to enjoy one...
Career Advice to Myself
Sometimes I lose sight of why I am interested in design, experience design, new product development, customer insights, digital innovation- whatever it is I do. I despair (and rejoice) that there are no elders in this field and there is definitely a very poorly defined career path. Then every now and then one of these design institutions actually comes through. Listen to this Design Global...
Social Media Predictions 2009
Reading Peter Kim’s Social Media Predictions 2009 roll-up of various Social Media gurus while I wait for my new Mac to finish target disk-ing with my old Mac. Net: look for a “conversational ecosystem” from brands, not just a Twitter program. Look for humans to supplement automation.
Like this quote from Pete Blackshaw of Nielsen Online: “Along the way, we’ll...
Alonzo King at Frog Design Mind
Last night I went to a the Design Mind event at Frog San Francisco. I love it when companies have the chutzpah to throw open their doors and talk about what goes on inside their walls.
An open interview with the choreographer Alonzo King really blew my mind. He talked so articulately about dance and with a totally unselfconscious nod to dance’s place not only in human expression, but...
Three overplayed songs I love anyway
Hey Ya!
by
Outkast
At the appropriate time, I do indeed Shake It Like a Polaroid Picture
Bohemian Rhapsody
by
Queen
Way!
Brown Eyed Girl
by
Van Morrison
Just kidding. I hate this...
Ducking iPhone
I’ve been having some fun (?) trying to turn off Autocorrect on my iPhone. Looks like I need a firmware upgrade. Too much trouble. However, I did learn a few workarounds for foul-mouthed types who are sick of “ducking” being substituted for you-know-what.
Check out http://www.duckingiphone.com
November 2008
4 posts
The New York Times and LinkedIn →
LinkedIn is powering customized headlines on NYT based the industry that you self-identify. I’ve been getting Design articles. Very nice. Very smart.
Joe's Bachelor Party →
Can a Hip Space Make You More Creative? →
Jinal Shah sent this meeting space in Soho- To me the look is very LA, very Brocade Home, which oddly enough is a spin-off of Restoration Hardware.
October 2008
5 posts
Financial crisis spells business for lending sites →
Taking Kiva-style lending to the USA
Pop!Tech vs. TED
I have been hearing from a few different people about how great Pop!Tech was. It’s a TED competitor that just took place in Maine last week. The “usual” line-up of digital visionaries (Clay Shirky), social activists (Jessica Flannery of Kiva.org), performance artists (Imogen Heap), and Intellectuals Liberals Admire (George Lakoff) A relative bargain at $3500 vs. $6000 for Ted,...
Death and Pessimism in Popular Culture
I realize that I chiefly consider The New York Times to be The World’s Best Newspaper because of its new analysis essays and its coverage of popular culture. It’s really hard to write about something inherently frivolous and ephemeral in a serious way, but their writers do it week after week.
Ginia Bellafante’s article (A Bleak Show for Bleak Times) about the apocalytic and...
PR and Truthiness
I had an interesting interaction with a nameless PR guy last week. He runs a matching service that links industry experts with journalists looking for quotes. I signed up and the emails came thick and fast- 2-3/day, 5 days week. Of the hundreds of opportunities over three weeks, only one was suitable for me (on how an MBA helps a non-traditional career) and I never heard back from them. So I...
September 2008
17 posts
Diamond and Kashyap on the Recent Financial... →
Two U of Chicago economists explain Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Lehman, AIG etc in layman’s terms.
“She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic. It’s taking us back to junior high...”
– Op-Ed Columnist - ‘Barbies for War!’ - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity →
Career Advice for MBAs
It’s always gratifying when people reach out to me for career advice. It reminds me that I am getting to a somewhere that other people want to go- and I think there are few enough experience strategy types that it’s sometimes hard to measure my progress. Plus Method is hiring and I personally looking to build out the Strategy team, so the timing is great.
In response to one such...
The Age of the Demo?
I love this article from R/GA’s Bob Greenberg on the shift from classic marketing messaging - creating a short burst message that distills the essence of a projcet and captures an emotional state - towards a product-centric approach that will feature more demo’s. How else could you explain a Tivo? Or an iPhone. In fact, TBWA’s campaigns for iPhone have been all about the...
The Underdog Marketing Theory: Embracing Success... →
An article I penned for Adotas, a weekly online marketing publication
Scarcity & Exclusivity Online
Web-centric companies like Organic spend a lot of digital ink chronicling the ways that the Internet is driving cultural change. Social networking in particular is a unique web phenomenon that has profound implications for the way that modern humans interact with one another.
But after a vacation spent entirely offline, I’ve had a chance to think about the way that the web can simply...
How Wall Street's Black Sunday Will Affect Ad... →
Oh for the days when I could just enjoy straight schadenfreude for the financial industry.
“Anything invented before you were 18 has been there forever.
Anything that...”
– Jim Griffin, Digital Media Consultant
Malcolm Gladwell's New Book
Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point/ Blink fame has a new book coming out. Outliers: The Story of Success. “In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too...
Kevin Kelly on 8 Generatives Better Than Free →
“I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop. At the...”
– Robert Rauschenberg, American Artist, Dies at 82 - New York Times
Digital Hot List: Dynamite Destinations & Devices... →
NYT on Digital Intimacy
Warren Sukernek sent me this article from the NYT, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy. Clive Thompson presents a really balanced view on social media and he does a nice job describing the links between Twitter, Facebook feeds, SMS etc, all tied up in creating “ambient awareness”.
When I last wrote about (being over) Twitter, I asked a similar basic question: “Are these weak...