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...
CPB Has Jumped The Shark
Well, it just took the right kind of stimulation to get back into the blogging game. And apparently the opportunity to be snarky is exactly what I needed.
Crispin Porter’s first advertisement for the Microsoft consumer business finally came out today after months of delays, and boy does it suck. When CPB took a big chunk of McCann SF’s Microsoft business, I was pretty sure that it spelled...