Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 283

Free Summer School For Marketers

Spoiler alert: I dropped out of university.

It's true. I entered university with the best of intentions. At the same time, I was already publishing a couple of music magazines that were becoming successful. As I ventured down the road of burnout by trying to be both a publisher and a full time college student, I had a heart-to-heart conversation with my parents. In a very non-traditional fashion, my mother said, "If the magazines don't work out you always go back to school, but if you stay in school and stop publishing those magazines, you will never know what could have been." While I dropped out of university (and never went back), I never let not being in school get in the way of a higher education.

Education has never been easier... and cheaper.

There is no substitute for what a deep-dive into a full-blown masters program can bring. The intensive study, camaraderie with peers, access to professors and time spent collaborating on both what you're learning and how you're learning, is a unique moment in most people's lives. The fact remains, that many of us either can't afford the material cost to attend these types of schools or we can't afford the time and dedication needed to get this done because we're older, have been in the workforce for several years and have a family that needs to be supported. Beyond that, individual's don't naturally invest in their own education willfully. It's the odd business book or conference and that's the extent of our personal development. No surprise, the Internet provides a ton of resources that - when approached in serious manner - offers up a wealth of amazing resources and education. In short, it has never been easier to invest in yourself and your education.  

Following are some of the richest and deepest places to grab a master's level education in marketing... for free (free of cost... not free of time, effort and homework):

E-newsletters:

AdWeek . One of the marketing industry's premiere trade magazines offers up a slew of free e-newsletters that are chock full of information and insight. Check out the Advertising & Branding e-newsletter along with the Technology Today one.

Almost Timely . A weekly (and free) e-newsletter from Christopher S. Penn (co-host of the podcast, Marketing Over Coffee, and author of the book, Marketing White Belt) who brings together a slew of links and tweets from some of the Web's biggest (and smartest) thinkers. Between Media ReDEFined (see below) and Almost Timely, if you read nothing else, these two will keep you in the loop without any gaps.

Marketing Charts . This is one of those "it's hard to believe that it's free," ones. This daily e-newsletter is filled with tons of free articles and insights on the bleeding edge of research. Warning: you can get lost in these articles and research reports.

MediaPost . Simply click on "publications" and then be very cautious. You will be overwhelmed with the breadth and depth of options here. Interested in marketing to moms? They have a unique e-newsletter for that. Real Time Bidding? Yep, one for that too. I'm a major fan of their Online Media Daily and Mobile Marketing Daily newsletters.

Media ReDEFined . Jason Hirschhorn is the former co-president of MySpace. Currently, he is curating and aggregating this amazing resource of information. Forget the website and simply sign up for his free, daily e-newsletter. If something interesting happened in the digital realm, Hirschhorn has you covered.

Websites:

Fast Company . Still an amazing magazine in print, the Fast Company web experience is an even more amazing wealth that also extends into sites like Co.CREATE, Co.DESIGN and Co.LABS. Smart business writing that has been edited by experts.

Harvard Business Review . Long before I was a contributor here, I was simply a fan of the marketing blog posts that you can find here. Inevitably, the deeper I dug, the more often I found myself picking up the physical magazine or purchasing digital reprints of specific long-form articles.

LinkedIn Today . It turns out that LinkedIn isn't just for poaching your competitor's best talent. LinkedIn Today is full of fascinating articles and blog posts that can also be organized by what is news, what influencers are posting or even by specific industry/channel.

MarketingProfs . With a focus on Business-To-Business and a slant towards content marketing and social media, MarketingProfs is filled with fascinating articles, blog posts and interviews. While there is vast majority of free content on this site, once you dive in you will find it hard to not upgrade to a paid Pro Membership level.

Seth Godin . There are thousands of marketing blogs on the Internet. There is only one Seth Godin. Short blog posts (sometimes long ones) that will get you thinking differently about marketing (and business). Along with having well-over ten bestselling business books, Godin is one of the few marketing experts online that is actually an established expert. He brings years of experience and skill to his blog, instead of hyperbole and posturing. It's rare to have a seasoned veteran offer this much constant and consistent quality content.

Sparksheet . A highly underrated and not well-known-enough website that focuses on content marketing, but veers into fascinating general marketing themes. Published by Spafax (a branded content and custom publishing agency), Sparksheet is a great, little gem.

Podcasts:

Foundation . Kevin Rose (ex-Digg and currently at Google Ventures) hosts this video podcast where he deep-dives into conversations with many startups from Silicon Valley. While this isn't a formal marketing podcast, Rose's depth of knowledge and subjects he chooses to have a conversation with always has some kind of bent towards marketing and how to make some noise.

HBR IdeaCast . Putting nepotism aside (because there isn't any), this Harvard Business Review audio podcast is not one to miss. Recent episodes have looked at everything from pricing strategies and business intelligence to finding great talent and creating a business for longevity.

iTunes U . You won't have a hard time finding a ton of marketing podcasts to download and enjoy for free by heading over to iTunes and looking in the Business - Management & Marketing category, but many people fail to realize that iTunes U gives you free access to some of the world's leading educational facilities (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc...) for free. Dig through both the Business category along with the Communications & Media one. Hours upon hours of amazing ivy league lectures (all free).

On The Media . This NPR radio program brings the bluntness of public radio with the biting side of media pundit, Bob Garfield. You don't want to miss these shows if you're looking for an angle that lies in between what brands want you to believe and the raging ridiculousness of what they often do to get a consumer's attention.

TED Talks - Business . As more and more TED Talks get published online and more TEDx events are held all over the world, the good people at TED have tagged over 200-plus talks as "business" and many of those have a heavy marketing slant.

It's all there... waiting for you.

The above is just a sample of what's out there. What you will quickly begin to understand is this: there has never been a moment in the history of business like this. Never before have individuals - like you and I - had this much access to this much education and content for free. The challenge is no longer in accessing this content. The challenge is in finding the time to immerse yourself in it. In the next couple of week, things will naturally slow down as we move into the summertime. As things slow down, you may want to find some moments to learn, grow and expand your marketing and business horizons. Everything is just a few clicks away.

What other top-shelf marketing resources would you recommend?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Harvard Business Review . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Harvard Business Review - A Summer Reading List for Marketers .

Tags:

advertising

adweek

almost timely

audio podcast

bob garfield

branded content

branding

business book

business column

business to business

christopher s penn

co create

co design

co labs

communications

conference

content marketing

custom publishing

digg

education

enewsletter

fast company

foundation

google ventures

harvard

harvard business review

hbr ideacast

higher education

itunes

itunes u

jason hirschhorn

kevin rose

linkedin

linkedin today

marketing blog

marketing charts

marketing education

marketing industry

marketing over coffee

marketing school

marketing white belt

marketingprofs

media

media redefined

mediapost

mobile marketing daily

myspace

npr

on the media

online media daily

personal development

podcast

publishing

seth godin

silicon valley

social media

spafax

sparksheet

stanford

technology

ted

ted talks

tedx

university

video podcast

yale

Does Being Nice Pay Off For Businesses Today?

Episode #363 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

A natural born storyteller. That is one of the best ways to describe PR celebrity, Peter Shankman. He has led an interesting life... and it continues to roll on. He wrote three business books, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work and Why Your Company Needs Them (in 2006), Customer Service: New Rules for a Social-Enabled World (in 2010) and most recently, Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over and Collaboration Is In. Beyond that he well-known for launching Help A Reporter Out and he still practices the art of networking and communications through his boutique PR and social media shop, The Geek Factory. Shankman is full of stories... enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #363.

Tags:

advertising podcast

blog

blogging

brand

business book

business podcast

can we do that

customer service

david usher

digital marketing

facebook

haro

help a reporter out

itunes

marketing podcast

nice companies finish first

peter shankman

podcast

podcasting

pr

pr stunt

public relations

the geek factory

twitter

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #157

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

The Tulipomania - Project Gutenberg . "I'm always looking for interesting historical content. This is no exception--a book on the madness of crowds from Charles Mackay . It explains a number of popular delusions, so I've made this link point to one in particular, on the great tulip mania. But it's chock-full of interesting stories, and because it's told in a long-gone age itself, is doubly interesting. Also, I win the Most Obscure Link This Week award automatically." (Alistair for Hugh).

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere - Kieran Healy . "There's been a lot written in the past couple of weeks about data, privacy, and wiretapping. This was my favorite piece. It re-imagines the British trying to catch Revere using only his social graph. Had they access to the rebel's contacts, it would have been an easy matter to thwart the US independence. That it's written in the language of the time makes it all the juicer." (Alistair for Mitch).

What happened when I started a feminist society at school - The Guardian . "This past year has seen a lot to make you think that something is very wrong with how Western society, boys, men (and even other women) treat women: the Steubenville rape case , Nigella Lawson , the pillorying Sheryl Sandberg was subjected to for her book, Lean In . The things themselves are bad enough, but what's shocked me is the reactions and commentary around these events. Here's more bad news, from a teen girl in England who tried to start a Feminist Society at her school." (Hugh for Alistair).

This Is What Happens When Publishers Invest In Long Stories - Fast Company . "The magazine Fast Company has been experimenting with something one of their writers calls a 'slow live blog.' When a story breaks they make a 'stub,' a URL with the basic information. But then they keep building on the story, adding new information, more context, links and updates, all in the same place. Analytics show: people love it. As I've written before here: long-form has a shining future."  (Hugh for Mitch).

Profits Without Production - The New York Times . "Think about this piece of data: When GM was in its prime (1950 - 1960), its value came from its production capabilities. With hundreds of factories, they employed about one percent of the total nonfarm workforce. Compare that to Apple today. As one of the highest valued companies in America, they employ 0.05% of the American workforce. On top of that, their cost of production has no significant link to what they charge for their products and services. Basically, they charge what the market will bear. Think that changes our world of economics and policy? Paul Krugman does." (Mitch for Alistair).

Whatever Happened To Terence Trent D'Arby?  - The New Yorker . "I often find myself deep down the rabbit hole on YouTube . I'm a child of the eighties and I have what can only be described as a 'guilty pleasure' eclectic taste is cheeseball pop and hair metal. I'm not asking for forgiveness. On those rabbit hole runs on YouTube, I'll find myself spending hours watching recent video clips of Level 42 playing some random Yugoslavian music festival (I made up the Yugoslavian part, but the rest is true). I also happen to love bands that only had a few big hits, but decades later are still peeling them off for audiences, simply because they love making music. It was hard not to know the name Terence Trent D'Arby back then. The word was that he would be the next James Brown or Prince... or both combined. It never happened. And here's why. I also concede that Terence Trent D'Arby is not as obscure as Alistair's The Tulipomania, but it's close." (Mitch for Hugh). 

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

apple

bitcurrent

book a futurists manifesto

charles mackay

complete web monitoring

fact company

gigaom

gm

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

james brown

kieran healy

lean in

level 42

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

nigella lawson

paul krugman

paul revere

pressbooks

prince

project gutenberg

sheryl sandberg

social media

solve for interesting

steubenville rape case

terence trent darby

the guardian

the new york times

the new yorker

the tulipomania

twitter

year one labs

youtube

Short(er) Form Video

It's happening.

Years ago, Loic Le Meur had a startup called Seesmic that looks very different from the Seesmic that it eventually became. Originally Seesmic was the Twitter for video. Shoot a quick, little video, and follow those you're interested in. Timing and marketing is key to a startup's success, and while Le Meur continues to do innovative things, the original concept for Seesmic never took hold. With 140 characters, you know what you're getting. A quick link to a video doesn't offer much teasing towards what you're about to get yourself into and the way Seesmic was structured made it incredibly hard to figure out what to watch and who to follow. The idea never died, it simply morphed.

Today.

When Twitter bought Vine in 2012, it was received with the same quizzical looks as those delivered when Twitter first came on the market. Shooting a quick six second video and sharing it? What's the point? If you're still asking those sets of questions, head over to Vine and check out what some of the top Viners are doing. As a senior-level marketing professional at a major consumer packaged goods asked me the other day, "why aren't brands all over this?" This individual isn't the only smart person asking the right questions. Just this week, Gary Vaynerchuk announced the launch of a talent agency that will focus on developing and nurturing these newly developed Viners (I bet Gary wishes that these people were called Vayners ;). On top of that, Facebook's Instagram launched their short(er) form video platform to compete with Vine. This one allows you to shoot for a whole fifteen seconds. Instagram founder, Kevin Systrom, explained it like this: "It's everything we know and love about Instagram, but it moves."

The shorter the attention span.

As Twitter developed, the intelligentsia was pushing hard that this form of 140 characters of communications is furthering the dumbing down of our society. Well, now you don't even have to snap a photo and explain it or figure out the few characters to express yourself. Now, just shoot a video. Whether it's Twitter, Seesmic, Vine or Instagram, these tiny things tend to be scoffed at, admonished and then, ultimately adopted as core to a businesses success. What most people don't see is this: these are new forms of communications and expressions. Yes, we could have done them before, but not with these confines and constrictions. It is these confines and constrictions that seem to make it interesting to the smaller group at first. This crew gets creative, inventive and ingenious with these newer channels and that's when the heads begin to turn.

Don't be a luddite (hat-tip to Nilofer Merchant).

It's free, cheap and easy to hop over, grab the apps, play around and see what others are doing. If you see nothing interesting, you may be looking at the wrong people. For my dollar, Twitter has shown me the genius of what can be done in short form text. Some people (like Jon Stewart) may joke about how Instagram's filters make crappy mobile photos worse, but I know many people (myself included) who have suddenly started taking and sharing that many more pictures as a part of their media creation diet. Watching some of the creative videos being shot on Vine will give you hope that newer forms of filming have been developed (and ones that are also highly creative). Who knows what tricks and hacks people will invent to do the same thing with Instagram's new video service? So, before you dismiss it, shrug your shoulders and wonder why anybody would care, spend some time with the people who are spending a lot of time in these places and better understand who they are, why they're doing it and if there's something interesting for your brand to be a part of?

Ask better questions.

Who knows if Vine or Instagram will win this short-form social sharing video war? We just need to be asking better questions. For every "who cares?" or "why does this matter to my brand?," it may be wiser to ask, "who is using this?" and "are they doing anything interesting with it?". Tethering those questions to your business strategy and looking for synergy may be a quicker way to think about how real-time communications coupled with contextual marketing in this social era could drive your marketing into new, more interesting and powerful areas. The ones where an impression may actually have a more substantive value along with creating something that people may actually want to talk about.

Could be interesting... right?

Tags:

brand

business strategy

communications

contextual marketing

cpg

creative video

creativity

facebook

gary vaynerchuk

innovation

instagram

jon stewart

kevin systrom

little video

loic le meur

marketing

marketing professional

media creation

mobile photo

nilofer merchant

photo sharing

real time marketing

seesmic

short form video

social era

social sharing

twitter

video

video platform

video service

vine

viner

How Does Influence Work?

How much control do you really think that you have over your decisions?

In fact, it's actually pretty scary once you start listening to Adam Alter. Alter is an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at NYU's Stern School of Business and psychology department. His research focuses on the intersection of behavioral economics, marketing, and the psychology of judgment and decision-making. I've had the pleasure of having a conversation with Alter about his latest book, Drunk Tank Pink (you can hear it here: SPOS #358 - Understanding Humans And Making Marketing Better With Adam Alter), and we became friends shortly after that. Recently, he appeared with Jonathan Fields on Good Life Project. 

Watch this:

Adam Alter: How Hidden Influences Control Your Life...

Tags:

adam alter

behavioral economics

decision making

drunk tank pink

good life project

hidden influences

influence

jonathan fields

marketing

nyu

pyschology

stern school of business

The World Of Change(d)

The world is changing. The world has changed.

Trolling through the news on Business Insider, I stumbled upon their chart of the day titled, Time Spent Watching Video On Mobile Devices Has Doubled In The Last Year. That some exponential growth, right there. The article goes on to explain: "As mobile devices like smartphones and tablets take over many computing tasks from traditional desktops or laptops, they're also changing the way we consume entertainment. In the past year alone, video-watching on mobile devices has doubled. And only recently, tablets have passed smartphones as the most popular type of device to watch video on."

How do you consume video content?

Have you watched a YouTube video on your TV (via something like Apple TV or Roku)? Have you watched a YouTube video on your computer? Have you watched a YouTube video on your smartphone? Of course. We all have. Is the experience similar? It's on YouTube... that's the same. It's video content... that's the same. It's on a screen... that's the same. But place yourself, contextually, now. When we're watching this content on a TV screen, it is usually a very different environment than that of a computer screen and we're usually not in a fixed or reclined position when we watch these pieces of video content on our mobile devices (we're, typically, on the go). I'd argue that those three environments are fundamentally different and how we consume, pay attention to and react to the content is very different as well.

Can you feel how much online video is changing how we consume video content?

Let's say you love a YouTube video that you saw on your TV, how do you share it and talk about it? It's simple when you're watching that same video on a computer and a little bit more complex when you're on a smartphone. As if marketers and media professionals didn't have enough to worry about, YouTube is now pushing TrueView (a system by which consumers can skip a video after 5 seconds). While TrueView may seem like a technology geared towards a consumer's desire to skip ads on video content, it's actually a robust analytics platform for television ads that is in a nascent stage as Google (the owners of YouTube) captures all of this critical usage to then push back on advertisers as a way for them to create better and more compelling ads (and for YouTube to charge a whole lot more in terms of placement and the analytics behind it). This could be the win-win that traditional advertisers need to create a more compelling advertising platform with video. We shall see. Still, video consumption is going through this massive shift as more and more viewers are cutting the chord and watching on the go. This isn't going to change. In fact, the trend demonstrates that it is going to increase - both in terms of the usage of these devices for video content and the amount of the population using them.

Deal with it.

We're about to enter a very different media generation. Accountability for TV ads is going to become as precise (if not more detailed) than what the people in search engine marketing have known for over a decade. We're going to soon have a much better idea as to what creative works, how much of it was truly seen, and if it had any impact (beyond people hitting a "skip this ad" button). Something tells me that traditional advertising is going to be in for some tough truths about the type of work that is being produced, and the value behind the entire process. Directly correlating sales and interest to TV ads isn't going to be the type of metric regulated to the specialized agencies anymore. It's going to be tablestakes in what will become a very complex game of finding optimal marketing mixes that are no longer so heavily weighted to TV ads over everything else.

We don't like change.

This is going to leave many media professionals scoffing. So be it. Just keep watching these mobile numbers and correlate that to people moving from traditional cable to Internet-enabled TV boxes, the growth of streaming platforms like Netflix and the many venture capital and acquisition deals happening in the online video and YouTube channel space. For some, the world is changing. For others, the world has changed. The growth of video content and how we watch it is quickly moving away from the traditional TV screen. We can either start doing the hard work right now of figuring out how to create compelling video-based advertising for these new platforms and this new consumer, or we can continue to simply dump our traditional thirty second spots on to YouTube and then complain that YouTube isn't as effective for videos ads as TV. We keep making the same, silly, mistakes over and over again. Eventually, we'll wake up. Eventually, we'll realize that this new way to watch video content calls for a new way to advertise on it as well.

Until then, stats like this will go unnoticed by the vast majority of those who must still protect the traditional TV advertising complex.

Tags:

ad creative

advertising platform

apple tv

business insider

cable television

computer

cutting the chord

desktop computer

entertainment

google

laptop

marketer

marketing mix

media generation

media professional

mobile

mobile device

mobile video

netflix

online video

roku

search engine marketing

sem

skip this ad

smartphone

streaming tv

tablet

television

television ads

thirty second spot

traditional advertising

trueview

tv

tv advertising complex

tv screen

venture capital

video

video based advertising

video consumption

video content

video watching

web analytics

youtube

youtube channel

The One Key To Successful Content

What do you think makes someone's content relevant?

Last night in New York City, the kind people at Google hosted a book launch for CTRL ALT Delete. Instead of making it the standard fare, I opted to invite Seth Godin to join me on stage to discuss some of the core concepts of the book. My initial thought was to get Seth's take on my theory of business purgatory and then dive a little deeper into the five movements that have changed business forever, along with the triggers that each one of us has to bring to the work that we do. Seth would have none of that. Seth was more interested in inspiring people to do the hard work of buying the book and - more importantly - reading it and doing something about it. As usual, Seth was right and it speaks volumes to how he thinks and gets people to think along with him. During the Q&A session, someone asked:

How do you come up with the content for your blogs?

Seth answered the question, as only Seth can. I'm paraphrasing here, but it went something like, "when people ask me what I do, I tell them that I notice things and ask questions about it." My answer was much more verbose. I'm an infovore. I can't read, watch or listen to enough content. There are simply not enough hours in the day. All of that media consumption creates a cauldron of ideas, some boil over and some percolate, but by the end of the day there is usually some topic that rises to the top. It something that comes out like an exhaust valve. It's a mental cleanse for the day.

Two different lessons with the same theme.

I was thinking about what Seth said and felt a pang of jealously. I wish I could "notice things" as creatively as he does. My process seems that much more complex. I'm weeding through a lot of content at the bottom of the digital sea to find some chum. Still, the answer that both Seth and I laid out to the audience last night is something that most content marketers don't understand. Most marketers who are creating content are worried about things like the type of content they're writing (text, images, audio, video)? Where that content should reside (Facebook, Twitter, blog, YouTube, Pinterest)? How frequently to post (hourly, daily, weekly)? Who is going to create it (an intern, the communications team, a freelance journalist, the CEO)? It turns out that Seth, myself and many other people who create content that seems to garner some semblance of an audience and attention are inspired to create the content. Pushing beyond that, we are inspired consistently.

Oooff... that's a tough one.

Seth doesn't blog because it's his job, he blogs because he has to. Same here (and the same thing for my podcast, business columns and business books). Brands can nail every facet of what it takes to create content, but they'll always miss the mark when there is no one behind the curtains who is creating content because they have to. Consistently and constantly. Because they are inspired. It's true, being inspired needs to intersect with skill (a unique voice, something that people want to connect with, etc...). but without the spark of being inspired consistently, it's going to be extremely challenging to get that proverbial rubber to meet the road.

Finding your ability to be inspired consistently.

Surround yourself. Surround yourself with elements of content that will inspire you. Try to avoid the American Pickers marathon on History Channel (I know it's hard) and always have something to read around you. My personal trick? I make sure to buy every interesting business magazine. Paying for content makes me feel guilty when I don't consume it. Letting magazines pile up is a much better reminder to do the work, than episodes of a TV show on your PVR (those you don't see).

Step outside. Walking around and adding in smalls trips along the way will inspire. It can be as innocuous as a trip to your local bookstore or a few hours at a museum.

Keep notes. It doesn't matter is it's Evernote or a Moleskine or voice memos. Any time a question about something pops into your mind, take a note of it. While it doesn't matter what you capture the ideas with, it does matter where you store them. My personal trick? I email everything to myself and have a specific folder for blog ideas, titles, and more.

Don't stop. Keep at it. Keep reading. Keep watching. Keep listening. But, more importantly: keep blogging. Keep creating and keep sharing your content.

You will have to force it.

There are days when the consistent inspiration seems to be waning. Keep at it. Toying with the keyboard will push through everything. Seth mentioned last night that he doesn't believe in writer's block. I don't either. I do think that some days we're better with our words than others, but it's less about being blocked and much more about focus.

Keep at it. The habit of keeping at it will turn your inspiration into being inspired consistently. 

Tags:

american pickers

blog

book launch

bookstore

business book

business magazine

business purgatory

communications

content

content marketing

ctrl alt delete

evernote

facebook

google

google nyc

history channel

infovore

inspired consistently

journalism

journalist

media

media consumption

moleskine email

pinterest

podcast

seth godin

tv

twitter

writers block

youtube

Does Retail Understand The Untethered Consumer?

Episode #362 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

While many companies were still lamenting a basic website back in the nineties, Gary Schwartz was already imagining how content, voice and mobility would change how we connect to one another... and the brands that serve us. For over a decade, Gary has been a leader in the mobile industry. He is CEO of Impact Mobile (offices in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, etc...), is Chair of the Mobile Entertainment Forum and Chair Emeritus of the Mobile Committee for the Internet Advertising Bureau. He published his first book, The Impulse Economy - Understanding mobile shoppers and what makes them buy, and appeared on this podcast back in 2012. Now, he is back with his latest book, Fast Shopper, Slow Store - A Guide to Courting and Capturing the Mobile Consumer, that looks at how shopping has changed since consumers have massive computational power and inter-connectedness in the palms of their hands. The game has changed. The game is changing. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #362.

Tags:

advertising podcast

blog

blogging

brand

business book

business podcast

david usher

digital marketing

facebook

fast shopper slow store

gary schwartz

impact mobile

interactive advertising bureau

itunes

marketing podcast

mobile consumer

mobile entertainment forum

podcast

podcasting

the impulse economy

twitter

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #156

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

What is "derp"? The answer is technical - Noahpinion . "Derp is one of those words that started on the Internet, which is really just a giant meme-minting machine, after all. It defies definition--like modern art, you know it when you see it. Well, here's a working explanation from Noah Smith , and it turns out it's about Bayes' Theorem ." (Alistair for Hugh).

How To Sell Coke To People Who Have Never Had A Sip - Planet Money . "Brand marketing hasn't really changed, and venerated brands like Coke can usually coast on a market where everyone's familiar with their ubiquitous red-and-white swirled logo. So finding a country that hasn't had Coca-Cola is like finding a lost tribe, untainted by the modern world. This NPR story looks at bringing the soft drink back to Myanmar after a 60-year hiatus." (Alistair for Mitch).

Chekhov's gun - Wikipedia . "The Snowden revelations of massive spying on the American population (and indeed: on anyone who uses Facebook , Google , Yahoo etc) made me think of Chekhov's law. If a gun is hanging on the wall in Act I, it better go off by the end of the play. And in real life: if you put all of your data on servers someone else controls, then you can bet that someone will be looking at it." (Hugh for Alistair).

John le Carré Interview - CBC Books . "John le Carré's writing defined the cold-war spy novel: murky, morally ambiguous, and filled with rogues and fallen zealots. He's always been a thoughtful writer, examining the stories those in power tell us, and the hazier reality of things. I wish this interview had taken place a couple of weeks later than it did, so that the former MI6 man could have commented on Edward Snowden and the leaks about NSA's surveillance programs. He discusses all of it anyway - reminding us that we knew this was happening all along." (Hugh for Mitch).

Coding Is Coming To Every Industry You Can Think Of, Time To Start Learning It Now - Co.EXIST . "I have very young kids. When the conversation about language comes up, I'm always eager for my kids to be trilingual. I want my kids to to be learning English, French... and Code. The fact is that we're building a brave new digital world right now. Not making our children literate in this new language of architecture, urban planning and infrastructure for the digital spaces is akin to not teaching them how to read and write. I'd argue that we all could do a better job of learning some of the basics of coding."

How To Be Prolific: Guidelines For Getting It Done From Joss Whedon - Co.CREATE . "There has been a lot of talk about the whole quality over quantity debate when it comes to brands creating content (more on that here: Marketers Are Not Publishing Enough Content ). The title of this article puts a wet blanket on the debate, if you ask me. If you want to get stuff done, if you want to get some great ideas to percolate to the top, you have to be prolific. You have to constantly be pushing yourself (and your content out there). This doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a strategy. It just means that once you know why you're doing something (and what you want out of it), you have to be prolific. And for the record, prolific doesn't mean lots of crap. Powerful stuff." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

bayes theorem

bitcurrent

book a futurists manifesto

cbc

cbc books

chekhovs gun

co create

co exist

coca cola

coke

complete web monitoring

derp

edward snowden

facebook

fast company

gigaom

google

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

john le carre

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

noah smith

noahpinion

npr

nsa

planet money

pressbooks

social media

solve for interesting

twitter

wikipedia

yahoo

year one labs

Spend 20 Minutes With A Genius

You're going to read, look at, listen to and watch a lot of content over the weekend.

Most of it is going to suck. It's going to be boring. It's going to kill time rather than inspire you to find the time. What if I could give you something to watch for twenty minutes that will inspire you? Nobody does it better than Seth Godin. Don't believe me? Watch this talk on creativity with a theme called "backwards" that was recorded last month in NYC...

2013/05 Seth Godin | Backwards from CreativeMornings on Vimeo.

See, I told you :)

(and yes, quite candidly, I'm also psyching myself up for this: Want To Join Seth Godin And Me For A CTRL ALT Delete Book Launch At Google In NYC? )

Tags:

backwards

content

creative mornings

creativity

seth godin