Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 303

Don't Make Me Lie

The only thing I hate more than people who lie is when I'm being forced to lie to others.

Don't make me lie. This was my conversation with a recent border crossing guard at the airport:

Guard: What is the purpose of your travel?

Me: Business.

Guard: What kind of business? (already visibly frustrated).

Me: I have a business meeting.

Guard: With whom? (rolling his eyes and puffing).

Me: [insert name of business and and person I am meeting] to discuss a potential partnership.

Guard: Why? (motioning his hands with a "get on with it!" attitude).

Me: Because we feel like there may be an opportunity to work together. We're just meeting to see if it is even a possibility.

Guard: When do you get back?

Me: This evening.

Guard: Why so fast?

Me: It's just one meeting.

Guard: What line of business are you in? (he's getting aggressive now).

Me: Marketing.

Guard: What kind of marketing? (in a raised voice).

Me: Digital marketing - to helps brands on the Internet.

Guard: Next time you need a letter.

Me: Thank you... I understand. (I gather my documents take a few steps away, and then return to face the guard)... Excuse me, but a letter from who and about what?

Guard: It's called a B1... look it up. (he waves me off).

Well, that wasn't pleasant.

I often talk about my business travel here on the blog (over 150,000 air miles every year). I have a Nexus card (which enables me to be pre-screened) and I know the rules about travelling from Canada into the US. In my hundreds of trips each year, this was the first one (in a long while) where I had an encounter like this. Sure, the guard may have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, but I was following the rules as I know them. I answered the questions that I am asked directly, succinctly, honestly, politely and with a smile. There are two reasons for this:

There is no reason to lie or not be nice to everyone.

If I do lie or hide something, I risk losing my Nexus card (and I really don't want that to happen).

Lying would have been easier.

I could have just said, it's personal travel and not for business. I could have just said that I was going to see a friend for the day. The truth is, the person I am visiting is a friend, but I am going to meet them for business. As I sat in the lounge having my pre-flight breakfast, I realized how bothered I was by this minor inconvenience. What bothered me most was not the aggressive tone of the guard, or the fact that I actually don't need a B1 visa for a meeting of this nature, but that had I lied, life would have been simpler. I see this all of the time. I see it in how senior executives speak to their teams, I see it how people manage their careers and I see it in how brands communicate with consumers. People lie thinking that it's the better, easier or safer solution. Is it?

It's not me... it's you.

There is a certain level of protectionism that comes with lying, fibbing or shadowing the truth. Brands feel like they're providing more a service to the consumer rather than confusing them with all of the gory details. Consumer advocates argue that the "fine print" is nothing more than a legal way for brands and advertisers to blur the truth in front of consumers. I'd like to disagree, but it's hard.

The truth... simplified.

Some argue that people can't handle the truth. Here's where a brand can get better traction: if your product is what it is and does what it says it does, the only real role that marketing plays is in helping consumers to see the benefits over what you have against the competition. Not having that competitive advantage is no reason to lie. The true marketing imperative - at that point of inflection -  is to build into your products and services something that is unique, valuable and includes additional utility to the consumer. The truth is that I was telling this border guard the truth, when I could have lied. It may have been easier to do that, It may have frustrated him more to deal with me (not sure why), but it is what it is.

I wish more brands would stand up, take accountability and tell their own truth, regardless of those consumers who may act like the border guard. 

Tags:

business development

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communications

competition

consumer

consumer advocate

digital marketing

human resources

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unique selling proposition

Prepare For Impact

Episode #334 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Welcome to episode #334 of Six Pixels Of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast. Please excuse the nepotism, but I treat Chris Brogan and Julien Smith like family. The two are more than close friends, they are the best-selling business book authors of Trust Agents and recently published their sophomore effort, The Impact Equation. As the book continues to steadily climb the best-sellers lists, Brogan and Smith took some time out of their hectic schedules to discuss the new book and why it's so much more than follow-up to their first effort and how it's not about social media (while still being about social media). It's a great read if you're trying to figure out how to make the work that you do not only resonate, but for it to create true value and merit in the world. 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 #334.

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chris brogan

david usher

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podcast

podcasting

social media

the impact equation

trust agents

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #128

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

Rejection Therapy Day 3 - Ask for Olympic Symbol Doughnuts. Jackie at Krispy Kreme Delivers! - YouTube . "What if you decided you needed to learn to handle rejection as a basic life skill? Maybe you'd try to practice it by making outlandish requests. What if those requests were answered? I'm sending this not just because the video is funny, but because some of the 'bad' things that we try to avoid, might in fact be good things to work on. As a parent, I wonder about how to instill these things in my daughter as she grows up." (Alistair for Hugh).

'I Pretty Much Wanted to Die' - Grantland . "Lost was a huge success. But it didn't follow any normal rules of television. Created by a network executive, thrown together in a hurry, and built for failure. This Grantland piece on the book shows just how much modern media is rewriting old rules." (Alistair for Mitch).

Every story has a beginning - Wraggle Labs . "I've been thinking a lot about structuring the data inside of books - thinking about the 'semantic book,' on the Web (rather than the usual thoughts of the semantic web). Here is an example of web content that is semantically explodable: click through to the various buttons, and scroll down the page on the 'Full Text' view. I am thinking about how powerful it would be to do this with books (and easy! if you use the right tool to make your books! -- ahem, PressBooks )." (Hugh for Alistair).

Perhaps it is broken, the cover of your diadem [...], darkness collar [...]? - BaseCamp . "This is the most extraordinary thing I think I've read in years. After reading it four times, I still can't quite explain why. NOTE: it's designed for the screen, with lots of space = 'silence' ... so scroll down to keep reading." (Hugh for Mitch).

Disney Robots Play Catch With Your Kids - Mashable . "I have become overly fascinated with animatronics and robots. Computational power is getting good. Really good. What does this mean? We're inching closer to having robots do all sorts of cool things right along human beings. Science fiction? Crazy talk? Sure, currently this is all a bunch of parlor tricks, but it's going to change and it's going to happen at an exponential rate. Watch this..." (Mitch for Alistair).

The 4-Hour Chef is a NYT, WSJ, and USA Today Bestseller! But There is Mystery and Intrigue... - Tim Ferriss . "When people think of writing a book, they also (can't help but) think about having it land on the bestsellers list of the New York Times , Wall Street Journal and USA Today . Hey, a boy/girl can dream, right? Well, Tim Ferriss did it (again) with his latest book, The 4-Hour Chef . Ferriss is a fascinating guy (don't believe me? Check out our conversation here: SPOS #333 - Learn To Do Anything With Tim Ferriss ) who reveals the data, logic and mystery behind everything that he did to make it to the top. If you're interested in books, publishing and even social media marketing, this is a must-read." (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.

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alistair croll

basecamp

bitcurrent

complete web monitoring

disney

gigaom

grantland

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

mashable

media hacks

new york times

pressbooks

the book over

the four hour chef

tim ferriss

usa today

wall street journal

wraggle labs

year one labs

youtube

The Frightening Ramifications Of High-Frequency Pricing

Something fascinating happened during Black Friday.

It wasn't the mad hoards of people trampling one another for the latest electronic whiz-bang, and it wasn't the dreaded story of a major retailer's site going down, making them unable to capitalize on months of build-up, ad spends and hype (not to mention damage to the brand). We have entered a new era in marketing, and it's one where marketing and IT come together (and stop residing in their respective, vertical, ghettos within the organization). Gartner and others research firms are stating that marketing departments will soon be spending more on technology than the IT department. Innovations in the spaces of CRM, ERP, social medial, cloud-based solutions, mobile platforms and more may be driving this now, but looking out on to the horizon, newer technologies like context-based engines and more will escalate the ascent of both cost and infrastructure to the marketing department. The bigger, more pressing, issue is leveraging technology to optimize pricing.

A different price for different people at different moments.

On November 23rd, 2012, I blogged about the pending rise and increase in personalized pricing (you can read more about that here: The Future Of Personalized Pricing). Yesterday, The New York Times ran a news item titled, Retail Frenzy: Prices on the Web Change Hourly. From the article: "Retail price wars online have entered a new era of speed and precision, creating a confusing landscape for shoppers in which prices leap and plummet on short notice. In the old days, merchants sent employees into competitors' stores to check on pricing, and days later 'sale' signs reflected new markdowns. Now, sophisticated computer programs accomplish the same goal online within hours, and even minutes." 

When pricing goes digital, it's hard to know what a fair price is.

If a price changes from moment to moment, quickly over time it's hard to know what the best price (or most reasonable price) ever was. Imagine if the price of a product was as volatile and fluctuating as the stock market. The New York Times piece goes on to say: "... in all, seven price changes in seven days. The unluckiest buyer paid more than triple the price that the luckiest buyer paid." You may think this isn't a big deal. You may think that anyone can simply hop on Twitter and ask others what they paid for a similar item, but with fluctuations and changes happening all of the time, it would become increasingly challenging to know any one "truth" about what the best price is.

It's happening on Wall Street. It's going to start happening to everything that you buy.

Personalized pricing is one thing, high-frequency pricing is another. During a session at Google Zeitgeist this past year in Phoenix, New York Times columnist and best-selling business book author, Andrew Ross Sorkin (Too Big To Fail), painted a harrowing financial picture when describing the prevalence of high-frequency trading in relation to the kind of trading that your average investment advisor or stock broker are providing. These high-frequency trading systems are the dominant force on Wall Street, using incredibly powerful computer algorithms that are making massive decisions in milliseconds with no human intervention. In short, you (and the best stock broker in the world) don't stand a chance against these super-computers when it comes to generating money. So, while the current crop of price adjustments online don't seem fair and just during the most wonderful time of the year, what do you think is going to happen when these high-frequency algorithmic technologies become that much more accessible to brands?

The speed of price.

In short, it means that the price of a product may become much more similar to snowflakes. Where no two snowflakes are alike, high-frequency pricing will mean that no two prices are alike... even for the same product. The art of retail could them devolve not into a world of dollars per square feet, but instead become a game of pricing optimizing in milliseconds. Some business leaders may still think that this is business as usual. When thinking about a world where high-frequency pricing is as predominant as high-frequency trading (again, without the assistance of any human intervention), you can't help but wonder what kind of world we will be living in within the next five years.

Excited? Scared? Creeped out? What do you think about high-frequency pricing? 

Tags:

advertising

andrew ross sorkin

black friday

brand

brand reputation

business book

cloud technology

crm

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erp

gartner

google zeitgeist

high frequency pricing

high frequency trading

investment advisor

it

marketing

marketing department

mobile

online merchant

online shopping

personalized pricing

pricing optimization

retail

retail research

retailer

social media

stock broker

stock market

super computer

the new york times

too big to fail

twitter

wall street

A Ticket To Discovery

At 5:15 am...

My car drove alongside the train track down towards the highway heading to the airport for my early morning flight. This train track connects many suburbs to the downtown core of Montreal. It's at the end of my corner and you would never know it. Montreal is known for its subway system (we call it the metro), but it also has these trains. This one track, in particular, is electric. It's also silent and runs below the street level in my area as it descends into the tunnel that connects to our central train station in the core of the city. Many people ride it. I never have. The typical drive to downtown is about twenty-five minutes from home to downtown by car. The train ride is about five minutes. My guess is that those on the train don't know what traffic is.

Take the train.

As the haze of the day and the quiet of the streets was disrupted by my car, I had this striking image in my mind's eye of a dad taking his young child on the train. Destination: unknown. Kids love trains and adventures. I could imagine this Dad buying two train passes, walking from their home to the train platform, and just spending the day riding the train, getting off and on at random stops and discovering new places. Kids love this kind of entertainment and it serves as a breeding ground to get them excited about discovery and travel. This transcends into adulthood and is probably one of the main reasons that travel, for many, is still something to marvel and cherish. That feeling of discovery is a magnificent one.

Your ticket to discovery...

Each and every piece of content that your brand creates is a ticket of discovering. From the shortest tweet to a long-form video or extended blog post. The content is something that you see and know, but that you are sharing with the rest of the world. It is something to marvel and cherish as well. The majority of people take the train... and they take that train for granted. It's part of their routine and the daily grind. The majority of brands are creating content... and they take that content for granted. It's part of their routine and the daily grind.

At 5:15 am...

My car drove alongside the electric train track down towards the highway heading to the airport for my early morning flight. As I thought about the train, the father and the young child, it made me realize how important it is to encourage that feeling of discovery and amazement in children. It also made me realize how important it is to encourage that feeling of discovery and amazement in each and every one of you. If I don't (and you brand doesn't) when I create content, it becomes a grind (for both you and I). It shouldn't be a grind. Each and every piece of content that you create needs to be a ticket of discovery for your audience. Whether you are linking to another piece of content, creating an original piece of content or simply informing those who are to connected to you about something new. It is these links from one place to another one that makes the Internet such a diverse and interesting place.

Don't waste it. Create a ticket to discovery and send everyone on a journey. 

Tags:

a ticket to discovery

adventure

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content creation

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montreal

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serendipity

train

transportation

travel

twitter

The Value Of Links

I'm starting to feel like a dinosaur.

It will be ten years in 2013 that I first started blogging. Prior to blogging, I have a very clear memory of when hyperlinking started happening online. We take links and linking for granted today. Back then, if you wanted to visit a website, you would enter the URL in the address bar of your web browser. If you wanted to leave that page and go to another page, you would have to know and be able to correctly type that webpage's address into the address bar (bookmarking had yet to be perfected). That's right, you could not just have a clickable link on a page. Crazy, I know. For those of us who were around back then, the advent of hyperlinks and bookmarking were one of the earlier instances when you could see how more and more people would adopt the Internet because these little additions are what made the Internet much easier to use.

Links are about more than moving around the Web.

I love links. This should not surprise anyone. Take a look at any of my blogs posts and they are littered with anything that can be linked to. Does it annoy you? Distract you? Send you down a rabbit hole to other online resources and articles? Do you get so lost that you don't come back to Six Pixels of Separation? I hope not, but I understand if it does. The truth is that I don't link because:

It is the proper etiquette for online writing.

It is good for search engine optimization.

It provides sources and references.

It helps people discover other articles and blog posts.

It helps people discover new and interesting websites.

It may create a distraction.

It may push you away from my content.

Why I link...

It is more of a philosophical reason, but I link (and link a lot) because I believe that links are what turns the text on a blog (or website) from a two-dimensional experience into a three-dimensional text experience. Links makes the text come alive. Links gives text-based content depth. When done well, links gives text more context and discovery. I can see why people like Seth Godin and Tim Sanders don't care as much about links as I do. Sanders published a blog post today (Why Linkiness Is A Blogger's Form Of Truthiness) about why he doesn't link (and will probably do even less linking going forward). There is nothing within his blog post that I would disagree with, if the sole purpose of publishing content online was to capture an individual's attention. Let's not kid ourselves, if the Internet does one thing amazingly well, it allows anyone to have an idea and publish that thought in text, images, audio and video instantly and free to the world. No one can diminish how powerful that is. If the Internet does another thing amazingly well, it allows anyone to link to other content and makes all of our content more findable, shareable and expandable. Links are core to this. Sanders makes a strong case for less links. I'm hopeful that I make an equally strong case for more links. The more we link, the more we connect, share and enable others to find the work we're doing. More importantly, the more we link, the more we make text three-dimensional. That's (still) exciting to me.

Let's keep on linking. Please. 

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text experience

tim sanders

web browser

website

The Art Of Fake Familiarity For Better Sales

We (still) live in a world of really bad email pitches.

I recently got an email pitch from a public relations specialist that read something like this: "Hey Mitch, I work with Lame Corp. I'm a big fan of your blog and your newspaper articles. I know that you have written about our research before, so I'm attaching some new findings that I know you will find interesting. Our President, Mr. Lame-O, would love to spend some time with you on the phone to discuss our latest research, so please let me know if we can arrange some time in the next few days for you two to connect. I also saw on Twitter that you were at the Google offices in Mountain View recently. I have never been, but I hope to get the chance to go at some point in the near future." If you, your company or the communications agency that represents you has ever sent an email pitch like this before to start the sales cycle, you may be wondering what the issue is?

The problem with sales pitching via email is a topic that is constantly (and hotly) debated in the online channels.

While the general onslaught of non-personalized and near-offensive sales pitches continues to deluge the inbox of anyone who blogs and tweets (regardless of audience size and relevance), there's no doubt that some sales pros have spent a significant amount of time, money and resources as they inch away from the "spray and pray" model of blasting their self-involved pitches to anyone with a publish button over to one where they spend time training themselves to get better at knowing their target market that much more. Hence, the problem with the pitch above... it's stuck in the middle.

Push beyond the middle.

It's definitely not a non-personalized pitch, but it's also an individual (and a company that they represent) that I simply don't know (or don't remember). And so, it turns out that faking familiarity has an air of creepiness that is somewhat more disturbing than the spam that came before it. In the age of social media, networked people and a world where publishing everything (including our comings and goings and pictures of our kids) in places like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, it should come as no surprise that the smarter businesses are going to leverage this social data in some form of manipulative way (at least, the more dubious ones will). My first reaction to the pitch was to do a quick search on my blog for their company, name and research to see, if in fact, I had previously mentioned them. Guess what? Zero. Nada. Never. So now, they're not only trying to fake familiarity, but they're lying in the process.

Sales is human relations - regardless of whether you're hiding behind a keyboard or standing in front of someone at a local chamber of commerce networking event.

That's the biggest part of social media that the majority of companies still fail to accept and embrace. The companies that have made strides are the one that made changes to their corporate culture (both internally and externally) by using social media. The over-arching spirit of this shift it to create more powerful and real connections. It's not easy to do this and it takes a significant amount of corporate restructuring, top-down desire from the c-suite and a general impetus to change how the general public deals and interacts with a business. The above scenario isn't about a bad sales pitch. It's about a company that thinks it's leveraging social media to better connect with a constituency, when in reality they're using the channel to manipulate.

The real question is this: in a world of spammers and those trying to create a sense of familiarity, how do you - as a business - truly connect with customers and media in a more powerful and profound way?

The answer is simple (and not all that technical): how would you approach someone you really wanted to meet if you ran into them at an airport lounge? The art of social networking doesn't come from the "social" part of the equation... it comes from the "networking" part. The brands and individuals who build up significant audiences that are both engaged in their messages and helpful in terms of amplifying them are the ones who take the time to be the best networkers. They introduce themselves in a kind, simple and short way. They do their best to understand the people they're connecting to. They provide value first and are, ultimately, respectful of the other individual's time and temperament.

It's sad to see how often those sales professionals push words around without taking the time to do their homework first.

They say that they have so many clients who are demanding that as many people as possible see their messages and news. They simply do not have the time to get to know each and every individual that they're sending out messaging to. That those they're sending brand messaging out to are not all that kind and treat them with disdain. What these "professionals" and the brands that hire them have to understand is that social media is an ecosystem where great ideas do spread (look no further that how videos go viral on YouTube or how new business ventures get significant funding on Kickstarter). The real trick is in doing the work in the upfront phases of your business development to win friends and influence people in a digital world.

It may be easier to just blast anyone and everyone with your messaging, but odds are you will reap much greater rewards if you take the time to truly - and authentically - connect in a world where we're all connected.

If you want to learn how to do more with your business, I am thrilled to announce that I will be a featured presenter in Jeffrey Gitomer's new webinar bootcamp, {Re-define} Yourself. The online education series takes place from December 10th - 14th, 2012 right at your desk. This event is not free, so make sure to click on the link to register. Gitomer is the bestselling author of The Sales Bible. The Little Red Book of Selling, Social BOOM! and a ton of other books. The dirty, little secret here is that Gitomer is a true business icon in my life. I have not only read every book he has written, but have been a longtime subscriber to his e-zine, Sales Caffeine, and have paid to attend his past webinars and conferences. He's not only smart about what it takes to make the sale, but he's funny, on point and in-your-face (something we could all use, every once in a while). In this webinar series with Gitomer, I'm going to discuss how individuals can re-define their social media space to make their content and connections that much more personal, interesting and lucrative. The above article was a tweak from an earlier blog post I had written, and it was featured in this week's edition of Sales Caffeine, which you can view here: The Art of Fake Familiarity. To register for the webinar series, please visit: Jeffrey Gitomer's Webinar Boot Camp 2012 {Re•define} Yourself.

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blog

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business development

business icon

business venture

chamber of commerce

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corporate culture

digital world

email pitches

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fake familiarity

google

human relations

inbox

jeffrey gitomer

kickstarter

linkedin

networking event

newspaper article

online channel

online education

public relations

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redefine yourself

sales

sales caffeine

sales pitch

selling

social boom

social data

social media

social networking

the little red book of selling

the sales bible

twitter

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youtube

The Future Of Iconic Brands

In the real-time Web, the value of branding could become a game of diminishing returns.

A friend recently told me that he's nervous about Apple and their ability to deliver products that people can't get enough of. It seems like a ridiculous statement, doesn't it? Then again, one look at your investments and you may think otherwise. The speed with which our world now lives could well put an end to the world of iconic brands. Before all of this connectivity, a great brand could stand the test of time. Books like Built To Last by Jim Collins created blueprints for a company that could last forever. Investment advisors would have you invest your money in companies for the long haul. How often have you sat down with a financial planner and they spoke about investing in a company for over twenty years. It wasn't that long ago, that this type of thinking made rational and frugal sense.

It now seems like insanity.

Do you think Apple will continue to be as strong, powerful and resilient in twenty year's time? Ask the folks at RIM (BlackBerry) what that type of event horizon now feels like. Does it make any sense that Kodak implodes around the same time that Instagram is bought by Facebook for one billion dollars (give or take a buck or two)? Do we think that Chrysler will have what it takes to be relevant in twenty years? It's easy to chalk the brand disasters that we have see up to poor management or a lack of innovation, but at a macro level it just seems like the pendulum is swinging with faster momentum. From a media perspective, we all know that what's hot today may well be cold tomorrow. From a Twitter perspective, what's hot right now may be cold before dinner.

An over-dramatization to make a point.

Sure, Apple could still be relevant in twenty years and yes, Facebook may very well be the place where we're all connected, but the ability for a brand to have a enduring legacy looks less likely as the speed with which consumer interest evolves. As media people, this is a trend that should both fascinate and terrify us. It gives room for new and interesting players (fascinating) while killing off brands we would consider iconic in short order (terrifying). So, this raises two important question:

What is a brand worth?

Can we value brands on a forward-looking model.

A brand has value... today.

Perhaps we have to re-imagine (to steal turn of phrase from Tom Peters) how we define value in the now economy. Perhaps we have to agree (and accept) that the brand of today may not be the brand of tomorrow and prescribing value can't be done by looking twenty years into the future, because the pace of change and disruption is increasingly happening faster and faster. We can all admire the work that brands like Apple, Starbucks, Red Bull and more have created and continue to nurture, but perhaps these brands will disappear into our ether, having been relevant for a brief moment in history. What this could mean is that more and more brands fill these voids over less and less time. So, will memory serve or fail us in terms of brand perception? The Beatles were iconic. Some may argue that Nirvana was iconic too. Do you believe that any of the musicians today that we admire will be able to leave this kind of legacy? As Gangnam Style becomes the most viewed video of all time on YouTube, do we believe that Psy becomes an iconic brand, a one hit wonder or just an indicator that the world of iconic brands may have seen their final days? Why not prescribe that same kind of thinking to business. Perhaps a great run for a company that lasts decade or two won't qualify them for iconic status.

The end of iconic brands.

When I think about the end of iconic brands - which I believe will become a reality, I realize that with it, comes a natural thought that this means we cannot invest too deeply in a company's future. This, is where the true rub lies. This type of thinking (no matter how salient or foolish) spells a very scary story for the stock market. Not the stock market of today that is littered with high speed algorithms making most of the trades happen in milliseconds, but for the true stock market of tomorrow that is counting on the rise of the iconic brands for the wealth of nations.

What do you think? Will our future have iconic brands or simply a mass of companies that made good money during short period of time?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . 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:

The Huffington Post - Have We Traded Our Iconic Brands for One Hit Wonders?

Tags:

apple

blackberry

brand

brand value

branding

built to last

business column

chrysler

connectivity

facebook

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high speed trading

iconic brand

innovation

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investment advisor

jim collins

kodak

media hacker

nirvana

one hit wonder

real time web

red bull

rim

starbucks

stock market

the beatles

the huffington post

the now economy

tom peters

twitter

youtube

Tim Ferriss Wants You To Learn More, Faster and More Efficiently

Episode #333 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

There are few people that fascinate me as much as Tim Ferriss. He's young (35 years old), has two bestselling books (The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body) and a soon-to-be third one (The 4-Hour Chef). If that weren't enough, he is also an angel investor and advisor for companies like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Evernote, Uber and many others. If you're not impressed by that, Tim also holds a Guinness Book of World Records record in tango dancing and won a Chinese kickboxing championship. Like I said, he's an impressive young man, and that's not even scratching the surface on his bio. Currently, he's trying to prove the book retail business wrong by releasing his newest book, The 4-Hour Chef - The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life, on Amazon's publishing imprint (which many of the major retailers have refused to carry). I'm someone who can't boil an egg or turn on a barbeque, so trust me when I say: this book is not just about cooking. It's really a book about how you can  learn to do anything well (and fast and efficiently). 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 #333.

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #127

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, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

Skyrim mods - A State of Trance . "Some eye candy this week. Skyrim is a pretty popular game, and it's highly modifiable. Some people have been pushing this to its logical consequence: making screens that look like the real world. Today, the rig these images were made on might seem expensive; but computers have a way of getting cheaper quickly. Check out the video of landscapes, too ." (Alistair for Hugh).

Travis Rice Winning Run at Red Bull Supernatural . "Seems like Red Bull is putting on all the cool events the Olympics won't. Their Supernatural is a back-country snowboarding contest. Take one of the best snowboarders in the world, and a really good head-mounted camera. Now see what back-country altitude feels like. Turns out SSX wasn't far off." (Alistair for Mitch).

Exxon warming up to 'secret' U.S. carbon tax plans - Financial Post . "I don't know about you, but it seems to me that the winds of Hurricane Sandy have shifted the political discourse on climate change as well as ravaging the East Coast. This is the first article I have ever seen in which Exxon Mobil (the world's largest oil company) suggests climate legislation. Also  mentioned in the article, alongside climate legislation: The American Enterprise Institute. This is a major major shift, a small ray of hope that the world might come around to dealing with climate change." (Hugh for Alistair).

Stray penises and politicos - The Audacity of Despair . "Thankfully l'affaire Patraeus seems to have quieted down in the media. But for a while there, boy. David Simon (creator of The Wire , and a former newspaperman) lambastes the media, and the public, for their gleeful hypocrisy in tearing down two people who made the choice to share the wrong bed." (Hugh for Mitch).

Prometheus Animatronic Artist's FX reel will haunt your dreams - io9 . "This may get me punched in the gut, but I really liked the movie, Prometheus . Special effects have come so far, that I just figured everything I saw on the screen was - in some way - just another CGI effect. Watching this video reel made my jaw drop. I had no idea how advanced animatronics have become. I, sincerely, thought animatronics was a lost/dying form of special effects in a world where you can create anything with a laptop (see Alistair's dizzying Skyrim links above). Furthermore, you realize how these pieces of animatronics are much more than movie artifacts or special effects... they are truly works of art." (Mitch for Alistair). 

I'll be watching over you - Letters of Note . "'On January 12th of 1997, 41-year-old astronaut Jerry Linenger kissed his pregnant wife and 14-month-old son goodbye, boarded Space Shuttle Atlantis, and headed for Space Station Mir where he joined two Russian cosmonauts. He then remained in Space for a record-breaking 132 days. Below are just three of the dozens of letters he wrote to his young son, John, during his stay.' This link are some of the letters. One word: beautiful. You will cry. You have been warned." (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.

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