Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 405

Four Current Trends That Will Change Marketing Forever

The one component that holds most businesses back from getting involved in new media (besides muttering under their breath the wrongly held belief that, "This is the way it has always been done") is the concern about going after what is "real" versus what may well be just a fad.

While many companies have capitalized on short-term trends (look no further than the fashion industry), the more traditional businesses would rather be the slow followers. It's almost laughable that there are still s...

What Happens When Malcolm Gladwell And Clay Shirky Can't Agree On Social Media?

Two of the smartest thinkers when it comes to media and business are Malcolm Gladwell and Clay Shirky.

Gladwell is the best-selling business book author of, Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What The Dog Saw and Shirky penned the "must-own" book, Here Comes Everybody along with being both a world-class media academic, speaker and pundit. Both have some of the most progressive business perspectives that have been put forth in the past decade, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that...

Maybe We Need To Ease Up On The Advertising

When you play in the Social Media sphere, a lot of people will refer to advertising as "interruption-based marketing". No one likes to be interrupted.

It has been a huge week for the online advertising community. Everybody is scrambling to figure out the ramifications of what Apple's soon to launch iAd platform will mean to the industry. As if it's not enough of a struggle to get your interactive development team primed to produce content and new digital environments for the iPad, this new i...

How To Be Relevant

It's important for a brand to understand their new role as a Publisher. It's important for a brand to understand that nothing happens unless they are interesting. It's also important for a brand to understand that none of that matters unless they are relevant.

A lot of people confuse "being relevant" with simply following a "trend" or "fad." You can quibble over the semantics of that last sentence, but think about American Idol and what Simon Cowell constantly attempts to reinforce to the...

Figuring Out The Hardest Part Of Marketing With Nilofer Merchant

Episode #198 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

When you ask people working in Digital Marketing how they develop their strategy, most of them look at you the same way a dog does when you talk to it (sideways). Nilofer Merchant lives in the world of helping companies (Adobe, Apple, Nokia, etc...) figure out not just their business strategy, but how to create and engage in a culture of strategy that is ongoing and iterative. I...

What Happens When Malcolm Gladwell And Clay Shirk Can't Agree On Social Media?

Two of the smartest thinkers when it comes to media and business are Malcolm Gladwell and Clay Shirky.

Gladwell is the best-selling business book author of, Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What The Dog Saw and Shirky penned the "must-own" book, Here Comes Everybody along with being both a world-class media academic, speaker and pundit. Both have some of the most progressive business perspectives that have been put forth in the past decade, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that...

The End Of Online Advertising Standards

Do online advertising standards work? Is there a real point to them?

The online and interactive advertising industry will have you believe that this is the only way to get both advertisers and publishers on the same page (so to speak) when it comes to delivering the ultimate user experience, but the truth of the matter is that having standards for banner ads (and even rich media ads) is not even beginning to scratch the surface of what's needed if we really feel we need standards around...

All You Need Is Love (And Then Comes The Business)

Art first. Business second.

If you get the chance, be sure to watch the documentary, All Together Now. The feature-length documentary chronicles the making of The Beatles' Love show by Cirque du Soleil. It's a staggering work of creativity, and we're not talking about the majesty that is the everyday performance, but rather how this very unique partnership of the two living members of The Beatles (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) with the wives and family members of the two members who are ...

Moving Marketing From Your Eyes To Your Hands

I have a personal gripe with anyone who questions what Social Media can do for their business.

We toss around the words "Social Media" as if it's like saying, "I need a 30-second spot." It's a mistake. We keep on making it, and things have to start changing soon before it becomes a hollow term (or worse, a fad). Unlike other media channels, Social Media is many different types of content (text, images, audio and video) with many different types of platforms and channels on which the content ...

Touch It

This is not another Blog post about Apple 's launch of the iPad.

There's something a little deeper happening here, and it's not about whether or not the iPad (or any other pending touch tablet) is a success or not (but let's be honest, 300,000 iPads out the door in one day is still pretty impressive, especially when you consider that Apple sold more iPads on its first day than when it launched the iPhone). There's a-change that is happening (or has happened).

Most of the hardware we use to...