Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 8

Can You Get Tired From…Thinking?

Have you ever really put your brain to task and felt tired afterwards? I know that I have. In fact, there are times when I am writing so hard, or working on solving a problem, or developing a marketing campaign, or analyzing some trends, that I’ll literally shut down, put my head on the desk, and take a quick snooze.

Perhaps, at these times, I’m suffering from “Decision Fatigue.”

The New York Times wrote about this a couple of years ago. So what is decision fatigue? According to the article:

Dec...

Where We Really Need More Smart People

I often hear how we need more smart people creating more things to help humanity. Like Elon Musk and his hyperloop. These are the geniuses of our age, right? But I contend that we also need more really smart people looking at the “why”. What does it mean that the Age of Context is upon us? And not economically, but culturally? Socially? Spiritually? This oversight, really, of engendering more smart people to “big picture thinking” can be partly blamed on education. We aren’t focusing on an un...

The Shift to Digital Marketing Isn’t Just About Technology

We often want to think that the evolution of marketing is all about technology, that technology can get us to digital intimacy with our audience. But it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. In fact, it doesn’t get selected and installed by itself either. It’s lead by people. According to the Harvard Business Review, that’s the “digital CMO.”

What do these “digital CMOs” do differently? They experiment aggressively. They hire smart digital natives — and empower them. They partner with great agencies. T...

An Inherent Problem

As this article describes (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cloud-security-20110617,0,5779844.story), security of cloud-based services is in question. Recent attacks against Citigroup and Sony only illustrate an inherent problem: the bigger a system gets, the more vulnerable it gets. I wonder if there’s a moore’s law or metcalf principle here.

Now cloud services could adopt some sort of proprietary protocol (i.e., like Adobe did with RTMP and RTMPE) but that just gives another point of re...

The 9 “C”s of Awesome Storytelling

You want to tell stories to your digital audiences. No, really, I’m telling you that you want to. In fact, you have to. There’s just too much noise out there to continue broadcasting your message. You’ve got to get intimate with your audience. Digital enables you to form powerful one-on-one relationships with your audience, and the best way to do that is through stories.

I recently gave a presentation at the Content2Conversion conference in New York in April that explored not only why this is...

Quote: On Hugh Heffner Marrying a 25-year Old

I didn’t get why Hugh Hefner marrying a 25 yr old was weird until Dave said it’s like docking an iPhone to an Apple II.

–Paul Alfieri, via Twitter

Originally posted 2011-07-12 09:18:22.

The Consumerization of Field of Vision Computing (FoVC)

When I first wrote about Google Glass (and how it portends to radically alter the fundamental relationship we have with computing) I wasn’t thinking broadly enough. Sure, there have been “heads-up” displays for quite some time. The military has been experimenting with them for probably over a decade. And movies like IronMan showed what a world would look like augmented by data. In fact, there is a whole industry of “augmented reality” applications and software.

And as I thought more broadly ab...

When Modern Ingenuity Meets an Age Old Fairy Tale

Okay, what happens when a geek dad, lots of PVC, and a dream to make the Tooth Fairy’s life (*cough cough*) easier? You get a pneumatic tooth delivery system right to the Tooth Fairy’s secret tree house. I love what this guy did, not because it makes him any better than any other dad but because it’s just a demonstration of what some simple materials and a little ingenuity can do.

Photo: The Beauty of the Universe Around Us

Sometimes we forget out insignificantly small we are in the grand scheme of the universe. And although there are beautiful things in the world around us, some of them even sublime, there is an even grander stage out there of truly magnificent creations such as Discovery’s posting of a recent spiral galaxy:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/01/the-dusty-depths-of-a-spectacular-spiral-galaxy/

Really puts you in perspective.

Originally posted 2011-08-01 15:07:23.

Transmedia Breakdown: Chipotle’s “The Scarecrow”

Although it’s not surprising when media properties like Game of Thrones showcase transmedia efforts, it’s another thing when retail brands do it. Chipotle recently launched their “The Scarecrow” campaign that included both a short video as well as a complimentary mobile game.

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So what has Chipotle done from a transmedia standpoint?

They created a world. This is the first and most important element in any transmedia property. The word of “The Scarecrow” with Crow Foods is a unique place. As you w...