Archive For December, 2008
I walked up Telegraph in Berkeley, CA past the empty Cody’s bookstore last weekend. I’ve seen it empty before, but it really struck me this time, maybe because I wasn’t in such a rush. Cody’s. Empty. Gone. I’m one of those people who believes that books saved my life by transporting me to other fictional [...]
Sure, TV retains its advertising dollars in this recession, but what’s really going on? The piece tells us that while the money continues to come in ratings are down and so the broadcast networks, who guaranteed a certain number of viewers at the beginning of the season for upfront money, are having to give advertisers [...]
Tim O’Reilly wrote a post today about Wendell Berry’s “In Distrust of Movements,” about the need to think holistically about our problems, and it inspired a comment, which I thought I’d share here, too. I started it with a line from Tim’s post. – “. . . that just maybe, we are getting the first [...]
This jumped out at me from John Battelle’s end-of-the-year predictions for 2008: Google will continue to struggle with its display advertising business, at least as it is traditionally understood, in part due to a culture conflict between its engineering-based roots and the thousands of media-saavy sales and marketing folks the company has hired in the [...]
Did you realize that when you use Google Maps to get driving directions that you can click on any step in those directions and get a visual (top pane) with your point on the map (bottom pane)? “Walking through” your route in this manner makes the actual trip much easier because, in a sense, you’ve [...]
John Hagel has talked about a type of strategy that embraces a network of networks to bring about something entirely new. He calls this a “shaping strategy.” Link. This type of strategy, he says, uses positive incentives to “mobilize and focus thousands of participants in shaping specific markets or industries.” Salesforce.com has reshaped and revitalized [...]
Chas points to an Ad Age estimate that GM, Chrysler, and Ford spend $7.3B on marketing and the fact that the “car czar” will have a major role in how it gets spent. Car Czar Will Control $7.3 Billion Ad Budget What this czar should really be doing, though, is cut that spend by half [...]
Ad agencies like Publicis are working hard to redefine advertising and marketing, but one can bet that innovation that really changes the game is going to pop-up at some smart, little company in an unexpected way. Maybe that’s what Tim Hanlon at VivaKi, the investment unit of Publicis, is thinking, too, when he says: I [...]
Crisis focuses the mind. And for groups and communities it focuses the conversation. Here’s some exceptional conversations that I’ve dipped into this week: change.gov: Your Seat At the Table Umair Haque: How To Be a 21st Century Capitalist Charlie Rose: Nassim Taleb Joel Makover: Sustainable Business circa 2018 ChasNote: Verizon Sparks Positive Conversation With Ads [...]