Posted: December 30th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
As bad as things seem these days, remember a few (highly debatable, but, why would you) points:
We have more money than we used to.
We work less than we used to.
We pay lower taxes than we used to.
Yet, our stress keeps rising.
2011 is going to be a great year. Get a bicycle, put a beer cage on it, you’ll be ok.
Posted: December 28th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
This is interesting from the new Consumer Confidence report:
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index®, which had improved in November, decreased slightly in December. The Index now stands at 52.5 (1985=100), down from 54.3 in November. The Present Situation Index declined to 23.5 from 25.4. The Expectations Index decreased to 71.9 from 73.6 last month.
Yet, Retail Sales were way up:
Sales at stores open at least a year for the week ended Dec. 25 rose 4.8% vs. a year ago, says the ICSC-Goldman Sachs chain-store sales index. It was the best such gain since late April.
So, what does no confidence plus lots of spending mean? Sure, lots of things were probably sold at a substantial discount, but methinks maybe one of these reports is just plain wrong.
Posted: December 28th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
Chris Patten has a really good read over on Project Syndicate about religious fundamentalism. This line particularly struck me:
The strident and damaging dogmatism of fundamentalists of every stripe has a common feature: a truculent sense of grievance, rooted in fear and resentment of modernity.
It’s interesting to think of fundamentalism as simply risk aversion to the extreme: an unwillingness to accept change and harken back to days of old. It seems entirely counter-intuitive to me. I would have expected fundamentalism to capitalize on individuals with risk-seeking behavioral traits. Fundamentalist dogma, and their leaders, would seem advantaged by exploiting these type of people rather than the overly risk-averse ones.
Posted: August 16th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
There is a fundamental difference between media that is looking for an idea and an idea that is looking for media. To be sure, all ideas need media. Lots of that media is bought but some might be earned too. This leaves digital agencies with two strategic moves: Build ideas for media, or create ideas that command media.
The former is safe, predictable, and well-aligned with the status quo. It’s collaborative and keeps our agency partners happy and comfortably employed.
The latter is unknown, scary, hard to sell, and fraught. But, it’s often the right choice for the channels too.
With few exceptions, this isn’t an either/or decision. But the simple act of pursuing the latter classification of ideas is a giant step for moving digital agencies forward.
Posted: July 19th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
Dawn Lepore, CEO of Drugstore.com, seems like a lovely lady with
a level-headed view of business. The afore-linked interview in the NYT has lots of good advice in it and many excellent tactics for developing as a leader.
She made an interesting point that I did take slight issue with however. When describing a key lesson she learned about becoming a boss:
Every time you take on a new role, building credibility is incredibly important. I don’t think you do it by being smarter than everybody else or knowing more necessarily than everybody else. I think you do it by rolling up your sleeves, by showing commitment, by proving that you’re willing to learn, by asking for help.
Credibility is obviously critical to building trust which is critical to effective leadership. And I’m sure that Ms. Lepore isn’t suggesting that every situation requires literally performing tasks side-by-side with others, a task rarely possible in a sophisticated workforce.
Still, I worry that the language implying a desire to “prove” something is dangerous territory. There are lots of leadership styles each with different applicability for different situations. Even so, most effective leaders have an adept regulation of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills (Goleman 2004). I worry that the need to prove something, to illustrate beyond reproach, comes from an emotional territory of anxiety or something equally outward-focused. The nature of decisions made in those sorts of emotional territories are often not successful in the long-term.
Posted: July 19th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
There is a fantastic
piece in the NYT today about the value of privacy.
The study:
The research paper describes a field experiment at a Pittsburgh shopping mall. People were given choices between two kinds of gift cards: a $10 gift card that was anonymous, and a $12 gift card that would include personal information (and transactions made with the card would be linked to the holder’s name).
One group of people was presented first with the $10 card, and told they could trade it for a $12 card. About half switched to the $12 card, and half refused the offer.
Another group was first given the $12 card, and asked if they wanted to switch to the $10 card, trading cash for greater privacy. Less that 10 percent switched.
The conclusion:
“When you have privacy, you value it more,” said Mr. Acquisti. “But when the starting point is that we feel we don’t have privacy, we value privacy far less.”
That’s a really interesting insight and directional true. However, I think the insight expects isolated circumstance to hold true. It’s possible that our valuation of privacy also depends on the level of privacy enjoyed by our neighbors as well as the costs of other available outlets for expression. Taken together, our value of privacy is the greatest when we’re sharing no more than our neighbors and the next available outlet requires too great a level of public-y.
I think that helps to explain why the value of privacy on Facebook is quite low: Neighbors share more than us and there is no where else to retreat to.
Posted: July 14th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
There is a fantastic piece on
Pew regarding whether or not Millennials will grow out of sharing on the internet by 2020. There are many expert opinions cited with almost 70% of those expecting Millennials to stay ambient broadcasters of personal information.
Andreas Kluth of The Economist:
“Starting before we left the savannahs, the young members of Homo sapiens have over-shared in order to make themselves socially interesting to the group and to potential mates, only to discover the enormous risks involved when shared information reaches malicious individuals or a group at large, at which point they have re-learned the discretion of their parents.”
I would expect that evolutionary psychologists would largely support this view. It is generally excepted that intelligence evolves to solve novel problems and that our brains have difficulty in adapting to things not present in the ancestral environment. The question is whether new technology represents, or creates, novel problems.
I don’t think it does. The mechanisms are different offering much greater speed and scale. But the personal consequences are likely the same. The evolutionary implication is that humans will choose to share just the right amount, commensurate with their experiences, just as their ancestors did. It is a characteristic wired into the human psyche.
Posted: July 7th, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
Bridges are interesting. A bridge is one of the greatest single function devices in culture. Its single purpose is to connect one thing with another thing.
Metaphorically, lots of people talk about communications as bridges between a brand and a consumer. While I think that’s true, I equally think it’s true that gulfs are just as valuable.
A gulf creates a gap between what you are and where you don’t want to be. This can be the wrong target audience, the wrong values, etc. The gap can be pricing, ways to distribute, or features you create.
A gulf can be just as valuable as a bridge.
But that’s a bit of esoteric wankery interesting only to people who love to muse; usually gulfs are not very good as many of us want to be everywhere. Usually it’s a bridge you are trying to create. There is there, there is here, how do you get from here to there.
It’s quite easy to rationalize a rickety old bridge into something of substance, safe enough to cross comfortably. But taken from another’s perspective, it’s just an irresponsible undertaking.
In the oft absence of adequate benchmarks, testing, or conclusive evidence, decisions about bridges are really best guesses, preparing yourself for mindful post-rationalization. Not much more, really.
Posted: March 21st, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
Interesting piece on Biz Week this week about apps being built for the iPad.
It seems as though games are making up almost half of the apps on the iPad. This is a pretty cool development as it seems like iPhone-esque games on a larger screen will be very cool. It will be interesting to watch how the iPad competes against other console machines. Can it put pressure on the Wii and the PS3? Maybe, maybe not. But if nothing else, it opens up a whole new world of games that will be played in the living room, with the family presumably. The barriers to entry in the App Store, high as they may be, don’t match the barriers to get on console. It will be interesting to watch if Sony and Microsoft open up their ecosystems to developers in the future as a way to parry the competitive pressure that’s going to come from Apple.
Posted: March 21st, 2010 | Author: matt | Filed under: Uncategorized | View Comments
Interesting piece on Ad Age called “
Our Biggest Brands Can No Longer By Managed By Nerds“.
As one of the nerds (I think?), I’ve got to respectfully disagree. I think the point the author is trying to make is flawed because the question is wrong. It’s not a matter of Nerds vs. Soothsayers. There is 100% room for both and the proportion of contribution from each is probably roughly held in an appropriate equilibrium.
But regardless, a major point that the author is missing is globalization. Globalization changes everything and makes the Golden Era of Advertising nearly impossible to repeat. Globalization results in infinite supply possibilities. The two generic strategies of competing on price or competing on differentiation are nearly reduced to a single strategic objective: Capitalize something fast, take short-term profits, survive or get out. Globalization results in infinite choices and infinite competition. That’s why the math nerds appeared: Windows close faster and louder than every before.
Soothsayers largely created solutions to unmet needs. But, these were large needs. And culture was experiencing prosperity growths unlike few other times in industrialized hist Unmet needs today are highly specific and often short-lived. That takes science. Art too, to be sure, but plenty of science.