...I heard myself tell the marketers in Singapore, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once.Pico Iyer
As marketers, we’re always trying to fit one more brand message in or send one more tweet. Wouldn’t it be great if you did the opposite in 2012? What if you really valued your customers outside of their wallet and down to their soul?
If you make just one resolution in 2012 it should be to take some time to slow down, think and pay attention to the moment. Refreshing article by Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Quiet”.
One thing I know for certain: A leader must emerge from Happy Valley to tie our community together again, and it won’t come from our parents’ generation.
They have failed us, over and over and over again.
I speak not specifically of our parents — I have two loving ones — but of the public leaders our parents’ generation has produced. With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”
They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.
Growing up (and even today), I always deferred to my elders for advice leadership. I’ve been taught that you have to put in lots of hard work and an even greater amount of time to be recognized as a leader. This call to arms piece by Thomas Day of the Washington Post just threw my prior notions out window.
This isn’t about Penn State. This is a rallying cry.
If you read one thing to prepare yourself for upcoming trends in digital media and technolgoy, make sure it’s Razorfish’s annual Outlook Report.
Late last year I predicted that content would be the new social and that smart companies would begin focusing on compelling content that is non-salesy,original and valuable. Watch the video to see how Coca-Cola is embracing this shift and moving from creative excellence to content excellence.
On a side note, Confab, The Content Strategy Conference, has opened registration for their 2012 conference.
It’s part of the American way to get a lot of self-worth from your job. Meanwhile, one of the reasons there aren’t enough of those jobs out there is that America no longer makes enough stuff. Young people feel that void, intrinsically. Making stuff is what got us smiles from our parents and top billing in refrigerator art galleries. And since we are, as a generation, more addicted to positive reinforcement than any before us, and because we have learned firsthand the futility of finding that affirmation through our employers, we have returned to our stuff-making ways, via pursuits easily mocked: the modern-day pickling, the obsessive Etsying, the flower-arranging classes, the knitting resurgence, the Kickstarter funds for art projects of no potential commercial value. The millions upon millions who upload footage of themselves singing or dancing or talking about the news to YouTube. Of course, funny videos and adorable hand-sewn ikat pillows aren’t the only kind of stuff that people are making as a way of coping with harsh economic realities—meth, for instance, comes to mind. But putting aside those darker enterprises, this is a golden age for creativity and knowledge for their own sakes. Our pastimes have become our expressions of mastery, a substitute for the all-consuming career.Noreen Malone
Great article in New York Magazine about the Millennial generation and their rather self-absorbed, pampered and resilient ways. It’s worth your time to read the complete piece.
I had lunch the other day with the ever-brilliant Future Josh. I had some ideas that I wanted to run past him. When we get together though, the conversation invariably keeps coming back to Apple. We talked about my ideas, but mostly we floundered around all things iPhone 4S, Steve Jobs’ legacy and more.
Then he said something utterly futuristic about Siri, Apple’s voice-command software, and where he envisioned it going. Right now, on the surface it resembles a virtual personal assistant and note taker, but as we talked he unfolded how it could be more than just a helper application. Josh proceeded to eulogize that Siri was Apples decoy into Google’s search market. He believes that Apple is already making plans to fast forward what we consider basic search today. So instead of simple text searches, Apple could be positioning itself as a natural language search engine to compliment its array of products and essentially squeezing Google and Microsoft out of the picture. This idea is beyond the browser and is already made up of a large (and willing) audience.
As voice recognition and technology evolves, searches and commands could be seamless. Can you imagine a search engine that could actually sense your tone and factor such into its results? A more sophisticated example might be the day where you can ask Siri the temperature inside your house and then instruct it to increase or decrease the thermostat – all without picking up your device.
Apple won’t depend on advertising revenue to pull this off either since their model is different than Google’s. Apple creates services for its users to sell more products while Google on the other hand creates services to sell more ads. Bingo bango!
Hi, my name is Bob Hazlett. I'm a digital marketer and thumb-wrestling enthusiast living in Memphis, TN. Most of the time I post about online marketing, internet strategy and advertising, but sometimes I get weird. Bear with me.
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