Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
A few years back, the idea of having all your music in your pocket was revolutionary. This was the game-changing thought behind the iPod, of course. But at the time, it was not a zero sum game. You'd also have everything on CD, and possibly vinyl. Maybe tape. For a few weeks in 1995, you… Continue reading A subscriber’s life
I've been thinking about what 2009 holds in store. At this point, I should of course wheel out all of the great reasons one should not make predictions (especially about the future). Or perhaps I should recall the fictional Magrethea in HitchHikers' Guide to the Galaxy, a planet which decided to hibernate through Galactic recession… Continue reading 20 days for 20 years
So Ted McConnell, P&G's general manager for interactive marketing and innovation has just told a conference audience that he didn't want to buy any more ads on Facebook (thanks to Dan W for the link). He succinctly summarises his thinking: "What in heaven's name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking… Continue reading Soap operas
It's a funny industry, the web industry. What started out for many of us as a job creating digital expressions has fast become the job of watching the world change how it communicates with itself and then coming up with ways in which we, or our clients, might fit into it all. Buoyed up by… Continue reading Abstraction and absurdity
An interesting comment on the last post came back to a topic which I seem to be asked, or ask myself, more and more often. If social media increasingly leads to closed groups, and tomorrow's media consumers are increasingly avoiding the mass media, what will happen to mass-participation media events, and don't we as a culture lose… Continue reading No one to hear you scream
I wrote a piece a few weeks ago called 'the structure of advertising revolutions'. That was all about the way in which we should expect the advertising world to deal with changing paradigms, based on how the scientific community does. It was inspired by Clay Shirky's video, blog and book, pointing out that the new… Continue reading The implication of advertising revolutions
Remember the first website you built. I remember doing them at university a bit but they were really awful. And then I did one for the company I worked in. And then, rather suddenly I was running a company that made them. And in the start people would argue about everything. Should there be persistent… Continue reading Ins and outs – a redefinition of digital marketing
Amid the phenomenal suprise of the new... 3G iphone, Jobs also slipped some other news into the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. It seems Apple is re-releasing an old favourite from Microsoft: Yes, it's the sick older sister of Windows '98. The ill-fated 'millennium edition' of Windows which barely made it into the noughties. This new… Continue reading Is it just me?
Thomas Kuhn wrote and incredible book called 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'. It's probably the one book I studied at university which I ever think of now. In the book, Kuhn investigates what really happens in science; how the step changes in understanding really get incorporated into the overall body of knowledge. The view you… Continue reading The structure of advertising revolutions
Amelia's amusing analysis of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 came coincidentally on the same day that I was at a conference thingy and had been having exactly that discussion: what was 2.0 and how much of it was pure marketing sentiment. I couldn't disagree more. I think 2.0 is a radical shift in society. It… Continue reading Third time lucky
Leading product 