Month: October 2012
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Learning by Teaching
There's a bit in Dave Trott's Creative Mischief where he talks about the practice he's adopted over the years of giving classes of students briefs to work on and having them come into the agency in the evenings to present their work to the creative department. As well as being wonderfully useful to the students he…
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Being Right Means Knowing When You’re Not Right Anymore
I've long been a fan of Jeff Bezos's approach toward being stubborn on vision whilst flexible on details, and playing the long game. Amazon are one of the few companies that seem to really live and breathe that. So it was interesting to read over on the 37Signals blog the advice he gave to them…
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NewsWeek and the Death of Print
"Exiting print is an extremely difficult moment for all of us who love the romance of print and the unique weekly camaraderie of those hectic hours before the close on Friday night. But as we head for the 80th anniversary of Newsweek next year we must sustain the journalism that gives the magazine its purpose—and…
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Is the Internet a Giant Echo Chamber?
Only if you want it to be it seems. Many believe that the web, and particularly social media, makes it uniquely easy to quarantine yourself amongst groups of likeminded people, surround yourself with positive feedback loops and avoid opposing or divergent viewpoints, in a giant echo chamber effect. Eric Barker quotes from Steven Johnson's new…
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Doing Things Your Own Way
I somehow missed this, but it's a wonderful story. When he was fifteen, John Gurdon's Science teacher wrote on his school report: "…he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way. I believe he has ideas about becoming a Scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous…" Last…
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Work On Stuff That Matters
"Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations" Tim O'Reilly This is a great short interview with Tim O'Reilly. Well worth eleven minutes of your time. I've long…
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Communications Planning in 2013
The good people at WARC are keen to encourage people to start thinking early about planning themes for 2013 and so have asked me (along with a few other ad bloggers around the world) to put down a few thoughts on the subject. Tough to do justice to such a broad and forever shifting entity…
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Are We Living in a Low Innovation Age?
I gave a keynote last week at the rather wonderful Google Squared programme on the subject of technological disruption and chose to dedicate my latest column in New Media Age to the subject: “With so much written about digital and technological disruption we take it as read that we are living in an age of…
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Post Of The Month – September 2012 – The Winner
Noah Brier's excellent talk on the interest graph for brands took an early lead in this month's vote for Post Of The Month, and despite a good showing for Tim Malbon's post on lessons learned at MadeByMany, it proved an unassailable one. So well done Noah – you get the props of your blogging peers…
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Post Of The Month – September 2012 – The Vote
Thanks all for the nominations. Our shortlist this month is between: The Interest Graph for Brands from Noah Brier We Are Five Years Old. Here’s What We Learnt by Tim Malbon Graft and Craft: What Makes a Planner from Martin Weigel While I was Sleeping – A Tale of Modern ‘Manufacturing’ by Chris Thorpe Startup = Growth from…