Year: 2012
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Sometimes It’s Good To Be Third
When I first started working in digital back in the time of the dot-com bubble, many people obsessed about so-called 'first mover advantage'. Within the context provided by the digital goldrush of the time, the thinking went that if you arrived first with your innovation, you could plant your flag and rapidly attain a lead…
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Post Of The Month – October 2012 – The Winner
A good showing for George Prest's excellent post but something of a one horse race in this month's vote. Well done to Jennifer Hohn, whose Denver Egotist post secured a runaway number of votes and it is of-course entered into the Hall Of Fame. Thanks everyone for taking part.
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Post Of The Month – October 2012 – The Vote
Thanks everyone for the nominations. Our vote this month is between: Time To Confront The Mental Illness Taboo In Our Industry by Anon Advertising Is Dying, Long Live Design from George Prest Lucky by Andrew Hovell Stop Making Sense from James Caig Communications Planning in 2013 from me Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems by Jason Pontin How To…
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Post Of The Month – October 2012 – Nominations
Nominations for Post Of The Month for October are now open, so if there's a great post you've read that was posted in the month of October please nominate it by dropping the link into the comments below. As usual, I have a few of my own favourites (along with a nomination I've already received) as a…
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Fixing Stuff
John Naughton had a smart post about planned obsolesence, which is far from a new idea, but is something that Apple seem to be very good at (reducing the support, compatability for older but perfectly workable versions of products in order to encourage people to buy the latest one). In response to my tweeting of the…
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The Evolution Of Digital Display
I've been following John Battelle's thinking on the future of digital display. Earlier this year he wrote a long post on the so-called 'death of display', the rumours of which have been greatly exaggerated. Yet whilst display on the web continues to grow (for example, at more than 10% y-o-y in the UK according to the…
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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…