BradBerens.com
Thoughts about where our real and digital worlds collide.

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Portland Startups to work with Target, Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Wieden + Kennedy

    Our industry has relapsed into a high digital startup fever, but this time with a new twist— brands working directly with entrepreneurs in order to find the next hot digital companies at the earliest possible stage and to stay at the sharpest edge of marketing innovation. We’ve seen this elsewhere with the PepsiCo10 in New…

  • Netflix’s Big OOPS– didn’t these guys take Psych 101?

    Topline takeway for this post: Netflix has screwed up, turning unconsidered background choices into front-of-mind considerations. They don’t understand how pleasure and satisfaction work. I’m on vacation and somewhat unplugged, but I was still connected enought to receive a surprising email from Netflix yesterday saying that if I want to retain both unlimited streaming and…

  • Interesting Tidbits for June 21st

    Things worth reading for May 30th through June 21st: Xbox Will Introduce Interactive Ads to Games – NYTimes.com – Neat! Nielsen sees Web grocery growth, plans new service | Reuters – Digital Lifescapes: More Mobile Broadband Subscribers than on Wireline – Onswipe Wants To Make Slate, Forbes And Your Website Feel Like A Native Tablet…

  • New Evernote Trick: Combine & Print Notes

    Post Updated: Feedback from Adam Boettiger showed me that my initial post wasn’t clear.  I’ve now clarified the paragraph with the asterisk, below, to make my point pointier. I’m becoming more and more fond of Evernote, but I also like having a printed-out copy of my multitudinous To Do lists so that I have an…

  • The Death of Media Channel Loyalty: What the New Pew Data Shows Us

    Over the holiday weekend the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released data showing that 24% of internet users have placed calls online, up from 8% of internet users in 2007. The precise wording of the question was: “Please tell me if you ever use the internet to make a phone call online, using…

  • From the Bizarre Question Department: Voice Page Turning for iPad?

    I love reading while on the elliptical machine at the gym, and it’s a handy time to plough through reports and PDFs using the iPad (gen 1).  However, if I’m tracking my heartrate I have to take my hands OFF the paddles in order to go to the next page on the document, book, PDF…

  • Sat AM Quick Updates on Urban Outfitters

    Quick updates: Urban Outfitters finally spoke out both via Twitter and on the blog to which they link: Hey everyone, please read our statement regarding the I Heart Destination Necklace. http://urbout.co/kqdecK Why the company waited until the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend is beyond me. Note also that my friend Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb found…

  • Urban Outfitters’ Massive Social Media FAIL

    Please check out my latest post over at iMedia Connection about how Urban Outfitters is following in the dubious footsteps of Domino’s Pizza back in 2009 in their failure to address a massively negative social media campaign. Domino’s learned this lesson the hard way — and is now doing social media right — so let’s…

  • Interesting Tidbits for May 26th

    Things worth reading for May 19th through May 26th: Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: The Pull of Narrative – In Search of Persistent Context – Interesting piece by John Hagel on the difference between story and narrative. When Ideas Have Sex | WhatTheFuture.tv – Really nice piece of gem cutting from WhatTheFutureTV. 20+ Awesome &…

  • Simile Search: Please Help This Writer!

    I’m looking for evocative comparisons that talk about how one thing so automatically comes with another that we take the pairing for granted. Like, “the juice comes with the meat” (except it often doesn’t) or “the warmth that comes with the fire” but preferably less flabby.  Something taste or smell related (for its Proustian oomph)…