Category: Marketing

  • The half-life of brands: Amazon’s algorithmic strategy

    Although what comes next will offend generations of power-mad English teachers, red-pen-wielding copy editors, and Spelling Bee conquistadores, these days most people don’t need to learn how to spell. Spellcheck saves us from having to do work that we don’t care about and that we don’t have time to do anyway. Plus, more and more…

  • The Fall and Rise of the Visual Internet

    I’m pleased to announce that my role with the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg has expanded, and I’m now the Chief Strategy Officer. This column is cross-posted from the Center’s website, and is the first of many regular pieces from me and my colleagues. And now, onto the column…  Bennett and I…

  • Delight and paradox in Jeff Rosenblum’s book ‘Friction’

    I’m delighted to share my first byline with The Drum, which is a review of “Friction” by my friends Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg. Here are the first few paragraphs: Reading most business books is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, just without the funny bits. Such books bludgeon their readers with a single idea…

  • CES 2017 for Brands: a Skeptical Review

    Most years at CES you can spot me leading tours, and most years after the show is over I sit down to ponder what I made of it all, what the pundits got right and what they missed. While in past years I’ve given presentations on these things, this year I wrote it up for…

  • SHORT: Don’t Miss REDEF Original on Truth in Advertising

    From the “too long for a tweet” department: I just finished Adam Wray‘s powerful Fashion REDEFined original article “With Great Power: Seth Matlins on how Advertising can Shift Culture for the Better.” It’s about Seth Matlins‘ efforts to change how advertisements featuring too-skinny and Photoshopped models body shame girls and women (men too, by the way).…

  • Don’t Call Them “Consumers”

    What you call people matters.  It tells them what you really think about them. Here’s an example: years ago my friend Jules shared how her Mom would call for her Dad in a never-changing escalation of urgency and decline of affection: “Sweetheart!” she’d trill, followed by, “Honey?” and then ending with “Bill!!”  The equation worked…

  • Michael Wolff’s Just-Released Book is a Puzzler

    The dust-jacket of Television is the New Television: the Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age describes Wolff as a man with unparalleled access to powerful figures in media and the book as something that will change the reader’s thinking. Moreover, it frames Wolff as an archly bitchy writer with enemies who would…

  • I Want to be my own Big Brother: an App Daydream

    “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” (Gwendolyn Fairfax in Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”) I’m skeptical about how much corporations benefit from the data I generate.  If tracking my every movement worked, then Facebook would not keep trying to sell me the icky…

  • My 2014 in Books

    I read a lot — magazines, two newspapers, email newsletters, and countless social-media-shared links I chase down digital rabbit holes. I’d never know anything, for example, without Jason Hirshhorn’s magnificent daily Media Redefined. But I’m lost without books.  Actual books.  Whether paper or digital, if I’m not reading at least two books then I get…

  • IOS 8 Correction: I was WRONG (but check Location settings anyway & here’s why)

    Sunday morning after updating my iPad to IOS 8, I was horrified to see that just about all my apps were broadcasting my location 24/7/365, and I blamed the update thinking that Apple had toggled the settings from off to on. I wrote a post about it that you can find here, and I asked…