Gordon Hotchkiss

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• Gordon attended OMMA Global at Advertising Week, September 27, 2010
  
  

Articles by Gordon All articles by Gordon

• I, Robot.... in Media Insider on 09/19/2017
  

  In the year 1942, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Rules of Robotics in his collection of short stories, "I, Robot." Asimov set the rules coming from the Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D. What was once an unimaginably distant time in the future is now knocking with increasing intensity on the door of the present. And Elon Musk, for one, is worried, noting, "AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization" Musk believes, Rules of Robotics or no, we won't be able to control this genie once it gets out of its bottle.

• Email Keeps Us Hanging On in Media Insider on 09/12/2017
  

  Adobe just released its Consumer Email Survey Report. And one line from it immediately jumped out at me: "We've seen a 28 percent decrease in consumers checking email messages from bed in the morning (though 26 percent still do it)." Good for you, you 28% who have a life. I, unfortunately, fall into the pathetic 26%.

• Addicted To Tech in Media Insider on 09/05/2017
  

  A few columns ago, I mentioned one of the aspects troubling me about technology: the shallowness of social media. I had mentioned at the time that there were other aspects that were equally troubling. Here's one: Technology is addictive, and it's addictive by design.

• To Buy Or Not To Buy - The Touchy Subject Of Mobile ECommerce in Media Insider on 08/29/2017
  

  A recent report from Akamai indicates that users have little patience when it comes to making purchases on a mobile device. Here are just a few of the stats.

• The Assisted Reality Of The New Marketer in Media Insider on 08/22/2017
  

  Last week, MediaPost's Laurie Sullivan warned us that the future of analytical number crunchers is not particularly rosy in the world of marketing. With cognitive technologies like IBM's Watson coming on strong in more and more places, analytic skills are not that hot a commodity anymore. Ironically, when it comes to marketing, the majority of companies have not planned to incorporate cognitive technologies in the near future. According to a report from IBM and Oxford Economics, only 24% of organizations have a plan to incorporate CT in their own operations.

• Is Google Slipping, Or Is It Just Our Imagination? in Media Insider on 08/15/2017
  

  Google is almost 20 years old. The domain Google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. Given that 20 years is an eternity in internet years, it's actually amazing that it's stood up as well as it has for the past two decades. Whether Google's naysayers care to admit it or not, that's due to Google's almost religious devotion to the quality of its search results. That devotion extends to advertising. Google has always paid a lot of attention to the balance between user experience and monetization. But it's not the presence of ads that has led to this perceived decline of quality. It's a change in our expectations of what a search experience should be.

• GE: A Different Company For A Different World in Media Insider on 08/08/2017
  

  One week ago today, John Flannery took over as the new CEO of General Electric. He's only the third person in the past 36 years to have held the role. GE has been around for a long time. It actually predates the Dow Jones Index by four years (having been founded in 1892) and is the only one of the 12 original companies listed that still exists. It -- perhaps more than any other company -- serves as a case study for the evolution of the multinational mega corporation. But GE is in trouble. Share prices are down. It's struggling to retain its considerable grip on the industries in which it competes. Flannery has his hands full.

• Is Busy the New Alpha? in Media Insider on 08/01/2017
  

  Imagine you've just been introduced into a new social situation. Your brain immediately starts creating a social hierarchy. That's what we do. We try to identify the power players. The process by which we do this is interesting. The first thing we do is look for obvious cues. In a new job, that would be titles and positions. It's interesting that the cues we use to assign standings are context-dependent. They can also change over time. What's more, they can vary from person to person or generation to generation. In other words, like most things, our understanding of social hierarchy is in the midst of disruption.

• Curmudgeon, Chicken Little Or Cognoscenti?  in Media Insider on 07/25/2017
  

  My previous column about the potential shallowness encouraged by social media drew a few comments that indicated I was just being a grumpy old man.The comments seemed to telling me, "Relax. You just don't understand because you're too old. Everything will be great." And, if that's true, I'd be okay with that. I'm more than willing to be proven a doddering old fool if it means technology is ushering us into a new era of human greatness. But what if this time is different? Maybe civilization as we know it will be over. The important part of this is "as we know it."

• Live From Inside Gale Of Creative Destruction in Media Insider on 07/18/2017
  

  Talk about cognitive dissonance. First, Mediapost's Jack Loechner writes about a Forrester Report, "The End of Advertising as We Know It," which was published earlier this year. Seeing as last week I started to ring the death knell for advertising agencies, I though I should check the report out. But i encountered some problems.

Comments by Gordon All comments by Gordon

• Too Many Fish In The Sea: The Search For Brand Love by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 02/21/2017)
  

  Thanks Esther. Ordered and in my Kindle "to read" queue. Stay tuned!

• The Vanishing Value Of The Truth by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 01/24/2017)
  

  I should have let Clint write the column..as he has much more expertise in Alternate Facts than I do. Your link is taken from an angle to show a full crowd. A much more objective analysis is here:http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/24/fact-check-inauguration-crowd-size/96984496/. But at the end of the day..I'm probably not going to change what you believe based on verifiable facts..and that was the whole point of the column.

• When Evolution (And Democracy) Get It Wrong by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 11/01/2016)
  

  Paula and John - very interesting thread you've started. I think I'll follow up on this in next week's column.

• The Rise Of The Audience Marketplace by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 08/30/2016)
  

  Thanks all for your comments. I actually just submitted tomorrow's column before the recent round of comments. There's a lot of potential follow up here..especially Esther and Doc's contributions. I'll be ruminating further on this.

• Media Buying Just Tip Of Advertising's Disruptive Iceberg by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 08/09/2016)
  

  Thanks Ed and Maarten...great points. Regarding the "Hub" concept, I probably didn't add enough of my own thoughts on this topic, as it wasn't the main point of my column. Rather than a hub, I would place my bets on an aggregated media marketplace that is more democratized than our current models. I think audience identification and customization based on multiple (and smarter) segmentation criteria will move media buying to "audience" acquisition. These thoughts are admittedly off the top of my head. Perhaps I'll fully bake them in a future column. Regarding Maarten's comments on filtering - we essentially agree. I meant "objectivity" and "reliability" in terms of what the consumer perceives those things to be. There are all kinds of biases and personal preferences still in place, but I do contend that we are looking for information sources that we perceive as objective and reliable.

• Trump's Bump: The Scary Appeal Of The Authoritarian Father by Barbara Lippert (Mad Blog on 07/28/2016)
  

  Barbara..in reading this, I was reminded of something I had read in the past. It took me a bit to dig it up..but found it: "From the standpoint of social development, the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it." Another quote, "(the goal is) producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. At first the child has to submit to the structure of the authoritarian miniature state, the family; this makes it capable of later subordination to the general authoritarian system." It was from Wilhelm Reich. The work was the Mass Pscyhology of Fascism. It was written in 1933.

• Why Marketers Love Malcolm Gladwell -- & Why They Shouldn't by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 05/24/2016)
  

  A few additional comments..First..Kenneth - you're absolutely right. Mea culpa. Now..to Ted. Absolutely word of mouth and influencers is a huge factor  - my point - and Duncan Watt's point - is it's not nearly as simply or predictable as Gladwell makes it out to be. Anyone could be an influencer, given the right context. You cite a Fast Company article defending influencer marketing - here's one on the opposite side worth a read: http://www.fastcompany.com/641124/tipping-point-toast. Watts discredited? Not really by any credible academic source - just a lot of marketers pissed off because he's poking holes in their business model. And he's certainly got a lot more empirical evidence behind him than Mr. Gladwell.

• Why Marketers Love Malcolm Gladwell -- & Why They Shouldn't by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 05/24/2016)
  

  Jeanne - Watts is a very able writer. His prose is accessible - but he is an academic at heart and so doesn't have a habit of jumping to satisfying conclusions, unlike Gladwell. Watts tells things as they appear to be, backed up with empirical evidence, rather than as we wish them to be.

• The Collateral Damage Of Disruption by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 03/01/2016)
  

  Thanks Kenneth. I'm amazed at how some will find one semantic bone to pick, while skipping over the much more important larger consequences (intended or not). What is important here, as you point out, is the idea of disruption as driven by a technological catalyst and the resulting impact on entire industries. And another important distinction. Hayek and Schumpeter both saw entrepreneurialism as the force that drove creative destruction. But what is interesting about what we're seeing is the role of the user in this, empowered by new technological capabilities and challenging an existing supply chain. There is a networked, distributed dynamism at work here that may be a brand new flavor of disruption.

• The Face Of Disruption by Gord Hotchkiss (Online Spin on 02/23/2016)
  

  Thanks Paula..I assume you mean for President. I would say I don't qualify, but seeing as both Ted Cruz and I were born in Calgary, who knows?

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