• ONLINE SPIN
    If Your CMO Is Not On Social Media, Find A New CMO
    Last week, my MediaPost colleague Catharine Taylor wrote a post wondering why CMOs aren't that social. In response, another MediaPost colleague, Maarten Albarda, suggested that nobody cares, that it doesn't matter whether CMOs are on social media, and who can even name the Starbucks CMO, anyway? If there's one thing I've learned in my years on the Internet, it's that if two people are disagreeing online, the most productive course of action is to wade right in with your own overblown opinion. So here I am.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Size DOES Matter -- We Like BIG Trends
    We are a society that measures everything we do, and size truly does matter. Last week saw the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. It's BIGGER, faster, and the screen might even be stronger. Apple sold 10 million of these bad boys in three days. If the iPhone came out with the new software but in the same size as its predecessors, everyone would have been disappointed. The truth is, simply put, we like 'em BIG (our phones, of course).
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Fellow Executives, It's Time To Go Back To School
    Permutation, correlation. causation: These are the new vocabulary words for today's marketing leaders. Four years ago, you needed to hire someone to understand what your digital marketing data meant. That's because digital and all the valuable insight it has to provide about how your consumers see, internalize and interact with your brand was becoming something you needed to understand. But you're not a freshman anymore. This is now a varsity game.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    CMOs Just Aren't That Social -- And Who Cares?
    I wanted to react to Catharine Taylor's recent column about the lack of social media activity by CMOs. She refers to Infegy's list of the Top 50 most social CMOs in 2014, as measured by number of retweets, interactions, shares and so on. Catherine is not impressed by the fact that only nine of the Top 50 CMOs are from Fortune 50 companies. In other words, CMOs from big, well-known companies are absent in social media. But I say: Who cares?
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Everything Is Now Your Responsibility
    For the past three years, I've been attending an annual unconference here in New Zealand: an event with no pre-set agenda, no keynote speakers, no topics declared in advance. It is entirely designed by its attendees. On arrival, the walls are covered with gridded sheets of paper indicating available rooms and session times; when we're given the cue by the organizer, we run a kind of organic, self-determining scrum, putting Post-its on the wall to co-create the schedule.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Attention: Nothing Else Matters
    There is a limited amount of human attention in the world. Every day the same amount of attention is created (number of people multiplied by number of conscious hours). Everything meaningful in life requires attention. Laughing, crying, learning. Everything. And we humans consider our attention precious, because we know we have a finite amount of it. Yet somehow the advertising industry developed the notion that it either A) does not need people's attention, or B) can simply create more attention. Both assumptions are obviously ridiculous, but in order to keep passing money around, the industry seems to have just taken …
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Journey From The Unknown To The Known
    Marketers are not scientists or magicians, but they are quickly spearheading the journey from the unknown into the known. Let me explain.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Making Mistakes... On Purpose
    I was keynoting at a Satmetrix (the Net Promoter People) customer experience conference last week in London -- and over fish 'n chips during lunch, I ended up chatting with one of my fellow keynoters, Ian Williams (@CustExpMan), about making mistakes. Ian had a rather controversial point of view that organizations should go out of their way to make mistakes ON PURPOSE.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    A Comprehensive Overview Of Excuses For When Your Plan Does Not Deliver As Intended
    I have been reading an industry book that I found by accident, at a library book fair event. One of its chapters is devoted to measurement. Let me share some of its observations on this very topical subject:
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Maybe This Whole Online Advertising Thing Just Isn't Working Out
    We've known each other for a while now, you and I -- since 2007, by my reckoning. So I think it's time to start being, you know, a bit more real with each other. Maybe tell each other some things about ourselves we're not so proud of. I'll start.
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