May 2011
9 posts
Appearance, Racism and the fragmentation of...
A lofty subject line I admit. I’ve read several articles lately about how younger people, particularly urban and educated, don’t see race in the same way their parents and grandparents do. The hints and clues that trigger the first reaction if someone’s in your tribe are more about haircuts, clothing, headphones, etc. than it is about skin color. And that transition of visual...
Make stuff. Sell stuff. Or get out.
A job description for a potential hire crossed my desk the other day. After flipping through the multiple pages of duties, responsibilities, expectations, etc., I realized that nowhere in it was anything about what ad agencies actually do. It isn’t just an agency problem, you see it in corporations everywhere. We’re so wrapped up in the details, we lose sight of the role of our...
Embrace The Destruction of Everything.
A bit hyperbolic, but a very insightful article from 2009.
http://brianshall.com/content/new-working-class
The Serendipity Problem
In a creative discussion with a team, I started down the path of how the things we create have to provide some level of utility to our consumers. Pretty standard fare for a digital CD. But I heard myself going on and on about breaking through what’s expected to “surprise and delight.”
Then it hit me. We’ve made all of our digital stuff so good at delivering what we want...
The Pretending Layer
I’ve been thinking a lot about “persona cycling” and how easily we quickly flip from one aspect of our personality to another w our various social apps on our phones. How one is used for one part of our lives, another for another. Then I saw this from my old friend Russell Davies.
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2011/04/the-pretending-layer.html
We need to switch our thinking to...
