On this day in 1737 Thomas Paine was born. Happy 273rd Tommy! I hope it is a good one for you. Paine is arguably one of the most influential thinkers of the last 300 years, having played key roles in both the French and American Revolutions. More importantly for this…
Today, despite the massive increase it would mean in terms of my personal revenue stream, I am glad I am not the Senior VP of Marketing at Pepsi. Why? Two basic facts: It seems the Super Bowl was the most watched TV show ever. There was not one Pepsi ad…
I just grabbed Seth Godin‘s All Marketers are Liars. True to form, it’s bomb ass. The book details how marketing is really about telling stories – a premise you’ve definitely heard if you’ve been near a business in the last 5 to 5000 years. So, if telling a story is…
Tintin, the popular French speaking comic book character, speaks a slang known as “joual” (at least in books sold in Quebec). Profs, columnists and others in salons in the Plateau Montreal and Outremont are outraged reports the National Post. The above piece singled out two reactions from members of the Quebec intelligentsia that…
Length matters. I say this partly because, in the last few days, I’ve come across several items on the amount of words needed to convey news. Two in particular spurred on some thoughts: This post, that touched on whether the 140 character world might eventually kill traditional news media. A…
Justin Kownacki, who tends to deliver the goods, had an interesting post about inspiration (and why it is bullshit) the other day. I disagreed with elements of what he wrote, but looking back we were pissing around over semantics. In effect, we were talking about different meanings of the same word….
I am about 50 pages into Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food with about 15o to go so this ain’t a book review. However, already, I’d recommend you read it even if you have limited interest in food production (if you don’t care about what you eat then you…
A small part of this post by Chris Brogan caught my eye and got me thinking. Here is what Brogan said that jumped out at me: Last night, Kat and I were at Ruby Foos in Manhattan for dinner after a movie. The server, Jenna, was pretty good at her…
Brian Solis has a great post today on how businesses are using social media tools. Brian highlights a report by econsultancy.com. The report says that micro- blogging (i.e. Twitter) is now the most widely adopted social media tactic, used by 78% of company respondents. This I find surprising. There’s waaaay more…
Journalism is a day in day out grind and has the added problem of trying to combine exalted purpose (think about the public service performed by exposing Tiger Woods or Balloon Boy and blanket covering OJ) with the harsh reality of needing to act like a business. Tough stuff. Mother…