The marketing industry runs on heuristics, although nobody actually uses that term. Simple rules of thumb become axioms, which are then dressed up in a new, snappier shell and presented as insights. They are then recycled and reused.
They do, of course, contain grains of truth and so they resonate. They gain traction. Consensus builds around them and they propagate, under slightly different guises, through various agency frameworks and client marketing programs.
Unfortunately, as momentum builds, so does inertia and it becomes difficult to pivot or even evolve. Just as it used to be that no one got fired for buying IBM, no marketer gets called out for propagating conventional wisdom, even if the evidence doesn’t support it. Some of today’s most popular marketing concepts need to be rethought.
No one doubts that Leo Tolstoy was a singular genius. His novel, War and Peace , is considered one of history’s great works and another, Anna Karenina, was recently adapted for a major motion picture, nearly 150 years after it was written.
Famous lines such as “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” the opening of Anna Karenina, show not only uncommon insight into the human condition, but a superlative talent for communication that spans barriers of time and language.
Yet if you would put an infinite amount of monkeys sitting at an infinite amount of keyboards, the problem of producing masterworks like Tolstoy’s would be one of curation, not creation. Up till now, the concept of infinite monkeys has been an interesting notion and nothing more, but amazing advances in artificial intelligence are making it a reality.
Every manager wants to boost productivity. We invest billions in new machinery and software every year, not to mention a vast array of consultants, management books and other tools designed to increase the efficiency of our efforts.
Yet I’ve found that the most effective way to get results is not to dream up the unimaginably brilliant, but to put a stop to doing the unbelievably stupid and what most companies do horribly is meetings.
A recent Wall Street Journal article points out that CEO’s spend over 30% of their time in ineffective meetings. A wider survey, covering decades of research, came to even more disturbing conclusions (including that 40% of managers fall asleep in meetings). Clearly, making meetings more effective is one of the best ways to increase overall productivity.
In 1982, Steve Jobs first made the cover of Time magazine, where he was celebrated as the 26 year-old college-dropout-wunderkind who created the personal computer industry and made a fortune in the process. It seemed like a new age had dawned.
Unfortunately, tangible results were frustratingly hard to find. By 1987, the economist Robert Solow complained that “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics,” a phenomenon which came to be known as the productivity paradox.
Today, nobody questions that computers have fundamentally changed the way we create, deliver and capture value. Erik Brynjolfsson, who coined the term “productivity paradox,” even has a new book out touting technology’s impressive contributions. What’s changed? I would argue that a big part of it is our ability to enjoy success while simulating failure.
I’ve long given up the habit of making New Years resolutions. What’s the point? The seeds of the next year are sown in the previous one. So rather than empty vows of change, all that effort can be put to better use by planning for what is to come.
To do so, we need to go beyond simple linear extrapolation. Principles like accelerating returns and hype cycles help point the way and we also need to keep in touch with the technologists and entrepreneurs that drive events.
As I’ve noted before, blindly following trends is for suckers, but putting serious thought into where things are headed is an essential exercise. Mapping out what we can expect helps us prepare for the unexpected, be robust and stay on our toes. With that in mind, here are 6 things we can expect to shape the digital world over the next year and beyond
The industrial world was built by practical men, those hearty souls who rolled up their sleeves and got things done. They were men of action, unhindered by the softheaded notions of ivory towers.
Today, however, we no longer live in an industrial world of railroads, furnaces and factories, but one of the visceral abstract, where the common devices that dominate our everyday lives are based on principles that the proverbial “man on the street” would find totally impractical, absolutely nutty.
Every time you use a computer or smartphone, drive a car, use a navigation system or shop at Wal-mart, you are in a very real sense, believing in ideas that defy common sense. These notions were often ridiculed because they defied common experience. In that sense, they were revolutions no less heroic than the physical kind. Here are four:
Well, we’ve almost made it through 2012 without blowing up the economy (hopefully) or a good sized country. Along the way, we found the Higgs boson and landed a rover on Mars that continues to send us back amazing pictures and other souvenirs.
I have a feeling that when we look back, 2012 will be seen as a pivotal year. Partly because Microsoft has entered the three-way race for mobile domination, but mostly because it was this year when artificial intelligence finally came into its own and looks set to drive technology for the next decade or so.
Most of all it was a great year for Digital Tonto. The community grew by leaps and bounds this year, to almost 150,000. Thank you all for your support, encouragement and advice. Once again, here are the posts you liked best over the past 12 months. I wish you a safe, happy and prosperous New Year. All the best!
Jorge Luis Borges once wrote, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Blissfully devoid of management fads, new age theories and other guru talk, 2012 was that kind of year: Great books and powerful ideas.
When Daniel Kahneman, Ray Kurzweil and Benoit Mandelbrot (from the grave no less!), plus others too numerous to note here, all publish in the same year, we have a lot be thankful for.
As in past years, I am providing a reading list of books I enjoyed and used in posts, so If you saw an idea you found interesting in Digital Tonto over the past year, chances are you can learn a whole lot more about it in the books below. Links are provided that will allow you to purchase them from Amazon. Enjoy! read more…
I find writing difficult. Words don’t always come easy, I’m an absolutely horrendous typist and I often don’t have the first clue what I should be writing about.
Nevertheless, many seem to think that I write well, in spite of my deficiencies. I publish a successful blog and have managed to consistently push out two posts per week for over three years (which is much harder than you’d think). So I guess, in the final analysis, I’m not completely bereft of talent.
The more salient point, however, is that most people write extremely poorly. For all the talk I hear about the power of social media and the rise of amateurs, most of the writing I see on the Web is completely incoherent. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve found that through following a few simple rules and some practice, your writing can vastly improve.
Albert Camus once said that “true art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.” Henry Ward Beecher similarly wrote that “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
You don’t have to look far to find quotes like these, because art is something we consider intensely human. Art and the artist are so thoroughly intertwined that we can’t bear to think of one without the other.
For better or worse, we’re going to have to rethink this comfortable little notion. Machine intelligence is advancing to the point where algorithms have begun to invade the world of culture and the aesthetic. From recommendations to evaluation to the production of art itself, computers are becoming a force to be reckoned with in the creative realm. read more…
Or install manually
Copy and paste the following Google tag code onto every page of your website, immediately after the element. Don’t add more than one Google tag to each page.
, is considered one of history’s great works and another, 
, was recently adapted for a major motion picture, nearly 150 years after it was written.
out touting technology’s impressive contributions. What’s changed? I would argue that a big part of it is our ability to enjoy success while simulating failure.
