Bob Hoffman is an old media curmudgeon. He still believes in TV and earns his living making ads. He rails against newfangled media like Facebook and Twitter, while he taunts social media advocates.
In many ways, Bob is very much one those dinosaurs we hear so much about: committed to traditional media, suspicious of new technology and unwavering in his faith that great ads build great businesses. The irony is that he is also a true social media superstar.
He has a lively Facebook fan page, over 7000 followers on Twitter and his Ad Contrarian blog is one of the most popular, informative and entertaining in the industry. He recently addressed this paradox in a post and, more than any social media guru ever could, he outlined the true value social media along with it’s very real problems.
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Nobody likes the status quo. It’s boring. The companies that we admire are radical. They have the courage, smarts and verve to do something truly different.
The problem is that radical innovation is rarely a prudent course. It not only disrupts competitors, but also your value network: customers, suppliers, partners and even employees. It’s one thing to lead the charge, quite another to get anyone to follow.
So what to do? If you stand still you’ll get run over, but if you go chasing every half-baked idea that makes its way onto TechCrunch, you’ll lose focus on your core business and decrease competitiveness. Some firms, however, have learned how to harness disruptive technologies not by being first movers, but by learning how to follow intelligently.
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If it weren’t for lawyers, marketers would probably be the most reviled professional class. Rodney Dangerfield has nothing on us.
Lately, the criticism has gotten unusually shrill. One prominent ad agency executive recently said that marketing is dead. Somebody else wrote the same in Harvard Business Review. A prominent VC says that marketing is just for companies with sucky products. It seems like we never get any respect.
I think that part of the problem stems from the fact that other professions have qualifications. Doctors go to medical school, engineers build things, financiers make money and even lawyers need to get admitted to the bar. Meanwhile, any jackass off the street can call himself a marketer. What we need are concrete principles. Here are seven.
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“Greed…is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” That was the ‘80’s Gecko mantra.
It was based on something high-flying financier Ivan Boesky said shortly before he was exposed as a fraud and sent to prison. Nevertheless, we bought into it then and the sentiment resonates even now. George Bush, after all, encouraged us to shop in the face of adversity.
But is greed really good? Does it capture the “essence of the evolutionary spirit? Is Geckoism a hardheaded, pragmatic approach or utter nonsense? These were serious questions a generation ago, but they have long been answered. The truth is that while greed might work in the movies, in the real world it’s simply naive.
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The ancient Chinese phrase “may you live in interesting times” was meant as a curse. Unexpected events, for most of history, have been unwelcome. They inevitably brought war, famine and poverty.
Today, we have our problems and some of them are pretty bad, like terrorism, global warming and hunger. The big difference is that we have learned how to innovate our way out of trouble. When you start looking at what’s coming up, you can’t help but be optimistic.
The power of information technology is that it advances at an exponential pace. Once scarce commodities like storage and processing power are now abundant and that is making possible novel solutions to old problems. New industries like nanotech, robotics and genomics are creating things that would have been science fiction a decade ago.
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People like to say, “keep it simple, stupid.” It’s a down-home remedy for our overly complex, technology infused modern life. Like much good advice, it is often given, but rarely followed.
The problem is that simplicity is not so simple. We live in a complex universe where much that happens is beyond our control. Merely wishing things to be simpler does not make it so. In fact, making facile assumptions often leads to disaster.
How we deal with complexity determines how we innovate, build organizations that can compete effectively and navigate an increasingly technological marketplace. We need to take it seriously, not gloss over it. Fortunately, this has been an area of intense study since the beginning of the digital age and there are some basic principles that can guide us.
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Over the past decade, marketing has become increasingly ROI focused. Generally, that’s been an enormously positive thing, but as I’ve noted before, there has been some reason for concern.
One of the chief problems is that metrics often obscure value. Business success occurs in the marketplace, not in Excel or in Powerpoint. It’s easy to get so caught up with key performance indicators that you forget about performance in the real world.
Managing a business is different than managing a budget. The outcome of an investment is not solely, or even primarily, a function of efficiency. It matters where you invest. Resources allocated to a good business will work harder than those that are put towards a bad one. That’s why it’s crucial to rightsize investment. Here’s a quick guide.
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A brilliant and accomplished editor, one who I respect greatly, used to tell his staff that they should write for the fourth floor, where the sales and marketing teams sat. The idea was that journalists should write for the dull and dim comprehension of the business world.
As a perennial inhabitant of that floor, I resented the implication. For me, business has always been a lively intellectual endeavor where ideas are more than dreams; they are tested in the marketplace.
So, in a certain sense, this blog is a retort to my old friend. Alas, since I moved away, he no longer comes over to drink whiskey and certainly won’t send me any presents. Therefore, as in past years, I’m celebrating Digital Tonto’s birthday with a list of my favorite posts. They weren’t necessarily the most popular, but they’re the ones I like.
Cinderella was an amazing performer. In one night she made it to the ball, found her prince and lived happily ever after.
Amazingly, she did so by her natural grace, charm and wit. Having no experience with princes or balls, she became the star of the show, with no prior coaching, preparation or experience. She simply believed it could be true and it was.
Alas, Cinderella, much like many stories of great accomplishment, is a fairy tale. We love hearing about the moment of triumph; the shot at the buzzer, the photo finish and the medals at the podium. The truth is boring – endless hours, repeated frustration and constant exhaustion. Here are 5 principles that determine whether it’s all worth it.
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They say that those who don’t learn their history are condemned to repeat it, but isn’t the opposite also true? If the past is prologue, can we really move forward without looking backward?
Futuristic buzzwords like the social web, strong AI, and the web of things have become fashionable to talk about as hot new trends, but our digital future will most likely be far stranger and more wonderful than anything we can imagine today.
The truth is that new paradigms arise from novel solutions to old problems. Those solutions in turn have consequences that are both unforeseen and unintended. Much of today’s technology began as investigations into obscure curiosities in first-order logic, radio communication and the like. The seeds of the next wave will be just as improbable.
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