Metrics. ROI. Optimization. These all have some intrinsic value. However, they’ve also led to a misguided Wall Streetification of marketing that has confused means with ends and correlation with causality. As we transition to a digital world, the tendency for destructive reductionism becomes even more pervasive.
The result has been a rejection of the intangible in favor of what we can model in Excel. An abdication of the spirit in the pursuit of rationality. To a great extent, in our quest for accountability, we’ve lost what’s important.
Okay, here’s an exercise. Go to your bathroom mirror and practice a serious face. Furrow your brow, tighten your lips and lower your gaze.
Got it? Good. You are now ready to cop-out. Often much maligned, copping out is a time honored tradition in corporate life. It will save you time, keep underlings at a safe distance and help you avoid pesky questions.
It’s not all about appearances though. You have to master the lingo. Here are some choice phrases that will help you along.
Why pay journalists, producers and directors, if you can crowdsource? Who needs TV networks when people can create their own on YouTube? Why pay editors to choose stories when you have RSS and Digg? A new dawn had arrived or so it seemed.
Now traditional media is soaring back and social media, many still struggling to find elusive profits, are inking content deals. Meanwhile, Yahoo is cutting social services even as they hire journalists. What’s going on?
For years now I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how we need to break down silos in marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Silos are good. They focus on getting a job done and there are lots of important jobs that need to be done extremely well by dedicated experts conversant with the minutiae of specific problems. Silos are therefore necessary and proper.
The problem is that most silos are isolated when they should be connected. Specialization and ignorance are two vastly different things. So while we need to keep our silos, we need to make them smarter and more plugged in to what’s going on around them.
The Web is a confusing place. It confounds even the most well informed and insightful observers. Whenever a future path seemingly becomes clear, something new arrives and muddies the waters.
For the past few years most of the excitement has been around social media. As regular readers know, I’ve been skeptical about much that has been said (and most of it has indeed been silly).
However, with IPO’s of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter now imminent, we’re headed for another curve in the road. It’s not what we were told to expect, but chances are, it will be more far reaching and important than anyone imagined.
Want to know the future of media and technology? There are many who are willing to point the way. They can explain, with flawless logic, what the future will look like: The past, mired in inefficiency and confusion, will give way to a more streamlined, rational world.
They’re usually wrong. For innovation to succeed, it has to work with people. That’s easier said than done. People are strange, quirky, emotionally driven and often unpredictable.
Many technologists today are, in fact, anachronisms trying to revive a failed philosophy from centuries past. They are, in a very real sense, accidental Cartesians, who confuse the rational world with the actual one.
It was recently announced that Facebook received a $500 million investment from Goldman Sachs that puts the total value of the company at $50 Billion. Wow! Congratulations Mark Zuckerberg!
However, a valuation that high begs the question: Is it really worth that much? I admit, I was skeptical at first, but having run some numbers, it appears decidedly less ridiculous than I first thought. In actuality, the price reflects some fairly reasonable assumptions.
Happy New Year! I’m so glad 2010 is over! I can’t remember a year that annoyed me so much. Every time I turned around some jackass was proclaiming the death of something: Old Media, The Web, E-mail, whatever…
At first, I would be intrigued, click on Twitter links and read stuff that I couldn’t understand. Then I would brush up on my acronyms, check some facts and eventually realize that it was all crap. When I would point out the inconsistencies and non-sequiturs, people would write me nasty comments and say that I “didn’t get it” (which was true).
I do have greater hopes for 2011. The stakes will be vastly higher and that’s likely to engender more serious thinking and business-like approaches. The coming year holds great promise, lots of challenges and it’s only just begun!
I’d like to thank everybody for their support in 2010, Digital Tonto’s first full year in existence.
80,000 of you visited the site, far more than I ever expected. (When I started, I was pretty sure about my mother, but that was about it). Many of you were also generous with sharing insight and expertise, which was very much appreciated.
Here’s a list of the posts that you most liked to read, tweet and comment on. Feel free to click on any that you might have missed.
People often tell me that one of the things they like best about Digital Tonto is the wide array of sources I use. So just like last year, here’s a list of books I read and/or used for sources in popular posts in 2010.
I hope you find them just as helpful and fun as I did.
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.
