me, me, me, me, me, me
Hi. My name is Bud Caddell. Thanks for being curious.
I help organizations solve problems in a complex world.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to put my strategic experience to work for some of the biggest brands on the planet: Pepsi, CNN, Volkswagen, American Express, HBO, Ford Motor Company, GE and many others. My work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and AdAge. Personally, I’ve been cited in NYMag and the Harvard Business Review. My essay, “Becoming a Mad Man,” discussing emerging media fandom has earned me citations in Grant McCracken’s latest book, Chief Culture Officer, and Henry Jenkins’ upcoming anthology on spreadable media.
I work and live in West Los Angeles. At my day job, I’m responsible for bringing ideas and prototypes to clients that don’t fit the usual mold of advertising deliverables. Specifically, I’m charged with bringing concepts that serve consumer needs, solve business problems, and ignite culture.
I’m also currently in development of my first book: an exploration of how organizations solve problems in a more unpredictable and complex world. I’m also assembling a network of creative professionals, The Bucket Brigade, dedicated to solving complex problems using systems thinking and collaboration.
Who I am, where I am, and what I do is the product of 1) an obsessive curiosity, 2) a love and literacy of technology, 3) two generations of entrepreneurs that raised me well, 4) a few sparks of creativity, and 5) an enduring sense of I can make that better.
speaking of what can be made better…
Understanding people and how culture is created is critical in the digital age.
Videos aren’t viral (they don’t spread themselves) and no one is as impressed with your new micro-site as you are. Our job is to mobilize and empower networks of people, connected by shared interests, to satisfy measurable business objectives. Without continually questioning people’s motivations and behaviors, we all run the risk of becoming ineffectual tacticians.
We live in a more connected, therefore more complex world. We must try to understand complexity itself.
Internet technologies have enabled market forces, consumer demands, and cultural fashions to coalesce far more quickly than ever before (see the recent housing market collapse and global recession, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wallstreet Movement, and the GoDaddy anti-SOPA boycott). I believe that helping organizations become more adaptive to the market environment and more responsive to their consumers is critical to their long term viability.
We can all do more to make a difference.
Whether it’s fixing what’s broken or inventing something new, changing your business, or changing the world, we’re all accountable to ourselves and frankly, we’re not getting any younger. I don’t believe in a life that revolves solely around work, nor a business that exists solely to make money. Meaning is not optional.
About the site:
This site is an experiment. It will change often, it will sometimes be broken, and it will always be a little strange. The shared images and posts are powered, for now, by what I’m sharing inside Google Reader, and then pushed through a Yahoo! Pipe, and then fed into my site. If you find your content here and are unhappy with how I’m sharing it, please let me know.
The logo and all monsters on the site were created for me by Jan Willem Wennekes, also known as Zeptonn – an illustrative designer working in the Netherlands.
