Today, our son Quinn turns one. With a woolly brain, addled from both pandemic and parenting, I have been attempting to reflect on the journey so far. Mostly my hands feel full of unintelligible puzzle pieces. There seems to be no box with a master picture I can follow or even convenient edge pieces to start hanging everything else from. But as a person who must make sense of things, I feel compelled to begin […]
There’s a lot being written about Elon Musk and Twitter right now, but I wanted to address his leadership, what’s happening with leadership in general right now, and my own thoughts on continuing to use the platform. In related news, looks like I’ll be publishing here a bit more frequently. ____ Organizational change, particularly in companies that have repeatedly failed to make change in the past, requires what’s known as ‘transgressive leaders.’ These leaders don’t […]
Uncertain, unprecedented: every week in 2020 forced organizations to adapt—in many cases overnight—to a remote workforce, changing consumer demands, fluctuating government restrictions, employee struggles. At NOBL, we wanted to look beyond the headlines to help leaders navigate this unique moment in history, and assess whether responses were quick fixes to immediate problems, or more permanent shifts in how business is done. View the full post, including a direct link to the slides.
A craftsperson is someone who practices a trade or discipline with the ultimate goal of mastery. Anyone, in any discipline, can be a craftsperson if they so choose. Each and every one of us has the capacity to do good work of some kind. I myself am a consultant by trade and the founder of a consulting company. I approach my work as a craftsperson (and it so happens I was raised by multiple generations […]
If nearly any task can be governed by an algorithm, that means nearly any management role can be performed by software. The white-collar jobs that were assumed to be safe from automation may in fact be even more vulnerable—and your boss’s job might be automated before yours is. Before rushing into this brave new world, managers, employees, and AI engineers should consider the benefits and failings of AI management. We looked into algorithms as managers […]
This week, Tony Hsieh issued a challenge to every Zappos employee: self organize or leave. I wrote a post on the challenges of going Holacratic. Update: I was asked to come to Zappos to deliver this in-person. Tony Hsieh wasn’t jazzed about my opinion. Only time will tell. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This post was originally sent to Standard General, the investment firm which has assumed 44% ownership in American Apparel, on July 9th of this year. No word yet in response. At my company, NOBL – a strategic consultancy, we help large and ambitious organizations prepare for and profit from disruption. We’re also Angelenos, with an office right in American Apparel’s backyard, so we want to see the retailer regain its footing and continue its mission […]
Whether you’re borrowing it, creating it, or bucking it, advertising is the use of culture to influence commerce. Which means … Creatives need to live and breath big and small cultures, fast and slow, old and new, online and offline. Clients need to demand work that earns its own attention and ignites communities to share the work on the brand’s behalf. Agencies need to measure the work for both impact on sales and impact on […]
23 months ago I took on the mantle of Director of Invention at a hallowed ad agency here in LA. I assumed a title no one had ever heard of before, took what was my first gig inside an ad agency proper, and set about (with considerable help) to re-engineer a perfectly good, highly successful factory to produce an entirely new kind of output – marketing as product. Since, rightly or wrongly, I’ve been asked by clients […]
Classically, the marketing department’s role within the larger organization has been to spread value. To take the raw product of the organization and to distribute a product or message across geographical boundaries and into the hearts and minds of a target market. Today, more and more, the role of the marketing department has become one of creating value (from entertainment to service). Market shares have solidified, mediums have matured, attention spans have shortened – and […]
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” – Sir William Preece, the British Post Office, 1876. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union, 1878. “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Charles H. Duell, an official at the US patent office, 1899. “Who […]
Just a couple weeks back, I got to meet Kevin Doohan, former Head of Digital Marketing at Red Bull. He actually reminded me about Stratos and told me to keep my eye on it. Hence, I woke up early (on the west coast) this morning and watched, tensely, the livestream of Felix’s triple-record-breaking-leap to Earth. I asked him about what Red Bull does for their athletes. I referenced Shaun White’s now famous, but once secret, super […]
A couple weeks back, the digital leadership team at Deutsch LA held a week-long 101 course on digital marketing for the entire company. The goal of the program was to set a common literacy of digital marketing across the agency and to create a sense of shared purpose across departments. I ran two sessions. The first was “Thinking Digital” and the objective was to share a series of perspectives on digital technologies as they’re related to marketing […]
I was touring a photography exhibit at The Getty today in LA and spotted this diagram of the Bauhaus curriculum by the school’s founder, Walter Gropius. I find myself a bit jealous of the simplicity of this design and inherent teaching philosophy. I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to the history of design, what I do know has mostly been the unintentional consequence of theft. But I’ve always been drawn to the beauty and utility of Bauhaus and, maybe […]
The First IRL Like Sign In addition to our shiny new dot-com, a small team here at Deutsch has just finished creating what we call our Like Sign. For every Facebook Like we receive on our new site, this sign lights up in the office. For now, we’ve installed the sign directly in front of the office of our Chief Digital Officer, Winston Binch, where it nearly blinds him with every click. Why we built […]
Earlier this year I had to stop using one of my favorite file sharing services, Drop.io, when they were purchased by Facebook and all of their data was shut down. I’m still waiting for Facebook to make this technology available again. I used to rely on Backtweets to track who was linking to my blog and to my client projects from Twitter. This service was purchased by Twitter and then shut down. I’m still waiting […]
This is a business model framework I adapted for network or platform based businesses from an original IDEO slideshare. The goal is to be able to plot a business model across these buckets that not only creates value for customers – but creates value FROM customers, as well. Some explanation … Costs: here I’ve broken down costs into two camps, stealing from the software engineer Fred Brooks, accidental vs essential. Essential costs (and complexity) are […]
When I was 18 years old, right around the year 2000, I was the lead (and mostly sole) developer for a venture capital funded internet start-up. I was also making what seemed to be an ungodly amount of money for a high school senior – all thanks to the web, and to my incredible good fortune of being thrown into it early in my life. I had my own little shop by the time I […]
Think of the list as a simple set of heuristics to be mated, recombined, mutated, adapted, and evolved for specific needs. Also, feel free to debate the hell out of them. Here we go, in no particular order … DEFINE INSIDERS & OUTSIDERS Mike used to say this like a broken strategic record. Strong brands are bold enough to define who’s in and who’s out, who makes the cut, and who is left behind. Most brands, […]
By now, we all know what a giant success the recent Old Spice work has been. Yes, Virginia, it’s even moved product – culminating with a 107% sales increase in June. Nicely done, W+K. As ad folk (and as humans), we tend to have short memories. We’re good at remembering spectacular hits and not much else. With that said, it’s easy to forget just how long Old Spice has been experimenting with many of the artistic […]
