I hate employees. And I feel like I can never escape them. I was recently at dinner with friends, and someone asked me, “How many employees do you have?” Earlier that day, I had to answer the same question a couple of different times, once for a survey and again for a site registration. Each …

Many years ago, I was part of a team who had an opportunity to revolutionalize e-commerce through leveraging social influencers. But we didn’t, because we were too focused on efficiency and less interested in experience. Here’s the set up: back in the early days of digital marketing I was part of a team that created …

There are five levels of self-awareness. Zoom makes the fifth absolutely painful. But luckily, there is a solution. Researchers have defined the levels of awareness by using a mirror and seeing how babies and others react to it. The research shows there are distinct stages of awareness: that’s a mirror (Level 1); there’s a person …

The question many people are asking right now is, “what is the role of an office?” This question feels urgent and recent but reality is that the advertising community (at least) has been wondering the same thing for over 20 years, when Jay Chiat created what was then called “the virtual office.” In 2000 Chiat …

I kept coming back to that question as I re-read the Accenture Fjords Digital Trends 2021 report. In it they shared an overall theme about the need for businesses to map out new territory in the digital arena. The central idea is that the people who create digital experiences have relied too heavily on tried-and-true …

No doubt you’ve heard the quote famously attributed to the noted retail giant and marketing pioneer John Wanamaker back in the early 1900’s, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Late into the 20th Century the answer to this conundrum was barely improved. Marketers relied …

That was the advice we recently gave one of our clients who is looking to undertake a seismic re-imagining of their digital experience. An experience they’ve been improving in increments for several years, using a traditional test-and-learn approach both in lab and in the real world. An approach that got them to a point where …

The other day I was talking with a marketer in the financial services space who was sharing that they weren’t getting enough people through their online application. He described their app as like something from the 1990’s, which was causing significant drop off issues. Then, almost in the same breath, he said they wanted to …

Early in my advertising career I remember hearing the saying that “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but as a life-long runner I thought to myself, “great, I will go alone. I like going fast.” I was recently …

Recently our team got into a debate about the relative value of a brand’s heritage. Some believed the longevity and endurance of a brand brought intrinsic and positive value; others argued that a brand with a long and storied history might have overstayed its welcome in a modern market filled with innovation. We happened to …