MATT TOERING

We shape our tools and our tools shape us.” As more of the tools we live with every day become digital instead of physical, our opportunity – and responsibility – as designers is multiplying. We live in a world of screens, and we are the ones who decide what goes on them. We are in a unique position to have an impact – one that lasts longer than the next redesign or the latest technology. What happens when we stop thinking of ourselves not just as developers or experience designers, and take up the mantle as a new generation of product designers for a digital world?

Every entrepreneur should watch this keynote by Mark Randall. 

Favorite quote: 

Amplify your unique talents

with the skills of a great team

to change the world, 

creating value for others 

and meaning for you. 

Four steps to implementing a shared-services model to capture scale and develop advanced capabilities.

In many large companies, the marketing function is decentralized and sprawling, leaving executives without a holistic view of their marketing activities and costs. And those costs can be enormous, not just in dollars but also in lost opportunities: Lack of consolidation and collaboration can frustrate attempts to develop critical new consumer-focused capabilities, such as social media marketing, and interfere with marketers’ ability to focus on high-value tasks, such as generating richer customer segmentations.

Want to learn a different language? Duolingo (beta) allows you to learn foreign languages while translating the web. Once I get my invite I’m hoping to fine tune my limited Spanish skills. 

What’s one word you would use to describe about your organization?

The ability to capture and hold one word in the mind of your intended market is perhaps the most telling measure of marketing success.

This is how you sell product. 

Of all dreams marketers have, one stands out: Help products cross the tipping point, reaching a critical mass of consumers. For some marketers, the dream becomes reality—as has been the case with Apple, Nike, Starbucks and Red Bull marketers.  For other marketers, it remains just a dream. The difference between dream and reality is in the following seven principles of WOM and Buzz Marketing:

1. Begin with the consumer
2. Be innovative
3. Target the right group
4. Create the message
5. Find the right social context
6. Spread the message
7. Turn WOM into buzz

Good ideas usually don’t hang by themselves, unattached. They come about as solutions. Thus, allowing criticism into a room full of people trying to brainstorm allows them to refine and redefine a problem. Adding more and more complex problems to the mix doesn’t stifle creativity—it actually gives the mind more to work with, simply by demanding that we find better and better answers.

A Letter from David Ogilvy, the original Mad Man, talking about his creative process. 

April 19, 1955

Dear Mr. Calt:

On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:

1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.

2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.

3. I am helpless without research material—and the more “motivational” the better.

4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.

5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down ever concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.

6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.

7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)

8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.

9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.

10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.

11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)

12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.

Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.

Yours sincerely,

D.O.

Umair Haque on how brands and companies need to adjust their marketing strategies for the 21st Century. He points out that marketers need to amplify and enhance human potential and not just differentiate products. 

@SimonSinek explains his concept of the Golden Circle and why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others. Starting with WHY is a powerful message that us marketers need to remind ourselves of every day. 

These Are The Rules Of A Creator’s Life

If you’re a marketer (like myself) and want to create attention grabbing messages, this is a great article. I am a firm believer that people don’t have to hear a message 7 times before they remember it. You simply need to craft a message that sticks. 

There is a great book called “Made to Stick” that relates to this article and is one of my all-time favorite marketing books. You can find it here on Amazon.  Btw I love the cover so I’m including the image. 

These snowman comics made my day

Eric Reis

this is good advice

Why you shouldn’t launch your startup in the press — Tech News and Analysis