Gurus | Big Marketers

Engaging with criticism

If you need to find out how your audience is receiving your work, it’s worth considering how you’ve structured the interactions around criticism. Sometimes a customer has a one-off problem, a situation that is unique and a concern that has to be extinguished on the spot. More often, though, that feedback you’re getting represents the [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

The map has been replaced by the compass

The map keeps getting redrawn, because it’s cheaper than ever to go offroad, to develop and innovate and remake what we thought was going to be next. Technology keeps changing the routes we take to get our projects from here to there. It doesn’t pay to memorize the route, because it’s going to change soon. [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

Brands Face Stream Fatigue as Consumers Look Beyond Gimmicks in Social Networks

Part of an unpublished appendix for The End of Business as Usual… The mystique of Twitter, Facebook and Google+ causes a momentary lapse of reason where businesses are surprisingly acting first and addressing “the why” at a later point in time, if at all. Without careful consideration and strategy, a great wave of stream fatigue, [...]

As seen on: "BrianSolis"

Too far from the center?

The action used to happen at court. In France, if you wanted to get ahead, you put on your outfit, called in favors and hung out near the King, because proximity was all. If you’re in Kibera, are you too far from Silicon Valley to write an app? If you live in New Zealand, are [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

"How’d it work out?"

It turns out that the light fixtures a builder used in my kitchen a few years ago have all begun to fail. One by one, each one stops working. My guess is that he has no idea, and continues to confidently install these fixtures, his go-to choice for kitchen lighting. And why not? He doesn’t [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

Transparent or translucent?

There’s an argument for transparency. If you make it easy for people to see right through you, the thinking goes, you are easier to trust. The market, though, often seeks out the translucent. Things that glow. We’re drawn to the glow, to the illumination and warm feeling it brings. We’d like our tools and our [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

The illusion of privacy (and what we actually care about)

You probably have very little privacy at all, giving it up a long time ago. If you’ve got a charge card, the card company already knows what you do, where you go, how you spend your money, what your debt is like. If you use a cell phone or a computer, someone upstream already has [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

Report: Content and the New Marketing Equation

Rebecca Lieb, my colleague at Altimeter Group released a new report, “Content: The New Marketing Equation Why Organizations Must Rebalance.” The report helps organizations find balance in the creation of effective content strategies while delivering value to stakeholders and consumers and also the bottom line. It’s safe to assume that the attention of the audience [...]

As seen on: "BrianSolis"

We can handle information density

Memo to search engines: we’re smart enough to look at more than five search results above the fold. As the web has gotten more crowded, sites regularly expose us to dashboards crammed with information. Sometimes there are more than a hundred links or cues on a page, and we are getting very good at scanning [...]

As seen on: "Seth"

The fifth Beatle

It’s an insult. If someone (who isn’t John, Paul, George or Ringo) calls you a fifth Beatle, they’re not being nice. For fifty years, people have been proclaiming that they’re intimates, part of the story, a key component of the success of the Beatles… Just as there are people who would like you to believe [...]

As seen on: "Seth"