Once again, Tom pegs what I’m thinking and where I’m at.
Blending into the herd has never really been my style. And this is my year to spread the message far and wide.
Here’s his way to kick off the New Year…
Thanks Tom.
Archive for the 'design' Category
Hugh pegs the nexus of creativity and profit.
On the spectrum of “creatives”, I fall closer to the black sheep profit and efficiency side. I appreciate the creative process and the elusive quest for perfection, but I no longer let it drive me. Here’s the thing; as soon as you step into the business realm, you can no longer be an “artist”–you’re a designer. True artists work for themselves, not to produce commercially acceptable “art” and not to produce a profit. The sale isn’t the focus. Artists are concerned about getting their emotions across, not their client’s. Designers, on the other hand, are commissioned to produce a specific piece that solves a specific problem. And they jump into the project head first knowing how much they’re going to be paid. More often that not, they are trading time for money (not that I agree w/ that approach, but let’s move on).
A creative’s passion and love for their craft puts them at direct odds with the ultimate mission of their own business. I’m not sure how to solve it, but I know it affects most good designers. And maybe it’s that tension which makes for good design–as long as there is someone in between the client and the designer to translate and keep the project progressing.
I choose to become a millionaire artist; or something…
Well, today is my last day at Cre8tive Group. 18 months ago I was presented w/ an opportunity to choose between staying in big business Corporate America or jumping to a small business and now I know I made the right decision.
Not only do small businesses dominate the economy and the job market, there is almost unlimited room for growth and professional development opportunities that are simply not available to most employees in a Fortune 500 organization. That said, I also learned a tremendous amount during my days in Corporate America, but I believe I’ve found my heart in small business. And that comes in no small part from Cre8tive Group. It is with both anticipation and sadness that I move into the next phase of my career. I will truly miss the people (and clients) of Cre8tive Group. They are a wonderful, caring group that has meant a lot to me over the years. The growth over the last few quarters is only one indication of the great things to come for Cre8tive.
So, it is with great joy that I announce that I’m joining EOP Architects as their Director of Marketing. This firm is widely considered to be the best design-focused firm in the area. They design and build some of the most inspiring structures around and I’m proud to bring my marketing and branding expertise to bear on their behalf. I honestly believe that once more people are aware and turned on to what EOP is capable of, explosive growth is will be inevitable. The partners are great and I cannot wait to meet and learn more about the staff.
This blog will remain the same. I have not been able to devote as much time to it as I’d like recently. But I do hope to be able to continue to provide practical results-oriented marketing commentary. Blogging has developed into one of my passions and I’ve met some wonderful people online. I hope to to use this as a platform to document and transfer practical marketing knowledge as I apply it w/ EOP.
So, I’ll probably add an “Architecture” category as I learn more about the space. Like most design people, I’m intrigued by architecture and I believe that it is one of the few design disciplines that truly has the ability to shape culture and make a direct impact on society.
I’m excited about this new opportunity and hope you are as well. And lastly, I have to thank Dr. Seuss for one of the best motivational and inspiring books I’ve ever read (note the title of this post). “Oh the Place You’ll Go” has always been a guiding force for me – and I’m reading it to my daughter almost nightly hoping that that the positivity and reality will set deeply within her.
So with that, I’m off to EOP. Talk to you soon.
I’ve always been inspired by good displays of complex data sets. Edward Tufte discusses this better than almost anyone. His books should be standard fare for all designers IMO.
Worldmappr applies the visual display of quantitative data to wealth, population and carbon emissions. Via 37signals.
GDP Wealth
Carbon Emissions
Total Population
Welcome to the January 2, 2007 edition of Marketing (r)evolution Carnival brought to you by Nick Rice @ Strategic Design.
This Carnival is an aggregation of some of the best thoughts on the future of advertising, branding, marketing and strategy. Enjoy and Happy New Year!
Advertising
Valeria Maltoni presents Where’s the Benefit to me? posted at Conversation Agent, saying, “Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to the conversation.”
Chris Houchens presents Users First posted at Shotgun Marketing BLOG, saying, “Your customers are what “monetize” a business. Stop developing short term strategies that kill long term gains.”
Murad Ali presents Three (3) Easy Ways to Optimize Your Blog posted at The New Marketing World.
Branding
Jack Yoest presents Rocky Balboa: Courage, Integrity, Faith, Victory The Movie posted at Reasoned Audacity, saying, “Your Business Blogger was in Philly recently and wondered about the Rocky statue that was briefly at the top of the 72 steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Since September, the statue is now at the base of the steps. So I decided to ask the man who might know, Sylvester Stallone. Why? I asked him. Rocky Sly says, It’s better where it is — at the base of the steps. At the top was the completion — the end — but it’s not the completion that counts — it’s the journey. The Effort; The Passion.”
Kevin Skarritt presents Jingle all the Way posted at Nuts and Bolts of Brand.
Marketing
C.B. Whittemore presents Shelly Lazarus on the Future of Advertising & Marketing posted at Flooring The Consumer.
David Maister presents I Can’t Believe This Worked on Me! posted at Passion, People and Principles, saying, “We all love to believe that we are very rational in our own buying, but there are times when marketing and selling approaches that we would like to believe don’t work on us, well, they actually do.”
Kevin Skarritt presents Control Freak! posted at Nuts and Bolts of Brand.
Matthew Paulson presents The Problem with Quixtar & Amway. posted at Getting Green.
Charles H. Green presents Bad Marketing 101: Trust Me! posted at Trust Matters, saying, “What are the two most trust-destroying words you can say? “Trust me!”"
Mike Sansone presents Is del.icio.us a Marketing Tool? posted at Converstations.
Strategy
Andy Nulman presents Theory 2-Intimate Goes Big posted at Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise, saying, “Happy to be at the carnival, and wondering if the rights to the cotton candy concession are still available.”
Tim Peter presents What Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will buy in 2007 and why… » thinks posted at Tim Peter thinks…, saying, “This is from about a week ago, but I think it takes a broad look at media 2.0 in 2007. Enjoy!”
Tim Peter presents What’s the least you can do? » thinks posted at Tim Peter thinks…, saying, “This is an another post that you might also find useful. Enjoy.”
Matthew Paulson presents Gold: A Bad Investment posted at Getting Green.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Marketing (r)evolution Carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Technorati tags: marketing (r)evolution carnival, blog carnival, marketing, advertising, strategy, branding
I’ve watched viral web pieces gather steam and take off like a rocket to the moon. But I’ve never been a part of one until now. This all started with Mack Collier wanting to spread a little link love to a few blogs that he thought deserved a little more attention. A few folks added a few more links until it became a monster unto itself.
My story is an interesting case study in Technorati logic. I had been debating whether or not to move from Blogger to Wordpress. One thing that had always stopped me was the fact that I would have to lose my links and ranking. But I made the move anyway (looking back I should have done it much earlier).
When the z-list meme began, I had 2 blogs linking to me and a Technorati rank of roughly 260,000. After a week or so of the meme blowing up across the internet (including postings from marketing guru Seth Godin and Digitas Creative VP David Armano), this blog now has 67117 links and a new ranking of 49,372 25,448. Seth is even attempting to leverage the new functionality in Squidoo called Plexo for user ranking. Though is particular Plexo is turning into its own mini-Technorati, the technology is cool, if not a little slow. As of right now, Strategic Design is setting at #48 of 262.
But the best part isn’t the numbers, it’s the new blogs and people that I’ve been introduced to. As the blogosphere continues to grow, it gets harder and harder to find good content. And while I’ll probably never be a Top 100 blogger, it has been nice to let the power of the web do a little natural marketing for me.
I mentioned David Armano’s push to capture the best of 2006 (from a social media perspective) the other day.
He’s compiled his report and it’s available on his blog. I opened it up and lo and behold, there was part of my comment to him on page four.
David is really making a dent in one of the largest marketing companies around. And his good work has not gone unnoticed, a few months back he was promoted to VP. So now that he has greater reach and visibility, I’m looking forward to seeing him influence and shape new media . I hope he doesn’t get too bogged down in the management aspect of his new role. Thanks David.
For those of you not familiar with David Armano, you should definitely check him out. He’s a rising star in the blogging space and one of my few daily reads.
He’s started a great thread on the biggest marketing/advertising impact in 2006. Most of it is centered on web 2.0-type things, but that’s where the entire industry is moving anyway. This thread was just covered in BusinessWeek and it’s still picking up steam.
You’ll see my responses around comment #15 or so…
technorati tags > marketing, 2006, businessweek, david armano, impact, trends
Submitted to Hugh as a mini-manifesto…
I read somewhere that the best test for creativity in business was simply to ask “are you creative?” So I tried it. And for the majority of people it seemingly proved true. The people that we all see as creative (designers, PowerPoint gurus, out of the box thinkers) said yes; and the planners, project managers, sales people said no. So I naively believed it to be true.
Watching my two year old daughter run around and play reminds me that we’re all creative. We all have boundless imaginations. We always have. Unfortunately our educational system has progressively worked that aspect our being out of our nature. No educational system on the planet puts as much emphasis on creativity as they do logic. Think about the number of math and science classes you took versus the arts and humanities. Not that logic is bad. In fact, it’s a critical element of life. I just believe that we are over-balanced on logic compared to creativity.
I believe the lack of creativity is slowly killing business. That lack is driving everything to a commodity price-driven market. It’s creating an environment that puts cost cutting before customer satisfaction. Without creative thinking how will the engineering team discover the next breakthrough product? How will the marketing team develop messaging that stands above a crowded market place.
Creativity isn’t solely the realm of designers and ad agencies. It shouldn’t be associated with art. It does not equal wild and crazy. It doesn’t equal foolishness. And being “creative” not a job title.
When you hear “out of the box thinking”; that’s the call to creativity. It’s your management team asking you to come up with a new approach. It’s daring to think differently. It’s not copying the competition. And after all, when you boil it down isn’t creative thinking what we’re paid to do? If everyone has the same view, the same ideas, the same approach, and the same results why are we all still here?
To succeed in business is to be creative in your role. Growth demands creativity. It will separate you from the competition. As humans we’re trained to only notice what’s different in our environment. Therefore, standing out is the best way to raise awareness.The lack of creativity across the board is not only hurting your brand, it’s ultimately hurting your profitability. And it’s hurting your employees.
Creativity isn’t a special gift – we’re all born with it. It never leaves, it’s just hiding behind years of logic. I challenge you to find time to let the two year old inside of you come out and play. Your employees, customers, and shareholders will thank you.
technorati tags > creativity, gaping void, business, marketing, growth, strategies
