Jun 30
2008
Barbarians Enlist Naked Strategist
Wow, that's me.
I kind of feel like I sound like an idiot ... but it always feels that way when you read your own stuff (or that's what I keep telling myself).
June 2008 Archives
Jun 30
2008
I'm a Barbarian
All about my big move to join The Barbarian Group
So I've got a pretty big announcement to make today. People who know me probably already know about this, but I haven't really told that many folks. I have moved to Barbarian Group to head up planning and strategy and I'm super excited (like super super excited).
There's lots of reasons I decided to move over, but mostly it's because I think the Barbarians are awesome. For those that don't know them, here's their Greatest Hits which includes Subservient Chicken and Method's Come Clean site and recently CNN's new t-shirt thing and Getty Images' Moodstream.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll all be hearing lots about what I'm up to over here in the coming months, but in the meantime I'll turn to an entry by Rick Webb on the Barbarian Blog to explain it:
The Barbarians and Strategic Planning
In thinking about the strategy and planning offerings at The Barbarian Group, it’s important to understand that we aren’t adding planning and strategy to our company, we are formalizing our offering and responding to increased, near-constant demand for planning and strategy that has thus far only been offered on a first-come, first-served basis by Benjamin, Bruce and Rick. Our clients have come to respect our insights into these areas and ask for these services more frequently, so the right thing to do was put a process around it, some discipline, and bring in a big brain to help us and ensure we do things rigorously and better than we did before.
Secondly, Noah is freakin’ awesome and we would have probably made a juggling department if that was part of his conditions for coming over. This is a joke, but intended to drive home the point that Noah was bright and there was no previous search underway for a new department or offering so much as he highlighted an opportunity and problem we had been ignoring until the perfect solution presented itself.
Thirdly, the ad-press-unnoticed addition last year of a User Experience department has been an unmitigated success. Like 1000% revenue growth in less than a year for the offering. Like pioneering-what-the-field-is type of stuff. Like we’ve been so busy with it we haven’t had time to write enough about it. And while this is awesome, User Experience at the initial side of things is heavily driven by brand and product strategy, and UX in the 21st century starts before the site, and begins to merge with your media strategy – Facebook app, widget, banner or game? Website or blog? That sort of thing. It all blends together, and our UX department has driven a need for disciplined strategic planning to drive it. And doing them both ensures a far more effective result. Just ask any startup company who has a brand strategist and a UX team at two different companies.
Finally, our aim is to offer every service under the sun in assisting organizations and individuals in forming, executing, measuring and capitalizing off of their interactive marketing. This is our organizing principle. Not being a production shop, not being an agency, not just creative, not just this or that. Everything in service to that goal. One-stop coordinated interactive brilliance for any type of organization that needs it. This is just another step for us in that direction.
That's it for now. Hopefully the return to full-time work (I've had 3 weeks off) will mean a return to posting here a little more often.
Finally, thanks again to everyone who has kept with me over the last few years, I really believe nothing I've accomplished would have happened were it not for this site at the center. So thanks for that.
Jun 28
2008
google stealth
I wrote in the past about parents picking baby names based on domain name availability (as well as giving the baby gift of page rank).
Anyway, Ryan at Barbarian offers up an interesting alternative: "Name your child something so common that it’s nearly impossible to separate the signal from the noise. You simply vanish into a sea of digital homogeny."
Tags: culture, identity, internet, names
Jun 28
2008
bored? stoned? insomniac? UPL8.tv
My buddy Aaron put together this little gem of a site called UPL8.tv. It's a pretty simple idea: A whole bunch of oddly mesmerizing YouTube videos that play one after the other (you can skip to the next one at any time by pressing space). Watch out, though, because you'll look up and realize it's a half hour later.
Jun 25
2008
Market Adjustment
Maybe we're not seeing a radical shift, but rather a simple adjustment.
While I've been in California I've been spending a lot of time reading the newspaper (that's right, like the printed one). I don't read the paper often at home, maybe once or twice a week at most, but I always enjoy myself. What's amazing to me every time I sit down with a paper (or a good magazine for that matter) is how I always end up reading and enjoying things I never thought I would. Online we're so selective, scanning and choosing carefully what to read and what not to. With the paper in hand I find the process completely different, I read almost everything. Maybe it's because I've actually invested in it (all $1.25) or maybe it's just because reading the paper is much more of a leisure activity for me (I usually am just hanging out somewhere with plenty of time).
Now I would never say one is better than the other, however, I think it's safe to say that I read a lot in the newspaper that I'd never think about spending time reading online (and vice versa, much of what I read on the web wouldn't ever make it into the paper). Now I'm not really sure where to go with all this, but I find it to be an interesting phenomena.
With that out of the way, this entry was actually supposed to be about some themes from today's New York Times business section. As I was reading through I was struck by the strings that seemed to run through all the articles (of course it's entirely possible that I am imagining their existence). Anyway, bear with me as I try and run through some thoughts I had ...
My thinking got rolling with this quote:
In truth, Wall Street is in for a radical makeover. Fewer people, lower margins, lower risk, lower compensation — and ultimately, fewer talented people. It is likely to change the culture of an industry that for nearly a century has been the money center of the world.
That is an almost perfect explanation of what's happening all over the business world at the moment: You could use the same words to describe the music business or the advertising world. Maybe what we're seeing at the moment isn't some sort of radical shift, but rather a market correction. I've written before that I believe success is a relative, not absolute, measure. Unfortunately, we've gotten so used to things like year-on-year growth and, in the case of the media/entertainment industries, mass audiences that we've forgotten that success is about how much you put in as well as how much you get out.
Continuing the theme of market adjustments is this quote from an article about cable's recent success.
“The natural shift of dollars to cable will continue,” said Jason Kanefsky, a senior vice president and account director at the media buying agency MPG. “It just makes sense. Why pay more for eyeballs on CBS when you can go out and buy eyeballs on Turner for half the price?”
Now I'm no economist, but if you have two things of equal value and one costs less than the other it's only a matter of time before the prices equalize. Cable beating network TV isn't revolutionary, it just a market doing what a market does. Ultimately the only reason we're surprised (whether "we" are the advertising industry or television executives) is because we've gotten comfortable with the incredible profits. Once again, it doesn't mean that network TV is going anywhere, just that it will see lower margins. The sky isn't falling, it's just lowering slightly.
Jun 23
2008
Quick & Dirty Tumblr Survey
My friend Amit (of Photojojo and Jelly fame) is doing a little survey about tumblr. He's going to make all the data available. So, if you use tumblr and have a few minutes to spare, go fill it out.
I'm not sure if I've written this before, but I think tumblr is 1) a fascinating idea and also 2) nicely illustrative of the New York tech scene at the moment. One, because I think there's a big opportunity for super targeted blogging platforms. If you think about it, tumblr is essentially a CMS made only for reblogging. Makes me think about all the other single use CMS's that could be built. Two because it's less about tech and more about behavior/design. The tech behind tumblr isn't that complicated, it's a CMS (and not a particularly robust one at that). However, it's perfectly suited for it's task (reblogging) and beautifully designed. There's no fancy algorithm behind it or anything else.
Tags: blogging, technology, tumblr
Jun 21
2008
Blue Bottle Coffee Making
Yesterday morning I went to Blue Bottle Coffee Company for likemind sf. A few months ago I read about Blue Bottle's $20k coffee machine and I was really curious to see it at work (I had seen the New York Times slideshow).
Anyway, I got my wish and caught video of the whole thing: Step 1, Step 2 and Step 3.
Jun 19
2008
Chinese Democracy Leaks
So nevermind what Stereogum says about the album, could it be true that Chinese Democracy, "the most expensive album never made", is actually coming out? Is Dr. Pepper happy or sad? (Happy is my guess.)
Oh, and if you get your hands on it, please let me know. I'd really like to hear it.
Tags: music
Jun 19
2008
Hyper
I love pictures of grocery stores and I love pictures of people jumping
Hyper, by Denis Darzacq, is just about perfect.
Tags: photography
Jun 19
2008
Tie on the Ropes?
WSJ reports that tie sales are down to 50% of what they were in 1995 ($677 million vs. $1.3 billion) and only 6% of American men wear a tie to work every day. Crazy stuff.
My real point, though, is that I thought this quote was quite interesting: "Power is being able to dress the way you want." Thought it was a really interesting point about the way business culture has changed over the years. People are now dressing down to make their authority felt.
Jun 17
2008
Tim Russert News Broken By Wikipedia?
All the Tim Russert coverage has been amazing, but I found this to be especially interesting: Apparently the first place with the story was Wikipedia.
Makes me wonder if Wikipedia is becoming more efficient (in economic terms). One day maybe every piece of information will be on there the moment it happens (very Kurzweilian I know). Reminds me of this research on the speed that British football betters take in information.
Jun 17
2008
Dymaxion Man
I don't often write about things I haven't finished reading, but this New Yorker profile of Buckminster Fuller included a nugget I just couldn't help but share: "Following this string of disappointments, Fuller might have decided that his “experiment” had run its course. Instead, he kept right on going. Turning his attention to mathematics, he concluded that the Cartesian coördinate system had got things all wrong and invented his own system, which he called Synergetic Geometry. Synergetic Geometry was based on sixty-degree (rather than ninety-degree) angles, took the tetrahedron to be the basic building block of the universe, and avoided the use of pi, a number that Fuller found deeply distasteful." (Emphasis mine.)
He found pi "deeply distasteful" ... Amazing.
Tags: architecture, history
Jun 15
2008
brand tags battle mode
This has been floating around in my head for a while and I decided to finally make it happen. In this new brand tags game, two random brands are pitted against each other (hence the name battle mode). It actually ends up being a lot of fun, especially because you find yourself coming up with funny ways to compare two random logos (and I kept coming up with explanations in my head for why they're not really random at all). Also just added the ability to mark a matchup as favorite and add comments. Give it a try.
Jun 14
2008
Crazy Friday Night
Not really. Spent tonight writing emails and catching up on some reading ...
I'm still pretty snowed in by brand tags. More than anything else, it's just keeping on top of emails with new brands to add. I can't complain, but it's definitely kept me from reading/thinking as much as I might like. But, I haven't been totally dormant, so here's some random things I've read/seen/thought about over the past week or so.
- 1) let me get some brand tags business out of the way: 1. I reached 1 million tags. 2) I launched a brand tags blog (which will include announcements and hopefully observations by me and others). 3) I launched uk brandtags and hispanic brand tags. 4) This is a bit old, but brand tags was on NPR and they made this cool video segment.
- I'm off to San Francisco and LA next week. If you're around and want to meet up, drop me a line.
- Faris and I wrote an article for this month's Contagious Magazine all about the importance of data visualization. For me, at least, it was in part inspired by a quote from Ed Cotton: "in a data driven world, infographics are the new art." Anyhow, Faris has a little writeup of the article and a link to the full thing in PDF form.
- I know I'm a little late to the game on this, but: Thing Younger Then McCain. Some of my favorites include automatic transmissions, LP records and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
- This poster is awesome.
- I keep saying this to people, but I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here ... I think the best way to understand what any business does is to listen to what it says it's not. If you feel like you need to defend yourself preemptively by saying you're not something than that's probably exactly what you are.
- After one week of hard core training new Zappos employees are offered $1000 to quit. The idea is that if you're willing to take the cash then you weren't right for the job anyway. I think that's awesome.
That's all for now. Thanks to everyone again for all the brand tags support and sorry for ignoring the blog for a few weeks.
Jun 6
2008
Google Economist Sees a More Measurable Future
AdWeek's Brian Morrisey spoke to Google's chief economist Hal Varian about, not surprisingly, search marketing. The real nugget from Varian comes towards the end when he says, "Marketing is the new finance ... Just as finance has become more quantitative because of what happened in the 1970s, you'll see marketing do that."
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I think he's absolutely right. I keep trying to write all the reasons why, but I'm feeling particularly inarticulate today, so it will need to wait until another day.
Tags: finance, google, marketing
Jun 6
2008
The Lush Life
My friend Mike built a really simple website that lists Manhattan's best cocktail bars. My personal favorite, Death and Co., makes the cut.
Jun 4
2008
Friday Evening Shindig
A little drinks get together this Friday.
So I'm back from vacation and feel like it's been far too long since I did a proper drinks get together. After consulting with my friend Colin, we've decided Friday evening at 6pm is ideal. As usual, bring along anyone you'd like.
Who: Noah and Colin (and anyone else who you want to invite)
When: Friday, June 6 from 6pm until whenever
Where: Sweet and Vicious, 5 Spring Street between Elizabeth and Bowery
Why: It's been far too long and it's getting warm in NYC
Like I said, feel free to tell or invite anyone you'd like. See you Friday.
And I promise that I will be posting more regularly sometime soon.
Jun 4
2008
Plainview
Plainview is a fullscreen browser without any Chrome at all specially made for presentations. As Rick explains in the blog post about it, "How many times had we done presentations where we just wanted to show our work in a browser – screw powerpoint – but couldn’t do it because it would look lame with all that browser chrome? How many pointless Powerpoint presentations have we made of Quicktime movies of our sites, just so we could show them in full screen and look slick?"
Tags: browser
Jun 2
2008
Young People
They are graduating so let's think about them
It's time to think about young people and what they mean again. So says the media, from what I gather. However, I'm noticing a change in tone around this subject this year that has got me thinking.
Where a story a few years ago about Millennials entering the workplace (then with a front edge barely pushing 25) included some fresh observation and (cautious) optimism, this year seems to be telling a more combative and cynical story:
"It's graduation time and once again we say 'Stand back all bosses!' a new breed of American worker is attacking everything you hold sacred."
Those words came from Morley Safer in his intro to the recent 60 Minutes report on the Millennials. The segment then dove into some dialogue that didn't paint a very pleasant picture:
Morley Safer: Take me through some of the do's and don'ts about how you must speak to this generation of young workers. Expert: You do have to speak to them a little bit like a therapist on television might speak to a patient.
Add to this the little debate going around a few weeks ago triggered by the Radar post titled "Generation Slap: They're naive, self-important, and perpetually plugged in. This is a call to arms against Millennials."
Here's the little story I'm picking up on: Millennials have reached critical mass in the workplace (front edge 27ish now), are exerting some real power and influence on business and culture, have more like-minded folks coming in behind them that amplify their perspectives, and now, according to some folks, it's time to get defensive.
I'm bit hesitant in the first place to draw this type of line between "clashing generations," because I don't think there is actually a line, and the differences that exist tend to be exaggerated. I agree for the most part with Anastasia's thoughts on the matter: that young people aren't fundamentally that different from other generations. I think a lot of what we hear about young people is reactionary hype.
But I do think a key dynamic at play here might have to do with something that Adrian at Zeus Jones wrote about awhile back on how what we call the digital divide is really a human values one, not a technological one, since "technology shapes behavior which shapes thinking." It's worth reading the values he lays out (open, supportive, optimists, value the process, reject authority etc). Seen this way, the 60 Minutes piece seems more about a clash between digital thinkers and non-digital thinkers. Maybe the so called problems employers are facing with challenges to authority and strong attitudes on how to do things better is actually just that: a better approach.
That leads me to the observation Clay Shirky makes near the end of "Here Comes Everybody" -- that many of the examples in his book feature young people because they are "...taking better advantage of social tools, extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models not because they know more useful things than we do but because they know fewer useless things than we do."
In this complex story of who this generation is and what they mean, I think the biggest (and most exciting) point is missed if we don't look at everything through the lens of the changed digital communications DNA that they are the leaders of. The great upside to this, as Shirky points out, is that all generations benefit. The way young people operate and the tools they use spread everywhere. The new ways they are organizing themselves will spread everywhere (I'll be surprised if the biggest, most historic story this year is not about how young people organized themselves to vote in their choice to the White House). I think this is a healthier way to look at the situation. We can be excited that we can work and collaborate with a group that brings a fresh approach to communication, among many other things.
Chet Gulland lives in NYC and works at Anomaly.
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Hi, I'm Noah. I like writing on, thinking about and making stuff for the internet. I work for The Barbarian Group and am responsible for a few internet experiments like Brand Tags, likemind and My First Tweet. On this site I write about media, marketing, culture, technology and randomness. I like it when people email me.
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Mostly random thought (from Twitter): Wow, I am now getting Ground Zero Mosque comment spam ... I don't know whether to be impressed or disturbed. (31 August 2010, 11:54 am)
Q: What is this site all about?
A: I think Michael Bierut explained it nicely a few years ago in response to people asking him why he didn't write more about design on Design Observer: "But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be." Replace "graphic design" with "media/marketing/technology" (or whatever you'd like to call my field) and you've got my deal.
Q: Where else do you live?
A: Good question. All over the place as a matter of fact. On Tumblr for more randomness, Twitter for short bursts, Dopplr for places I'm going, Delicious for things I'm reading, last.fm for music I'm listening to, Flickr for photos I'm taking and Facebook because I don't really have a choice. (Oh, and Amazon for stuff I want people to buy me.)
Q: I meant that literally. Where do you live?
A: Oh, sorry, Brooklyn, New York is where I call home at the moment.
Q: Any other side projects you'd like to tell us about?
A: As a matter of fact, yes. There's How Much Does it Buy?, a calculator for the rest of us. Holy Crap! Facts (and accompanying Twitter feed) which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Da' Bears Blog is, in my opinion, the best Chicago Bears blog on the web (I don't write it, I just helped it get off the ground) and Tweemail is a little PHP script I wrote for getting Twitter updates by email. I'm also always working on a few other things and will let you know when they're ready for public consumption.
Q: Um okay.
A: Yeah, that's a fake question mostly so I can throw in this one other quote I like that I think sums up some of what I try to do here. This one comes from Albert Einstein (or at least the internet says so) and goes something like, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Words to live by.
Q: What sites do you like?
A: Well that changes all the time. At the moment I've been digging clusterflock, Beyond the Beyond, Bobulate, Barking up the wrong tree and The Awl.