a thought-provoking ramble on the state of life, clients and the universe at large
The debate over false and fake news continues, as it has for millennia. It will no doubt flare up as the means of information distribution get ever more efficient. And who knows? One day the Pinocchio effect might actually be realized, as embedded chips in our brains cause physical changes to our bodies if we…
“Providing relevant answers has been the cornerstone of Google’s approach to search from the very beginning. It would undermine the people’s trust in our results and company if we were to change course.”- Google, in response to SEME research. SEME, in this context, is for those who Googled and found links to Japanese culture: “The…
How impactful do you think social media was during the recent US presidential campaign? I’m not referring to the tweets or posts of either candidate. I’m more interested in the celebrity endorsements, the influencer factor if you will. A quick search and count will tell you that Clinton out celeb’d Trump by an exponential factor….
“Politics is just like show business.” – Ronald Reagan It’s hard to argue with that sentiment after the recent US election. However, my interest is more on the side of how the show-business effect impacted Millennial voter turnout than in the antics and theater of any particular candidate. To that end, it is important to note…
“A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes.” -Mark Twain (no one knows for sure if he said it) Even if he didn’t say it (and if you know—one way or another—please tell), it is prescient in its meaning today. Fake news is all the rage these days,…
So what was it that made it so hard to predict the recent US election that caught the data scientists; the media; the pollsters; the pundits and the bettors by surprise much like Brexit did in the UK a few short months ago? Could it be as New York Times (who got it dreadfully wrong…
It doesn’t matter where in the world you live. It doesn’t matter what your politics are. The negative, nasty and vindictive tone of the US presidential election—from all sides—has affected us throughout the globe. Saturday Night Live, the famous US comedy show, has been skewering both presidential candidates for the past few months…so well, in…
What do Vine and HBO have in common? What indeed? Vine—once the fresh face of what some said would replace TV—is fading into oblivion. HBO—which should have been heading toward extinction, according to many of the same analysts and pundits—is hot on watch lists across generations and platforms. User-generated six-second content was going to be…
There is much to learn from the current US presidential election, and that is without touching on issues and arguments. Those I leave to you, dear reader, whatever your political persuasion in whatever country you live. My focus has been on what we can learn from all of the noise around us…often DIGIBABBLE…that plays such…
Fifty years ago I celebrated my bar mitzvah, the traditional coming-of-age ceremony for Jewish males at the age of 13. While its origin is spiritual, gifts—to be honest—do play a role in the day, and in my day it was an often repeated joke at such events: “Today I am a fountain pen.” Truth be…
September 19, 2016, was a critical date for marketers. In fact, I’d argue it was a day when yet another devastating salvo was unleashed on the hordes of Digibabblists who swarm like Orcs…attacking those trying desperately to connect with their consumers; their users; their buyers; their clients. You see, on that day Google launched its…
Trump or Clinton? Donald or Hillary? I apologize to my friends outside the United States for leading with the existential question we here are faced with…Real Consequence Reality TV. However, I would argue, strongly, that we are yet another microcosm in the MACROCOSM that is a world struggling to understand the true impact of digital…
And the naysayers nayed… First a Tesla crashes, tragically killing its occupant/owner/“driver” while it was on autopilot And then…. The Falcon 9 rocket exploded early on September 1, during a static flight test on its launch pad in Cape Canaveral. The rocket was preparing to launch the Amos-6, an Israeli communications satellite, but both rocket…
Game of Thrones… Which after six seasons and a steadily growing global audience, watching across all platforms, continues to break records and win awards…and is often viewed as a metaphor for politics everywhere… No doubt beyond the great visuals, acting and scripts, the basic story talks to us in a visceral way…it’s all a game……
DIGIBABBLE is being taken to a new high… The Newspaper Association of America, the trade group that has represented the interests of major newspaper publishers in one form or another since 1887, is going to drop from its name the very word that defined it: “Newspaper.” The group will be known as the News Media…
People First is a platform for development way more powerful than Mobile First; Digital First or even Pokemon First…forgive the sarcasm…. And frankly, as a subset of People First, I’d lead with Education First…as in Literacy First…because while there no doubt exists a good argument to show that literacy isn’t really required to find your…
Do they really know everything about you? No…I’m not talking about your parents, significant other or best friend…but I will return to them… I am referencing Facebook and Google as proxy for the all-knowing, all-seeing eye of digital. Yes…those ads that follow you around can feel creepy and make you wonder about Big Sibling (PC…LOL),…
I’ve admitted to being a sucker for the Olympics. But, truthfully, I am a sucker for those moments that, to me, are redolent of what the Olympics are supposed to stand for, whether they are incredible feats of prowess by individuals or teams or whether they are moments that rise above sports and enter into…
Inequality, in mathematics, describes the relationship between two values when they are different. Expressed in its equation form as “a≠b,” that is exactly what it means—not that one is bigger or smaller than the other or even that they can be compared in size. Ergo, when applied to society this relatively simple equation makes clear…
When I became CEO of Young & Rubicam, an industry website famous for its anonymous postings called my company a dinosaur, with all of the associated imagery. I was reminded of that posting last week when I took my grandson, Teddy, to the Museum of Natural History in New York City to, amongst other things,…
And the race is on! Wherever I have been in the world, the last few months, nearly everyone has asked me about the upcoming elections in the United States. And, I had the interesting experience, for an American, of watching both the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions from Europe and reaped the benefit of hearing…
Confirmation Bias…the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. According to Wikipedia: A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in…