Posted by Tim Leberecht - December 2, 2008
I am finally reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s mesmerizing book The Black Swan – The Impact of The Highly Improbable, and I am intrigued by the parallels you can draw to Obama’s campaign (they may be quite a stretch, but those are the best, no?)
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Posted by Tim Leberecht - November 28, 2008
Cees van Dok, frog’s executive creative director in Europe, spoke at the Trendforum 2008 this week, one of Germany’s leading conferences for “trend research, innovation management, and trend marketing,” that brings together corporate decision-makers, creative agencies, trend scouts, and the public sector.
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Posted by Tim Leberecht - November 28, 2008
It's a few weeks old but still worth pointing out as another recent example of "Disruptive Realism" - a clever twist on the slogan of the New York Times: 'All the news we hope to print:'
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Posted by Tim Leberecht - November 25, 2008
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Posted by Adam Richardson - November 25, 2008
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Posted by Robert Fabricant - November 24, 2008
I had lunch with my kids at our local Middle Eastern restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, yesterday. It has been there for a long time in a neighborhood that has exploded with cool cafes. The smell of warm pitas, fresh from the oven, practically brought my kids to tears. This place is getting more and more attractive to me these days. They provide good, cheap, fresh food – I can stuff the whole family for less than $30. But that's not all: at the end of the meal they always bring out some free honey semolina cake along with the check (they divide one standard portion into four little cubes for us). What a wonderful bonus...or maybe not. I would argue in this economy that cake is a critical element of their survival strategy. My neighborhood is flush with tasty restaurants competing for my shrinking budget. They all better be thinking of new ways to delight me.
In this economy the most pressing business imperative is customer loyalty. You better be thinking hard about how you are going to retain your customers over the next two years (even if you lose some real money doing it). I am paying close attention to the businesses that get this. The ones that are working extra hard to recognize regular visitors like me, even if I rarely buy (and never at full price). My presence in the store alone has rising business value these days.
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Posted by Adam Richardson - November 17, 2008
Despite the vaguely technical title, the latest James Bond installment, Quantum of Solace, is almost completely devoid of gadgets.
Gee-whiz gadgets have been a mainstay of the Bond oeuvre, from car ejection seats to lighters that convert into pistols, from watches with lasers to personal jetpacks. But with the "reboot" of the series starting with the last movie, Casino Royale, the film-makers have dramatically downplayed the use of devices as deus-ex-machina methods of getting Bond out of a jam.
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Posted by Nick de la Mare - November 16, 2008
Chris Foss was (perhaps is) a British sci-fi artist. He’s most famous for his association with an ill-fated attempt to make the first Dune film in 1976. It's a shame the film was never made because it would most likely have been classic 70’s cinematic madness and excess (witness Zardoz starring Sean Connery in diapers for comparison). Set to star Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali, with a Pink Floyd soundtrack and H.R. Giger and Chris Foss on deck to provide the vision and set design, you have to imagine it would have been epic.
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Posted by Tim Leberecht - November 16, 2008
Now that Barack Obama has appointed YouTube as his “Secretary of Video,” as CNET comments, it raises the question what does Generation O’s new transparency mean for businesses?
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Posted by Tim Leberecht - November 15, 2008
Demos, the UK-based “every democracy” think tank, is putting on an interesting event in London this week (November 18): How to make news and influence people: Media and journalism in the network age will discuss "the new politics of images" and "what kinds of news and photo-journalism are emerging to connect people with politics."
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