This Week March 19, 2018

Sports fans---you had to love UMBC becoming the first #16 seed in history to beat a #1. I particularly enjoyed watching UMBC's Twitter feed through ‘till the end and then watching the retweets roll in real time.

Last Friday Insights & Analytics held our ~monthly book/article team discussion and this time it was a Bloomberg podcast featuring Scott Galloway. Vina chose this one which a lot of you may like as well. Scott is an NYU professor who has made his professional career studying the 'hidden DNA' of the big FOUR companies of our era: Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. His premise is that a key reason why they dominate so overwhelmingly is that each represent an organ in our bodies (e.g. a central truth). He then talks about each company with incredible interesting-ness.

A key thing I liked about this podcast was it's another example of someone smart and interesting solving a cool riddle in our culture. Such people don't invent anything new, per se, they have just codified a way of framing something that clarifies what's going on and is easy to remember. Listening to Scott I was reminded of three other people: How Brené Brown made us understand empathy. How Angela Duckworth made us appreciate grit. And how Simon Sinek made us recognize the power of why.

These are smart people. And yet what's encouraging is that anyone with excellent framing and good selling can rise up and change the world a little bit—not by painfully inventing something through years of trial, error, risk and money, but by turning something we all sense instinctively into something we all understand collectively. 

 
From John's Pinboard

 

- Channel 4, a brand who produces amazing advertising, is promoting something called the AzanaBand that someone can wear around their neck and it stimulates emotions. Is it real?? 

- A funny bit on Conan with Jeff Goldblum whose Pop! from Funko just sold out and is getting reordered.

- Harris' annual poll of the most visible brands is out. Apple and Google fell, Amazon and Tesla rise. Proof, again, that how brands grow is through brand penetration and frequency.

- eMarketer’s latest social forecast is out: Nearly 200 million people, or 60.5% of the US population, will use a social network at least once a month this year, up 2.6% over 2017.

- Here’s why it's legal for brands like Zara to straight up copy the designs of other fashion companies. (Hint: it has to do with the fashion industry.) 

 

- Elisia posted a cool ad in #greatwork from Nils Leonard’s new agency on climate change/wind power. 

 

- Wunderman suddenly has a 150 person AI dept. They run it from their Seattle office a few blocks from us. 

 

- The Superbrands list is also out and Mark Ritson has a field day tearing it apart. He’s right. My favorite bit is the Rolex part. Enjoy this funny post. 

 

- How do people shop on Pinterest? Jill posted a helpful piece in #outreach. Cool Infographic for the files. 

 

- Why have independent bookstores grown despite Amazon? An academic has been studying this for years and the conclusion is: when new tech comes along, focus on doubling down on what you’re great at, not trying to do the same and playing catch up. For the indy bookstores it’s ‘community’.

 

- There’s a data company named Cambridge Analytica who helped win the 2016 election using personality trait profiles. At the time we, in I&A, were wondering how they could do that. Thought about it for a while but to no conclusion. Well, it turns out that sadly they stole the data. Informative piece in the NYT about it. 

 

- Sean adds a great post on #readers from Rebecca West about how “art is not a plaything.” Great, short piece.