In no particular order…..
1. The news is bad for you – Rolf Dobelli in The Guardian
Rolf Dobelli has taken a bit of Jonah Lehrer style criticism but I try and only read the news once a week and find much to agree with here.
2. The Cult of Shareholder value – The Washington Post
Agree with a lot of this, maximising shareholder value is a very narrow, short term objective. We ought to have triple bottom line accounting where all stakeholders are taken into account not just the owners of capital.
3. The rise of the full stack marketeer – Kyle Tibbitts
The essential marketing skills for start ups. Am really curious as to whether an agency could package these up for the start up community to tap into vs have in house.
4. The liberation of magic – Martin Weigel
As ever lucid and compelling argument from Martin Weigel on successful brand marketing based on the Erhenberg/Sharp school -Top of mind awareness and relevance to infrequent purchasers are more important than differentiation and appealing to fans if a brand wants to grow.
5. The Boston Manhunt and social media – New York Magazine
Gripping dissection of the impact of social media on how news is reported and how easily falsehoods are shared and reported as fact as media outlets trip over each other trying to be first with a scoop.
6. Dan Weiden on chaos and culture (from 2005)
Not technically from 2013 but re posted by W+K on their blog last year. Amazing 2005 speech by Dan Weiden on the importance of chaos to creativity and insight into the agency philosophy.
7. Free speech in the era of it’s technological amplification – MIT Tech Review
Fab piece on the impact of technology on free speech written as a letter to JS Mill.
8. An app for gender equality – Natascha McElhone in The Guardian
What constitutes modern feminism has been a hot topic recently and I enjoyed this by Natascha McElhone on the fourth wave of feminism that is tackling society and culture’s remaining issues around gender equality.
9. In praise of laziness -The Economist
As one of the many people that I am sure hates email this rang true. And the start of the year certainly feels like a good time to focus on getting meaningful work done rather than spinning the wheels doing email and attending pointless meetings.
10. An interview with Rick Rubin – thedailybeast.com
And finally, thought this was great insight into the creative process in the music industry from Rick Rubin’s work with artists such as LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Hope you find some of them interesting and have a great 2014….
