It’s clear that media’s charter has changed. Beyond a slight course correction or even a pivot, we’re talking 180-degree change. Continue down the same path and you’re hot on the heels of dinosaurs.
Archive for Patrick Reynolds 
Lesson for Yahoo: Is a Clean Slate the Best Solution?
Posted by Patrick Reynolds on July 18th, 2012 at 11:00 am
As you’ve probably heard, Yahoo just hired ex-Googler Marissa Mayer as its new CEO. She is the company’s fifth CEO in five years. But can yet another CEO change the fate of the struggling company? It got me thinking.
I get sad when I see “paperboys” (themselves now in their forties) literally throwing a rolled up log of dead tree at “customers” before peeling off. Really? Dinosaurs no longer roam the earth. Equally, though, I cringe at the gilded turd sites and applications that so beautifully say nothing in their perfectly developed pointlessness.
These folks need one another. Here’s a case in point.
I had a great lunch with a good friend and super smart guy recently. He was mentioning that in his particular company “the cavalry is always coming.” Mind you, his is a phenomenal company and very venerable, but it’s always had a bit of envy hardwired in its DNA. They’ve always been one person away from MEGA success in their collective mind.
Finally, at a recent meeting someone finally stepped up and said what some of the newer management had been thinking. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We have everything and everyone we need right here.” Crickets. Crickets.... Read more
A Flat PBR
Posted by Patrick Reynolds on July 16th, 2012 at 6:22 am
Less cynical people think it’s the result of us (especially marketing folks) living in a 140-character world. Abrvtn bcmes rqrd. Possibly. I’m all about brevity. I firmly believe distilling complex things down to their essence is not just good communication, but good thinking. Filtering and Processing are twin towers of great minds.
But there’s shorthand and there’s inside baseball. I think this is the latter.
Learning to Live with Our Technology
Posted by Patrick Reynolds on June 13th, 2012 at 9:17 am
The phantom vibration in my pocket from the iPhone that wasn't there was the least of it.
Yesterday I bit the Apple. I did what I was warned never to do. I put all my technology down and walked away. For twelve hours.
I'm blessed to commute by ferry. Having left my iPhone, iPad, and laptop locked away in my office (as much from me as from any would-be thieves) I set out on foot for the fifteen-minute walk from my office to the boat.
I played with the now impotent headphones in my pocket nervously. The first thing I noticed was the birds. Spring had sprung and they played call and response even amongst the office buildings and industrial landscape.
The next thing was the sirens. Goddamn but there are a lot of sirens in the city. Who knew? I wondered which were Police versus Fire or Ambulances. I feel sure I used to know. Was it my imagination or were some more urgent than others? Maybe just nearer?
I soon passed the Children's Museum (lots of chortles and squeeeels) and arrived at the boat.
That's when it hit me.
I felt like Ebenezer Scrooge tripping back through time or Patrick Swayze in "Ghost." That's a... Read more
Curly Was Wrong
Posted by Patrick Reynolds on March 26th, 2012 at 9:28 am
I was reading Fast Company’s list of "Most Innovative Companies" when it struck me: Curly was wrong.
You know-- leather-faced Curly from City Slickers. Specifically when he (played by all-time badass Jack Palance) was imparting his cowboy wisdom on hapless (and now similarly leather-faced Oscar host) Billy Crystal that the key to life was 'just one thing.’
All apologies, but wrong.
Life is about a bunch of things. Big things. Smaller things. But "things" plural. Fast Company’s top four most innovative companies—Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon—have this decidedly in common. In a seemingly ‘there’s an app for that world’ where ‘do one thing and do it better than anyone else’ is the mantra, they stand in contrast to a degree. Their utility is not one-dimensional or limited in any way. Their future seems wider, not deeper.
I won’t belabor the Applification of America. Apple is pervasive, thanks largely to ease of use and enormous utility. Apple works like you think it should and does a bunch of stuff that makes your life better or more enjoyable—even if you didn’t know it prior. What started with the iconic Mac has ballooned into something much, much more—a mix of hardware and software wrapped around an elegant... Read more
