It’s January, and back to work and ready for a year of complexity and opportunity. It struck me toward the end of the year that this complexity that we all deal with in the audience targeting business can be a good thing, rather than a limiting factor. The more solid, easily interlocking audience and data elements you have, the more solid and durable your entire digital marketing effort can be. If you have kids, and I just spent Christmas with my two amazing ones, you already know a great example of this: Lego.
Lego is actually my favorite activity with the kids. Sometimes we just build one of the elaborate Star Wars or Harry Potter sets, but more often than not, we create structures that come purely out of their imaginations. We always find that the success of these creations can be traced to two key elements. One: Assemble a vibrant collection of different and unique Lego parts. Two: Organize them so key elements are easy to find and use. When you have those two states, you can build creations that are unexpected, delightful, and completely different than you had originally planned.
This is such an apt analogy to the state of... Read more
Tagged 'Data' 
Would you give up your shower and shoes for your mobile phone?
A flushing toilet in exchange for Facebook? Air conditioning in lieu of Angry Birds? Ranking a list of your most appreciated items is no easy task but when the London Science Museum asked 3,000 British adults to do just that, the results were astonishing. Only four items ranked above Facebook in terms of appreciation – sunshine, the Internet, clean drinking water, and a fridge – and the mobile phone came in at number ten, ranking just below a flushing toilet!
There were some other shockers as well, including a push-up bra beating out a freezer and painkillers ranking higher than fresh fruit and vegetables. But outside of creating a few gasps and giggles, what can we really learn from this? The appreciation for an Internet connection, Facebook, Email, and mobile phones/smartphones shows the degree of influence that the digital world is having on our culture. As more people shift their behavior in favor of what the digital world has to offer, e.g. a two-click Black Friday purchase from your iPhone versus lining up in front of Target at 4 a.m., sending a neighbor a Facebook message versus knocking on their door to invite them... Read more
