April 2011
The Avatar’s New Clothes →
“Los Angeles-based startup Styku is chasing the Holy Grail of the online apparel business: making a virtual fitting room that actually works.”
The Post-Advertising Age →
“Today, the only way brands can connect with customers and prospects is by genuinely adding value to their lives, either by providing a useful service or by telling rewarding stories. Brands have no choice. Messages that aren’t valued will be ignored.”
Joichi Ito Named Head of M.I.T. Media Lab →
AARON KOBLIN'S DATA ART
Data-driven decision-making →
“In a modern economy, information should be the prime asset — the raw material of new products and services, smarter decisions, competitive advantage for companies, and greater growth and productivity.”
Conde Nast is tapping the brakes on its drive to deliver iPad editions of all its magazines http://goo.gl/lKJqB
WatchA look inside LN-CC, the East End’s answer to Dover Street #london
Message to Executives: Stop Multitasking →
McKinsey: “Always on, multitasking work environments are killing productivity, dampening creativity, and making us unhappy,” the article begins. It goes on to say that “these scourges hit CEO’s and others in the C-suite particularly hard” because senior executives need time and focus to synthesize lots of information, and make good judgments. Their advice? Focusing (do one thing at a time),...
You Are the Ad →
MIT Technology Review: “Facebook has emerged from a privacy scandal to become online advertising’s next great hope. Its goal: turning us all into marketers.”
‘Remember when a publicist was called a “press agent”? Now, to quote the legendary Hollywood publicist Pat Kingsley, “suppress agent” might be a better term. In the new era of social media, any celebrity with a half-baked idea and a laptop — or any fan with a cellphone camera — can quickly undo years of careful image crafting. And many publicists (and their studio overlords) demand that...
Mutually Assured Distraction →
Great David Carr piece on digital distraction, thx Gerhard: ‘Anthony Breznican, a reporter for Entertainment Weekly, said all it takes is for one person at a dinner to excuse himself into his phone, and the race is on among everyone else. “Instead of continuing with the conversation, we all take out our phones and check them in earnest,” he said. “For a few minutes everybody is typing away....
Examining the End of D&G →
As Dolce & Gabbana decides to fold its younger, less expensive D&G brand into its high-end line, the WSJ questions the logic of secondary lines in a world in which consumers have been mixing and matching expensive and cheap clothes for years.
“If you seek to innovate and you’re constantly trying to measure the price of...”
– Trevor Edwards, Nike