Category Archives: What’s Going On

The Double Nickles

A Maximum Speed 55 sign sometimes used in Cali...

I turned 55 today. It’s not really a “big” birthday but it feels sort of like one. As one of my friends pointed out, I’m closer to 60 than to 50 (and feel free to point out that I might need new friends). Maybe in golf terms I’ve made the turn but there’s lots of real estate left to navigate.
The thing that keeps rattling around in my head is how different the world is on each birthday. When I was born, the last Russian forces were still leaving parts of Austria – leftovers from World War II – and West Germany became a country. A vaccine for polio – which killed and crippled millions – was approved. A Daley was mayor of Chicago. The President (Eisenhower) sent troops overseas (to Vietnam), and someone planted a bomb on an airplane (United flight 629) which blew the plane out of the sky.  OK, so maybe some things haven’t really changed.  But much more has, even if the scourge is now AIDS, we’re sending troops elsewhere, and the start of our current wars is actually about as far back as the end of WWII was to my birthday.  But there’s the lesson. Continue reading

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Two More Trends

I wrote last week about 10 trends to watch coming out of the BMO Capital Markets Advertising and Marketing Conference and told you I’d be going into detail on each. Here are the next two trends to watch – Coordinating Connections and Transactional Marketing.
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Filed under digital media, What's Going On

Looking at Two Trends

Service Normalization Image B

I wrote the other day about ten trends to watch coming out of the BMO Advertising and Marketing Services Conference.  Today I want to dig a little deeper into two of them and discuss why I think they’re relevant even if you’re not an advertising or marketing service business.

Trend number one was the incorporation of technology into other industries.  In a nutshell, this means Internet Protocol-based communication systems being mixed into objects such as refrigerators, roadways, and elsewhere.  Trend number two, which is an outgrowth of trend number one, is the explosion of data available today.  Here’s why you should pay attention. Continue reading

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