Doing Stephen Hawking's Light Work

I know you're worried about KPIs and journeys and data-driven everything and dashboards but, honestly, there are bigger things to worry about.

Stephen Hawking says Earth is about over and we're going to need to leave here within a hundred years and find a new planet. And he's even smarter than a blogger.

So I thought it would be good to start a conversation about the kind of place we want. This way when we send out the interplanetary real estate agents to look for a new home they don't come back with some piece of shit planet for us.

Here are the things I think we should be looking for in a new planet:

   - Plenty of free parking

   - TVs that automatically turn off when you start snoring

   - Lots of pretty flowers

   - Super-hot nymphos who dig old bald guys

   - Coffee shops with good cinnamon twists, not the crap they sell at Starbucks

   - Dogs that don't shit

   - And while we're at it, babies that don't shit

   - And while we're at it, guys in front of you on the bathroom line at restaurants who don't shit

   - Free beer on Wednesdays

   - Invisible flying millennials

   - Public transit without the public

   - Bottomless martini glasses

   - Lots of amazing banner ads. Only kidding

   - Floors that give off a deadly electric shock when someone misses the urinal

   - Mandatory mid-day naps

   - Cars that drive themselves...oh, wait a minute...

   - Reverse digestion.The more lasagna you eat, the thinner you get

And this would be our planetary anthem...


That's my kinda planet. No charge, Stevie.

(h/t Malcolm Gordon)

Can Facebook Make Old Cool?

Say what you want about Facebook, they have proven to be amazing salespeople.

• When they started out they convinced gullible marketers that advertising was dying and that social media, in the form of conversations, was the future. Mark Zuckerberg said... “For the last 100 years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation.                                                                                                                                                                       That is, until he discovered he could make billions pushing out advertising to people all over his platform and then Facebook quickly morphed into another channel for delivering traditional paid advertising. Doing a complete 180, a Facebook spokesperson had this to say “… if businesses want to make sure that people see their content, the best strategy is, and always has been, paid advertising.” Oh.

• For several years they sold imbeciles in the marketing industry the fairytale that "likes" were worth something. 

• When every discount dentist was advertising on Facebook, they convinced marketers that the key to advertising success was getting clicks through "precision targeting." But when big advertisers balked, they changed their tune and decided advertising was all about that tired old thing, reach and frequency.

The point is, if there's anyone who knows how to blind the marketing industry with horseshit, it's Facebook. But now, they may actually be in a position to do the marketing world some good despite the industry's unwillingness to help itself.

According to Bloomberg, Facebook will lose over 3% of its teen audience next year  -- the first year in its history it has lost any part of any audience. A few more years of this and Facebook may be forced to do the unthinkable -- start selling its clients on the value of an older target.

People over 50 are the most valuable consumer group in the history of marketing. But the television and radio industries, who have plenty of over-50's, have been totally incompetent at explaining to advertisers the incredible amount of money they are losing by ignoring this group.

The one and only media entity with the brains and skill to sell advertisers on the value of advertising to a mature target may very well be Facebook.

If so, it would be the second time Facebook stole billions of dollars in ad revenue from the asleep-at-the-wheel broadcast industry.

Total Solar Eclipse Insider Summit

Monday in North America we will be experiencing a total eclipse of the sun.

A total eclipse occurs when God turns out the lights for few minutes because he has to do scheduled  maintenance.

It is further proof (as if any were needed) that everything revolves around the earth. Otherwise how could airplanes get anywhere? Answer me that, Mr. Smart Guy!

A total eclipse is different from a total ellipse.

A total ellipse is a curve that is the locus of all points in the plane the sum of whose distances r_1 and r_2 from two fixed points F_1 and F_2 (the foci) separated by a distance of 2c is a given positive constant 2a.  This results in the two-center bipolar coordinate equation r_1 + r_2 = 2a, where "a" is the semimajor axis and the origin of the coordinate system is at one of the foci. The corresponding parameter "b" is known as the semiminor axis.

But let's not dwell on the obvious.

The question for marketers is how will they leverage the eclipse to create experiential brand purpose that will authentically resonate with consumers to contextualize the millennial target's relevant alignment with your ecosystem? Either that or something about engagement or blockchains.

Here's why you don't want to miss the Total Solar Eclipse Insider Summit:

• Learn best practices, case studies, and newest tactics which can all be applied to your eclipsifying strategies.

• Understand emerging models of true one-to-one, highly personal, addressable and real-time eclipsification.

• Craft Identity Graphs and translate them into people-based eclipse shit.

• Use everything from  dynamic content tools and embedded multimedia to AI and cross channel data to serve what is relevant or at least edible.

• Plus all kinds of horseshit about conversations! 

So, don't be left in the dark (get it?) The Total Solar Eclipse Insider Summit is the one must-attend marketing event of the year. There won't be another total solar eclipse for another billion years or something.

And there won't be another Total Solar Eclipse Insider Summit until February.