The title is credited to Max Beerbohm, English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson. Taken from his 1918 work, Hosts and Guests, I interpret his work for a new era of hospitality. We live in a connected society now and as such, guests and the experiences they have and share, form the foundation of marketing and service. If we try to scale experiences for the sake of doing so, we miss the essence…
How Marketers Can Thrive in an Era of Digital Darwinism
While in London promoting What’s the Future of Business (WTF): Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences, I spent some time with the folks who produce The Digital Marketing Show. In this short video, I share the rise of Generation C and how an era of connected consumerism created the perfect storm for digital Darwinism to accelerate. We also discuss how the future of marketing takes more than technology, it takes a philosophical shift to create meaningful and shareable experiences. It’s…
Habits are the Invisible Architecture of Everyday Life
Guest post by Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin), one of the most thought-provoking writers on habits and happiness. Her new book, Better than Before, is about how we change our habits. Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life. Research shows that each day, we repeat about 40 percent of our behavior, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If our habits work for us, we’re far more likely to be happy, healthy, and productive—and if our habits don’t work…
The Apple Watch Will Make Work More Delightful and Reshape Employee Engagement
Guest post by Jason Shah is the founder and CEO of Do (do.com), a collaboration platform that helps people run productive meetings and do work they love. TL;DR Summary: Apple Watch will make work easier and more impactful. Through a constrained interface, powerful one-tap actions, and intimate data it will collect, people will be better at their jobs and form new bonds with coworkers previously not possible. There is a widespread myth that a new device will only add more…
The Future of Business is About Experience Architecture
Digital Darwinism is forcing businesses to #AdaptorDie. Many realize that customers are different. At the same time, leaders understand that how employees want to work is also changing. Yet, they’re frozen in the past, undermining the future simply because they do not know what to do and how. After all that is known, it is the unknown and the fear of venturing into the unfamiliar that becomes paralyzing. I spend a substantial amount of time inside businesses researching digital transformation…
Experience Begins Here
Experience is becoming more important than the product itself. What is experience? It’s not a thing, it’s everything. It’s an embrace and an emotional ecosystem that requires purpose, thoughtfulness and mastery. More so, experience requires architecture and a supporting ecosystem to deliver more than features, utility or capability. And, it starts here: <3 We must flip our everyday approach from brand-centricity to customer-centricity. Think beyond budgets, approvals and technology and creativity for the sake of technology and creativity. That’s what…
Pardon My Bluntness, The Future of Marketing is Screwed…But It Doesn’t Have To Be
The Adobe Summit in London is a pretty special event to me. A big part of it of course has to do with its location. I adore London and all of my friends, and those I’ve yet to meet, make the trip special each time. The other reason is that Adobe’s platform reaches EMEA and thus helps marketers who are pushing for change on a global scale. To prepare for the event, the team at CMO.com asked me to share…
Digital Transformation Starts with Reimagining the Customer Experience
All customers are not created equal. This is also true for relationships. No business has the same relationship with their customers as you intend to have with yours. The thing is though, you must first define what a relationship with your customer looks and feels like and in turn, how they would describe it to their friends and colleagues. This is where the future of customer experience begins. At a time when technology is affecting how people go through life,…
Meerkat and the Ephemeral State of Livestreaming
By now you must have heard about Meerkat, the latest tech media darling that lets people tweet (stream) live experiences with friends and followers on Twitter. It’s basically an easy to use app that combines ephemeral livecasting/livestreaming on top of the Twitter platform but through a dedicated screen where participants can see video, who’s watching as well as the Tweets between them. I call it Meerkasting and yes, it’s already a verb. I realize that most of the words I…
Insights: Interviews on The Future of Social Media as Curated by Anil Dash and Gina Trapani
I’ve long admired the work of Anil Dash and Gina Tripani over the years. In many ways, each has shaped my perspectives in new media and its impact on our professional and personal lives over the years. It came as no surprise that Dash and Tripani collaborated on yet another project. This time, they created ThinkUp, a social media service that offers daily insights about you and your friends on Twitter and Facebook. To celebrate the launch of their latest…
