luni, 29 septembrie 2014

Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers?

Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers?

Link to White.net

Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers?

Posted: 29 Sep 2014 01:51 AM PDT

We’ve known for some time now that the hard-sell doesn’t really work online. So what strategies are brands in 2014 using to urge browsers to buy online?

They’re using magazine content.

What is magazine content?

Well you can call it visual content marketing, editorial content, lookbook content or whatever you like.

Essentially, it’s content that has an editorial look, and that presents features, information, advice and inspiration alongside products on-sale in an integrated fashion.

The likes of Liberty, Harrods and other luxury brands and retailers have been embracing this kind of content to drive their eCommerce sales for a while, and it’s a strategy that looks like it’s here to stay. Let’s look at a brand that was early to the magazine content party…

The Net-A-Porter Example

Net-A-Porter.com was a relatively early adopter of this kind of content, re-launching their weekly on-site magazine, The Edit, in early 2013. Described as 30 pages of fashion shoots that allow readers to buy directly from the pages, as well as news, features and interviews with women from around the world.

NAP’s editor-in-chief, Lucy Yeomans, said ahead of the re-launch:

“We have an extraordinary customer base and we have to make sure we are looking after their needs, and that means bringing in the best of everything out there.”

The ambition of this new content focus, according to Tess Macleod Smith at Net A Porter, was to create a more in-depth customer experience:

“The aim is to inspire the consumer from the very beginning of her journey — and follow her all the way to the end.”

The-edit-by-net-a-porter

 

The approach appears to have worked brilliantly well for the brand in the last eighteen months, with the company seeing 18% growth in the year to February 2014. This success also means that the company has taken the decision recently to produce its own glossy magazine, to link the offline and online browsing experience.

It has been a commerce/content hybrid from the beginning. The website opens with a magazine-like "Edit". Readers can become shoppers by clicking on images in both articles and adverts. The new paper magazine extends that idea into print.” says Schumpeter in The Economist. “There is no disguising that Porter [the new print magazine] will help blur boundaries between writing about goods and services…and selling them”

They key term here for me is ‘blurring boundaries’. Magazine content, when executed well, can have a startling effect on our willingness to purchase. What’s more, the ‘shopability’ of products featured in magazine content is made more natural.

So for fashion forward brands, magazine style content is working supremely well and is therefore, presumably, here to stay.

But what about more traditional brands? Are they embracing this new marketing approach?

I’m taking a look at some traditional British retailers, known for their quality and brand, but not necessarily their forward-thinking attitude to marketing, and discovering how they are approaching magazine-style selling to consumers  online.

Marks and Spencer

The launch of Marks & Spencer’s sleek new magine-style website in February (below) was followed swiftly in July this year with news that the retailer had suffered an 8% fall in online sales. So what was the problem? Was the move too revolutionary for a brand that targets such a wide age-range and demographic? Going shopping on websites means "reading a magazine", says M&S's online chief, Laura Wade-Gery. So was the fact that a large percentage of their target audience are more likely to be reading Gardeners’ World or Home and Garden than Vogue the big problem?

According to The Economist, they wanted to ‘weave stories around their products’; let’s take a look at how they achieved that…

The Key Elements of the magazine-style page

Weaving a story means creating looks, inspiration, ideas and desire for a product.

marks-and-spencer-a and b

a.  Authorship and editorial authority

Adding simple elements such as an author bi-line or image help to reinforce the concept of editorial authority and objectivity. Net-A-Porter calls it "enhancing its online experience to its customers and providing compelling content and an authoritative editorial voice on its websites." (Drapers)

b.  Social sharing buttons

Integrating share buttons reduces the burden of sharing content socially and encourages multiple shares across platforms.

marks-and-spencer-the-new-workwear-c and d

c.  Product link buttons – start the purchasing cycle

Facilitating a move to a product purchase with ease by using ‘Shop the look’ or ‘get the product’ buttons – this may be a good element to A/B test – your customers may not respond to your language in the way you think.

marks-and-spencer-the-new-workwear--d

d. Upselling – lower cost products as add-ons

Ecommerce sites have been offering us ‘add-on’ products during the checkout process for years. Lower price point items work well as they are ‘impulse buy products’ Here, tempting add-ons or complimentary accessories are integrated within the content.

marks-and-spencer-the-new-workwear--e

e. Encouraging further exploration of magazine-style content

Browsing online is no different to flicking through a traditional glossy magazine. Sometimes you want to read more, sometimes you’re selective in the articles you read. Giving online browsers the options to continue their browsing journey on your website is key – keeping them on your site is better than letting them leave without making a purchase.

Lets look at another example…

Clarks

clarks-biker-boot-headerClarks has jumped on the magazine format bandwagon and produced some great content for its site this autumn, such as this Biker Boot page. This page comes just in time for the explosion of autumn/winter collections that appear every year around the time of London Fashion Week.

Clarks has clearly taken cues from the likes of Net-A-Porter and other high-end brands and the result is slick pages that look like they would fit nicely in Vogue.

movie-retro

Clarks has included classic magazine elements such as imagery around inspiration for the collection, images of well-known stars wearing a similar look, and ideas of how to wear the biker boots with different outfits. What’s great about this page, and others like it on the Clarks site, is that they have taken advantage of third party products (as examples of how to style the footwear) to make the page seem more objective.

This page has also included a high-quality video, which backs up the look ideas and helps visitors imagine how the looks could be realised in real life, and facilitates the easy purchase of these accessories.

Not only has Clarks done a great job in creating engaging and readable magazine content, these pages are great landing pages for web users searching Google for ‘Biker Boots’ as they are both engaging and highly relevant.

And so on to our final brand….

The Body Shop

This brand always seemed to me to be a divisive one; you were either a Body Shop customer or you weren’t, and I always was. So how are The Body Shop going about capturing new customers?

Take their new Argan oil range for example. Argan oil has been a buzzword in the fashion and beauty industry for the past few years (see Google trends graph below), but The Body Shop has moved beyond its use as solely a product for hair to create a range of skincare using Argan oil.

argan-oil-moroccan-oil-search-trends

Because this product has been a hot trend over the past few years, all of the top beauty and women’s magazines have produced features and reviewed argan oil products, so how has The Body Shop compete and introduce itself to new customers in this space?

By answering their questions!

Research based queries around argan oil, its benefits and advantages are growing:

What is argan oil? Monthly Keyword volume: 590 (and growing)

Argan oil research informational query keyword universe: 3,150 (and growing)

So The Body Shop has created an information hub to capture consumers in the research stage of the buying process and introduce them to their new product range.

What-is-argan-oil-organic-listing

 

What-is-argan-oil

The Body Shop’s What is Argan Oil? page is targeting the web users who are seeking out information, ie, they are in research mode so therefore the purpose of the page is to convert researchers into potential purchasers.

The Body Shop has created some visually engaging content about this topic, which means it is more likely to be seen as an authority by search engines and visitors. However, I think this landing page would benefit from a less sales-y approach, incorporating more objective content and trust factors such as quotes from magazines or bloggers.

This content is split across two pages, though I think it would make more sense as one single, longer page. I think longer form is more appealing these days and visitors are likely to miss out if they are required to click through to a second page.

I would have included some trust factors on these pages, such as reviews from magazines or online publications. There’s no shortage of blogger reviews of this product range (for example: here and here, especially from their in-store showcase events.)

 

Alex’s closing thoughts

Is the key to this kind of content, as Business of Fashion says, ‘shortening the path between inspiration and transaction’?

Is it all about creating a story and inspiring browsers with ideas?

  • Does viewing this type of content increase our willingness to buy or the amount we are willing to spend in once transaction?
  • Does it make us more likely to re-visit a site, either to browse or make a transaction?
  • Does magazine-style content evoke luxury and quality?
  • Does magazine style content feel more authoritative and impartial?

What do you think are the key elements of magazine content that create the desire to buy? Do you find this type of content more authoritative or objective (in spite of your marketing knowledge)?

Further reading:

Video: Inside Net-a-Porter’s Strategy for ‘Porter’ Magazine (here)

M&S launches new website, focuses on curation, clustering and content (here)

Main image credit: Kampoli

The post Aspirational brands: Is magazine content the future for online retailers? appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : Wishing vs. doing

 

Wishing vs. doing

By giving people more ways to speak up and more tools to take action, we keep decreasing the gap between what we wish for and what we can do about it.

If you're not willing to do anything about it, best not to waste the energy wishing about it.

       

 

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duminică, 28 septembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Elephant in the Room Minsky Moment

Posted: 28 Sep 2014 06:02 PM PDT

The "elephant in the room" is debt. Try as they might, central bankers have not been able to spur credit, hiring, or much business expansion because of the elephant. Things are even worse in Europe.

Via email, this is a guest post from Steen Jakobsen, chief economist of Saxo bank.

Debt - The Elephant in the Room
'Interest on debt grows without rain' – Yiddish proverb

This proverb explains most of what goes on in policy circles these days. We are now watching Extend-and-Pretend, Episode VI: Promises for improvement amid ever growing debt levels.

Short put, we're still working with the same dog-eared script we were introduced to all of five years ago, when markets had stabilized in the wake of the financial crisis: maintain sufficiently low interest rates to service the debt burden. Pretend to have credible plan, but never address the structural problem and simply buy more time. But while we were able to get away with this theme for an awfully long time, the dynamic is now changing as the risk of low inflation (and even deflation) is a brick wall for the extend-and-pretend meme. Yes, interest does grow without rain, and the cost of maintaining and servicing debt grows especially fast in a deflationary regime.

Mads Koefoed, Saxo Bank's macro economist projects US growth at around 2.0% for all of 2014. That will be the sixth year with US growth near 2.0% - so despite lower unemployment, despite a record high S&P500, the economy has a hard time escaping that 2.0% level. Any talk of higher interest rates is hard to take seriously when US growth is going nowhere and world growth is considerable weaker than expected in January or as recently as July, for that matter. It seems everyone has forgotten that even the US is a part of the global economy.

The fourth quarter is always the most politically interesting time of year. Countries need to get their new budgets in order. The EU, IMF and World Bank will need to pretend they agree or accept the weaker data, which has to mean bigger deficits. It's a tiresome exercise to watch denial-in-action as EU governments and other policymakers try to make something so obviously unpalatable go down easy in their internal reporting. It's obvious that buying more time (extending) is always the number one priority, followed by projecting (pretending) the forward looking growth will reach an ever higher trajectory in order to make the budget fit within the supposed constraints. Or in France's case, the recent unilateral abandonment of meeting budget targets for the next two years is already a fait accompli.

Who's next?

Such behavior would cost you your job in the private sector, but in the economic model of 2014, which reminds us more of Soviet Union than a market based economy, its par for the course. But, many would protest, it would be even worse if we hadn't done so much to "save the system", right?

Well maybe, except for the fact that those economies where belief in State Capitalism is strongest:  Russia, China and France, are all at the end of the line. Time has caught up. Negative productivity, capital flight and a system built on protecting the elite is failing. France is now moving from recession to depression. China is moving quickly from denial towards a mandate for change, Russia's future has not looked this bleak since the late 1990's.  Meanwhile the US continues on sluggish 2.0% growth. Investors and pundits seem to have forgotten that we were promised 2014 would be the end of the crisis. Instead, we are speeding towards the inflection point at which debt becomes harder to service because pretend-and-extend policy making have created a depression in investment and consumption.

The public debt loads continue to inflate across Europe: Portugal's public debt has ramped to a staggering 130% of GDP – up from about 70% in 2007. Greece's public debt load, even after the restructuring of Greek debt a few years ago, has swelled to 175% of GDP. The EU now has far more systemic risk than at the beginning of the crisis. With zero growth or as our economist Mads sees it, 0.6% with the arrow pointing down, debt levels continue to rise relative to GDP. And most importantly, the current flirt with deflation will make servicing the growing debt even more expensive. The nightmare for ECB and world is deflation as it's a tax on debtors and a boon to net savers. The new reality is that we currently stand face-to-face with the very deflation risk that just about everyone denied could ever happen when Q1 outlooks were written.

Two other global threats, or time bombs, if you will, outside of the EU are risks from the growing costs of servicing debt in China and the USA. In China, the governments national and local have piled up considerable debt, but it is the overall debt service costs in all of China that are the real concern, which have only grown so large with the dangerous assumption by  Chinese banks, companies and citizens that they can count on a public bailout. According to a Societe Generale analyst, total debt service costs (including maturing debt and roll overs) in China area at nearly 39% of GDP.  Compare that with the closer to 25% of GDP for the USA in 2007.

In the US, interest on US government debt cost over 6% of budget outlays in 2013. This is relatively down from its worst levels when interest rates were much higher, but only because FOMC has so drastically lowered the costs for the US government to issue debt with a zero interest rate policy. And now the debt load is vastly larger than it was before the financial crisis – at 80% of GDP (net debt according to IMF) versus 45% of GDP a mere 10 years ago. So are we actually to believe that the Fed can lift the entire front-end of the curve from 0-1% (current rates out to three years) to 2-4% over the next two years without massive further stress on the deficit and only adding to the debt? Servicing 2% interest when growth is 2% means you are doing worse than standing in place if you also have a budget deficit.

Whatever the timing, the USA, China and Europe are all headed for another Minsky moment: the point in debt inflation where the cash generated by assets is insufficient to service the debt taken on to acquire the asset. The US productivity growth last year was +0.36%. The real growth per capita was about 1.5%. Anything which is not productivity is consumption of capital. So, the only way to grow an economy without productivity growth is temporarily with the use of debt – about 75% debt and 25% productivity growth in this case.

Since the 1970s, US productivity growth rates have fallen 81% - the move onto the internet has ironically made us bigger consumers and less productive. Had we remained at pre-1970s productivity, the US GDP would have been 55% higher and the outstanding debt to GDP would be easily fundable.

I just returned from Singapore on business – Singapore, to me, used to be the most rational business model around. Its founder Lee Kuan Yew was one of the greatest statesmen in history. Now, productivity is collapsing in Singapore. They are, like us, becoming the Monaco of the world, an economy based on consumption and not on productivity and growth. The developed economies are growing old in demographic terms, but we're still not wise enough to realize that our current model is a Ponzi scheme rushing toward its inevitable Minsky moment. No serious policymaker or central banker is talking about the truth told by simple maths and hoping that things turn out well. Hope is not good policy and it belongs in church, not in the real economy.

Steen
Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Reflections on Catalonia, Crimea, Iraq, California, Nation Building

Posted: 28 Sep 2014 11:09 AM PDT

Catalonia Independence Vote to Proceed on Schedule 

Arthur Mas, president of Catalonia declared today that the vote for independence of that region will go as scheduled on November 9. Spain contends the vote is illegal and vows to stop it.

El Economista reports Arthur Mas Calls for Vote on Independence of Catalonia.
President of Catalonia, Artur Mas nationalist, officially called for a vote on the independence of this rich region of Spain for the November 9, challenging the Spanish government began the process to prevent it.

In a ceremony at the gallery Gothic Palace of the Generalitat, the seat of regional government in Barcelona, ​​Artur Mas, supported by his executive and representatives of other nationalist parties, signed the decree of convocation of this non-binding referendum.

"This is the way democracies are expressed and political projects are born. Voting it is the responsibility of the Democrats do not circumvent it," then said in a brief speech.

"Catalonia wants to talk, want to be heard, want to vote," he said Mas, who continues to ask Madrid to allow the query as London did in Scotland, where the "no" won Sept. 18 in a referendum with broad participation.
The proposal flew like a lead balloon in Madrid. Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy Initiated a Process to Suspend the Referendum.

Reflections on Catalonia, Crimea, California

There is a lot of puffery in Spain given the resolution is nonbinding, unlike the vote for Scottish independence.

In the US, if California wanted to cede from the union and form its own country, look on the bright side: California independence would be a huge upside for the rest of us.

Such a referendum, if allowed to stand, would take a lot of socialist votes out of the US House of Representatives. That would be a good thing. Unfortunately, there will never be support in California to cede from the union.

Crimea Votes Overwhelming to Join Russia

In Crimea, citizens voted 96.77% for integration of the region into the Russian Federation. Some claim the vote was rigged. Perhaps so, but by how much?

A Gallup Poll in Crimea following the referendum shows overwhelming support.

  • More than eight in 10 (82.8%) say the referendum reflects most Crimeans' views.
  • About three-fourths of Crimeans (73.9%) say Crimea's becoming part of Russia will make life better for themselves and their families, just 5.5% disagree.
  • Crimeans are overwhelmingly likely to view Russia's role in the crisis as positive (71.3%) rather than negative (8.8%).
  • Outside of Crimea, responses are practically reversed (66.4% see Russia's role as negative, 15.6% positive).
  • Though Ukrainians outside of Crimea are somewhat ambivalent about the United States' role in the crisis (39.0% say it has been positive, 27.7% negative, and 21.6% neutral), Crimeans are far more unified in their view that the U.S. has played a negative (76.2%) rather than a positive (2.8%) role.

Justice was served in Crimea. The people clearly got what they wanted, and they did so in a peaceful, democratic process, undoing a haphazardly pieced together nation that simply did not belong together as configured.

Who am I (or anyone in Kiev) to question what an overwhelming percentage of the Crimeans want?

Nonetheless, arrogant outsiders with zero legitimate interest insist "the vote must not stand" and Russia must return Crimea to the Ukraine.

Instead, I propose, the US ought to consider outcomes like the Crimea vote and the Ukrainian civil war before it goes poking sticks at bears and stirring up geopolitical trouble.

Reflections on Nation Building

Nation building by outsiders does not work, ever. Results are especially bad when outside forces  haphazardly piece together nations to suit political whims.

Iraq and Ukraine are proof enough.

In Iraq, the Kurds want their own nation. The US is against the idea.

But why shouldn't the Kurds have the right of self-determination?

I seem to recall at least one great nation got its start that way. Anyone else remember? And isn't the voting booth preferable to war?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Two purposes of user feedback

 

Two purposes of user feedback

What's a customer worth?

A customer at the local supermarket or at the corner Fedex Print shop might spend $10,000 or even $25,000 over the course of a few years. That's why marketers are so willing to spend so much time and money on coupons, promos and ads getting people to start doing business with us.

But what happens when it goes wrong? What if a service slip or a policy choice threatens that long-term relationship?

If you know what's broken, you can fix it for all the customers that follow. It seems obvious, but you want to hear what customers have to say. After all, if people in charge realize what's not working, the thinking is that they might want to change it.

At the same time, a critical but often overlooked benefit of open customer communication is that individuals want to be heard. Your disgruntled customer doesn't want to hear you to make excuses, and possibly doesn't even want you to fix yesterday's problem (probably too late for that), but she does want to know that you know, that you care, and that it's not going to happen again. Merely listening, really listening, might be enough.

Big organizations (and smaller, unenlightened ones) grab onto the data benefit and tend to ignore the "listening" one. Worse still, in their desire to isolate themselves from customers, they industralize and mechanize the process of gathering data (in the name of scale) and squeeze all the juiciness out of it.

If you live in the US, you might try calling 800-398-0242. That's the number Fedex Print lists on all their receipts, hoping for customer feedback. It's hard to imagine a happy customer working her way through all of these menus and buttons and clicks, and harder still to imagine an annoyed customer being happy to do all of this data processing for them.

The alternative is pretty simple: if you're about to lose a $10,000 customer, put the cell phone number of the regional manager on the receipt. That's what you and I would do if we owned the place, wouldn't we?

Answer the phone and listen. It's an essay test, not multiple choice.

When in doubt, be human.

       

 

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sâmbătă, 27 septembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Sick Man of Europe is Europe; Blame the Socialists, Progressives, Greens, and the Euro Itself

Posted: 27 Sep 2014 05:48 PM PDT

Joel Kotkin writing for New Geography hits the nail smack on the head with his assessment Sick Man of Europe is Europe.
Throughout the continent, public support for a united Europe fell sharply last year. Opposition to greater integration has emerged, with anti-EU parties gaining support in countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany and France.

The new reality is epitomized by France's ascendant far-right political figure, Marine Le Pen, who is now leading in many polls to win the next presidential election.

These attitudes suggest that the EU could be devolving from a nascent super-state to something that increasingly resembles the Holy Roman Empire, a fragmented landscape of small, unimportant states wrapped in a unitary, but ephemeral crepe. This challenges the view of some Americans, particularly but not only on the left, who see Europe as a role model for the U.S. 

Some pundits, such as Paul Krugman, routinely describe Europe's approach to economic, environment and social policy as more enlightened than America's. Wherever possible, progressives push for European-style action in areas such as curbing carbon emissions and rapidly converting to "green" energy.

Several years ago Germany and the Netherlands were exemplars as opposed to the much-disdained PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). But German growth rates have plummeted, going negative in the last quarter, along with France and Italy. More stagnation is likely as energy costs surge and key export markets, notably in Russia and China, begin to contract. Today, the "sick man" of Europe is not any one country, or collection of countries; the "sick man of Europe" is Europe.

Europe's poor economy stems in large part from policy. The strong welfare state so admired by progressives here has also made Europe a very expensive place to do business. High taxes and welfare costs, long tolerable in an efficient economy like Germany, have a way of catching up with companies and countries. This has been particularly notable after the financial crisis; since 2008 the unemployment rate has shot up 5 percentage points while dropping steadily in the Untied States.

All this suggests that Americans would do better than look to Europe for future solutions to our own problems. However attractive the European model may seem to our pundit class, the reality on the ground shows something more to be avoided than embraced.
Blame the Socialists, Progressives, Greens, and the Euro

The socialists ruined France and Italy. And the Euro which was supposed to be a uniter has been anything but.

There is more bickering than ever before on what constitutes sound fiscal policy. Germany wants one thing,  France and Italy another. Some countries want something in between and others waver back and forth.

More importantly, what the people want, is not what the politicians want. The result has been the rise of Marine Le Pen in France, Beppe Grillo in Italy, and Golden Dawn in Greece. Unstable governments and alliances exist in several countries.

Energy costs have soared in Germany thanks to Green policies. German businesses pay twice as much for energy as US counterparts.

For example, a typical medium-sized German industrial company pays 9.14 euro cents per kilowatt hour compared with 4.82 cents/kWh in Texas, according to research carried out by Ecofys, a consultancy, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research.

The founders of the Euro project thought fiscal matters would unify over time. Instead, politics and policies diverged.

The fact remains: No currency union in history that did not also have a fiscal union has ever survived.

With horrendous demographics in most of Europe, impossible to untangle socialist promises in the "Club-Med" countries and France, and no hope for a sensible fiscal union, the situation is bleak.

My take: A Disruptive Eurozone Breakup Awaits.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Wasted Money: Delegation of Governors Make Surprise Trip to Afghanistan

Posted: 27 Sep 2014 11:23 AM PDT

Ways to waste money in Afghanistan are endless. Here's another case in point: Cuomo Makes Surprise Trip to Afghanistan.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday as part of a delegation of governors and Defense Department officials to visit troops and receive briefings on counterterrorism and security issues, the governor's office said.

Also among the group were Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee, Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri and Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada.

This is the second trip abroad for Mr. Cuomo in recent weeks. He traveled to Israel in August in what his office called an effort to show support for the country in its conflict with Hamas.
Are Missouri and Tennessee prime terrorist targets? Even if any of those states are terrorist targets, is there anything any of the governors can learn in Afghanistan that they cannot learn right here?

Of course not.

This is a political grandstanding stunt for all involved.

In the grand scheme of things, this trip wastes a trivial amount compared to the trillions of dollars we have already wasted.

Curiously, the boondoggle does have one useful aspect: It highlights the massive over-inflated egos of the three of them. Then again, we probably did not need to waste money to figure that out.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : None of this makes sense

 

None of this makes sense

Your own personal media company, the focus on building individual skills, the networks that we're all part of...

It makes no sense that we're busy spending our 'work' time weaving together audience, passion and new competencies.

Unless.

Unless we also acknowledge that the old method of productivity, of being a good employee by obediently doing what you are told, is obsolete.

Our job is to figure out what's next and to bring the ideas and resources to the table to make it happen. Otherwise, all of this (this blog, your online activity, the courses you take) is nothing but a worthless distraction.

We've created a huge web of inputs and levels and skills and distractions. It's thrilling to see people doing something with it. Go.

       

 

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