Entries Written By Alistair Vince
The100: Anthropocentrism, the ‘right’ mistakes and monks
Monk Mode Modern work is a mess. Or, as Bruce Daisley, ex-European VP of Twitter, would say: modern work is a lie. Just try not to put your neck out as you nod along with everything he says… Open-plan offices have made it harder to concentrate. Email has added an average of 2 hours to …
The100: Starting over, deliberative rhetoric & heartprints
I quit By this point in the year many people have waved the white flag to their resolutions. Their hands full of retrieved chocolates. The still squeaking running shoes are just for show. All the while mumbling promises to do better next year. But, if the resolution to quit your day job and set up …
The100: Thinking fast, harbingers of failure & ice cream
Trender bender Little known fact: if you laid all the pages of all the 2020 trend reports published to date, end to end, they would circle the earth. Twice. Helpfully, Julian Cole has kindly pulled together all the relevant PDFs into one handy place. I’m sharing it because I know it will be popular; but …
The100: Best of 2019
Back in the hot seat. And after a week of not eating leftover cheese and chocolate for breakfast, I’m feeling good. And lighter. For the first The100 of the year, I’ve herded the 10 most popular articles we featured during 2019. It seems readers of The100 are particularly interested in strategy, storytelling, effectiveness and why …
The100: Behavioural science, Haha, Aha & Cheetos
Be a fool Justin Lines spoke recently about how comedians can help us reveal better insights. Because Haha is far closer to Aha than you think. Comedians have to warm up the audience. Not just with a warm-up act, but also with the crescendo of their set. Justin argues that we could do the same …
The100: A.I., Disney’s mindsets and Ben Affleck
Behold the Sky Rabbits! (Alleged) AI and some of its applications are snake oil. Sold as a remedy for something-or-other but having no real benefit or worth. That’s what Arvind Narayanan, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Princeton (yikes) thinks. And after reading his accessible presentation entitled How to recognise AI snake oil, I’d be inclined …
The100: dotcom bubbles, newstalgia and plastic elephants
Messing with the magic Snip. Snip. Snip. Snip. The slithers of rope tethering online advertising to any form of respectability are gradually being severed. $5 to anyone who can read the (albeit old) eBay case study without shaking their heads. “The experiment ended up showing that, for years, eBay had been spending millions of dollars …
The100: Thick data, the gray tsunami and spirit animals
Rebranding data Canvas8 has been asking global tech ethnographer Tricia Wang for her tuppenceworth on why thick data makes big data more valuable. There’s this belief that anything that is measurable is more valuable, but that devalues a large part of human expertise because if it’s not quantifiable, then it’s not valuable knowledge. That’s scary, because …
The100: brand experience, unsung heroes and the 2nd Spring
Valuing mental availability Paul Feldwick’s article on how brand experience should not distract marketers from fundamental brand truths has been well shared this week, but it’s a must read. “the most important search engine is still the one in your head” I just adore the William Hesketh (uni)Lever example which shows that things haven’t really changed much …
The100: Innovation lessons, diplomatic rebels and our Jack
Czech this out There is a marketing festival in Prague next year which is called, errr, Marketing Festival. The time they saved coming up with the title must have been put into curating the speakers, because the line up is pretty special with Tom Goodwin, Helen Edwards, Binet & Field and Vikki Ross all there. …