Entries Written By Alistair Vince
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. …
The100: Trends, Sapiens and Fairycakes
From The New School Tim Stock teaches what looks to be a hugely interesting course at The New School called Analyzing Trends. Sadly, I’m a few thousand miles and most likely a couple-of-hundred grand short of being able to enrol. But Tim has released the slides from the course introduction where he covers a plethora of points. …
The100: Long term thinking, mental reframing and Haddon Salt Esq.
Flipping failure It’s good to be back in the hot seat after a couple of weeks on holiday (and see that no-one had filled my drawers with balloons… it happens here). One of the trip highlights was a 3-day hike through the Atlas Mountains with the saucepan lids. You see, walking is about 498th on the …
The100: Universal laws, intellectual mischief, and CSI Miami
Intellectual mischief Alex Morris has released his Strategy and Planning Field Guide. There are enough gems in there to sink a ship. I simply can’t list them all. So here are my top 5: Page 28: Ways to start doing research differently Pages 34 – 35: The danger of aggregates and averages Page 37: A guide …