Great Stories From The Edge

Get great insights, perspectives and ideas from marketing professionals who walk the line between insanity and genius.

TBT: St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day used to be a huge activation for our team on the Enterprise Ireland business.

We'd start messaging work in October and finish up the six-month cycle with vast content libraries to be syndicated over the months ahead, completely spent but immensely satisfied.

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Throwback Thursday

“Brilliant idea, John!  Now who is the one who has to make that happen?”

Our team worked for two years finding the 44 artists, explaining our goal, issuing the keys and having them send back the signed keys so the keyboard could be reassembled.

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Analytics & Attribution

The lines of communication between brand and audience have never been more important.

It started with circulation and reach, then impressions, engagement, conversion and now attribution. It is changing how we market, message, hire and the media we use and consume.

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Throwback Thursday

The 103rd AES convention was held in NYC 1997.

JBL Professional had Julian Lennon perform at the relocated China Club on 47th Street. With AES back in NYC next month these photos from that night are a fun TBT!

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Sludge

Sludge can slow cars down and bring some to an expensive end.

It struck me that something which was intended to lubricate movement and eliminate
friction ended up seizing the engine.

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The Press

Not all press create equally because not all press are created equally. 

Just as there is more than one type of PR person, there is more than one type of journalist. The casting of the media as one homogenous group is as incorrect as lumping all PR practitioners into the same pile.

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I Am A Hurler

Not a good hurler but an enthusiastic hurler with a deep love of Ireland’s oldest game.

I’ve learned that as hard as you try, having a deep love for what you do is central to being happy at what you do. Being happy with who you are and what you do makes you better at everything.

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The Road Less Taken

People I enjoy working with most seem to make the path of least resistance their road less taken.

They gain satisfaction not from simply ticking the boxes but from doing great work. They know that their road less taken leads straight to their comfort zone.

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The Pace of Strange

Whatever the space or sport, pace yourself doesn't mean slowing down!

The pace of change in business has so radically evolved in recent times. Agile, independent agencies are best positioned to capitalize on this new world order.

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Bold Is Beautiful!

Boldness is central to differentiation.

Reconciling (not compromising!) boldness with what’s going on in the world is the challenge business leaders should face every waking moment. 

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AV Is About To Burst…

And it will be brilliant!

Disruption comes in cycles, but it has not occurred in AV for a while. It’s only a matter of time before radical innovation comes to AV — bringing massive, positive change.

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Content Economy

Video is the currency of the content economy.

It offers the nearest thing to face-to-face human interaction, but it’s also repeatable, sharable, economical and can be translated and versioned. But even with all these benefits it’s got to get better.

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AV + AI = IOAV



The potential for AV has never been greater.

Smart AV will become the eyes, ears, voice and expression of an infinite array of cloud-based AI-enabled services. These systems will connect us, our cars, buildings and businesses.

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Trust Checklist

Trust. It’s what makes the world go round.

An agency that understands the world order as it should be vs. the order as they’d like it to be should be able to easily tick off the following simple checklist.

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Old School

There’s a lot of talk about
Advertising 2.0. 

What’s right, what’s wrong and what’s possible. So how do we unlock value in the 2.0 world in which we operate? It takes focus and discipline.

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Invention

I love that we talk of the Mother of invention.

It's not the father, the godfather, the brother or uncle. Mother is the perfect metaphor for the persona best equipped to provide an environment for a bright idea to grow into something real.

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Breaking Ad

Engaging, horrifying and
entertaining.

Breaking Bad asked us to believe that someone could transform themselves over the course of a few desperate decisions. Today, we’re asked to transform ourselves and our businesses not once a lifetime but once every few years.

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Think

Some people get it and it makes them better.

Thoughtfulness can never be coded into AI. It can’t easily be communicated in an emoji or shared virally. It’s what makes us, our relationships, our communities and cultures.

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Fear

Today in business, there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty.

We need to get beyond it — to retire the fundamentally divisive view that only the paranoid survive and instead act confidently, and bravely on instinct, intelligence and principle.

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Icarus

I used to have a rule here at
the firm to avoid the Icarus
Trap.

Sometimes our imaginations and ideas would get the better of us and we’d try too hard to get the impossible done. I now realize I was wrong to harness one of (several) things that makes a team great.

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Strong

Five days ago a coward placed a bomb outside our office on West 27th Street in Manhattan.

We’ve seen a lot in NYC over the past 15+ years. We've lost buildings and friends and family members. The experience and loss has made us stronger, more compassionate and better prepared.

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Meaning

It’s not always easy, but the quest itself can be worth it.

I believe that to be happy and fulfilled, it’s important for all of us to look for meaning in what we do every day, examine how we live and how we work.

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Empathy

Empathy is an attribute but it should also be a goal.

It’s a quality that comes naturally to great leaders who’ve innately understood their constituents and affected change. For others, we have to work hard at it. 

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Drive

I believe there is an opportunity for every person on the planet to find a job and become the best in the world in that function.

I recognize that it’s wildly impossible, but if we could find the right role for everyone then they'd find the drive to outperform all others in that role.

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Miasma

For some, technology has become a crutch. It provides distance to overcome innate shyness and mitigates the pain of rejection.

So we obsess with the process, update the app or populate the spreadsheet/platform to convince ourselves we’re doing a good job — and miasma creeps in.

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Live Life on the Edge