I've been spending a lot of time lately studying racing history, particularly dirt-track racing in the 1950s and 60s. Many race fans consider that period the golden age of auto racing, when ever-growing speeds and technology ran head first into unforgiving tracks built for slower times.
This video -- a mashup of Dick Wallen race video and musician Moby -- is a touching reminder of how cool those old cars and drivers were, and how many of those circle-track heroes left the track in ambulances.
I find marketing superstar Seth Godin to be 2 parts genius and 1 part annoying.
I think he spends too much time telling us how different he is from the rest of us mortals. But I guess he's earned that obnoxiousness because I can't think of another Internet-age marketing voice who consistently delivers unique insights, vision and lessons day in, day out.
Case in point is his new Domino Project, an effort to revolutionize book publishing.
Godin lays out his vision for his brave newpublishing world in an interview with litopia.com. It's well worth a listen for anyone in media; you'll find yourself wanting to "bookmark" places in the interview.
Spurlock used eBay to auction off naming rights to this TED talk to reinforce the concept of his most recent film, "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," an over-the-top documentary about product placement.
This 18-minute speech challenging traditional marketing concepts is highlighted by some amazingly dumb promotional folks (sorry, Ban, but you need to clean house) and some brazen ideas about how far product placement can go. Traditional content creators will find themselves queasy, but that's Spurlock's mission.
But just when Spurlock has traditional content creators at the point of discomfort, he delivers something of a plot twist by playing off some visual jokes at the beginning of his speech and turning them into sources of inspiration for those wanting to stir the pot. It's a clever trick that turns our initial perceptions against ourselves.
"If you take chances, if you take risks, that in those risks will come opportunity," Spurlock said. "I believe that when you push people away from that, you're pushing them more towards failure. I believe that when you train your employees to be risk averse, then you're preparing your whole company to be reward challenged.
"I feel like that what has to happen moving forward is we need to encourage people to take risks, we need to encourage to people not to be afraid of of opportunities that may scare them. Ultimately, moving forward I think we need to embrace fear. We need to put that bear in a cage."
Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 11:08 PM 