Context & Continuity

My Estimationa of Brandis Wither....

Following the players: FTP’s traveling ‘Guildenstern’ amuses

by Kayla Dos Santos

March 12, 2010

Clever stage direction and stellar acting made the Free Play Theatre Cooperative’s production “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” an enjoyable experience. However, Tom Stoppard’s uneven and muddled script left the audience feeling dissatisfied.

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Unfortunately, the play faltered when, at turns, it became serious. This was not from poor acting, but from the script’s abrupt shifts in tone. The main characters would be laughing one minute and hyperventilating from grief and fear the next. There seemed to be no real transitions, thus creating the issue that the audience did not know whether to empathize with their grief or to laugh at it.

The play also suffered from attempting to juggle too many themes: death, reality, fate, the acting experience—all set against the backdrop of “Hamlet.” While separately the themes were interesting and led to enlightening philosophical discussions between the main characters, especially concerning the nature of and acceptance of death, taken all together the themes were a confusing mess.

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Soldier , Mr. Stoppard.   Soldier on.  I wouldn't let Ms Dos Santos cause you to be dispiritied

Strategy and Business: Five Gates to Innovation

This article starts off a bit slow]but then an interesting opinion  on innovation.

,As the Gorilla project raced toward its last stage gate, it soaked up more and more resources at Corning; as a result, other projects had to be pared away. Keeping business units motivated in the face of cutbacks is one of the toughest challenges in managing innovation. Corning’s response is to maintain the backlog of development efforts as live but unstaffed and to avoid laying off researchers in favor of moving them to ongoing development programs. “If there is an absence of pull in the marketplace, a fundamental flaw in the technology, or if the investment is unaffordable, the project manager is responsible for bringing that information forward,” CTO Miller says. “He’ll do that if he feels safe that if we shut it down, his people are going someplace else within the company. Otherwise, self-preservation kicks in.

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McKinsey Quarterly: The Internet of Things.

I've been involved in hooking up things like light bulbs, refrigerators, HVAC, security, etc. to the internet ever since Ken Oshman came up with the bright idea for a company called, Echelon.  (That would turn the dial back to a breath-taking 1989, dear.) 

Anyhow, the McKinsey Quarterly has now had sufficient time to ruminate on the topic and brings their thoughts forward to us. 

Here are some of their pearls of wisdom:

But the predictable pathways of information are changing: the physical world itself is becoming a type of information system. In what’s called the Internet of Things, sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects—from roadways to pacemakers—are linked through wired and wireless networks, often using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that connects the Internet. These networks churn out huge volumes of data that flow to computers for analysis. When objects can both sense the environment and communicate, they become tools for understanding complexity and responding to it swiftly. What’s revolutionary in all this is that these physical information systems are now beginning to be deployed, and some of them even work largely without human intervention.

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The widespread adoption of the Internet of Things will take time, but the time line is advancing thanks to improvements in underlying technologies. Advances in wireless networking technology and the greater standardization of communications protocols make it possible to collect data from these sensors almost anywhere at any time. Ever-smaller silicon chips for this purpose are gaining new capabilities, while costs, following the pattern of Moore’s Law, are falling. Massive increases in storage and computing power, some of it available via cloud computing, make number crunching possible at very large scale and at declining cost.

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Companies can begin taking steps now to position themselves for these changes by using the new technologies to optimize business processes in which traditional approaches have not brought satisfactory returns. Energy consumption efficiency and process optimization are good early targets. Experiments with the emerging technologies should be conducted in development labs and in small-scale pilot trials, and established companies can seek partnerships with innovative technology suppliers creating Internet-of-Things capabilities for target industries.

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Recovery.

I've been thinking about this word lately for two reasons:  first, reality TV is chock-a-block with shows about people going into 'recovery' for numerous reasons and this has led to a society with recovery on the mind.  In fact on one of the recent network morning shows, a woman advocating pre-emptive recovery was interviewed. 

Of course the second reason, the word 'recovery' is being bandied about regarding our economy.  And, just the other day, Mr. Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup and probably one of the smartest people in any room, told a Congregational committee that he believed his industry needed more regulation -- eventhough he believed that his own company was well in hand.  

And suddenly these two definitions of Recovery collapsed in my mind.  Now, I don't know that much about twelve-step programs, but as I re-call one of the first steps in recovery is admitting one is out of control.  --So now I'm wondering if we will be able to move beyond this addmition of lack of control and move on the the second, third and subsequent steps in our twelve step program.

Which brings me to another point, one that literally caused me to tear up over my morning coffee and newspapers.  Specifically, it was a report about education in the U.S. and where various states and the Distric of Columbia rank.  And that made me think of values.  And that made me think about the people in this country who can't get healthcare.  And then that made me think about the fearless sons and daughters we're sending to rick their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.  --And that made me think about Values again.  

And I found myself wondering, out loud, where are our values?  What have we done to walk so far away from values that so many of us believe in personally but collectively,  They vanish like the fog in my neck of the words as the sun climbs towards its zenith. 

In my tradition, we would say it is a shandra that our government, the institution that's supposed to be in our service is such a disservice to so many and a stumbling block. 

The Agency of the Future: Be Still My Heart

I refuse to go into much detail on this as I having a paying client to serve, but I must bring this article to your attention, if for nothing else to cause you distress or amusement.  Your choice.

Ms. Jodi Harris, who we can tell from her picture, is not some wizened much less long time experienced observer of the Public Relation scene, reports on a speech by Bryan Weiner, CEO of 360i made at something called the IAB Ecosystem conference held last week in Carlsbad, Calif.  Her reporting includes the following:

"It's time to leave the pessimism behind. This represents an unprecedented opportunity for agencies to become indispensable marketing partners," said Weiner...

Not to be too catty, but I've always believed deeply in my heart that pessimism was Very Counter Productive for agency life.  

If marketers want to radically impact change in the marketing ecosystem, it starts with how you allocate dollars.

Well, that's Painfully Obvious for some of us who have toiled in the Public Relations fields for almost any length of time. 

Think about how your property can serve as a conduit for deeper interactions between brands and consumers.

I'm just going to leave this nugget from Ms. Harris in the file marked "cryptic."

Here's a real good one:

Yet the fact remains: Advertising is about getting consumers to be product and service advocates. To be able to do that today, agencies need to find innovative solutions, and do so at reasonable prices.

I double dare you to walk into the cube of anyone responsible for spending precious corporate dollars on advertising to support this idea.  I have met and worked with the folks, some from our most highly esteemed companies and can honest report to you that advertising is about selling more stuff to more people.  Nevertheless, as a Public Relations guy, I'm happy for anyone to take a shot at Advertising.

As Weiner sees it, the model for the agency of the future doesn't exist yet, but marketers can help create it in their own environments by focusing all their efforts toward meeting client needs.

Well, that's probably why the speech is about the Agency of the (wait for it) ...Future.

Again, I apologize in advance for taking such a cheap shot at this reporter and the story.  I'm an almost old and certainly crusty PR guy who has seen how the business works (and doesn't work) and I become annoyed when people who obviously have know idea what they're talking about blow some of their bloviation in my direction. 

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That's all for now except to wish you a great weekend.