James Gross' Website

"The shift in marketing approaches can’t compare in historical magnitude to the changes brought about..."

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:13:00 -0400

“

The shift in marketing approaches can’t compare in historical magnitude to the changes brought about by the automobile and the industrial age, but the analogy provides an instructive framework for thinking about how to solve big questions. While history looks in awe at Ford’s imagination for modernizing transportation, his real innovation came through his use of systems that augmented humans’ ability to produce new goods. Instead of looking to the past for an answer, he created an entirely new system to build the future.

If you are a brand thinking about the challenges of the age of social media, start by asking yourself, “What is different now than in the past and what are the tools that we have at our fingertips?” If the answers make you feel as if you are treading into territory never documented before, that’s a good thing. As many have noted, the biggest mistake we make in a new medium is mirroring the process of an old one.

”

- The awkward self-quote from an article I wrote in AdAge. Outside of hiring and meeting clients this is what I spend most of my day thinking about.

In Order To Build the Future Systems of Content, Forget the Past | - Advertising Age

"RSS is the file-system of news, in a post-file system world"

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:28:06 -0400

“RSS is the file-system of news, in a post-file system world”

- Google spring cleans Reader out of existence, also trashcans some CalDav, Snapseed for Mac | iMore.com

"There are too many complaints about society having to move fast to keep up with the machine. There..."

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:18:08 -0500

“There are too many complaints about society having to move fast to keep up with the machine. There is a great advantage in moving fast if you move completely, if social, educational, and recreational changes keep pace. You must change the whole pattern at once and the whole group together—and the people themselves must decide to move. (Margaret Mead Time Magazine 1954)”

- I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot lately. I really like it. More on Margaret Mead here.
Fast Capitalism

A recap from our Community Manager event on Monday. ...

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:16:23 -0500

A recap from our Community Manager event on Monday.

(via Recapping Percolate’s #SPEAKEASY #CMAD | Blog @ Percolate)

We have officially joined the Twitter Certified Products...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 18:48:24 -0500

We have officially joined the Twitter Certified Products Program

(via Percolate + Twitter | Blog @ Percolate)

Why Marketers are Not Journalists | Digiday

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 09:00:22 -0500

Why Marketers are Not Journalists | Digiday:

Great post by @kunur explaining an important distinction and why the future won’t look like the past

"When I was first at Facebook, a woman named Lori Goler, a 1997 graduate of HBS, was working in..."

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:32:22 -0500

“When I was first at Facebook, a woman named Lori Goler, a 1997 graduate of HBS, was working in marketing at eBay and I knew her kind of socially. And she called me and said, I want to talk with you about coming to work with you at Facebook. So I thought about calling you, she said, and telling you all the things I’m good at and all the things I like to do. But I figured that everyone is doing that. So instead I want to know what’s your biggest problem and how can I solve it. My jaw hit the floor. I’d hired thousands of people up to that point in my career, but no one had ever said anything like that. I had never said anything like that. Job searches are always about the job searcher, but not in Laurie’s case. I said, you’re hired. My biggest problem is recruiting and you can solve it. So Lori changed fields into something she never thought she’d do, went down a level to start in a new field and has since been promoted and runs all of the people operations at Facebook and has done an extraordinary job.”

- Sheryl Sandberg’s Full HBS Speech: Get On A Rocketship Whenever You Get The Chance - Business Insider

"If you’re not committed to your life’s work in a company and with people you could endure for..."

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:42:25 -0500

“If you’re not committed to your life’s work in a company and with people you could endure for decades, are you making progress on it?”

- Your life’s work by David of 37signals

"By constantly questioning, probing and wondering ‘what if’, curiosity becomes the catalyst for..."

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:26:27 -0500

“By constantly questioning, probing and wondering ‘what if’, curiosity becomes the catalyst for change, breaking down otherwise ingrained and embedded constraints. It is the impetus to creativity, innovation and disruption. And this is the value of curiosity. Its potential is vast.”

- Curiosity Under Constraints | Blog @ Percolate

"We need to let robots take over. They will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than..."

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 14:10:28 -0500

“

We need to let robots take over. They will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. And they will help us discover new jobs for ourselves, new tasks that expand who we are. They will let us focus on becoming more human than we were.

Let the robots take the jobs, and let them help us dream up new work that matters.

”

- Better Than Human | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

"The one thing humans can do that robots can’t (at least for a long while) is to decide what it is..."

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 14:05:28 -0500

“The one thing humans can do that robots can’t (at least for a long while) is to decide what it is that humans want to do.”

- Better Than Human | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

"The Japanese have an expression, hara hachi bu, which means, roughly speaking, “belly 80 percent..."

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 15:16:28 -0500

“The Japanese have an expression, hara hachi bu, which means, roughly speaking, “belly 80 percent full.” Hara hachi bu is shorthand for an ancient injunction to stop eating before feeling full. Nutritionally, the command makes a great deal of sense. When people eat, their stomachs produce peptides that signal fullness to the nervous system. Unfortunately, the mechanism is so slow that eaters frequently perceive satiety only after they have consumed too much—hence the all-too-common condition of feeling bloated or sick from overeating.”

- State of the Species | Charles C. Mann | Orion Magazine

(via Photo by songhia • Instagram)

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:53:33 -0500

(via Photo by songhia • Instagram)

"Thank goodness for Percolate, a small but fast-growing company that recognizes that marketing on the..."

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:36:34 -0500

“

Thank goodness for Percolate, a small but fast-growing company that recognizes that marketing on the “social scale” requires content, content and more content, but only if it passes the relevancy test. Through algorithms, filters and other tools, Percolate scours the web and serves up content tailored to my specific areas of focus that I can review and easily share.

I’m grateful for and a tiny bit envious of this start-up. I marvel at how its founders quickly spotted a need and last year created a company that has scored a slew of clients and, in November, $9 million in funding. Besides that, everything this company does is on-brand, from its business cards and its Daily Brew email to the—yes–perkiness of its staffers.

”

- This feels good.
What Big Brands Can Learn From Small Companies - Forbes

"Claiming to have been born in 1906, Pierre Jean Buster Martin was a 104-year-old beer drinking and..."

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:36:36 -0500

“Claiming to have been born in 1906, Pierre Jean Buster Martin was a 104-year-old beer drinking and chain-smoking marathon runner. He did not include fish, dairy, tea, or water in his diet. Buster smoked since he was seven-years-old and followed a diligent regimen of beer, cigarettes, and red meat.[9] In 2008, Buster successfully finished the London Marathon. When Buster was not training for marathons, he cleaned vans for Pimlico Plumbers in southeast London. On April 12, 2011 Buster finished work, had a beer, and went home. He died that night, at age 104”

- How to Live Forever - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"My agency is no stranger to this, either. For example, we started to see that the creative process..."

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:22:38 -0500

“My agency is no stranger to this, either. For example, we started to see that the creative process and its business model were breaking down the deeper we got into social media. Constant, timely asset creation was mandatory but did not work within “normal” digital operational or financial models. We could not create assets intelligently, creatively, quickly or inexpensively enough to be as effective as we believed we needed to be. So we had to re-imagine and re-invent a significant part of our business to adapt, and our Moment Studio was born. And it, like us, will need to be in a constant state of flux. And frankly, both will always have a long way to go, because we are in the service business, a highly competitive space with downward pressure on margins and rising expectations for leadership. We have accepted that we must remain nimble enough to re-invent other areas of our business in our quest to be the best, and the best option for our clients. That means striving to be the best at disrupting ourselves. The only way to be well positioned for the future is to accept that it is uncertain and to structure your organization as one that is self-disruptive. The only certain part of the future for agencies is that we will continue to get consideration for our most commoditized services. You should not be OK with that.”

- Why Agencies Are Not OK | Digiday

s-m-i: Hosted by Percolate; Kristin Maverick, The Barbarian...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 23:26:56 -0500

s-m-i:

Hosted by Percolate; Kristin Maverick, The Barbarian Group; Kristine Michelsen, bitly; Lauren Cuciontta, TEDx; and Allie McPherson, Text100.

Join us.

You should come.

Today we announced our relationship with our friends at Tumblr....

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:30:00 -0500

Today we announced our relationship with our friends at Tumblr. boomboom.

(via Percolate + Tumblr | Blog @ Percolate)

"Nevertheless, these arguments are potentially more intellectually coherent than the ones that..."

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:28:45 -0400

“Nevertheless, these arguments are potentially more intellectually coherent than the ones that propose that the race is “too close to call.” It isn’t. If the state polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you can’t acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20 swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal is to inform rather than entertain the public.”

- Nate Silver On Who Political Pundits Who Are Mostly Entertainers - Business Insider

"The counterculture is aging fast and starting to die. The best counterculture now is in biology. As..."

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:22:49 -0400

“The counterculture is aging fast and starting to die. The best counterculture now is in biology. As far as I can tell, biohackers are all adventurous young people, incredibly athletic, and they’re all traveling the world. I don’t know if biohackers are as much fun as the computer hackers were, but they’re way more responsible. They monitor their own potential misbehavior in a way that computer hackers never have.”

- Futurist Stewart Brand Wants to Revive Extinct Species | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com