I’ve been listening to DJ Danger Mouse’ Grey Album lately and thinking about how the mash-up culture Wired Magazine discussed several years ago will impact businesses. Wikipedia defines a mash-up in regards to music as: A mash-up or bootleg is a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another The Grey album is an amazing...
I heard on the radio yesterday that Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was releasing an all instrumental album/cd/8 Track/whatever you call it now, entitled Ghosts I-IV. I was very excited to hear this even though, I haven’t been an active fan since The Downward Spiral. I’ve always wanted him to release an instrumental collection as I was never really a fan of his vocal stylings and have...
I recently had the good fortune to sit down with Eric Lyon, one of the founders of Scapegoat to talk about their goals, their brand and their desire to return to niche. Eric along with Jason Olden have been consultants under the name Sid Factor Seven since 2002 and have worked with companies such as Nike, North Face, Camelbak and Specialized. Eric used to work for Adidas and I asked him what was...
I have been thinking about the social graph concept quite a bit lately and decided to find out exactly what a social graph is. What I finally settled on was the “official definition”: Social Graph is the network of connections that exist through which people communicate and share information. Applications like photos and events are examples that leverage the social graph. Dave...
I am not loyal to brands. I like to experience the product or service and the thought of the brand is secondary. When I shop, I look for shirts with no logo on the front. I have always declared that I don’t want to be apart of the” shopping army”. Not sure how I got to this point and if I’m alone in this. (I even took the John Elway decal off of my car after I bought it...
On January 7th, BusinessWeek featured a story announcing the departure of Jim Donald who had been the CEO of Starbucks since 2005. This announcement came out three days before a story in time magazine indicated that a fight between McDonalds and Starbucks was imminent. This article makes the obvious point that the two companies are not after the same market but who knows if that will continue to...
Back in college a friend of mine showed up to class one day with a small black and white sticker of Andre the Giant with the words OBEY printed right below his face. At the time this did not mean much to me as I was mostly concerned with school and when would I be able to sleep more than 3 hours in one shot. Years later I found that same sticker in a box of old stuff and when I told my friend...