With the New England Patriots at the White House yesterday, it prompted me to think about the best Super Bowl ads I've seen over the years. Here's my top four, and why I think each are awesome: 4) Reebok - Terry Tate Office Linebacker Why it's great: Countless inside jokes for anyone who's worked in an office. Drinking all the coffee and not brewing more. Making long-distance personal calls at work. Improperly filing reports. In a normal office environment, these things often go unpunished... Not when Terry Tate is on staff. 3) Volkswagen - The Force Why it's great: The contrast of the fragility of boyhood and the Darth Vader Costume. The stirring iconic music of the Imperial March. The timeless question...
A month ago Peter Diamandis wrote an interesting post on disrupting the Real Estate market. It caught my eye mainly because I'm in the process of selling my old house and buying a new one. Diamandis paints a wonderful picture of being able to use Virtual Reality to browse real estate, and see what your future home might look like with renovations. The thing is, as much as real estate could benefit from Virtual Reality and other virtual experiential marketing, that isn't the most pressing issue in the process as I see it. The biggest issue is that from start to finish, buying a house is almost universally regarded as a terrible customer experience. You Need a Sales Funnel as...
Exactly two years ago Marissa Mayer made headlines with Yahoo's policy that required its employees to come to the office instead of working from home. A raging debate ensued, and was largely focused on collaboration vs. productivity, and flexibility vs. innovation. The surprising omission from the group was economics. Working in an office building costs workers and employers an incredible amount of money. Here's how it breaks down as I see it: Employer Costs: Two years ago, the average cost of office space in the United States was just over $23 a square foot per quarter. A fairly modest office space for an employee is about 125 square feet, which means that companies typically pay about $2,875 a quarter for...
About four years ago I read "The 4-Hour Work-Week" by Tim Ferriss, and was enthralled. The book promises to show you how to obtain financial freedom, visit exotic places, and have loads of fun while doing it... sort of like channeling your inner Richard Branson. Sign me up! A friend of mine who recommended the book said "I don't recommend doing everything he says, but some of it is really good." I soon learned that this was sage advice. Join the New Rich? For those unfamiliar, the tagline of the book is "escape the 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich." In other words, the book promises the ultimate in autonomy. No more daily grind, do whatever you want,...
There is a little-known company that is Silicon Valley's moral equivalent of “The Smoking Man” in The X-Files. It's one of the most influential tech companies in the world… and hardly anybody outside of Silicon Valley has heard of them. You’ve likely heard of their offspring though: Dropbox, Code Academy, Heroku, Genius.com and AirBNB. Y-Combinator is a company that exclusively focuses on funding and launching tech startups, and readers are given insider access into their exclusive world through “The Launchpad” by Randall Stross. Set in 2011, the book reads like The Shark Tank for tech startups, and is an outstanding overview of what it takes to launch a startup in Silicon Valley… in three short months. Here are five lessons...
