Making Sense: A Point
- Max Levchin on Data, Sensors, and Building the Future of Finance. Gigaom: I think the next great financial institution is going to be fundamentally about the dynamic relation with a bank. Today’s banking services have an entirely static relationship with their customers, both on a merchant side and a consumer side, and data is what allows for that relationship to become dynamic.
- Data is meaningless until you’re focused on the user and the bottom line. GigaOm: this problem illustrates a huge opportunity looming with the internet of things: making data available at the point where it’s most useful. This requires access to data, an ability to separate the signal from the noise in that data, and then the ability to deliver it at the time when it’s most useful.
Making Do: A Way
- I Lived Out Of My Car For Four Months To Join The Tech Revolution. BI: On a side note, there's another fantastic benefit that comes from living like this — embracing a minimalistic perspective on life. Before these 4 months, everyday I took for granted things like a warm bed, shower, home cooked meals, etc. It’s easy to lose sight of how privileged the majority of us are, but there are many, many people without these basic things. I realized that even the simple things in life could bring me more happiness than a world of possessions.
Making it: A Hit
- Facebook Advertising Research Around the World. EPIC: [...] when it comes to ads, people and advertisers tell us over and over the importance of being relevant to them. But what “relevance” means varies. In Turkey, given the centrality of television and widely viewed soap operas, we repeatedly heard that the best commercials tell stories, just like their favorite shows. In contrast, many people we spoke with in Indonesia told us that relevant ads for them were ads with lots of specific product information, whereas we repeatedly heard in South Africa that relevant ads were aspirational and “draws me in” with a beautiful photo and emotionally resonant, creative, humorous, and inspirational content.
- Good luck trying to replicate the ice bucket challenge. Edward Boches: The #icebucketchallenge was started by a person. Not a company. Not a marketer. Not even the charity itself. No one ever planned, or even dreamed, it would get as big as it did. In all likelihood, if it had been launched by a pharmaceutical company that offered treatment, or by a social media platform getting behind the cause, or by the cause itself, it would never have reached such scale.
[Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge]
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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.