In less than a week, the northeast USA got hit with another storm. While many are so tired of winter, many more are really done with snow and the cold and wanting spring to arrive. Now.
With close to 10 inches [25 cm] of wet, heavy, snow falling overnight, the next morning did not disappoint for people like me.
With nothing but stillness and silence all around me this morning, I thought of Dan Gurney, an incredible achiever by any standard, who said something to the effect of, “If you see something and can make it beautiful, but choose not to, what does that say about you?”
I suppose someone helped a vine or tree limb grow like a corkscrew. On the other hand, maybe this is a message from Mother Nature and she’s telling us of the stress we’re subjecting her to.
This image shows part of a very large oak limb horizontally spanning about 30-feet [9-meters]. Growing straight up from this limb is a host of small branches that look a lot like saplings. Usually I see such saplings on the forest floor, but this is the first time I’ve seen them emerging from a limb.
I’m not an arborist, so just maybe this is all part of a seasonal norm…
Vertical dimensions and shapes provide seminal perspectives. The Bay of Fundy is such a place to feel them. It claims to have the highest tidal range on the planet, on average rising and falling 56 feet [17 meters], twice a day.
While the tides run relatively constant, the power of moving water creates an impermanence to the landscape. The land changes albeit slowly. And of course, we physically change too, though on a timeline far shorter than these “monuments.” These amazing structures will outlast me, which is to say they’ll still deliver an enduring perspective to others who might be standing on the very spots when I took these photos.
It’s not difficult to dislike the brutal cold [7F with -10 windchill]. In spite of that, I find a quality that transcends visual beauty.
The cold makes things hold fast. It’s a natural form of “stop-motion” for inanimate objects. And a few animated ones as well vis-a-vis, birds stoically perched in a tangle of shrubs enduring both the cold and the wind.
For a brief instance—and I mean brief—I’m part of the landscape with camera in hand. The cold forces me to hunker down, to pull tighter the collar of my jacket, the hat on my head, the gloves that now feel powerless to the temperature as my fingers start to numb.
*City of Superlatives. Anything that projects grandeur or largesse beyond one’s imagination sounds better in french. Hudson Yards is a good example. And this project is more than just another set of very tall buildings.
My sole photo doesn’t begin to tout the scale of the real estate involved. Heading west from 10th Avenue to 12th and south from West 34th to West 30th lies the acreage that holds the largest private, real-estate construction project in the USA.
The Big Apple is about to get much bigger on so many levels, but don’t take my word on it.
I recently attended the Digital Marketing Summit for Financial Services & Advisors in NYC. The sea-change in marketing as a science is nothing short of overwhelming. It’s not a stretch to feel data sets [Big Data] testing your senses of feasibility in order to select specific data that can help shape your marketing messages and strategies.
My fascination for everything that is Formula 1 is insatiable, including the way F1 teams develop new technologies to gain a competitive edge under the rules. In recent years, digital data procurement has become de rigueur , just as it has in marketing. There’s no escaping it, there’s no going back. The Summit was well attended, moderated with timely panels and break-out discussions; collectively the 2.5 days allowed me to get in over my head on various “How To….” and “Why Social Media is….” findings, benchmarks and strategies. Professionals from across the USA, Canada, Trinidad Tobago, Germany, England, and other countries were on hand.
The digital marketing and social media cognoscenti may know this already, but these are my Summit take-aways:
Be willing to experiment with your digital tactics, to try things and rule them in/out based on the experience & findings
Marketing, compliance, operations and client service represent the minimum of a purposeful “department” to keep your brand integrated in the customer experience. Working in silos will not provide insights or competitive advantages
It’s unreasonable to expect to have one, even two, IT professionals to manage the entirety that is digital marketing. You will need experts who specialize in a given field or discipline
Clients will expect “frictionless” and real-time interactions with financial services [Example: Amazon is testing AmazonGo, an app that allows you to physically walk into an Amazon store–bricks and mortar–select items you want, and then walk out of the store. The app takes care of all the financial interactions that had just taken place, in real-time
Technology, however sophisticated, can never be a substitute, let alone a panacea, for person-to-person interaction
The diagram noted above is the [estimated] output of a Formula 1 car during practice at this year’s Malaysian GP. The data set is a representative overview of what the driver must know based on speed, gear selection, braking points, acceleration points, track sections and the use of the car’s DRS [Drag Reduction System] to optimize aerodynamics. That’s just a partial list. All told, an actual race sends 1.5 billion data samples to race engineers who monitor the action from their paddocks.
Having access to data sets is far different from the utilization of specific data sets that you believe can optimize your marketing strategy. Ultimately, two goals need to be accomplished: 1) is to consistently, authentically provide to the client the experience that your brand promises, and 2) to deliver on that promise profitably.
In a short period of time, a tsunami of products and services have overwhelmed our values to such a point that we’ve conditioned ourselves to expect the next version of something, to be better than the one we already have. But we’re not any happier or better in our day-to-day lives. Not all consumers consume as such. There is a distinction between a collector and an accumulator.
Longmeadow–October 2017
The sheer number of branded products vying for our attention—and our money—is beyond words. Our attention spans are already fractured from our immersion in diversions and distractions. Is it any wonder that marketers are looking for that strategy which helps their brands to stand out, to be readily noticed and purchased, to be the “next best thing?”
So, how do we optimize the value of our brands, which by the way, also includes our personal brand?
Minimalism.
During my walkabout with camera in hand, I noticed in a meadow a particular detail that stood out: specs of white in an expanse of green, brown and yellow. If the meadow is a designated market area [DMA], the flora its products and services, then it’s easy to recognize the stand out among all the offerings. The simple, white flowers.
These flowers lack the colorful palette of warm yellows, reds and oranges, which is precisely the point. One color, was enough to make our “product” stand out from the rest of the other flowering plants. If we are to champion some level of emotional ownership for a brand, more is often not always better. In fact, the challenge becomes finding the single most relevant, genuine quality that deserves attention. That quality is a narrative that needs to be told.
That quality doesn’t need to be original [nothing is anymore, really], but must be genuine. The quality is accessible, identifiable, perhaps even an antidote to the distractions that contribute to our sensory overload. Marketing minimalism is the distillation of that particular quality that allows the brand to stand out. In this day and age of “reality-this-or-that,” there is a hunger for something far more genuine, more real, more tangible that removes us from our penchant to consume or accumulate things.
Carlo Centeno 