Google and Advertising

An interesting interview with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. The session comes from the Ad Age Madison + Vine Conference on July 16, 2008. I like that Schmidt is forthright about not becoming a media company "Because we're no good at it." Google will focus on things that are measured. He says that advertising is heuristic and subjective - which is, of course, true. I like the concept of adjacency of the web to be a companion to core business - it is something I am interested in exploring further.

The Atlantic Monthly article Schmidt refers to is interesting and worth reading. While you on the Atlantic site I also recommend reading the story about Frank Lloyd Wright's tallest building - Price Tower - which once headquartered an engineering firm that serviced the oil industry. The writing is prosaic, in that measured, very American style. If design and architecture is your thing also check out the companion slide show to view some of the building's details.

Price told Wright he wanted a three-story building and was willing to spend $750,000. Wright suggested a 10-story tower (“Modern elevators and all that,” he explained). In the end, as Price later wrote, “we finally compromised on nineteen floors.” Price Tower, completed in 1956, cost $2.1 million.

Comments

Go figure

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

Why billboards must go.

The problem with billboards and advertising in public places is they are an invasion of privacy. Unlike magazine, tv, radio (etc) advertising you cannot choose to turn it off or avoid it. Nor does it offer anything in return. It is a medium that offers no benefit or advantage to the person it is inflicted on. At least television ads subsidise the programming. Without doubt some billboards are entertaining - I thought the anti GE poster for short lived MADGE activist group was particularly good. But most are rubbish. Literally. Badly executed. Nothing important to say. The debate has led to a great deal of hysteria - mostly from people with a vested interest in perpetuating the deployment of hoardings. Perhaps the idea that the issue at stake is 'property rights' is the creepiest. If you own a building you have every right to plaster anything you like on its external surfaces. Is that an antisocial point of view? I think so. In the UK you could have an ASBO slapped on you for si...

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St...

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