Andrew Pascoe

Our competitive set is no longer Omnicom and IPG and Publicis. It is Nielsen and GFK. It’s the data companies.

‘We’re a brand that runs a business, not a business that runs a brand.’

Hint: You’re not smart when you make me feel stupid. You’re smart when you make me smarter.

But no developer dreams of making the jump to work for a mid-sized media company. They just don’t spend their college careers dreaming about it.

To give a simple example, if a frequentist was asked to evaluate a free throw shooter in basketball, he couldn’t give you an answer until he saw a certain amount of trials (say 100). A Bayesian, however, would keep updating his evaluation from the very first attempt. In today’s business environment, we simply can’t wait for the strategic equivalent of 100 free throws.

Michael Porter reminded us of the difference between effectiveness and strategy: “Operational effectiveness means performing similar activities better than rivals perform them…Strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals or performing similar activities in different ways.

The choice of the term user, rather than customer or audience, is critical. …More critically, user frames a mindset in which a brand’s users are participants in the products, services and the experiences that the organization delivers. Audiences are passive receivers, users are involved.

I went to a Masters store the other day and there was a big sign saying you weren’t allowed to use your mobile phone. “Well why the fuck have you got QR codes everywhere? I just find it bizarre.

Even if unintentional on their part, people who indulge in smart-talk can be genuinely dangerous. They’ll seem plausible enough at first, but in reality they’ll often know just enough to get everyone into real trouble, but not enough to get out of it again. Not helpful…

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is often a form of mental laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

Wansink and Van Ittersum found that the average size of the American-manufactured dinner plate has increased by almost 23% from 1900. Having procured a variety of plates produced over the last century on eBay.com, they noted that plates were just over 9 inches in 1900, around 10 inches in 1950 and creeping towards 12 inches in 2010.

He and others at DreamWorks are now considered proficient enough at managing these big cloud systems that Intel and Hewlett-Packard, suppliers of much of DreamWorks’ technology, have them speaking to customers in such seemingly unrelated fields as energy and finance.

You don’t change someone’s mind by telling them they’re an idiot. When’s the last time someone changed your mind that way?

What the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years.

Digital disruption is a bigger deal than you think—it’s a bigger deal than anyone thinks, even those of us who study it for a living.

The ability to generate commercial success on behalf of clients is what we always were set up to do. The shift that’s taken place in the market means much of what is available to clients is irrelevant. We have to get people to act in a commercially advantageous way and that really means reinventing the services we offer.

Mi9 launched its Microsoft Advertising Exchange 15 months ago and has reportedly estimated one-third of its inventory would be traded programmatically by this year.

People say SXSW is the new Cannes. Maybe it is in terms of agency execs going somewhere nice and warm for a few days to drink and line up new gigs. There is one big difference. If the advertising people didn’t go to Cannes, there is no Cannes. If the advertising people don’t go to Austin, you know what will happen? Nothing. The real business of SXSW — and don’t forget that it is interactive, music and film — has nothing to do with Madison Avenue, despite the desperate attempts by agencies and brands to make it about them.