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Mike Colombo and Jason Ocker from the digital agency Maark discuss creativity and technology in a commercial world. Except it gets a lot messier than that. A weekly podcast from the agency's headquarters in Boston.
96 Episodes
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Jay Wightman, head of digital experience at Manulife Investment Management, joins us to talk the data and product challenges of the company's digital transformation and how Maestro was a critical part of the solution. Mike and Jason want you to go to http://maestro.maark.com/.
In the holy trinity of story, vision, and style, style is often the one sacrificed. That can be true whether it's art, marketing, or digital experiences. Mike and Jason just want style to be in style.
There are many reasons to release a minimum viable product (MVP) in the software world--to hit a deadline, to test the concept on the market, to lower cost--and they're all probably wrong strategies. Mike and Jason just want you to knock off the M and V and focus on the P.
It sounds weird to say, but we've outlived Google Search's usefulness. It's full of ads, we never make it past page three of its results, it's hard to trust its objectivity, and the privacy concerns aren't going away. That means any other search engine is just as good, if not better. Mike and Jason just want to retrain the muscle memory that sends them to Google every time.
We pushed the bounds of science and bureaucracy to create a COVID vaccine in record time. But the simple online form for getting it is broken in every way despite big agencies and major companies building it. Even worse, this software fail is the state of the industry. Mike and Jason just don't want people to die from bad software.
It was fun to root for the Redditors, but the GameStop debacle shows yet again how software platforms are best at turning individuals into faceless, hysterical mobs. Mike and Jason are just sore they didn't get in when they were trading shares for old Nintendo cartridges.
Social media forces us to be emotionally attached to everything due to the social pressure to make statements or the unending need to post content. But the rabid pursuit to be "in the conversation" is exhausting and fomentative. We need more emotional impartiality. Mike and Jason are working on the self-help book: Not Caring Yourself into a Better Life.
1We welcome to the podcast Cassidy Shield, VP of Marketing at Narrative Science, a company dedicated to telling engaging stories through data. We go way back with Cassidy, maybe too far back, and we get to pick his brain about who in the company should own the product vision and what the heck that even means (TL;DL: It should be Marketing).
Do we want to look back at 2020? Of course we do. It was a strange year for everyone, a tragic year for some, and--from a digital industry perspective--an enlightening year. Mike and Jason just want to record this podcast in person again.
The digital world has increased both consumption and production of both art and content to crazy levels. But has that voracious cycle caused us to lose something important? Mike and Jason just want to rehash old college dorm arguments...in the digital world.
When the pandemic started, Zoom was one of its heroes. Now its brand seems to have shifted from one of positive collaboration to one of necessary evil. Mike and Jason just want their friends and colleagues to be larger than a computer screen.
Goodby and Silverstein are known for iconic ad campaigns like Got Milk?, and their MasterClass is great, both for what they say and what they don't say about the modern state of marketing and advertising. And what they don't say, well, Mike and Jason do in this discussion of both the MasterClass and GS&P. Mike and Jason just want people to not forget about the time ET was impressed by Comcast.
There's an attempt to institutionalize good in business today, both via pressure from new generations of employees and the ideas of tech leaders like Marc Benioff and his stakeholder capitalism. But can you put a sincere engine for charity in a vehicle of escalating commerce? And is there even a shared sense of the greater good today? Mike and Jason just want more humanity in humanity.
We're inundated by software in our personal and professional lives, and every single platform is a learning curve. Meanwhile, that software is in constant flux, adding features and capabilities that clutter its menus and overlap other platforms and impact the experience. Software makers may need to think about their products in the software continuum of the user's life. Mike and Jason just want to email you a Word document.
Agency awards are...icky. The money machine is blatant--scores of awards, half a dozen deadlines each, 4,000 categories, non-competitive judging, checkout upsales. The money and business flow, not to the winners, but to the award orgs, and these orgs don't know what a modern, relevant agency does. Mike and Jason won an award for this podcast and are ashamed to tell you about it.
The Customer Experience shouldn't be silo'd into sales, marketing, product, and customer service. It should all be unified within a continuum of digital experiences. It's time for marketing to stop taking orders and start serving the long term vision of the customer's experience at every touchpoint. Mike and Jason just want to press "0" for the operator.
We started a cross-education program at Maark, with subscriptions to Treehouse for employees to expand their skillsets and to MasterClass to stoke their personal curiosity. Continuing education is a no-brainer, but how well do these platforms work for it? Mike and Jason want all their teachers to fit in little boxes on screens.
Sure, we all love movie theaters. They're nostalgic. And a chance to leave our screens at home for a screen somewhere else. But now that they're closed, do we need them anymore? Or is VOD to our 4K TVs a more profitable model for movie studios and a good enough experience for most movie-lovers? Mike and Jason are just glad Bill and Ted 3 isn't getting pushed to 2021.
Technicolor is bankrupt, and a big part of its business was visual effects. Their client list is impressive, as is their work, and yet, the margins for VFX are thinner than old pants. Is it the software conundrum? That clients don’t understand the true cost of innovation? Mike and Jason think whichever digital artists created Godzilla: King of the Monsters should be millionaires.
Blockbuster Video went from 9,000 stores across the country to 1 store in a decade. Movies and video games couldn't be more relevant, so how did Blockbuster fall so hard and so fast? The answer isn't Netflix. It's a failure at digital transformation. Mike and Jason miss Friday nights under the blue and yellow lights.
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