Share-worthy links Social Media ReInvention Community Members can enjoy during Sunday brunch:
1) YouTube: Enhance Your Lighting – GE Commercial. Jeff Goldblum provides a brilliant and hysterical performance in the GE advertising campaign for #EnhanceYourLighting. Views continue exploding (1,394,000+ when I wrote this post). GE takes mundane advertising and transforms it into funny, memorable, and campy content.
Hat Tip — Fast Company: JEFF GOLDBLUM GETS TOPLESS FOR GE, NYC GETS A NEW HEART: THE TOP 5 ADS OF THE WEEK.
2) YouTube: Introducing the Post-it® Plus App. No, I won't shut up about this app because I'm a Post-it® geek. Welcome to The Collaboration Age. Enjoy this video and wear your Post-it® geekiness as a badge of honor.
3) Forbes: Gone From Microsoft, Ballmer Begins A Surprising Second Act. George Anders wrote this great profile about Steve Ballmer (former Microsoft CEO, now owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise). Anders' article about how Ballmer is approaching this phase of his professional life is a great example of personal branding and reinvention:
- Ballmer analytically approaches problem solving or new challenges by researching as much as he can through self-study or interviewing experts. The guy is 58, worth $22.5 billion, and wants to stay in the game.
- He's finding his own path (away from Bill Gates). Anders notes Ballmer and his wife, Connie, are planning a different charitable route from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
- Ballmer continues taking calculated risks. Anders references this quote from an August 2014 ESPN interview ESPN conducted with Ballmer: “It’s not a cheap price, but when you’re used to looking at tech companies with huge risk, no earnings and huge multiples, this doesn’t look like the craziest thing I’ve ever acquired.”
4) Forbes: Finding Alibaba — How Jerry Yang Made The Most Lucrative Bet In Silicon Valley History. Parmy Olson reveals Jerry Yang's second act reinvention after leaving Yahoo in 2012. He's now a venture capitalist, Founding Partner of AME Cloud Ventures, and power broker.
Olson's article proves trust and familiarity are the heart and soul of business relationships (versus Excel spreadsheets forecasting ROI). Jack Ma (Chairman and CEO of Alibaba) and Yang's friendship started in 1997 (and may save Yahoo).
Not convinced? The Forbes article cites 36 billion reasons.
5) The New York Times: New York Times Plans to Eliminate 100 Jobs in the Newsroom. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (Publisher) and Mark Thompson (Chief Executive) announced the cuts October 1st. Here are some direct quotes:
- "The job losses are necessary to control our costs and to allow us to continue to invest in the digital future of The New York Times, but we know that they will be painful both for the individuals affected and for their colleagues."
- (Referencing the discontinued NYT Opinion app and ongoing NYT Cooking app) "They are all experiments, which we are determined to treat as such: to learn, pivot and, where necessary, make prompt decisions about them."
I admire and respect how a revered publishing institution like The New York Times attempts to adapt a Lean Startup mindset and culture. Yes, they're conducting experiments, validating learning, pivoting, etc.
But, it takes more than carefully sprinkled buzzwords in another announcement explaining job cuts. Organizations like The Times (and others) must wake up to the painful realization that lean startups do not require 1990's staffing levels and infrastructure.
Why doesn't the New York Times "just get on with it." They will thrive as a digital publisher. If it wants to go fully digital, why not commit now and:
- Quantify the required subscriptions to build and sustain a digital business.
- Determine and make the REAL job cuts needed.
- Retain the required staff and physical assets for optimizing a digital MVP (minimal viable product).
But, it won't.
So, the bloodshed continues …
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Tony Faustino is a marketing and corporate strategist. He thinks and writes about how The Internet reinvents marketing strategy in his personal blog, Social Media ReInvention. Follow his tweets @tonyfaustino or circle him on Google+.