Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Wrong for 65 million years

Last weekend I visited the fun, new dinosaur exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. What I was not prepared for was the realization that just about everything I knew about dinosaurs is wrong. Over the last ten years the dino world has been turned on its head. For example:

T-rex? Born with feathers which it kept till adult hood! 

Brontosaurs? Never even existed!?!

Most dinos not in fact lizards, rather they were mammals!

How weird, it must be, for those dino-experts who retired in the late 90s. They might have been paleontologists for 40 years, at the top of their game, and yet their career knowledge just 10 years later is as extinct as their former objects of study.

And honestly, for a moment I freaked out. It did not take much to contrast those ex-paleontologists with myself. After-all, most of what I learned (back in the 90s) as the start of my career really is irrelevant today. Am I a dinosaur?

Luckily, the freak out moment passed. (Mainly because my daughter, aged 4, started lecturing me on everything she knew about dinos). As I got my lesson in the finer points of the Jurassic age as only a kindergartner could, I mentally re-affirmed a few thoughts.

1) If you stop learning, adapting and trying new things, you will end extinct and fast. Paid media, traditional audiences and conventional marketing is going the way of the Dodo.

2) Anyone who says they have the answers is lying. Too much is too new for experts to be gurus. Who know's where media will be in 5 years, so don't bet what your doing now will get you there.

3) Dinosaurs are way cool, even with feathers,

cheers,
Josh.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Gone Google




My big news of the year is I am leaving my current job at Goodby Silverstein and heading down Peninsula to join Google. I will be Google's Director of Media.

After 8 years at GS&P, and nearly my whole career on the agency side, flipping to a client role feels like a big step. It is a big step. I am equal part excited and scared. 

I will write a more detailed post about my experience and thoughts on leaving GSP, but the reality is I am moving for Google. It was simply impossible to resit the lure of the biggest and smartest tech company in the world.

More to come. 

Josh