The audience has an audience.

Here's the video of my speech to the 4As conference last week.

Marketers must remain relevant at a time in which consumers are themselves the broadcasters, sharing content with their own audience via social, mobile and online channels.  By adopting a brand syndication model, with the persuasive power of video's sight, sound and motion at its core, marketers can authentically join the conversation.

A look at two Americas.

Informative report from the Wall Street Journal illustrating America's rural/urban divide.   The gulf has never been wider or more stark – something to think about when creating national marketing strategies.

What leading CMOs are thinking about.

CMOs are beginning to last longer in their jobs.  Executive search firm Spencer Stuart reports that CMO's are staying in their post an average of 45 months, a marked increase from 2005 when the average tenure was only 23.5 months.

So why the increase in job security?   I am seeing more and more senior marketing leaders focussing on enterprise marketing solutions, not just branding strategies.  CMOs are getting closer to their customers through Big Data, digital technologies, multicultural trends, and more contemporary media strategies.  They are working more closely with their company's CIO to develop smarter, data-driven strategies.  This is a welcome change from the days when a new CMO would put their stamp on the company by firing the agency and developing yet another advertising campaign.

The new CMO agenda is focused on four big questions:

1. How can data and analytics help optimize my company's marketing investment and mix?  How do we embrace Marketing Cloud solutions to get more accurate marketing attribution?  
2. How fast can we become a "mobile-first" marketing organization to get even closer to our customers, one that embraces "mobile as a service"?
3. How can we better engage customers who are tuning out of mass media?  Can we lessen our dependence on big campaigns and instead re-imagine marketing communications as an always-on, content publishing discipline?
4. How can we build a coalition of growth by serving our core customers as well as an increasingly multicultural America?   

What MBAs can learn from kindergartners.

What do you get when you mix 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow?  A deceptively simple design exercise that reveals clear and instructive lessons in collaboration and innovation.

During an innovation forum today at Team Detroit, Elyse Pachota on our Enterprise Digital team introduced me to The Marshmallow Challenge, which asks teams to build the tallest free-standing structure out the spaghetti, tape, string and marshmallow (which must be placed on top of the structure!).

Watch Tom Wujec's TED talk in which we learn how The Marshmallow Challenge underscores the benefit of rapid prototyping, iterative ideation and the need to uncover hidden assumption early in an innovation process.

Wujec also reveals how Kindergarten kids embrace these innovation principles better than MBA grads and CEOs.  (CEOs score better only when their Executive Assistant participates.  Seriously, I know.)

Today is #NearlyDouble day!

Tune in later today for the reveal of #nearlydouble.

Brands as Broadcasters

Several months ago I attended the Future of Storytelling Conference (#FoST) and helped lead some workshops on "Brands as Broadcasters" and "The Empathetic Corporation."  Great experience.

Yesterday I participated in a follow up conversation held via Google Hangout where a few of us explored these themes more deeply as part of an ongoing effort to harness the power of storytelling, both its timeless principles, and also the new non-linear forms of storytelling.

The future of advertising is in Motown.

If you're looking for the future of advertising you will likely find it at the intersection of real time analytics and custom content creation.

Team Detroit, Ford's global marketing communications agency, is putting this to work today for the launch of the 2015 F-150 – revealed this morning at the North American International Auto Show.

Our Content Studio combines the talents of our analytics, strategy and creative teams collaborating side-by-side with Ford's marketing team (which also includes real time legal input).  Walking through the room feels more like a news room than an advertising agency, and that's the point.  The team's goal is to use real time social sentiment analysis to inspire custom content that responds to the conversation surrounding the launch, thereby amplifying the impact of social media and public relations messaging.

Trends for 2014 and beyond.

The second edition of Ford’s annual publication on micro trends, Looking Further with Ford, examines the drivers of change and the complex response of consumers worldwide. This collection of 10 micro trends reflects our view of the attitudes that will alter consumer dynamics across the globe in 2014 and beyond.

Compiled and curated by Sheryl Connelly, who leads Global Consumer Trends and Futuring at Ford Motor Company, it also includes contributions from WPP's Global Team Ford.

Emerging trends for 2014 and beyond. from David Murphy

The Power of Empathy

I write frequently about the power of empathy.  (Remember, what's true in life is true in marketing.)  But I never thought about the contrast between empathy and sympathy.  This piece nails it. (As usual, as does RSA's animation.)

Cord cutters, aka, the death of TV.

This article from Business Insider provides a clear and fact-based analysis of the upheaval in the TV/cable industry as more and more Americans cut the cord and instead get their video fix via broadband, through services such as Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, Aereo, ABC.com, et al.  This massive change in media consumption patterns is the bi-product of new generational trends, broadband, economics and, of course, the declining quality of network television programming.  (As the great poet Springsteen sang, "57 channels and nothin' on.")

Here are Business Insider's major conclusions:

1. People are unplugging.
2. Cable TV ratings are sinking.
3. Fewer people are watching TV.
4. Ratings for some major TV events are in decline.
5. For the first time ever, the number of cable TV subscribers at major providers is about to dip below 40 million.
6. Cable and broadband companies are increasingly unable to retain customers.
7. For the first time ever, less than half of subscribers at major broadband companies now subscribe to cable TV.
8. Fewer households actually have TV.
9. Few households have TV because they are watching video on mobile devices instead.
10. Mobile video is booming.
11. Tablets are stealing prime time, the period we used to devote to TV.
12. Ad dollars are following eyeballs, shifting from TV to digital media of all kinds.
13. Ad revenue increases are masking the macro decline in TV.
14. People who are unplugging from both Cable TV and broadband internet are likely going to free wifi.