In my last post I wrote about the strategist’s role of finding the compelling idea within an organization and stripping away the rest, and made an admittedly highfalutin’ comparison to Michelangelo’s statement that the sculptor’s task is to find the statue hidden inside every block of marble.
No one’s saying brand strategy or corporate ID design is competing with Renaissance art, but the truth is that the link between brand strategy and art/design is more than a metaphor. As design thinking gains more momentum in the business world, …Read More…
I just read a nice post on a blog called MisEntropy. The post is a reaction to the Forbes.com article entitled “The Man Who Predicts the Medals,” about an economist named Daniel Johnson who has predicted medal counts over the past five Olympics with 94% accuracy. The accuracy is impressive, but more interesting is Johnson’s approach—he bases his predictions solely on “per-capita income (the economic output per person), the nation’s population, its political structure, its climate and the home-field advantage for hosting the Games or living nearby.”
The operative word in that sentence is solely. Johnson is quoted in the article as saying “I know nothing about the athletes. And even if I did, I didn’t include it.” The MisEntropy post focuses on this statement:
That completely derailed me. …Read More…
It’s been awhile since my last post. In the interim, I’ve moved to Shanghai where I’ll take a position as Senior Consultant with a Shanghai-based strategy firm. More on that later.
Today’s post is about naming—specifically naming in English, or at least for primarily English-speaking audiences (suppose I have to make that distinction now). Upon seeing Pollywog’s list of what they consider the best and worst names of 2009, I realized that most of the “best” names are …Read More…
A friend recently sent me a site listing common errors in English usage, and I’ve been looking for a relevant way of bringing it up on this site. I’ve had some fun clicking around on it.
- First, there’s the satisfaction of seeing some of my pet peeves corrected—nice to know someone shares my frustration at least. “ATM machine” and “I/me/myself” are good examples.
- Then there’s the entertainment factor—the supposedly common mistakes that I wasn’t even aware people were making. “Virii?” ”Disconcerning?”
- And lastly, …Read More…
In December in the US, perhaps the only thing that competes with what one of my friends referred to as “the explosive force of an American Christmas” is year-end list building. Or decade-end lists, in this case. A few I’ve noticed so far this year are BuzzSugar’s Top 20 Favorite Movies of the Decade, Time’s Top 10 Everything of 2009, and The Pollywog Blog’s Best and Worst Brand Names of 2009 (don’t be shocked if I have more to say about this last one in a later post).
February 2010 will mark a year since my first few posts on Semantic Argument, but in the spirit of the season, now seems like a better time to do a “year” in review. According to PostRank, here are the top five posts on this blog, in order: …Read More…
Couldn’t finish the year out without one more photo of unnecessary quotation marks.
It really is a nice thought. It just doesn’t need to be between quotation marks.
Rob Meyerson works with clients to find creative solutions that inform brand strategy, positioning, identity, and communications.
