John Winsor

Flight Time

Cliff jumping always makes you feel like you’re 16 again.

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Curating Versus Creating

I heard a great story the other day from a friend who runs a business in the Outdoor Sports market. He described the paradigm shift we're experiencing really well.

My friend says that he's at a crossroads. He currently has his agency produce TV spots to run on targeted cable channels. All in, he's spending a few hundred grand to reach a similar number of viewers.

It’s all good.

Until he starts looking at what his fans are doing on YouTube. People, who love his brand, are making their own spots by the hundreds. And, they’re popular. A half dozen of the videos have been viewed by over 1.5 million people.

At the end of the day, it comes down to math. It's either creating TV spots and buying the media for them for a lot of money or getting 9,000,000 viewers at the cost of $0. The decision seems easier than it really is. While the cost of the 9,000,000 viewers is 0, my friend has lost some of the control he had over his brand when he used his agency. The trick is moving from a creation mindset of controlling the message and broadcasting it to a curation mindset of inspiring and guiding the people who are creating and sharing the digital videos.

What do you think?

Is the Creative Factory Dead?

I'm in the middle of Seth Godin's new book, Linchpin, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a great read. He nails the economic inflection point we are all currently experiencing. To illustrate this change he talks about factories:

Factories convert natural resources into salable products. They turn iron ore into steel and corn into Twinkies. A surplus of natural resources cuts your cost and increases your productivity. If human beings are a natural resource for factories, then your goal as a factory owner is to get good, cheap ones.

The winds of change are blowing. And, terms like factory are becoming a relic of an earlier age, especially in industries like advertising and design.

Over the last couple of months I've had the opportunity to spend time with some of the best minds in advertising and design, from leaders of the current establishment to others who are just starting their careers and everyone in between. The common thread in all of these conversations is that the old agency model, based on being a creative factory, isn't working. Everyone is frustrated.

As the transition to the new era of abundance accelerates, new business models will emerge based on new principles. And, old ones will die. It's time to move beyond the factory to the network.

A Radically Simple Idea

Kudos to Edward Boches for a wonderful piece in Adweek today reporting on the meeting of the minds that discuss the future of the advertising industry and ways to collaborate. The session was hosted by Ben Malbon, of BBH, and Tim Malbon, of Made By Many, Boulder Digital Works and the Society of Digital Agencies.

While the discussion was far reaching and only scratched the surface of what's possible, I was inspired by the fact that 20 thought leaders from every different part of the industry were in the room talking about how to collaborate. While this might not seem like a big move, in an industry that's known for being extremely competitive and ego driven, this was a huge first step.

Sometimes the most radical moves are the simplest.

Quote of the Day

From The Grateful Dead member and lyricist John Perry Barlow, "What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then--the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes...The Internet doesn't behave that way...If I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced."

12 Seconds of Bliss

That’s all it takes.

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180° SOUTH

via 180south.com

Looking forward to this.

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Experience Versus Memory

Daniel  Kahneman was one of my favorite talks at this years TED. I love his thoughts on happiness.

The Beauty of Mistakes

I shot a lot of ski photos this weekend and somehow this mysterious photo ended up in the bunch. I love when mistakes happen. That's when the magic appears

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