Both Sides Now

CMOs who hope to keep their jobs must use both the left and right sides of their brains, according to Forrester's 2017 Predictions.

Those who can't—the "analytics-only" and the "brand-only" CMOs—will be pink-slipped.

A CMO's right hemisphere "designs experiences to engage customers." Her left "masters technology and analytics to deliver personalized, contextually rich experiences."

“'Whole-brained' CMOs are in the minority—but they will soon be the competency standard for both B2C and B2B companies," the report says.

Release the Kraken!

Every new technology will bite back.
The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused.                                                          

― Kevin Kelly

Futurist Brian Solis warned us: the stuff in the cloud is mighty.

Every day, millions of people share experiences on line, recycling others' content and creating their own.

"This content doesn’t self-destruct like SnapChat images," Solis says. "Shared experiences build upon one another, forming a collective repository in the cloud that’s indexable, searchable, and influential."

All those millions of blustery pre-election blog posts, Tweets, videos and memes were shared among the mortals, darkening their minds and eclipsing traditional media.

Who of us knew the Russians were seeding the cloud? But that's beside the point.

Zeus, the cloud gatherer, has released the Kraken.

Welcome to The Puritan Tyranny

An amoral and self-indulgent elite is peacefully ousted by a new gang of autocrats who are devoted to "schooling the world with considerable austerity."

Welcome to The Puritan Tyranny―how 2017 looked to H.G. Wells when he published his 1933 novel, The Shape of Things to Come.

"The Tyranny," as Wells named it, "tidied up the world" and "altered the human face forever."

Under the Tyrants' rule, reprobates and oddballs of every kind disappear.

So do introverts.

But, wait, there's more.

"History becomes a record of increasingly vast engineering undertakings and cultivations, of the pursuit of minerals and of the first deep borings into the planet," Wells says.

"New mechanisms appeared, multiplied, and were swept away by better mechanisms. The face of the earth changed. The scientific redistribution of population began."

In the name of progress―they prefer the term "business"―the Tyrants also "invent work," Wells says.

"Earth became an ant-hill under their dominion, clean and orderly, but needlessly 'busy."

The Tyrants tear down everything in sight.

They destroy "the huts, hovels, creeper-clad cottages and houses, old decaying stone and brick town halls, market houses, churches, mosques, factories and railway stations," replacing them with stark and sterile buildings.

And the Tyrants censor books, known as "fever rags" for their ability to incite people to doubt, complain, laugh and have sex.

"You may call it a tyranny," Wells says, "but it was in fact a release; it did not suppress men, but obsessions."

Size Matters Not

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?

― Yoda

Content marketers, make a New Year's resolution to ignore the idiots who tell you content length matters.

The thousands of snake-oil salesmen like James Scherer who promise, "Scientific research tells us how to write the perfect blog article," leaning on vendor data that "proves" long (1,600-word) posts yield higher rankings, greater sharing, and larger readership.

Baloney.

It's quality alone that counts.

A Little Mystery Goes a Long Way

The statue on the altar is never reverenced by him
who knew it as a trunk in the garden.

― Balthasar Gracian

Transparency's in vogue, but a little mystery goes a long way.

Sometimes you have to leave home for your talents to be appreciated; sometimes you have to appear foreign.

You're respected in a new place when you come from afar, because you're seen as ready-made and perfect; and respected by the folks back home, because you're seen only from a distance.