Anyone can be creative, lessons from a data king, trust, influence and marketing goes mobile

I’m a big fan of Alex Bogusky and his former namesake agency, particularly for the work they did on Mini Cooper. So I’ve been watching his new venture, Fearless Revolution, unfold. Maybe it’s my penchant for solid creative that gets results and tendency to ask a lot of questions about virtually everything, but like Mitch says, this is worth an hour of your time. Alex spent a week pursuing his vision with a group calling themselves UFuse and interviews them here. If American businesses are going to succeed in the future, it’s going to be because they embody creativity, innovation, design – and make a difference in people’s lives. They have to: we already have too much of too much. Schedule an hour for this – it makes you think a little deeper about what you want to be when you grow up.

Six lessons you should learn from Avinash – an amazing analytics expert if you don’t already know him. Here’s someone who thrives on data and detail, yet talks about the importance of soft skills and a high emotional quotient. And that it’s not the tools. It’s what you do with them; your process. Obsess about outcomes – that’s what every business cares about. Embrace agility, and recognize that it takes a LONG TIME to become really good at what you do. This is one of those get-grounded posts that I think complements the one above.

Much has been written about trust of late. Perhaps it’s because there’s been little of it going around the past few years so it’s become fashionable again. It’s not something you can easily acquire. People are skeptical. I know I am. You have to prove you can be trusted through your actions. How many companies do you know that do this? And while it takes years to build, it takes an instant to shatter it. Volvo learned this the hard way in 1990 when to demonstrate the strength of their cars compared to the competition, their agency weakened the competitors pillars and strengthened the Volvo’s  before showing a monster truck driving over the top of them. Valeria talks often of connections and in this post on trust makes some important observations.  Most interesting to me was “that professionals are more deeply connected to the reputations of the organizations they work for or with than in the past.”

We hear a lot about who is influential and measuring it, but what makes it up? I think David Armano does a nice job defining six components: Reach, proximity, expertise, relevance, credibility and trust (there’s that word again). I like that he mentioned he didn’t learn about influence from a book but from years of practice on the web. It is one thing to learn about concepts in theory, and quite another to actively put them to use and test them. It’s something I do with every new book I read: look for and implement at least one or two key ideas in my work.  How about you?

Got mobile? If not, it’s likely your competitors do. Or will. Heidi Cohen has published a nice roundup of key mobile marketing facts you should be aware of. 56 to be exact – backed up by data. The adoption rate for smart phones is incredible with 2011 predicted to be the tipping point. If the fact that there were 3 million app downloads PER DAY in December 2010 by top 300 apps doesn’t raise an eyebrow, perhaps the fact that the global mobile app market is predicted to be $25 billion just four years from now will. Get the facts and get to work on your mobile strategy.