Friday Five: final post edition (with a look back at some favorites)

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport offers some guidance to those who wonder if they could survive without being connected to social media. Quit all your social media platforms, unannounced, for 30 days, he advises, then consider whether 1.) you missed out on anything essential in the world and 2.) anyone said anything to you about being gone. If your life went on just fine without social media, and if no one noticed your absence, then perhaps you should disconnect from social media entirely. (Newport also gave a great TEDx talk on this subject.)

I’ve thought about Newport’s counsel many times over the past several months, but not only in terms of the social media platforms I use. I’ve also thought about it in terms of this blog, and whether to continue it.

I’ve decided that it’s time to give up this blog.

Ad Age spurs creative visuals to support #MarchForOurLives

An example of billboards created to support #MarchForOurLives

Ad Age enlisted the help of the creative community to create anti-gun-violence imagery to support today’s #MarchForOurLives gun-control demonstrations. And the creative community responded with powerful, inspiring visual statements. Ad Age shares more about the project here, and provides a link for you to download all the images for free.

Friday Five: St. Patrick’s Day Eve edition

Missouri S&T’s first female St. Pat is geology student Katelyn Jones, shown here with S&T interim Chancellor Chris Maples and members of her Court of St. Patrick. (Photo by Sam O’Keefe/Missouri S&T)

This post has absolutely nothing to do with St. Patrick’s Day. But working at Missouri S&T as I do, we are in the midst of our 110th annual celebration of St. Pat’s — and it’s the first in the history of this storied event in which a woman is portraying the venerable saint of engineers — so I feel an obligation to reference this holiday in some fashion. And if you read no further than this lead paragraph, then you should at least try your hand at our old-school snake invasion video game. You’ll thank me later for wasting your Friday.

Billboards and branding

A Missouri S&T billboard in Kansas City highlighting the school’s Mars Rover Design Team, which won a world championship.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is apparently the odds-on favorite to win a lot of Oscars at tonight’s Academy Awards ceremonies. But whether the movie brings home any trophies, it has reaffirmed something many marketers in our digital age may hesitate to admit:

Billboards  work.

Friday Five: Building brand equity, the ‘Iconic Advantage’ way

Iconic Advantage is a new book by Soon Yu

Today’s Friday Five is lifted straight from the pages of a book I recently picked up called Iconic Advantage: Don’t chase the new, innovate the old, by Soon Yu with David Birss. This isn’t a book about branding or marketing. It’s a book about building on the intrinsic “iconicity” of a brand, product or service. But it contains troves of great information for any brand manager or marketer. An early chapter on brand equity offers five great reminders about what drives iconic brands. Even if you don’t think your brand is iconic, you can learn from Yu’s wisdom.