Episode #358 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

There are certain people that business leaders and marketers should be paying a lot more attention to. Adam Alter is one of those individuals. He recently published his first book, Drunk Tank Pink - And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel And Behave, and it is a truly fascinating journey into the relationship between the forces of our environment and how this shapes the outcomes of our lives. Yes, it's deep stuff, but it is told in a very fun and compelling way (no dry academic fodder here!). Alter is an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at NYU's Stern School of Business and psychology department. His research focuses on the intersection of behavioral economics, marketing, and the psychology of judgment and decision-making. He's also an all-around nice guy. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #358.

By Mitch Joel

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

• Don't make fun of renowned Dan Brown - The Telegraph. "Possibly the best book review I have ever read. Saying more would spoil it." (Alistair for Hugh).
• Creepy or Cool? Portraits Derived From the DNA in Hair and Gum Found in Public Places - The Smithsonian. "Today, when I watch a procedural thriller of a certain age, I find myself thinking, 'one mobile phone and this whole plot collapses.' The title of this post makes it pretty clear what's going on. It's not perfect--the artist is using a lot of guesswork, and only knows things like race, eye color, and propensity for weight gain. But it's great foreshadowing. How long until our kids watch an episode of Castle or The Mentalist and shout, 'come on, just print the killer's face already'?" (Alistair for Mitch).
• What Norway did with its oil and we didn't - The Globe And Mail. "A nice way to go about life is: look at the things that work, and then do those things. Norway shares some important characteristics with Canada. Among other this: it's northy, and lots of oil. But Norway seems to have been a bit smarter with what it has done with its oil, and the huge income it has generated, over the past few decades." (Hugh for Alistair).
• What universal child care does for Norway - The Globe And Mail. "It's all Norway today. Here's an argument you don't hear often for expensive social programs: they make your country richer. In particular, Norway has free university education, and deeply subsidized child care. Results? Norway has the most productive economy in the world." (Hugh for Mitch).
• Big Data Is Watching You - The New York Times. "Evgeny Morozov is a controversial character in the online world. HIs latest book, To Save Everything ,Click, was recently published and this review in The New York Times Sunday Book Review is a fascinating read. Morozov sees the Internet from a very different perspective than most of us. And, while you may not agree with some (or all) of the things that he has to say, it's important for all of us 'believers' to read the thinking of someone who hasn't taken a swig of the Kool-Aid." (Mitch for Alistair). 
• The Twidiocracy - The Weekly Standard. "Maybe there's something in the water this week. Both of my picks seem (somewhat) anti-Web. This is a rant against Twitter. Again, if all you do is think that the Internet and social media are lollipops and bellyrubs, you may be missing the bigger (and more diverse) picture. It seems like those who have access to an audience through a traditional media channel hate the fact that everyone has access to a publish button. What these people fail to realize is that the Web is what you make it. If you have too many stupid tweets in your feed, it doesn't mean that Twitter sucks. It does mean that you suck at finding interesting people to connect to. Don't blame Twitter." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

By Mitch Joel

Have you thought about education lately?

When you say the word "education," most people run in the opposite direction. I dropped out of university (and, if I am to be candid, I was dragged - kicking and screaming - through both elementary and high school). But, I still never allowed my school to get in the way of a good education. I always had sparks of curiosity and the desire to be creative in whatever work I was trying to accomplish. I always had a deep passion to learn, read, write and create (regardless of how bored I was in classrooms). Now, many places in the world have an educational system that is in crisis. We are still training people for an industrial work environment that is quickly fading. We are teaching the children of today for a world of tomorrow that will look very different. Nobody knows this better than Sir Ken Robinson. I've had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Sir Ken on multiple occasions and have been fortunate enough to have significant one on one time to discuss education, the work that the we do and what kind of world we're preparing our young people for with him. Recently, TED published a new TED Talk featuring Sir Ken Robinson that you should watch. If you have kids, if you care about your own education, and if you think about the future, please spend 18 minutes watching this... and make sure to share it.

How to escape education's death valley...

And, if case you missed his first talk, watch this too...

By Mitch Joel

Here's a quote worthy of your attention:

"The real fact of the matter is that nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. Sometimes it's an ad." - Howard Gossage.

Let's face it: we often make out marketing and advertising to be more important than it really needs to be. This doesn't mean that it's not important, creative and a part of our lives, but this quote from the famed Mad Man speaks to the reality of a media saturated world... and this quote comes at us long before the Internet and social media made it stupid simple for anyone to be a media channel unto themselves. Ads are everywhere and the game of repetition and saturation is still what captures the attention, but there's something else happening to the advertising industry that is worthy of thinking about. It's also worth noting that the people who care most about marketing and advertising is usually us: the people who create it. Those who consume it? They could probably care less.

More than advertising.

If you survey the land of client and agency relationships, what you are bound to find is clients who are asking for much than an advertising campaign, these days. Technology and all of the media permutations that it has created has brought us to this interesting moment in time when clients aren't looking just  for ads, but rather business transformation. They want business solutions to help them augment the brand and build more credibility. Data, research and strategy has slowly crept into the creative department and now the work is much more than a thirty-second spot or a contest. Digital has given us the ability to better inform our idea and the net result is that advertising for the sake of creativity is now more like a stunt than the foundational work of what the brand truly represents.

What a true social media strategy looks like.

Too many inexperienced marketing professionals are pawning off social media editorial content calendars and tone and manner for tweets, blog posts and Facebook as some kind of social media strategy. It is not (don't be fooled). The more experienced marketing professionals deliver social media strategies that are, in fact, brand strategies (when done right). Transformation is never easy. Transformation is very hard. Sadly, most people are still thinking like advertisers when, in fact, they need to be thinking more like these global brands that are demanding that the agencies that serve them act as stewards for the transformation of business.

Big, big work.

It's true that sometimes people read ads. It's true that sometimes people like a brand on Facebook or retweet a promoted tweet on Twitter. It's true that a lot of brands use these digital channels as another mechanism to put up more impressions in the marketplace in the hopes of screaming louder than the competition. This isn't what world has to look like. Yes, advertising is still - at its core - the ability to persuade someone to buy something, but the real marketing can be so much more. Delivering business solutions isn't easy. Delivering business transformation is much harder. Creating a social media strategy that is, ultimately, a better brand strategy may not sit well with the clients, but we have to face the realities of the world that we live in.

It's not about ads... it's about solutions. It's not about the ads... it's about business transformation. And so, marketing, continues to change and evolve.

By Mitch Joel