Ctrl Alt Delete

April 8, 2013
Digital marketing guru Joel (Six Pixels of Separation) adds his voice to the crowded field of experts who claim to know how people and companies need to change. Joel's advice is to reboot: companies must reboot their businesses and employees must reboot how they do their jobs. In the book's first half, Joel addresses five major movements taking place in the business arena and explores how these movements require new ways of working. While Joel's assessment and prescriptions may be on target, his ideas are not necessarily novel. His first movement is the well-established shift toward direct relationships with consumers. However, his frank assessment of Mobile Apps, utility marketing, and his prescription of adding value reveal useful truths. For the individual reboot, Joel focuses on seven triggersâa combination of skills, attitudes, and perspectives needed to become "an invaluable employee or entrepreneur." Triggers include thinking with a good digital-first posture and marketing yourself. While there are golden nuggets ready to be extracted here, readers will need to sift through many already accepted ideas to find tthem.

December 1, 2013

Joel (president, Twist Image) positions himself as a guide for both businesses and individuals as they navigate what he calls a current "purgatory" state of rapidly changing technology and swirling social media. He expands on concepts that will be familiar to readers of marketing literature: consumers want direct business relationships, utility, and added value; businesses need a balance of passive and active media; big data expands a company's knowledge of its customers while raising privacy concerns. Likewise, other books have featured his examples of success: Apple, Zappos, and Kickstarter and other crowdsourced funding. The reader is encouraged to think entrepreneurially, to change careers bravely, and to self-market enthusiastically. Much of the information provided here has been covered elsewhere but perhaps not as succinctly. And for those nervous about embracing the concept of the "squiggle," which instructs readers on how to approach their career from a personal angle as new technology becomes the norm, Joel's passion for purgatory might win new converts. VERDICT Recommended for comprehensive public library collections.--Heidi Senior, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR

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