The Three Things, Edition 3

Welcome to the third edition of The Three Things, brought to you by Michael Schechter, Howie Goldfarb, and me.

Look at that! The third edition of three things you should read/listen to/watch to start your week out right by the three of us.

The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.

What Doesn’t Kill You

Michael on NPR. I’m torn. Two things stand out and I can’t decide. So, as Yogi Berra says, “When you come to a fork in the road, cheat” (or at least I think that’s what he said, I wasn’t really listening).

Radiolab and This American Life were both exceptional this week. Because I can’t choose between Tig Notaro’s story on the “What Doesn’t Kill You” episode of TAL (although you really should buy her whole set on Louis CK’s site… darn it… that’s another thing!) and Dave Wolf’s near death experience on the “Dark Side of the Earth” episode of Radiolab (Jad Abumrad’s gift for sound design is nothing short of exceptional), I’m just going to pretend like they are one thing, but you really should listen to both.

Robbie and Ruthie Talk About Pickles

Howie on Advertising. This isn’t new. But you will think it is new. Football season always has advertising on my mind. I am a big fan of Bob Hoffman who writes Ad Contrarian. When I made a career change from direct B2B sales of high tech industrial parts to advertising/marketing mid-career so much stuff did not make sense. Things I would read about advertising confounded me.  And I would think, “People buy impressions? How does Nielsen know you are watching TV?  If only the ads were better we would really love them?”  I thought advertising was about trying to sell a product or service showing how good it is.

This is the best blog post I ever read regarding advertising. Two to three times a year I go back and read it, which I did yesterday. It will always be current. You will see.

The Mogul Who Made Justin Bieber 

Gini on Entrepreneurship. This article in the New Yorker is about Scooter Braun (who, by-the-way, is only 31), the manager of Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, and PSY (Gangnam Style). In other words, a manager of rock stars. What’s interesting about Scooter is he created his own business out of nothing. It’s a story of working hard, networking, dropping names, brown-nosing, greasing some palms, and putting everything on the line (including your credit cards) because of someone you believe not only will make you rich, but will take the world by storm. And boy was he right! The underlying theme is how he uses his now-famous clients and their social networks to build a brand and awareness for up-and-coming stars.

Now we leave it to you. In the comments, tell us which stories, podcasts, or videos you think should be on our radar.

About Gini Dietrich

Gini Dietrich is the founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, a Chicago-based integrated marketing communications firm. She is the lead blogger here at Spin Sucks and is the founder of Spin Sucks Pro. She is the co-author of Marketing in the Round and co-host of Inside PR. Her second book, Spin Sucks, is due out in November 2013

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