By Lindsay Bell
Welcome to the 75th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss – from Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), Joe Cardillo (Visual.ly), and yours truly.
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t subscribe, 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.
Today we explore enhancing your IQ, Big Pharma and social media usage, and the best book in the world – Spin Sucks: The Book!
Genetic Screening to Enhance IQ Should Be Embraced
Howie on Humans Messing with Nature. Now that so many advances have been made in science, it will be very hard not to attempt to alter nature for our possible benefit. While there are obvious ones that we might all agree upon – like living longer – others, like GMO foods, are not quite as universally embraced (I sure don’t embrace them).
Today we have more and more decisions presented us. With our new born, we were asked if we wanted genetic screening (we declined). We are choosy about which vaccinations we let our children get. And those choices will be expanding as we know more about the human body. As this article presents – imagine guaranteeing a high IQ.
That would change things. Most workers maybe aren’t happy financially, but many accept comfort, stability, mundane work, in exchange for lower wages. Not everyone would want to be President, a doctor or a CEO. That’s a lot of stress, effort, or both! But imagine if everyone was smart and capable enough to handle such jobs. How competitive would this world be?
Is It Time For Pharma To Give Up The Social Media Ghost?
Joe on Choosing to Have a Conversation Online, or Not. I’ve talked before about how various channels are really just conversations at scale.
Healthcare in particular has had issues with this, and I’ve found Bill Evans regularly has good insights regarding both FDA and brand level decisions. In addition to being one of the sharpest agency folks out there (he leads that segment at WPP) he’s also just a generally thoughtful and inquisitive person… one of the reasons why I think his suggestion that social media might not be for pharma companies is worth considering.
If you don’t really want to have a conversation with someone, why bother? Not only is it fruitless but it’s actually a negative, because it wastes time.
Spin Sucks: Communication and Reputation Management in the Digital Age
Lindsay on the Best Book in the Whole Wide World. No. Really. I’m not making this up! And, I get fired every other day, so I’m not feeling the least bit pressured to write about this. I actually believe that this book is amazing. And it’s not JUST for CEOs. It’s for anyone who does any communicating online.
If you don’t know the ins and outs of the digital space, you will eventually find yourself in a crisis. And, if you don’t know how to deal effectively with a crisis, well, you’re doomed. Click the link above, read about the book on Amazon, and check out the reviews. Then, buy one for yourself, or buy a few, and give them to people you know who could benefit from the knowledge that spin sucks. Trust me. They’ll thank you for it.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a book, podcast, article, TV show, blog post, or story we should read?