Categories: Articles

Like A Rolling Stone Cab

Sadly, I have not picked up an issue of Rolling Stone magazine in a very long time. It never spoke to me as a teen and it certainly does not speak to me now. In fact, my musical tastes have probably gone more extreme as I age. Probably some pathetic attempt to self-validate myself as my level of retreating-cool oozes away as the years drool by.
En route from the airport to the hotel, getting psyched for Search Engine Strategies Toronto and I notice that my cab driver has left a recent copy of Rolling Stone along with an issue of Vanity Fair in the seat pocket ahead of me. The ride went fast as I glazed over the pages of eye candy and jotted down some bands I had never heard of (maybe it can speak to me… sometimes).
The simple act of leaving a copy of Rolling Stone magazine in a cab is what distinguishes this one driver from the thousand of other blurred cab rides I’ve hopped in my lifetime.
We may think that we’re getting to some level of one-to-one marketing sophistication with all this technology, but all it took was a magazine to make one person stand out, be memorable and create a better experience for one consumer with something so simple. And something worth mentioning.
Any cab driver can drop a copy of today’s newspaper on a seat. It takes a certain character to choose Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. At least I think so.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.