Blog - Ben Guttmann

Why you should take your clients to nice places

When we first started our agency, we were a couple of broke 22-year-old guys trying to figure it out and save every penny. If we met with a client outside their office, we’d go to Starbucks or the local coffee shop around the corner, and pay our $10 “rent” for a couple drinks and a convenient table. That was a bad move.

September 30, 2022

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Getting your heading right: The outsized power of one degree

The flight between New York’s JFK and Los Angeles’ LAX is the second most popular route in the country. Crossing 2,475 miles across the country end-to-end, 26,286 planes make the 5-ish hour trip each year. Every one of these flights is a tiny miracle in precision.

September 28, 2022

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The British monarchy is really just a tourism brand asset

With one chapter of the monarchy ending, and another about to begin, the question on a lot of people’s minds is simple, “is this whole thing even worth it?” From a purely marketing perspective, I would argue yeah, probably. In the eyes of a tourism-focused outsider, the British brand and the royal family are inextricably linked.

September 23, 2022

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My best campaign that never ran

In the summer of 2020, New York was facing a series of overlapping crises. There were the big issues that defined the whole year for the whole nation, the pandemic and BLM protests, but more locally we were facing a crisis of identity. Midtown Manhattan skyscrapers sat empty. Broadway and Museum Mile were silent. In sharp contrast, our parks were packed with people... and their garbage.

September 20, 2022

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One Good Thing: Libby

In this century, much of the content that libraries housed has now been made accessible digitally. And while the library itself is still a wonderful institution to visit, this continual revolution has allowed them to extend their reach beyond their four walls. The result is possibly the most delightful little free mobile app on the market: Libby.

September 12, 2022

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The problem with enormous version numbers

This week, with much of their usual fanfare, Apple introduced the iPhone 14. While there are some new bells and whistles, it looks a lot like the 13, 12, 11… It gets hard to be as innovative as you once were after you climb the initially steep curve of diminishing returns, 14 versions deep. Except this wasn’t the 14th iPhone – it was the 16th one, or the 38th one, depending who's counting.

September 9, 2022

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The curious idea of the Lindy Effect

Our time on this planet has been remarkably brief. The world as we have made it is young, and we’re still figuring things out. When even our ancient history seems recent, how should we think about time and what comes next? One model about how things come and go is called the “Lindy Effect,” named after a mid-century Manhattan diner frequented by “bald-headed, cigar-chomping know-it-alls."

September 7, 2022

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AI-generated art is a really, really big deal

Here’s a bold statement: I’ve never seen anything as incredible in my lifetime as what is happening right now with AI-generated art. What is happening right now with artificial intelligence is moving in units of days, not years. Every week there is something new and heretofore unimaginable on this rapidly unfolding frontier – and it's unclear if our society is ready for it.

September 1, 2022

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Embrace the limits of decision fatigue to make better choices

It turns out that we only have so much gas in the tank each day, and we only have room to really consider, deliberate, and make well-thought-through decisions so many times before our brains fizzle out. By some estimates we can make thousands of decisions each day, and each one takes a toll on our cognitive capacity to make the next one.

August 29, 2022

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Your surface area of luck

There's some luck you can control. The harder you work, the luckier you are. The more you expose yourself to opportunity, the more lottery tickets, rolls of the dice, at-bats, or whatever other metaphor you pick, the more you have a chance at success.

August 24, 2022

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