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John Bell
I am an eternally curious father, husband, and creative marketer
Interests: Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Peter Carey, Social Distortion, J.M. Coetzee, graphic design, sign-painting, design magazines, short story writing, Matt Dillon, Martin Scorcese, Wim Wenders
Recent Activity
Visit NextNow Digital…Now
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In 2020, I launched a new digital consultancy, NextNow Digital. All of my new ideas and insights can be found at the new site. The Digital Influence Mapping Project has been a labor of love since I started it in... Continue reading
Posted Nov 17, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Why I Published a Blog for 15 Years
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My first blog post in 2005 was a short few paragraphs on the Power of Fans. While hardly deep, it did ask a question that remains relevant today – “Why don't more brands leverage fans?” The rest is, literally, history.... Continue reading
Posted Nov 6, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Make the Content Marketing Commitment Already: Lessons from the ANA Study
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The ANA delivered its study of how 126 brand marketers see the “GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITIES IN CONTENT MARKETING.” Hats off to my good friends at Manifest Agency for their timely summary of the report which you can find here. As... Continue reading
Posted Aug 18, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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5 Learnings for Small Business Marketing in the Next Normal
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New normal, next normal, not-so-normal – however you see the changes to our lives and businesses, the affects will be lasting, even transformative. For small businesses, reopening is its own challenge only to be followed by an urgent need to... Continue reading
Posted Jul 21, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Five Priorities for Marketing During the Next Phase of COVID-19
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How do we market and manage our businesses as the country experiments with “opening up?” How do marketers balance their original growth strategies for 2020 with the new, much different reality? Is this about post-crisis or merely managing intervals in... Continue reading
Posted May 3, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Idea Bar #17: Virtual School Hackathon Challenge
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Schools went virtual overnight. Sure, online classes have been growing from the full blown online universities like the University of Phoenix to LinkedIn Learning to new startups like Lessonly for business. But a lot of secondary school teachers and even... Continue reading
Posted Apr 6, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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The Tenured CMO’s Survival Guide
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Some CMO’s only expect to be in their position between 36-43 months. For those that are in for the long haul – at least 6-8 years – there are key initiatives beyond short term sales that must be tackled. You... Continue reading
Posted Mar 14, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Three Marketing Predictions for 2020 from a Brand-side Marketer
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What are your big bets for digital marketing in the next 1-2 years? As a marketing strategist and practitioner inside a major brand, I need to focus on what will accelerate and improve business in the near term in addition... Continue reading
Posted Jan 1, 2020 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Practical Steps for Digital Transformation in Business
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"Digital Transformation" is big business for the world's top consultancies. The pressure for business to adopt digital practices has never been greater, and still it may feel inaccessible to many. You don't need a 6-7 figure consulting engagement to get... Continue reading
Posted Nov 11, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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4 Ways Voice Interaction Makes Us Better Marketers
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Fresh from designing and deploying a new Alexa Skill, I am struck by three things: Designing for voice interaction requires a new set of skills and tools. It’s not as simple as “audio content.” Voice interaction is a relatively new... Continue reading
Posted Oct 6, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Agile Marketing in 2019: Can You Get There from Here
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Having explored, experimented and applied agile practices within the marketing function for the past few years, I feel like I have as many questions today as when we first started. We have learned a lot. But I think there is... Continue reading
Posted Jul 21, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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How Enterprise-level Content Marketing Drives Digital Transformation and Customer-Centricity
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First came the drive for digital transformation. Companies embraced digital initiatives to become more efficient and, in some cases, to transform their business processes in one way or another. The Chief Digital Officer was born to drive a stimulus plan... Continue reading
Posted May 19, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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The 4 Vital Qualities for Digital Transformation
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What is Digital Transformation? Digital transformation describes the change inside an organization from the historical approach to designing products and services and delivering customer value to new approaches that leverage digital tools and behaviors. The purpose of digital transformation is... Continue reading
Posted Mar 17, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Three Ways to Scale Humanity in Marketing Technology and Automation
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For those of us trying to scale marketing’s impact via new technology and data solutions, one of the big tricks is holding onto some humanity in these approaches. Marketing automation quickly gets, well, automated and devoid of personality. What can... Continue reading
Posted Jan 20, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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How Tourism Embraces Content Marketing: #NewMexicoTrue
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State tourism used to be a series of TV spots to inspire and, if the tourism office was lucky, a memorable slogan. Remember the iconic “I(heart)NY” logo designed by Milton Glaser? The first TV spot urged people to explore upstate... Continue reading
Posted Jan 6, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Three Examples of Content Marketing to Enable Your Sales Channel
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If you sell through a sales channel and especially if you sell through an independent sales channel, a portion of your marketing effort goes towards enabling their sales effort. That’s old news. Most B2B marketing started by creating sales collateral... Continue reading
Posted Jan 2, 2019 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Three Predictions for Brand Marketers in 2019 (It's All About the Data)
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If I really knew what was coming down the pike, I would quietly invest in the market that benefits from my so-called predictions and be done with it. I am not much of a gambler. Still, that doesn’t mean I... Continue reading
Posted Dec 28, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Marketing Data Fluency for CMOs
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Insights, ideas, and creativity – marketers love to talk about these. The latest generation of CMOs can talk about revenue and business growth, sales and leads and so forth. But bring up “data” and you rarely get past the usual... Continue reading
Posted Oct 14, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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CDP vs. DMP vs. XYZ: What is Your Brand’s Approach to Marketing Data Management?
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Data management sounds so boring. The field is rife with acronyms for solutions that remain a bit vague like Customer Data Platform (CDP), Data Management Platform (DMP) and, in our case, Master Data Management (MDM). This is not exactly what... Continue reading
Posted Jul 15, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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The Importance of Authentic Brand Storytelling
To connect with customers and communities, brands need to put more energy into brand storytelling. This is as much advice I am giving myself as anyone else wrestling with marketing at a large, enterprise brand. It’s not enough to pump... Continue reading
Posted May 20, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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How Deep Learning May Change Marketing
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Listening to Hugo Larochelle, researcher at Google Brain, talk about the relationship between artificial intelligence, deep learning and the, apparently, much-maligned neural networks, two things become clear. First he is super smart. Like PhD+ smart. Like unattainably smart. The second... Continue reading
Posted Apr 1, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Eight Principles and Voices of Agile Marketing
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Agile marketing is still being defined. The rules are being written and tested as we speak. As such, I am not sure I buy into a dogmatic application of the software version of “agile” with its Scrum masters and 6-member... Continue reading
Posted Feb 4, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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CES 2018: Four Wishes for the Future
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I am just back from CES 2018 and found myself trying to sort through that experience of hobnobbing with 184K of my closest friends. What did I see or experience that really mattered to me? There are plenty of great... Continue reading
Posted Jan 15, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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Crash Course in AI for Marketing: 4 Videos
Continuing down the “roadmap of exploration” on how artificial intelligence and machine learning may impact marketing, I have discovered 4 videos which serve as a good foundation for thinking about the opportunity. These videos provide 4 important concepts for me... Continue reading
Posted Jan 7, 2018 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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How AI and Machine Learning May Apply to Marketing
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Most of the talk about current use of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing cites what the 4 Horsemen are doing or likely doing. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon have digital, data and automation at the heart of their businesses. They... Continue reading
Posted Dec 27, 2017 at Digital Influence Mapping Project
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