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The business journal of The Wharton School, Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton) interviewed Wharton professor Marshall Fisher, co-author of The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance. Among the biggest challenges retailers face is matching supply with demand. Fisher says retailers have the data they need to manage supply chains more efficiently and increase sales and profits.

Watch the video to learn the types of data that are most important for retailers to collect, how they can use this information to identify home-run products, and why the retailing industry might be missing as much as one-third of potential sales.

See the interview on the Knowledge@Wharton site.

Sell the sizzle along with the steak. That advertising mantra is exemplified in STA Travel’s (@statravelAU)  I Want To Know viral video marketing campaign (the above video is 1 of 3).

Karl Krantz of the Start Up Daily (@thestartupdaily) says it’s “an example of advertising done right....it makes me want to travel....for a video commissioned by a travel agency, you can’t get a better emotional response than that.”

It's not important what your marketing says, it’s important how it leaves people feeling. Show your customers what could be, inspire them to live better.

Nick Morris of Internet Marketing Adelaide (@WebMarkAdelaide) interviews Adam Fyfe, the “Move, Eat, Learn” campaign coordinator. Morris asks, “What were your objectives for this project?” Fyfe says,

At a brand level we had a need to increase awareness of our brand. At a more personal level, it was about putting some excitement back into what should be an inspiring industry.

Read the interview in full.

Let Somersault help create a strategic and effective ad campaign for your brand.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil (@KurzweilAINews) was interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel Live about his vision of humans merging with technology in the coming years to create The Singularity. The above videos are Part 1 and 2 of that interview. If even a tenth of what he predicts comes true, it will further revolutionize the world.

You’ll also want to read our previous blogpost “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.”

And you’ll want to listen to this On The Media (@onthemedia) segment, “Our Future with Technology.”

What do you see as the implications of these possibilities from a Christian point of view? From a publishing point of view? Add your comments below.

Join Somersault (@smrsault) in keeping an eye on how today’s technology will influence our future by reading the Somersault Futurist Daily News and using the SomersaultNOW dashboard of more than 300 articles and RSS feeds designed for publishers and marketers; especially note the Future tab. And tell your colleagues. Thanks!

An article in The Daily Beast / Newsweek (@thedailybeast) by Malcolm Jones profiles the fabulous new children’s ebook The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (@MorrisLessmore) by Moonbot Studios LA, LLC (@moonbotstudios). It says the ebook “embraces the potential of the iPad like nothing else.”

Dumped into a black-and-white landscape littered with wreckage, Morris Lessmore encounters a savior of sorts, who tosses him a flying book that leads him to a library set out in the countryside. Here he takes up residence, learns to care for the thousands of books he lives with and begins to write down his own story, an effort that takes him all his life.

In every scene, the viewer has to help move the action along — speeding up the wind that carries Morris away, spinning the house on which he flies through the storm, spelling out words in the cereal bowl with which Morris feeds the books (cereal like Alphabits, of course). But the interaction is not merely some computer form of a pop-up book. Besides spelling words, you can play a piano keyboard and make the books dance, and if you don’t want narration, you can mute it, and if you don’t want text, you can remove that, too. You can’t change the story, but the app designers have nevertheless found ways to make you feel very much a part of the story.

On the Morris Lessmore website it says

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation), award-winning author/illustrator William Joyce and co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a hybrid style of animation that harkens back to silent films and M-G-M Technicolor musicals.

Read this in full.

A one-paragraph summary of the article is here.

Is this a game-changer in the production of ebooks? How will your publishing plans change as a result? Let Somersault help.

This video introducing the Comon English Bible is debuting at the International Christian Retail Show (@ICRShow) (#ICRShow and #ICRS), going on July 10-13. Stop by the CEB booth 828 to get a free copy (while supplies last) of the just published print edition of the complete Bible.

Also see our previous post "Complete Print Edition of the Common English Bible Debuts at Christian Retail Show."

This video on Kottke.org (@Kottke) shows that back before print on demand, laser printers, and the Internet, printing was a time-consuming laborious process, that took teams of people working together to produce just one book. Amazing to watch and reflect on just how revolutionary digital publishing is!

Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman (@equalman), the above video is the latest attempt at capturing the world of today’s social media culture.

Compare where we are today with these previous videos summarizing the social media revolution.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you navigate these accelerating changes in social media.

In under 3 minutes, Derek Sivers (@sivers) dissects lessons from a candid video and explains how leaders (and followers) start movements:

• A leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed.
• The first follower shows everyone else how to follow.
• The leader embraces the first follower as an equal (so now it’s not about the leader (singular) any more, it’s about “them.”
• The first follower is an underestimated form of leadership.
• The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.
• When the second follower joins, it’s no long 2 but 3, and 3 is “news;” a movement must be public.
• New followers emulate the followers, not the leader.
• As more people join, momentum begins, until a tipping point occurs and a movement starts.
• As more people join in, it becomes less risky for others to join in (they won’t stand out, they won’t be ridiculed, but they’ll be part of the in-crowd if they hurry).

This is a great video to show at your next staff meeting!

Somersault was invited to attend the recent TEDxGrandRapids (@TEDxGrandRapids) (#TEDxGR), a local event inspired by the internationally known TED talks (@TEDTalks & @TEDNews). On May 12, 16 Innovators from diverse fields and from all over the world came to Grand Rapids, MI to share their personal stories of innovation with over 500 local thinkers and doers.

An insightful summary of the day’s speakers is provided by Sharon Oleniczak, strategist at Peopledesign (@peopledesign). For example, she writes: Robert Fuller: Innovate Wonder. Professor of Religious Studies at Bradley University (@bradleyu). Robert Fuller wants all of us to live in a state of wonder every day. “A life shaped by wonder is much different than a life shaped by fear or guilt,” he said. 

Read her recap in full.

If you have a chance to participate in a TED or TEDx event, you’ll want to prepare for it by reading these helpful tips from Ben Brousch (@brousch).

One of the videos shown at the event was this one, a life lesson presented by Mark Bezos, a volunteer firefighter:

How are you going to innovate today? Let Somersault help. And remember to daily use the SomersaultNOW online dashboard to read inspiring articles of innovation.

This article by Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) on paidContent.org (@paidContent) says a company called Enthrill Entertainment Inc. (@Enthrill) plans to partner with bookstores to sell “physical” copies of ebooks in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Enthrill’s model will allow bookstore to sell physical cards with an image of the book’s cover on one side and a QR code (which provides access to extras like sample chapters and trailers) and download code on the other side. After consumers purchase the card, they go to Enthrill’s website and use their code to download the book as a PDF or EPUB file, which is readable on any device. If they then download other titles as well, those sales are credited back to the bookstore where the customer made his or her original purchase.

Read the article in full.

Read Enthrill’s news release (pdf).

Enthrill’s explanatory video above looks much like Zondervan’s (@zondervan) Symtio (@Symtio) business model (see video below) when it was first launched in 2008, but then was divided in two in 2010, with the online portion sold to LibreDigital (@LibreDigital) and the in-store portion discontinued (see Christian Retailing‘s (@ChristianRetail) “Zondervan suspends, sells Symtio ebook program”).

Also see our Feb. 10 blog post “Is there hope for small bookstores in a digital age?”.