The 5th Gear – Top 5 Links – Week of 9/2/13

The Imagination Station/kickstarter.com

One of SHIFT’s 7 core values is connected, which means much more than just having a full Address Book app on your phone. Connected means knowing what’s going on, knowing what’s worth reading and sharing. Starting today, Mondays on the SHIFT blog will be SHIFTing Gears, a column dedicated to what our team members connected with on the web over the past week.

Let us know what you think about the series and/or the links in the comments below.

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First up, Christopher Penn shares his top pick for the week:

Measure & Optimize for Offline Sales with AdWords Conversion Import
Chris: To me, this is such a HUGE deal because it gives retailers the ability to begin bridging the gulf between online and offline. An AdWords click ID is passed to the client and goes into a CRM. That can then be used to identify actual sales in non-clickstream processes (like a sales person dialing and smiling), and then uploaded back to AdWords to tell you what ads are working.

Katie Clark-Alsadder (SHIFT Senior Account Manager) shared a great WSJ on work stress:

What to Do When Work Stress Eats Up the Evening
Katie: Love this idea in WSJ “At Work” – study found that taking a few minutes at the end of the day to scribble down thoughts on the day’s high points – whether it was work-related or “I brought a delicious lunch” – cuts down on the work stress you take home with you.

I read this short article with some important questions to ask yourself every day:

30 Thought-Provoking Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Day
Chel: Sometimes we don’t always recognize the reasons we make the choices we do. Learning about ourselves is something that often gets tossed on the very back burner in order to get everything else done. Asking yourself these questions even once a week and documenting the answers will help you make better decisions about your personal happiness.

Luisa Montes (SHIFT Senior Account Executive) shared a story on the most quoted man in the news from The New Yorker:

The Most Quoted Man in News
Lusia: The New Yorker has a mini-documentary about Greg Packer — a man who has been quoted by media thousands of times with no professional expertise. He makes it look so easy.

And to close, Dave Levy (SHIFT Senior Account Manager) shares a story Detriot Robocop and his intrigue regarding the community’s reluctance to support it:

Behind the Saga to Bring a Giant RoboCop Statue to Detroit
Dave: I have both of personal and professional interest in crowdfunding (one our clients is in the venture/equity side of things), as well as a severe love of all things Americana. That’s why I definitely took time out this week to learn about the struggles of trying to get a community to support a statue of Robocop in Detroit, funded through donation-based crowdfunding. It’s a very-fitting lesson, too, on not taking things seriously:

“’Yeah, it’s silly,’ Walley admits. ‘But is there no place for 10 feet of silliness within 139 square miles of our expansive city?’”

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Chel Wolverton
Senior Marketing Analyst

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