The bravery of the intransigent. At the “Bravest” Marketing Society Conference in November Tesco Chair and CBI president John Allan explained his own interpretation of bravery at work.  Commenting that risking unpopularity by disagreeing with the status quo didn’t require the same bravery as the day job of a fire fighter he talked about his…

How do you look?  How do you feel about how you look?  Have you dressed for success in the workplace? Or for comfort? Are you dressing in a feminine or masculine way? One of the most discussed aspects of my last book, The Glass Wall, success strategies for women at work and businesses that mean…

Keeping up with the kids. Here’s another point about brand building in the 21st century.  The internet means changes are immediate.  In analogue times change was slower and it was easier to keep pace.  Now it is faster and more important, and in some ways more cryptic. Its important for anyone who is advising a…

It isn’t either or. One of the plagues of our industry is binary thinking.  Its nice and simplistic to pit different ideas or disciplines against each other.  It isn’t true or helpful. A thorough reading of the IPA Effectiveness award winners in 2018 shows that there are many factors that might need to be considered…

The cost of safe decisions is often misunderstood.  Ignore it at your peril. “One of the most important — and misunderstood — ideas in economics is that of opportunity cost. Everything we do is an implicit decision not to do something else” says Economist Tim Harford. As MediaCom’s worldwide cpg planning chief Andy Walsh has…

Two outlaws have been pursued by the law through the desert.  They’re finally cornered on a cliff top.  If they fight they’ll be killed.  Suddenly one of them thinks of a way out.  A huge leap down into a fast moving river. Butch: I’ll jump first. Sundance: Nope. Butch: Then you jump first. Sundance: No,…

Remember the marshmallow test? Several small children were put in a viewing room by scientists at Stanford University in the 1960s. Presented with a plate with a single marshmallow on it, they were told that if they waited and didn’t eat it in the next fifteen minutes then they could have two marshmallows as a…

Together we can do so much. Agencies and marketers need to be more careful than ever to get rid of silos in campaign development. Things go wrong when there are silos. Here’s two reasons why: First of all silos mean that the right people aren’t always in the decision making room at the right time.…

The medium is the message. This is the most famous quotation from 1960s philosopher Marshall McLuhan.  McLuhan coined the term to explain how content is interpreted differently in different media.  He argued that the context makes a difference.  Many observers are currently rediscovering this. At its simplest we know that the same advert for a…

New technologies come and go, and always have done.  The ones that stick around and disrupt our businesses are the ones that consumers choose to adopt.  As Harvard Business School Professor Thales S.Teixeira writes: “The most common and pervasive pattern of disruption is driven by customers.”  When businesses focus on customer needs and wants they…

Let’s be positive. Conrad Hilton said: “Travel bridges cultures and promotes peace in the world”.  Some people are pointing to Cannes this year as a harbinger of doom.  Actually, it was the very opposite. Whilst it would be oversimplistic to suggest that the ad festival promoted world peace, the general message of the week was…

“Have you met Ted?” If you’re a fan of “How I met your mother”, you’ll recognise Barney’s catch phrase. As self-appointed wingman to friend Ted, he essentially chats up for him a series of women for dates. Have you got a Barney in your life? For Ted, characterised as more shy and more self-effacing, Barney…