“The cuteness of robots may make us lower our guard and forget questions of privacy and security”. This warning comes from Cherie Lacey, writing in Cosmo back in 2017.  Your day to day interactions with robots may be different to mine, but I wouldn’t characterise them as super cute. In fact, individuals, who are leading…

Advertising makes people unhappy. This news comes from Professor Oswald of the University of Warwick who asserts that the higher ad spend is the more miserable people become. He says this is because ads make us want what we don’t or can’t have and comments: “The idea is a very old one: Before I can…

I once overheard an American mocking the British weather forecast: “Basically it’s always “rainy with sunny intervals” except when its “sunny with a chance of rain”. Weather forecasts have become more accurate.  Even in Britain. Though the public still loves to complain when they get it wrong. We also love nothing more than a famously…

How clear is your desk?  Mine is perpetually cluttered.  With apologies to those amongst us who love order above all things, I find it easier to work amongst an element of clutter.  It seems to help my thinking and to drive cross pollination, an essential ingredient of creativity for me. There’s some personal items: photos…

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.…