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…

“A widespread promiscuous devotion to the untrue” This is how best-selling writer Kurt Anderson describes post truth Trump’s America.  In his recent best-selling book Fantasyland he argues that regarding facts as optional is deep rooted and centuries old in his homeland. His argument runs like this: The founding fathers fled an England that was too…

Lord Finklestein OBE, columnist at The Times, opened his diagnosis of Brexit at the Media360 conference which I co-chaired this May, with an old Jewish joke.  A village matchmaker goes to a peasant family and says that she’s found a match for their son.  “What about the daughter of the Tsar?” she says.  “But there’s…

Alexa and I are not really getting on as well as I had hoped, or thought we would.  First of all the rest of the family don’t like her listening in.  Then quite often we don’t understand each other.  When I asked about the forecast for rain the other day she played me the song…

“All my best decisions are made with heart, guts and taste” Instinct or algorithm? It’s a question that Karen Blackett OBE asked her three interviewees at her Chancellor’s Dinner at Portsmouth University last month. Kanya King OBE, supercool founder of the MOBOS said instinct. Sir Lenny Henry CBE fresh from raising money for Comic Relief…

Just kind In a business that is under disruption, sometimes the best decision you can make is to be kind. At the IPA conference for International Women’s Day one of the key note speakers Pinky Lilani CBE, Founder, Women of the Future, talked about the importance of kindness in modern leadership.  She said that her business…

There’s plenty of debate about campaigns with purpose.  Much of it very intelligent and informed.  Should marketers invest in campaigns that go beyond communicating the benefits of the product or service advertised and extend into a wider purpose for society with which the brand wants to associate? Does purpose pay is often the question.  And…

Some days are more inspirational than others. In the morning my client Mark Evans, CMO at Direct Line Group, mentioned that he’d been discussing the fact that Binet and Field’s now omnipresent thinking The Long and the Short of It, was applicable to more stuff than marketing science (crucial though this is).  And if anyone…

The if only awards Awards season is on us again (is it ever not these days?), with entries due for Campaign Media, Marketing Soc, Thinkbox, Outdoor, Festival of Media and more. Enormous effort will be made to ensure that each brilliant idea is explained properly, and the results will be polished up to look as…