“No idea is a bad idea” is one of the sacred rules of brainstorming. The concept is based on the theory that ideas are like young plants. Rain too hard on them and they will wilt away. Don’t criticise. Warm them in the greenhouse of sunshine approval. This is one of the founding rules laid…

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” (Yogi Berra and others). January is the month for pundits to place their best bets for the year. We need not go very far though these days to know what nonsense those bets usually amount to.  In respect of outlooks and outcomes for 2019 the bookies…

“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never” Winston Churchill I’ve always been inspired by persistence.  When you fall down, you get back up again.  Yet a fact based argument in the much resp‎ected Harvard Business Review challenges this idea. Cass Business School’s professor Andre Spicer says that there’s in fact a “weak link…

Often when mentoring, in a one to one, it will be clear that the mentees worst critic is the one they see very regularly, daily in fact.  Often when they are tired and stressed.  Often when they are at a low point.  It’s the one they see in the mirror. Its very common.  In my…

There’s a reason that organisations that have real diversity thrive. It is not just a tick box exercise. It’s the synthesis of people with differences of opinion, personality and thinking.  It’s the ultimate “Avengers Assemble” team (as WPP UK Country Manager Karen Blackett puts it). These teams are not groups of people who love hanging…

Fake news is everywhere, swaying politics, election results, public opinion. Fake news permeates our business too. You only need to attend a conference or browse your Twitter feed to come across media business fake news, such as, for example: “Brands are dead.” At a recent panel (Chatham House Rules) there was a fellow panellist who…

If you read this blog, you’ll have a better chance of being promoted, paid more, liked more, going home early. Got your attention? “What’s in it for you?” as a strategy is in fact short term and unsustainable for marketing, for management and finally for life. “What’s in it for you?” can be a successful…

Most businesses have a strategy for transformation, and if they don’t probably need one. When so much is changing and so fast it’s easy to assume that the old guard need clearing out. However it’s a mistake to assume that everything must change. If you lose perspective and all the experience from the team you…

5 days 24 presentations 21 partners‎ 35 presenters 1,400 attendees Our first transformation week at MediaCom happened as our English summer transformed into baking heat. Charles Darwin said “it’s not the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but those most responsive to change”.  Stephen Hawking said: “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”…

To boldly go, where no brand has gone before. Brands are facing an existential threat like no other.  Exactly how it will play out and how soon the question.  As Twitter’s Bruce Daisley said on MediaCom’s Connected Podcast recently (and out soon here), it’s impossible to predict the next twenty years, just as twenty years…

Serious about business. The best of the work this year curated in the MediaCom suite had business success running right through it. Sure the collection of work had plenty of stunts littering it still, but the cream of work that rose to the top included fabulous strategic thinking. This is of course true of the…

Don’t do everything Don’t shape shift Don’t do everything JK Rowling has been responsible for a generation of children learning to love literature.  In 2013 she was named a national literacy hero by the National Literacy Trust.  In her books and her films she defined femininity for a generation of girls who are now grown…