Have you ever been in a meeting where you felt unable to say what you were really thinking because you knew that it would be unpopular? You know the scenario.  You’re sitting there with an opinion that differs from the consensus.  Perhaps you have some inside knowledge of what’s really going on.  Or a strong instinct that doing…

My mum is moving house.  This means she’s going to chuck out a whole load of stuff from my and my siblings childhoods.  Some of it has to be rescued.  So I’ve recently taken home a huge box full of old photographs, looked through a few of them, got bored and stuck them in a…

The inflection point is the time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change.   Ex-chair of Intel Andrew Grove says “when a company faces an inflection point its future might literally be at stake – the proper response leads to sustained growth, while inappropriate reactions often lead to obsolescence.” Our…

The unexpected highlight of last month at Cannes for me was Vivienne Westwood.  I was reviewing the winning work from Monday night on Tuesday morning to prepare for a curation of the best bits when I realised that WW was in the house courtesy of Sapient Nitro. She brought the house down.  Partly due to…

What were Disney T-shirts manufacturers thinking when they produced girls Avengers Assemble T-shirts with the logo “I need a hero” and boys T’s with the logo “Be a hero”? Did they reference the 4000 years of patriarchy ways of working handbook ?  And what was John Inverdale thinking with his comments about Marion Bartoli ? …

This is BBC Digital Director Ralph Rivera’s view of the next stage of broadcast.  He says that internet native companies like Amazon and Facebook deal with people as individuals, not as a broad “audience” and that most TV programme makers don’t.  This would represent a change.  Think of the different creative process that goes into…

  A few weeks ago I entered the hallowed premises of the Groucho club courtesy of IPC Media’s Lisa Batty.  Lisa runs a book club and she’d invited me, and top creative Dave Dye to talk about our books.  (Mine, Tell the Truth, was published last year. Dye’s on truth in advertising is due later…

The 9 block grid is Jack Welch’s famous method for evaluating staff.  There are two criteria : Potential and Performance.  Those who excel at both are in the top right hand corner.  Those who fail at both are in the bottom left hand.  If you’re one of the three best blocks then you will be…

Recent trailers for The Apprentice show the candidates organising corporate awaydays for “major clients”.  I’ve been to my fair share of awaydays over the years, several of which certainly had elements at least that might have been organised by people with similar levels of ambition and professionalism to those currently competing to go into business…

One cold dark night, in the closing years of the last century, I and a few brave colleagues (including Matt Mee, then an outdoor expert, now our Global CSO) took an unconventional approach to the marketing of the Converse All Star.  We projected the advertising,  guerrilla style, on to the exterior walls of major indie…

Britain’s Eurovision dreams have been dashed again.  No great surprise that Bonnie’s song came 19th out of 26.  That won’t have caused a total eclipse of the national heart. What is a surprise is that academic research from a noted music college has conclusively proved that this is a perfectly fair and just result.  Denmark…

So one of football’s managerial greats has gone.  Ferguson’s era is finally over.  The BBC’s chief football writer Phil McNulty sums him up in three words here “Charismatic, explosive, contrary”.   It is the latter that explains his brilliance for me.  Sir Alex has never acted as he was “supposed to”.  When Wayne Rooney first threatened…