Did you read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell , and have you been operating on your gut instinct ever since?   How has that worked out for you?  If it has gone very well, and you are indeed now CEO or something equally excellent, then stop reading this now.  If on the other hand…

There really isn’t much to rely on any more.  For thousands of years people have had faith in kings, gods, priests or shamans. In the last decade we’ve heard time and again that people have lost faith in religious institutions, government, authority, and the monarchy. We understand instead that consumers would rather trust the opinion…

This is the cute soundbite from Deloitte’s TV predictions at Edinburgh this August.  Let’s remember how to put 1 trillion into context.  If 1 million seconds is11.5 days, and 1 billion seconds is 32 years, then 1 trillion seconds is 32,000 years.  So that’s a lot of TV ads then. Deloitte spend some time in…

At a drinks party recently one magazine editor confided in me that he thought the future business model for his magazine lay in diversification of services.  Conferences and events have long been used by Media Week to generate added revenues.  (Have you booked your table yet ?) This kind of of thing is newer for…

The Pitch got mixed reviews from critics.  The hour long unscripted shows on Sky Atlantic showed a behind the scenes view of two creative agencies pitching for a US client’s business.  Jonathan Bernstein writing in the Guardian said “The Pitch is so boring it would drive Don Draper to drink”.  (See what he did there?… no,…

“Truth in advertising has long been something to ignore or interpret creatively, if not intentionally avoid altogether”.  When Jonathan Salem Baskin and I wrote the opening words to our book Tell the Truth we did so out of a strong sense that the marketing industry was not reacting fast enough to the enormous change in…

So there was no great exploitation of “situationism” over the Jubilee weekend then, or certainly nothing that captured my attention (aside from the advertised notion that the Queen, like so many of the rest of us, eats Mexican). It doesn’t seem like 35 years since the Sex Pistols “revolutionised” pop music to me.  It is…

The current series of Mad Men goes from strength to strength.  This week’s episode (and I won’t spoil it for anyone who has yet to catch up with SkyPlus) was breathtaking.  And last week’s was a subtly pitched lesson in the politics of feminism at work (how else would she have made Partner ?) The…

In 1977 a boat  left Charing Cross pier to head down the River Thames.  On the boat the Sex Pistols and invited guests.  Later, as the boat passed the Houses of Parliament, the band played Anarchy in the UK  as loudly as they could.  Shortly afterwards the police boats moved in and started arresting people.…

This is not a blog about greeting Stevie Gladdis, our well known joint head of Challenge and Innovation.  Instead a welcome to Stevie, the start up that turns your social network feeds into “beautiful television experience”.  Or in other words flipboard for telly. As Jem Lloyd Williams remarked to me, whether the experience is “beautiful” or…

May 2012 and once again I am not invited to Google Zeitgeist conference.  How on earth am I to stay on top of what the zeitgeist actually is without 3 days in May rubbing shoulders with world leaders and media CEOs?  Oh I know, its OK, I can ask an iphone 4S Siri.   Me:…

  Imagine that you are about to make a critical senior appointment for your company.  In fact an appointment that is widely regarded as the most crucial and high profile in the industry.  Getting the right man (or woman) for the job is essential to your immediate future success.  You consult your colleagues, you perhaps…