We had lunch in our local café last weekend. The waitress had a brilliant, excellent English accent.  Her education had clearly been very thorough in that respect.  However her vocabulary was extremely limited.  A table nearby asked for the bill – she didn’t understand.  Then they tried asking for the cheque. She didn’t understand that…

  I was locked into a TV studio overlooking the Thames last week with Gerhard Zeiler, CEO of RTL Group and Charlie Crowe, CEO of C Squared. Charlie was grilling us on the future of TV for a MediaCom webcast. We had a lot to talk about as we obviously live in interesting times as…

At a recent discussion about the future of media being cross boundary, one of the speakers raised the idea that for a business to succeed the boundary that they needed to cross was the boundary that is drawn by most people between work and life outside work. She talked about the immense enthusiasm and energy…

Interesting discussions are going on about whether the Media Week Awards format should be revised.  I haven’t been party to the main conversations which I believe took place earlier this month but have spoken to a couple of people who were. The overall impression I get is that most people seem to think that the…

Last month on a shopping trip to New York with two teenagers, I found myself sitting quietly in Hollister on 5th Avenue watching the huge screen which depicts a surfing beach live from a webcam in California. The last time I did this it was in Hollister in Brent Cross. The similarities between the two…

One of my colleagues had a journey up North to arrange – a one way ticket to Manchester. (Not for ever – he had a lift home to London). He spent ages researching online. This indicated that he would be expected to pay in the region of £140 for the journey with no guarantee of…

This is according to the writings of Jonathan Salem Baskin – much respected marketer, author and blogger. His latest book “Histories of Social Media” explains that the behaviours we all talk about so much as new – Twitter, Facebook etc etc – are actually all really based on very ancient human practices. His entertaining analysis…

Image:worldgallery.com How refreshing to hear WPP’s planning guru Jon Steel, on a recent visit to MediaCom, talk about the need to get under the skin of what is really meant and felt in a qual research group, rather than simply reporting what has been said during it. We live in such a world of instant…

Everyone loves a Venn diagram don’t they ? I know I do. Venn diagrams were originally invented by John Venn in 1880. How many of us can expect to live on as a diagram for over a century. The new truth marketing Venn diagram is the intersection between the three things that the consumer wants…

The current argument about the Afghan war and the deployment of troops between the former head of the army and the former ambassador to Afghanistan gives us three things to watch out for when making judgements about deploying resources for a communications strategy. The row – which you can read more about at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12186888 –…

www.walyou.com Deloitte, the hosts of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2011, were very careful to mandate “Chatham House” rules at their launch event in London this week. Peter O’Donoghue, Predictions Lead Partner, said “No blogging, no tweeting and no Facebook Status updating” as he welcomed us to the overview; which seemed to cover most…

Truth in communications and marketing is like a treacle covered magnet. We are drawn to it and its very sticky. When we are introduced to truthful ideas we talk about them and spread them around. Truthiness on the other hand (it is a real word by the way – it was Word of the Year…