Transcending the Umwelt If you’re wondering what that is and why it matters, the Umwelt is a way of thinking and feeling that is specific to individual brains of different species, (and artificial intelligence).  Transcending your own Umwelt to understand others is crucial to being a planner and creating great communications for brands.  Understanding the…

Lots of discussion on the impact of AI on our industry in the broadest sense.  From the optimists who are already experimenting and using AI as if it comes naturally to them, to the pessimists who are worried about the impact on their jobs and on ethics.  There is overlap between the two cohorts of…

Says Becky Moffat, CMO at HSBC. But what is a convenor? Its not a word that I had in my vocabulary at all until I took on the role of deputy and then convenor of the IPA Effectiveness Awards judges.  During this period, from 2018 to 2022, when I read more words in IPA awards…

If you can measure it, you can improve it. Dr J is one of the greatest basketball players ever.  Julius Winfield Erving 11, better known as Dr J won 3 NBA championships, 4 most valuable player awards and is an inductee of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  In 1994 Sports Illustrated named him one of…

Lionel Shriver is not noted for her optimistic outlook on the world. She is an author and spokesperson, her breakthrough book was “We need to talk about Kevin”.  This was a dystopian description of a mother’s journey to explain why her son killed 9 people at his high school. Lionel was born Margaret Ann in…

During a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said: “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The janitor responded: “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.” Is everyone you work with…

One of my esteemed colleagues used to like to reflect annually on the continued decline in the numbers of people who agreed with the TGI statement “The ads are better than the programmes on TV”.  The glorious Tess Alps, ex ceo of Thinkbox would counter that this was because the programmes had got better. People…

What’s creativity for? One use is creative destruction. To destroy and to clear away old and legacy models so as to allow you to create new mores and standards.  Sometimes it is impossible to create the new if the heritage of the past hangs heavily on your organisation or culture. If this is your intention…

In 2008 a Chicago based marketing man Jonathan Salem Baskin wrote a best selling book: “Branding only works on cattle”.  The argument in the book was that if you focussed solely on building a brand in a silo, separately from customer service and pricing, then you would never optimise the full commercial potential of that…

For a couple of years way back in the seventies there were basically two tribes in the UK.  You were punk or you were not.  The Sex Pistols were storming the charts despite being banned (or arguably because they were banned), and the simple addition of a dog collar – that is a collar for…

Here’s two ways of achieving this.  Better use of data than your competition.  Better imagination (powered by better empathy and creativity). Author and journalist Derek Thompson says Moneyball has ruined baseball for him.  And ruined the music charts (he’s an expert here with his book Hit Makers, the science of popularity in an age of…

This might be a controversial statement for some.  And it depends of course on what you regard as “better”.  After all we are no longer in the so-called Golden Age of Advertising.  Creative legend and OG Dave Trott has recently posted lots of great ads on Twitter with his notes on how they cut through…