You might be surprised to know that one of my favourite consumer magazines is football monthly When Saturday Comes. Not because I am a particular fan of football (I don’t mind it when it is on), not because it is the best source of footballing analogies which are ever useful in explaining new strategies, but…

We’ve long had a little motto at MediaCom as far as finding new people to work here is concerned which runs “I don’t like you – you’re hired”. It is based on the thinking of Bob Sutton (http://www.bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/twelve_weird_id.html). His philosophies include the idea that you need to hire people who make you feel uncomfortable, or…

(www.bbc.co.uk) Now that we have a government sorted out we can turn our focus to football and the World Cup. A recent caller to Talk Sport suggested “we should have Nick Clegg in goal for England as he’s the only bloke who can turn left and right at the same time”. As it happens Clegg’s…

There has been a lot of self satisfied commentary in the traditional media from journalists who seem very pleased that the current election has not fulfilled some people’s prophesies to be the “first British internet election”.  Rather everyone is calling it a TV and press election.  The big turning point was the election debates on…

(Source: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0805/08052704) Call me inerudite if you will, but until last week I had no idea that “confabulation” was a real word. Sounded to me like gobbledegook. It turns out that it is in fact a scientific term which applies to the phenomenon that people will make up reasons to explain their own behaviour in…

It’s long been true that you only have to switch on the TV or glance up at a busside to see examples of creative ideas that really do not work at all well. One of the frustrations for some people in working on the media side of things is that they might put together a…

Long before his current notoriety I’ve been citing Tiger Woods to make a point about the need for companies and individuals to focus on being good rather than on short term profit. I borrowed the idea from Geoffrey A Moore from his book about how great companies innovate continuously titled “ Dealing with Darwin”. Tiger…

In his gem of a book Obliquity economist John Kay tells an old economist’s joke. An economist in the wilderness sees a bear approaching and pulls out his computer to calculate an optimal strategy for dealing with the situation. His colleague, appalled says “We don’t have time for that”. “Don’t worry” replies the economist “the…

“It resembled some kind of Stalinest Show trial”. This description was not of a bad buying audit or tricky new business pitch. The incident in question referred to someone’s experience of part of a training course. Following a profile report the attendees of this particular training programme had to explain their profiles to each other,…

Vijay Viatheeswaran, Economist correspondent, was the Chair of the Economist Summit on Redesigning Business: The Big Rethink which ran in London last week. “Need, Greed, and Speed” was his theme for day one. Our mission at the Summit to consider incorporating the principles of design thinking in order to avoid being tripped up by those…

Pain is good was the message from Adam Freeman (Director, Consumer Media) at the Guardian who came and spoke at a MediaCom planning awayday last week. Our topic was about change management, the hot topic at many awaydays at the moment I would think. Speaking to Marketing Magazine recently I coined the term “reconstruction” for…

There is a massive poster on my way to work now that shows a bloke called Ian from Congleton who says he’s going to vote Conservative for the first time in the next election. Hands up if you know where Congleton is. As a southerner born and bred I had to search online. It turns…