The Strategy Blog.
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Lessons from out of this world.
Dr Ed Lu is an American physicist and former astronaut. He was one of the opening speakers at this year’s Marketing Society conference. How cool is that. Everyone wants to hear from an astronaut. He flew on two space shuttle flights and made an extended 6 month stay on the…
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Football, like any other business, needs women in top jobs
Football: a beautiful game and a business. If there were more women involved in football at senior levels there would be better performance. When there are more women involved in senior management of businesses there is better performance. Is football really that different? There’s plenty of research into the benefits…
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Culture explains all.
Have you been keeping up with the latest investigations into the Dark Matter of the universe? 100s of millions of pounds have been spent searching for Dark Matter. Physicists have been searching for 3 decades. Not only have they not found it they still don’t know what it is that…
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The changing role of peak
A long time ago, in full service ad agencies, TV buying was a manual, spot by spot process. One of the first rules of TV buying for new buyers was that you had to buy 70% of a TV schedule in peak airtime, ie between 1730 and 2300. Most TV…
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Stay home and Hygge
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower” – Camus Autumn is well and truly upon us now. The nights are drawing in. The clocks are going back, we’re stocking up for Guy Fawkes and many of us are thankfully donning the black tights of concealment. The ad…
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Fresh blood in the mix
At the Royal Television Society conference last month there were calls for “Fresh blood in the funding mix” This felt a bit strange to me, as a panellist from the media agency sector. We have for a long time now been including branded content as a crucial part of the…
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When the machines take control
The machines are coming. In the course of talking about The Glass Wall, success strategies for women at work and businesses that mean business, some people have told me and my co-author Kathryn that there really is no need to be anxious about gender inequality in senior management. They speak…
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Time to add common sense to video view metrics
What is a view? “This is the glory of business travel” According to Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer of Group M, and he travels a lot, so if anyone should know Rob should know, the glory of business travel is doing your own ironing. He posted a video (which is…
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No regrets
Non, je ne regrette rien. No, I have no regrets. How many of us can truly say that? According to recent research in the US by Allianz 32% of Americans regret major choices in their lives. Topping the regret charts according to the research? Ignoring your health; neglecting to exercise;…
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How did we do that and what can we learn?
As we waved Team GB off on the way to Rio were you thinking what I was thinking? “Good luck, hope you do well, but I don’t really expect you to bring back as many medals as London 2012”. Team GB defied my expectations. The best accumulation of medals in…
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Consensus sounds nice, but is the last thing you need for your business.
“We are the urban elite. We live inside an echo chamber.” Creative genius Dave Trott in Campaign. Telling us off for surrounding ourselves with people who look and sound like ourselves. What’s to be done? More women in the boardroom. Even the best companies in our sector aren’t anywhere…
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Generation Brexit
2016 is 25 years on from the publication of Douglas Coupland’s iconic novel Generation X. So that generation, the generation of young people, just entering the workplace in 1991 and characterised by Coupland as doomed with lousy jobs and a general attitude of bitter cynicism, is all grown up now…
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