The Strategy Blog.
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Looking after yourself is right on trend
What is the spirit of these times? Being able to pinpoint the emerging Zeitgeist can have a powerful impact on brands and media channels. Current predictions include: mobile is everything; the quantified self; transparency (as I pointed out in my book “Tell the Truth, Honesty is your most Powerful Marketing…
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How’s your pace layering going?
A client of my acquaintance once confided that when they were out visiting agencies they sometimes used a “Bullshit Bingo” card to pass the time in meetings. “Programmatic” scores highly of course and I’d guess that “pace of change is breath taking” would be on there too. Change is now…
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Is mass personalisation the future for brands ?
“Blue like my boyfriend’s eyes or golden like my personality?” Jen is choosing her new car specifications. Most of it has been simple: of course she needs heated seats and black leather interior trim; fancy wheels and the best possible sound system. All of that took just moments. The tough…
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Wherever you go you take the weather with you
Rain, rain go away. The last couple of weeks of July felt like a very British summer, especially Friday 24th when an Ark would have been appropriate as a way of navigating Soho. Adlanders could have boarded two by two! The unseasonable, or perhaps merely typically unpredictable, weather…
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You’re so wrong you’re right.
“Right”, said Mark Earls, “Everyone in the second row and the fourth row come up to the stage, we’re going to play a game that illustrates what happens when humans copy each other.” Fearful of being made to participate in a conga, or maybe mass karaoke, the nervous participants shuffle…
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Bored? Good. Use it.
Nature Valley is creating a YouTube stir with its film asking 3 generations what they did as kids to amuse themselves. The older generations speak of “growing watermelons and plantains”. Younger adults talk of building forts and outdoor games. Kids today? Take a wild guess: Tablets and gaming. Of course…
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Everything is local.
The average British southerner moves no more than 6 miles from their birthplace. (I’ve currently managed 6.4). The average northerner no more than 3 (they’re firmly attached to their roots in the North). Of course that doesn’t stop you being a global citizen and in our trade we all work…
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The Selfie revolution and its impact on modern marketing
Boy George was amazing at MediaCom’s Cannes event. Talking profoundly to Steve Allan he talked what goes around, comes around. “I say to my niece, we had selfies in my day. It’s just that you had to get dressed up, get on the bus (in fear of being beaten up…
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“I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.” ― Jonah Goldberg
“Are you lonely? Tired of working on your own? Do you hate making decisions? Hold a meeting! You can see people, show charts, feel important, point with a stick, eat donuts, impress your colleagues. All on company time. Meetings: the practical alternative to work”. So runs the cartoon recently emerging…
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You are not a planner you are a lawyer
Google Firestarters this June invited a selection of 7 planners to come and talk about the most useful thing that they’d learned in their careers. It was a stellar line up (details at Neil Perkin’s Only Dead Fish page) and included two planners who combine their planning genius with immaculate…
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Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Hey, money makers, leave the kids alone. This is the thrust of George Monbiot’s recent rant in the Guardian about City Firms seducing grads into a doomed life of making money and ruining their lives. He argues that at this vulnerable point when they’ve got their lives in front of…
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Cultural Archetypes rule us all.
Zombies invade Cannes this year courtesy of MediaCom’s partnership with AMC. The session as Cannes opens reveals what the cultural conditions were that allowed The Walking Dead to become such a worldwide hit, and how in fact different nations would respond to a real life Zombie attack. How much has…
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