The Strategy Blog.
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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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Wide open sports sponsorship opportunities, cheap as chips and with no clutter, or scandal.
Always’ “#LikeAGirl” has just won the most pencils at D&AD 2015 awards. The ad, which is designed to help to address the drop off in body confidence in teenage girls, received its well-deserved accolade in the same week as this letter hit social media. The letter, which is anonymous, and…
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“I’d like to work in advertising. Can you help me get a job?”
You must have heard this more than once. As the summer milk round kicks off the requests from graduates will begin to escalate. Dave Trott, years ago, wrote a definitive guide “How to get a job in advertising” which includes the memorable advice :”99% of people trying to get a…
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Two nations DOOH
“I want to bring our country together, our United Kingdom together…to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost – the mantle of One Nation, One United Kingdom.”. So said David Cameron on the day of the elections results. Well in one way we are definitely already two…
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The Loch Ness Monster Media Test
It’s an increasing problem for media practitioners: how do we tell the difference between new technologies/brands/products/platforms that are short-term fads, and those that will establish themselves as long-term staples of our lifestyles and cultures. To help us all do this, I propose the Loch Ness monster test. On May 2…
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#millennials
The Millennials have been called the unluckiest generation by some. They have been written off as a feckless generation by others. (Interestingly including by millennials themselves but they’d like to point out that it is not their fault). The Economist Group on the other hand disagrees and believes that the…
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You say correlation; I say causation
TLDR “Too long, didn’t read”. Microsoft’s Chief Envisioning Officer Dave Coplin swept into our offices this month to remind us that behind every bit of tech there’s a human being. He described the symptoms of the Digital Deluge on the average human, one of which is that you can’t…
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The dominance of the “Visual Web” may herald a new era in human communication.
Nicola Mendelsohn of Facebook, speaking at last month’s Guardian Changing Media Summit, where she was described as the “most powerful media figure” in Europe, laid out the company’s vision for an “immersive, visual based web that makes communications easier in an increasingly frantic world”. Marketing Magazine said that Nicola…
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“Um, excuse me but the client would like to see him with his top off”
The first and only casting session I ever attended was for the Ajax Houseproud Hunk. I’d been involved in every stage of the pitch and idea. The product was for a new cleaning variant that meant that there was no residue after you sprayed your kitchen surface and wiped –…
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