The Strategy Blog.
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Scarcity is the mother
What links UK, Estonia, Israel, New Zealand and South Korea? The clue I think lies in the latter country’s digital reputation as these nations make up the D5, the most advanced digital governments countries in the world. The Digital 5, is a network of leading digital governments with the goal…
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The best way forward? Turn around and look back.
There’s an important issue that has been raised by many at the forefront of innovation. The pace of change is naturally becoming even faster. At the GDS Sprint 15 conference Martha Lane Fox said that breathlessness wasn’t enough to categorise the pace of change to come. “We’ll be panting” she…
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Content and Context go hand in hand
I was surprised to hear the old chestnut of media agencies separating from creative agencies being painted by someone as, well I can only say “separatism”. They bemoaned the split between content and context. Well, I think content and context are flourishing nicely arm in arm on most client…
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“The smartphone is the most successful consumer device ever.”
So says Deloitte. Whilst a part of me wonders where this leaves the toaster (surely the best consumer device since sliced bread) the immediate evidence of a billion upgrades in a single year is convincing. We are obsessed with them of course. At a recent Mobile get together I…
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“NHS managers dress as witches to dole out funds”
This was the headline in the Sunday Times earlier this month which you might have missed ( the news has been quite full on so far this year). It explained that at one group of hospitals staff have had to “dress up as monkeys and blow toy trumpets to…
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Pitch rehearsals in the dark.
Men may have outnumbered women on stage by some margin at the Marketing Society conference but the women who did feature were amazing. Kirsty Wark chaired the day with charm. Carolyn McCall never disappoints. She’s always great, either personally, where she is nothing but kind, nor professionally where she…
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“Have you noticed how the best planners are often biologists?” Rory Sutherland
This throwaway comment, from the Grand Rory, gave me pause to think. Biologists, really? Rory believes they best understand how the brain works. A biology graduate would have great expertise in the reptilian brain for instance, which helps to explain system 1 vs system 2 thinking that many consider…
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Love and Laugh
The other day I was chatting to the head of a media company about how one of his new recruits had settled in. He’s said that his new employee, a senior executive, had settled in well, and was already making a great contribution. He’d reported that he’d already had more…
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The XX Factor
“Notice anything unusual about this panel? Yes, it’s all-female. And yet male panels, or those with one woman, are so common, they go unremarked. Our industry is filled with incredible women, but the future isn’t female – just equal.” Lindsey Clay, chief executive, Thinkbox in Campaign Magazine. It really is…
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Tighter Targeting Doesn’t Mean Better Persuasion
“The weakness of modern strategy is that it is too reliant on technology. The triumph of accuracy of outputs with no impact on outcomes”. Hidden Histories GPS BBC. I am sometimes asked about how programmatic will transform advertising. Clearly a benefit of programmatic is pinpoint accuracy and the reduction of…
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Mix it Raw
YouTube has been everywhere recently. Buses, posters, magazine features and the BBC. An episode of the Apprentice featured the candidates making a YouTube video and collaborating with YouTube stars to promote it, thus proving once again that any idiot CANNOT be funny or clever enough to go viral. YouTube stars…
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Here come the next billion smartphones
Big news from the Ig Nobel Prize this year as one winner explains why banana skins are slippery. Earlier winners have included the researcher of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Duck. The originator of this dubious study is Kees Moeliker and he was a guest on a recent episode of…
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