The Strategy Blog.
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What motivates people?
With a global talent shortage, and as we get “back to school” for the autumn, after the summer holidays, it is important to unpick, and then refresh, motivation at work. Season 2 of The Bear is streaming now on Disney+. Spoiler alert, the season leaves many unanswered questions (including will…
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Break Expectations
“Chloe Kelly thumped home her winning penalty for England against Nigeria. At 111km per hour, it was more powerful than any Premier League goal in 22-23” Mailonline It’s just not that long ago that the papers were debating whether women’s football was ever going to be as interesting as the…
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Have you transcended the Umwelt today?
Transcending the Umwelt If you’re wondering what that is and why it matters, the Umwelt is a way of thinking and feeling that is specific to individual brains of different species, (and artificial intelligence). Transcending your own Umwelt to understand others is crucial to being a planner and creating great…
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5 take outs from Cannes this year.
Lots of discussion on the impact of AI on our industry in the broadest sense. From the optimists who are already experimenting and using AI as if it comes naturally to them, to the pessimists who are worried about the impact on their jobs and on ethics. There is overlap…
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“Great marketers tend to be great convenors”
Says Becky Moffat, CMO at HSBC. But what is a convenor? Its not a word that I had in my vocabulary at all until I took on the role of deputy and then convenor of the IPA Effectiveness Awards judges. During this period, from 2018 to 2022, when I read…
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If you can measure it, you can improve it. If you are measured, you will game it.
If you can measure it, you can improve it. Dr J is one of the greatest basketball players ever. Julius Winfield Erving 11, better known as Dr J won 3 NBA championships, 4 most valuable player awards and is an inductee of the Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1994 Sports…
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Conditions for transformation
Lionel Shriver is not noted for her optimistic outlook on the world. She is an author and spokesperson, her breakthrough book was “We need to talk about Kevin”. This was a dystopian description of a mother’s journey to explain why her son killed 9 people at his high school. Lionel…
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What do you really do?
During a visit to the NASA Space Centre in 1962, President Kennedy noticed a janitor carrying a broom. He interrupted his tour, walked over to the man and said: “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy, what are you doing?” The janitor responded: “I’m helping put a man on the moon, Mr President.”…
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When ads are welcome
One of my esteemed colleagues used to like to reflect annually on the continued decline in the numbers of people who agreed with the TGI statement “The ads are better than the programmes on TV”. The glorious Tess Alps, ex ceo of Thinkbox would counter that this was because the…
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There are 48 ways to be creative. Here’s number 10: Build communities.
What’s creativity for? One use is creative destruction. To destroy and to clear away old and legacy models so as to allow you to create new mores and standards. Sometimes it is impossible to create the new if the heritage of the past hangs heavily on your organisation or culture.…
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If every aspect of your customer experience does not support, or even exceed, the promise of the brand then you’re limiting your business and its growth.
In 2008 a Chicago based marketing man Jonathan Salem Baskin wrote a best selling book: “Branding only works on cattle”. The argument in the book was that if you focussed solely on building a brand in a silo, separately from customer service and pricing, then you would never optimise the…
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The power of inviting everyone in.
For a couple of years way back in the seventies there were basically two tribes in the UK. You were punk or you were not. The Sex Pistols were storming the charts despite being banned (or arguably because they were banned), and the simple addition of a dog collar –…
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