The Strategy Blog.
-
Millions of users – is it a stepchange in social?
My mum is moving house. This means she’s going to chuck out a whole load of stuff from my and my siblings childhoods. Some of it has to be rescued. So I’ve recently taken home a huge box full of old photographs, looked through a few of them, got bored…
-
Have you had your Personal Inflection Point yet ?
The inflection point is the time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. Ex-chair of Intel Andrew Grove says “when a company faces an inflection point its future might literally be at stake – the proper response leads to sustained growth, while inappropriate reactions…
-
What would best (insert name here) do ?
The unexpected highlight of last month at Cannes for me was Vivienne Westwood. I was reviewing the winning work from Monday night on Tuesday morning to prepare for a curation of the best bits when I realised that WW was in the house courtesy of Sapient Nitro. She brought the…
-
Heroism is not about gender it is about skill and strength and just not giving up.
What were Disney T-shirts manufacturers thinking when they produced girls Avengers Assemble T-shirts with the logo “I need a hero” and boys T’s with the logo “Be a hero”? Did they reference the 4000 years of patriarchy ways of working handbook ? And what was John Inverdale thinking with his…
-
Connecting to people “formerly known as the audience”.
This is BBC Digital Director Ralph Rivera’s view of the next stage of broadcast. He says that internet native companies like Amazon and Facebook deal with people as individuals, not as a broad “audience” and that most TV programme makers don’t. This would represent a change. Think of the different…
-
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
A few weeks ago I entered the hallowed premises of the Groucho club courtesy of IPC Media’s Lisa Batty. Lisa runs a book club and she’d invited me, and top creative Dave Dye to talk about our books. (Mine, Tell the Truth, was published last year. Dye’s on truth…
-
Don’t count your chickens in a 9 block grid
The 9 block grid is Jack Welch’s famous method for evaluating staff. There are two criteria : Potential and Performance. Those who excel at both are in the top right hand corner. Those who fail at both are in the bottom left hand. If you’re one of the three best…
-
What do you learn at an awayday?
Recent trailers for The Apprentice show the candidates organising corporate awaydays for “major clients”. I’ve been to my fair share of awaydays over the years, several of which certainly had elements at least that might have been organised by people with similar levels of ambition and professionalism to those currently…
-
The impact of directness
One cold dark night, in the closing years of the last century, I and a few brave colleagues (including Matt Mee, then an outdoor expert, now our Global CSO) took an unconventional approach to the marketing of the Converse All Star. We projected the advertising, guerrilla style, on to the…
-
A Total Eclipse of the Media Rationale ?
Britain’s Eurovision dreams have been dashed again. No great surprise that Bonnie’s song came 19th out of 26. That won’t have caused a total eclipse of the national heart. What is a surprise is that academic research from a noted music college has conclusively proved that this is a perfectly…
-
Here’s to the non-conformists
So one of football’s managerial greats has gone. Ferguson’s era is finally over. The BBC’s chief football writer Phil McNulty sums him up in three words here “Charismatic, explosive, contrary”. It is the latter that explains his brilliance for me. Sir Alex has never acted as he was “supposed to”. …
-
Google Glasses or iWatch? Which one’s better? There’s only one way to find out….
In a meeting with our digital heads last week speculation was rife on this issue. It boils down I think ultimately to functionality, though fashion clearly has a role in establishing who wins this next zeitgeist battle. As far as Google Glasses are concerned the media is torn between fear…
For your bookshelf
