The Strategy Blog.
-
There’s nothing a video call can do to replace this.
Can’t smell you, can’t touch you, can’t make eye contact with you, can you still motivate me? The movie director John Boorman has written that when he wanted to get the most out of a movie star during a shoot, he would make a small adjustment to their hair just…
-
What is your video background saying about you?
Your video background is your brand What does your working space, and what you choose to reveal about it say about you? We are in the business of brand building, we know how crucial it is to consider what is on show as well as what is said or done. …
-
Jerks hurt.
We are going through a very large jerk. There are roughly two theories about how evolution works. Charles Darwin, who wrote the book on evolution, was a believer in gradualism, slow change over millennia. For many years this was regarded as scientific fact. But if this was the case you…
-
The long and the short need adding to now: here’s the medium and the very long term of it.
The long and the short needs some additions: the medium term and the very long. The ad industry and marketing is familiar with the collective wisdom of the IPA best practice papers summed up by Binet and Field’s paper The Long and the Short of It where the importance of…
-
Survival
We’re in survival mode. And this affects each of us in different ways. A recent assessment of how consumers are feeling includes this list: Anxiety; Isolation; Loneliness; Boredom; Thankfulness; Community spirit; Slow Living; Personal growth. And, of course, it describes how we are all feeling too. There’s been a faster…
-
Why I have not blogged about IWD this year. (It isn’t because of Covid19)
International Women’s Day is a very important milestone in the year. And this year the executive director of the United Nations Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has said that this is a massive year for gender equality. On the days around the official date I am reminded of the issues that…
-
Transformation: don’t expect a prince every time
We’re all enormously influenced by the stories we heard as children, even as adults. Psychological theory states that we are, perhaps, more influenced by the stories that we have forgotten, than the ones that we remember; more in thrall to our unconscious, the stories from our very earliest years, than…
-
Grit: more essential now than ever.
It’s the essential ingredient for success in the 2020s. Grit is, for me, what makes watching top sports professionals so fascinating. Often, they will have had very similar training and coaching programmes. The technology that they use is mandated to be similar. (There are sometimes exceptions when the rules of the…
-
They’re coming and they’re alive!
“The cuteness of robots may make us lower our guard and forget questions of privacy and security”. This warning comes from Cherie Lacey, writing in Cosmo back in 2017. Your day to day interactions with robots may be different to mine, but I wouldn’t characterise them as super cute. In…
-
How to be happy
Advertising makes people unhappy. This news comes from Professor Oswald of the University of Warwick who asserts that the higher ad spend is the more miserable people become. He says this is because ads make us want what we don’t or can’t have and comments: “The idea is a very…
-
It’s time for the forecast
I once overheard an American mocking the British weather forecast: “Basically it’s always “rainy with sunny intervals” except when its “sunny with a chance of rain”. Weather forecasts have become more accurate. Even in Britain. Though the public still loves to complain when they get it wrong. We also love…
-
How clear is your desk?
How clear is your desk? Mine is perpetually cluttered. With apologies to those amongst us who love order above all things, I find it easier to work amongst an element of clutter. It seems to help my thinking and to drive cross pollination, an essential ingredient of creativity for me.…
For your bookshelf
