Certainty. We all crave it and, in some cases, demand it from our colleagues, partners and suppliers. But of course, there is no such thing as certainty. As William Goldman said of the entertainment industry in 1983, “nobody knows anything”. Which is perhaps more true...
What we measure is what counts. A universally acknowledged truth is that people adapt their behaviour based on how they perceive they will be measured/compared/judged. For those of us in the marketing and communication fields, what we measure has largely defined the industry we now...
For decades it was all about new inventions. "What will they think of next?" people used to cry. We were amazed, intrigued and expectant with the wave of new inventions presented to us. The rocket ship, the personal computer, the mobile phone and the electric...
In the olden days, an ambitious farmer, who owned no land, paid a local landowner to grow crops on his land in return for rent. A few years passed and the farmer was quite content, he always had enough food for his family and had...
Nowadays, innovative thinking rarely comes from the lightbulb moment in the bath. In today’s over-commoditised world, innovation is less about invention and more about finding a better way to do something than it was done before. For years brainstorm facilitators have used techniques to encourage participants...
Whilst ad-blocking is getting all the headlines at the moment, it is really just a symptom underlying a much bigger problem; people are telling companies they’ve had enough of their marketing. Not just a few people either, but the large majority of people. A recent study...
All of these are real. Some good. Some bad. But all communicate. So all of them matter. An airline whose receptionist has a welcoming smile on her face A gym with a deflated balloon hanging off their sign-up sign A design business with an interesting font on their business card A technology...
It used to be that in order to make as many people as possible aware of your message you would hit them over the head enough times via ‘mass reach’ channels with annoyingly high ‘frequency’. However, for an increasing number of marketers this ‘exposure’ model...
In the connection economy, having an audience that values your voice; your content; and your opinion is crucial to achieving relevance. Progressive brands recognise that owning the dialogue with their customers is far more powerful than paying to be a bystander to someone else’s conversation. Brands...
The marketing industry has finally accepted that what we have been experiencing as customers all our lives, is now one of this year’s ‘things’ to talk about. The expectation gap refers to the moment when you realise that what you were promised in advertising, isn't...
