Most people loathe waste. Especially people in the marketing and media fraternities where the wastage of money is considered a sacrilege. Yet wastage is universally acknowledged as a given. In 1911, John Wannamaker estimated 50% of his advertising budget was wasted, he just didn’t know which...
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...
Not the most glamorous of thoughts. Isn’t marketing supposed to be sexy? Well, in fact, this quote comes from someone describing one of the sexiest, most successful businesses of our lifetime; Apple. "Logistics means marketing" is a quote from Regis McKenna, the man who in 1976...
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...
There is a dark side to cults. One that might involve standing buck naked deep in a forest around a raging fire at midnight, eyes closed, chanting, whilst sacrificing a chicken. But there is much that can be learnt from them too. The characteristics of...
