Make acronyms your enemy
Most see the act of saying something that has absolutely no chance of ever coming to fruition or doing something that has absolutely no chance of success, as utterly pointless. But to my mind there is a certain nobility in the futile. Futility is hugely underrated. The decision of Lord Cardigan to send the British...
We need more ‘non-working marketing spend’, not less
There are many phrases to which I take exception. I hate dead metaphors such as “Achilles’ heel”. I hate euphemisms that are designed to disguise their true meaning, such as “collateral damage”. And I hate out-and-out lies such as “we will give the £350m we save from the European Union to the NHS”. But one...
Banishing unconscious bias from your planning
To celebrate the 55th series of Have I Got News For You, the show’s team captains, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton gave a now infamous interview to the Radio Times, a publication not normally used to setting the news agenda. Amid a conversation with ITN anchor-man Tom Bradby, the duo offered a highly criticised answer...
Orthodoxy is toxic
All my heroes are equal but George Orwell is more equal than others. I’m not taken to affection for old Etonian propagandists, after all there are enough of them stuffing the country up at the moment. But I make an exception for George. You may love him for his life-long opposition to totalitarianism but my...
We need to think more about advertising
Adam Lury, one of the founders of the late, great and greatly missed HHCL, is perhaps one of our least recognised planning legends. The exponent of a radical approach to strategy that helped make the agency’s work so distinctive in the 1990s, like many great planners, he was also immensely thoughtful about this business. Adam...
Who will buy our goods if every job has been automated?
During an early 1950s tour of the recently modernised Ford plant in Cleveland the President of the United Automobile Workers Union, Walter Reuther, was shown the latest car construction robots. His over zealous guide turned to him and said “Walter how are you going to get all these robots to pay their union dues?” To...
Stop faking it – Creating more meaningful connections with mums
Mumstock is the only marketing conference in the UK devoted to improving the woeful standard of marketing to mums. We have been at it for three years now along with our partners Mumsnet. And each year we have tried to deliver a new take on the subject through an unorthodox piece of research. So now...
In every form of content there is an optimum technology and an ideal experience
The resurgent UK bookseller, Waterstones, recently stopped selling Amazon’s Kindle. For all Kindle’s convenience in accessing and consuming printed material it is a terrible way to read the books you love. Part of this is its Soviet era aesthetic but in the main it’s because printed-paper books remain the ideal way to read oneself a...
The state of digital advertising right now
I’ve been having a pop at digital advertising recently. About how ad blocking is the fault of all of us that create online advertising. No one really took me to task over this. And so I thought I’d go a step further. And see what happens. These ten statements represent what I think about the...
Ad blocking is our fault
I have never understood the belief that advertising dollars should follow people’s time. The assumption that if people spend 50% of their time some place or other means that 50% of the advertising budget should go there too, seems to me to be arrant nonsense. This is despite the fact that it is an article...
The marketing truths we are all in danger of forgetting
Ask most secondary school aged kids how to prevent scurvy, a disease they will have had little contact with and they will tell you, with Vitamin C. The use of ascorbic acid, or at least citrus fruit that have high levels of one of the few vitamins our bodies don’t manufacture, has been known...
Does every brand need a purpose?
Gold Blend coffee has a new campaign. You’ll know if you live in any remotely built up part of the UK because the media buy is impressive. And it has to be said that it has caused a bit of a stir in the planning community. Now I accept that a bunch of North London...