14th February 2024
15th October 2017
The word ‘story’ is so compelling (and so heavily employed) in marketing, because it evokes emotional reactions rooted in our childhood. Many of the stories told us by our parents were in turn heard from their parents before that and so on.
It is this transferred passion and heritage that makes the word, and associations we have with it, so powerful.
8th September 2017
Despite the rather damp weather on this Friday morning, we still had nine intrepid and inquisitive wanderers gather together, at one of the entrances to Borough Market, London. Amongst the nine, I was very pleased to be accompanied by two of my sons – Rory and Luke, who were a great help assisting and taking pictures.
This is the third time I have run a Street Wisdom walk in Borough Market, one of my very favourite places. The terrorist attacks of a few months ago were terrible and tragic, but in the aftermath, it is heart-warming to see the market so busy and buzzing.
This article published on the Econsultancy blog here.
A recent leader in The Economist raised my interest in the little discussed area of ‘facile externality’.
14th February 2017
Coming back from a long weekend in the car last night I listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme called “Is talent a thing?” which discussed the concept of talent being so ill defined that it may be useless. It featured interviews by several psychologists and progressive HR leaders who were sharing their perspectives on what makes people successful at work.
19th April 2017
Let me start off with a disclaimer.
I am not a voice technology expert, conversational designer or even adept in the area of Alexa skills. This piece is written from a marketing perspective and will I hope, have relevance for marketeers wanting to know more about opportunities in this area.
24th March 2017
Although there will be plenty of summaries coming out of SxSW Interactive 2017, many of these will address broad trends and themes, without digging into the detail of specific sessions.
Because of this, I thought it would be interesting to provide a summary of some of the interesting debates I attended last week.
These looked at the areas of ad blocking, influencer marketing, social video, content distribution, and the thoughts of Joe Biden, former Vice-President of the USA.
9th March 2017
Article published on the Brand Learning blog – here
This is not one of those ‘crystal ball gazing’ kind of articles. Nor is it a compendium of mid or long term predictions. This piece is based on the universal ‘customer centric’ truth that consumers have, do, and will always ‘believe’ in brands that they feel able to rely on.
This article provides a perspective on the importance of trust in the world of marketing and the world in general. Why it is now, more important than it has ever been.
14th Jan 2017
Last week the high and rapidly changing price of bitcoin brought the digital currency to the top of the news, reaching an all-time trading high, at about $1,150 per coin.
It has since fluctuated considerably; the cause of this being statements and actions taken by the Chinese government. The clear majority of bitcoin trading (more than 95%) takes place in China, giving events there an enormous influence on the price.
31st October 2016
Although it is nearly seven years since Time Magazine observed that Facebook was ‘the site that ate the internet’, in the intervening years the social network has only increased its influence in the digital space and beyond.