Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
I was reminded of this by rewatching the excellent Sir Ken Robinson Ted Talk. Several lifetimes ago, I worked with a girl who could do a quite amazing thing. What captivated people about her was that you could give her a couple of ideas: Getting old and rainforests, running the marathon and losing out on… Continue reading On Creativity
Spurred on by a number of posts (Shaun McIlrath as a Scamp guest presenter, Russell Davies on 'Uncanny Valleys') and the enormous amount of crap that pours through my door and email inbox daily, I wanted to jot down my views on the myth of direct marketing. It feels funny saying this about an industry… Continue reading Why direct doesn’t work (reason number 429)
Perhaps we have a problem with teenage violence but there's nothing quite so unseemly as old people scrapping it out. It only makes it worse when those pensioners are millionaire bosses of major traditional media and marketing firms. As Brand Republic reports (requires free registration), Martin Sorrell and Maurice Levy have been taking time out… Continue reading Yeah but, no but… digital
I've been thinking a lot recently about what it is that companies like Apple actually do to inspire the kind of religious fervour we've seen recently in the lead up to CES, and journalists and fans alike clamber over each other to make wilder and wilder predictions over the next miracle that Jobs will announce.… Continue reading No zealot like a convert
Robin highlights that this month's IAB Creative Showcase results contain 'not a single banner in sight'. That's slightly misleading as both the winner, Lean Mean's 'Non-stop Fernando' and the first runner up, Dare's 'Vaio online script project' both use traditional ad formats at promotion. It's the second runner up however, glue's 'Potato parade' which I… Continue reading Your name here
There's been a fun discussion on Gaping Void the last couple of days in response to Hugh's post Social objects for beginners. In particular, Rachel Bellow weighed in with: 'Social objects are the particular manifestation of shared meaning, right? So that suggests there's a drive underlying all these manifestations... that the social object is not,… Continue reading Fun and games
The recent release of Stephen King's collected writings is brilliant and - this is lost on no-one - extremely prescient. Many of the issues that face current communicators appear to have been tackled, in outline at least, by King 30 or more years ago. We may only be able to guess what his detailed thoughts… Continue reading Enquiring minds
In yet another humiliating climbdown, the idiots at Freedm2 have shut up shop. The replacement site is actually called 'Freedm holding page' (!) and the email to tell us the horrendous news is – and I'm not joking here – an image of a note (see below). It's an email chaps, that comes after notes.… Continue reading So long, suckers
Some of the most interesting innovations in multi-channel retailing are an extremely light touch from the consumer’s point of view. For instance if I’ve bought an iPod from the Apple store and I want to return it online, how do they make that work? It’s not by any complex network of DSS-style computing network to… Continue reading Channel tunnels
There were two really strong themes from the Forrester Conference last week in Barcelona. For Financial Services, it was experience based differentiation. From the point of view of consumer brands, it was all about sharing your brand, about bringing your customers inside your marketing and product efforts, and from that building a network of vocal… Continue reading Leading from behind
Leading product 