Slow death of twitter?
The Atlantic has made the call, at least asked the question. Is Twitter dying? I have no idea, as I am not a real twitter fan, never have been, simply because I do not see the sustainable business model yet, although there is no doubt of the disruptive impact of...
4 point strategic rural reality check
There is plenty in the press about the role agriculture will play in the post mining boom era. "Asia's foodbowl" and other such optimistic clichés get front page coverage. I have been sitting in Armidale (NSW) for a few days, I have a bit of long term business up...
3 essential sales skills
Regularly I find myself on the receiving end of a pitch of some sort, as do all in business. We all buy and sell on a daily basis, and whilst there are easily recognisable and specialised functions that buy and sell on behalf of our organisations, we nevertheless...
Risk and A/B testing
As a marketer, I am fairly left brain oriented, some may say flakey and opinionated, and I have done well with that for many years. Here is the paradox. You can now test just about everything if you try hard enough. All sorts of ads, headlines, copy size, placement,...
How retailers can read the consumers mind.
Businesses spend many millions trying to understand the way consumers consider the choices confronting them in a supermarket. With up to 30,000 items on shelf, and some categories having hundreds of choices, it is a key consideration. A mix of psychology, data...
Outside-in innovation
My early days of marketing were as a minor part of the team that created Meadow Lea, the brand that completely changed then dominated the margarine markets for the following 25 years. I was really just a young gopher, but the lessons that came with those successes,...
10 X 8 Framework for a content StrategyAudit
These days with the ubiquity of mobile and social, almost everyone is a media channel. Recognising this simple fact changes the formula for media success. In the old days, the formula used so successfully by mass marketers was: Money X mass media = Sales. This used to...
8 ways to build a hypothesis testing mind set.
The most successful people I have seen over 40 years of business share one crucial characteristic. Curiosity. The successful are insatiably curious, it spans all aspects of their lives, not just the parts that are spent working at what pays the mortgage, but across...
How to build a personal brand
Personal branding seems to be a popular topic around the pub, even the brickie who lives a few streets away, and is not known for his new age sensitivities, has got a hold of it. It is not new, Julius Caesar had a personal brand well before Bill Shakespeare wrote a...
Renting your sales.
Walking into chain retailers these days you are inevitably confronted by displays of product, usually at a discount. Most people seem to think that it is the retailer doing the promotion as a means to attract added sales, which is true, but the reality is that...