Differentiation to making a difference
As a marketer, I have always sought to differentiate my products from those of my competitors in a meaningful way, to add value to the experience of use. In a hyper-connected, multi-branded world, where most people don't care too much despite the billions spend by...
Invest in the process.
A friend of mine, a smart bloke, has coached local soccer teams for ages, and seems to be able to take a bunch of ordinary 15 year olds, and mould them into a winning team. He has done it time and time again. The formula he uses is as deceptively simple, as it is...
The purpose of advertising.
"Advertising is what you do when you cannot get there in person" This has been a pretty regularly heard quote over my 40 years in this business, attributed to Fairfax Cone, one of the founders of Foote Cone & Belding advertising. It remains one of the foundations...
God help the NBN
In the communication revolution going on currently, the infrastructure to carry it all is vital, but how relevant will the 2010 infrastructure be to the world that greets it when it is finally completed roll-out in, when?, what was the last projection? ever?. The...
Pavlov’s customers.
We are in the middle of the post Christmas sales, an orgy of discount opportunities for consumers as retailers rush to clear stock, and take advantage of the behavior consumers exhibit every new year, "buy, buy, grab the discount". Whoops? Have we trained customers to...
What’s coming for 2012?
It is the time of year for predictions and reviews, so here is my shot. Three general predictions, and one very specific one, followed by a review of my predictions of this time last year. The barriers to communication are falling so quickly, that a raft of tools are...
Why not Organic?
An obtuse end of year thought, considering the problems the Government is having with its Green partner in policy. A convergence of trends, organic, free range, sustainable, all the other adjectives, food is all the rage, why not re-brand those horrid, smelly, carbon...
Thanks for hearing.
The hard part about writing a blog, I have found, is not finding stuff to write about, but finding stuff that has not been written about before, or finding a new twist on an old topic, and then being sufficiently interesting to those who so generously give you their...
Best management tool ever
The best management tool available is amongst the cheapest, a pair of shoes. Hierarchies are vertical, they filter and modify information as it goes up and down an organisation, but real things, those that customers pay for, get done in an organisation horizontally,...
Meritocracy, not democracy.
Meritocracy is about the best ideas, whereas democracy is about consensus, usually an average outcome. In a democracy, those who manage to smooth the waters, and gain the average usually get ahead, but in a true meritocracy, those with the best ideas get listened to,...