Another strategy myth flushed down the toilet
One of the standard assumptions about strategy is that it evolves from the top. Those at the top of the organisation have access to all the information and resources necessary to craft the strategy that will then be deployed through the organisation....
The four essential questions for successful marketing: A follow-up
Last week I published a post that outlined the four essential questions for successful marketing. A number of people contacted me and said, 'more detail please'. So, here goes: What problem can I solve? Unless you can solve a problem for someone, why would they...
Where does responsibility for marketing really lie?
"Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing Department" David Packard, co-founder of Hewlett Packard with Bill Hewlett in 1939 made that observation decades ago. He was right. At a time when every customer touchpoint is a marketing...
The month that ushered in the world we live in.
November 2022 is the 33rd birthday of what may be the most important month in recent history, November 1989. A momentous month. It saw the fall of the Berlin wall, the beginning of the end of communism and the soviet empire. We met that occasion with...
The four essential questions for successful marketing
Imagine you are faced with the task of joining two pieces of wood. What information are you likely to need before deciding how to go about the task? How big and important are the pieces, are they structural weight bearing, is the joint going to be seen, will...
Who will miss you when you are gone?
Who will miss you when you are gone? That is a question I often ask clients as they contemplate challenges such as the profile of their ideal customer. Last week I was gone. Laid low by flu such that for the first time in the almost 15 years of writing and...
Do copywriters still use the 120-year-old ‘Thompson T-Square’?
The J. Walter Thompson advertising agency is one of the prototypes for the 'Madmen' of advertising, the architype of the explosion of consumer advertising that occurred in the sixties. The agency was started by James Walter Thompson in 1896, when the...
How to lose customers – A case study.
We live in complicated times, none more disturbing than the now regular breaches of data privacy and subsequent risk to the financial and personal security of individuals. The recent spate of data breaches is probably just the beginning, but we, the...
The changed 1/2 life of information
Following on from a previous post about the value of information, it seems relevant to ask how long any value created lasts. We are all familiar with the notion of the '1/2 life'. The time it takes for radioactivity of an element to decay by 1/2. Uranium...
A 6-step process for SME’s to ‘Digitise’ their operations
No matter your businesses size, digital capability has become a driver of commercial sustainability over the last decade. It has become a clear case of digitise or die. This does not mean you have to go from an analogue starting point to fully digitised...