Proof: You must own your digital home base.
If we ever needed more evidence that you need to have a piece of the digital landscape that is yours, where you make the rules, the response of Facebook to the then proposed 'News Media and Digital Platforms mandatory Bargaining Code' is it. This piece of...
The vital secret of a great brand
Building a brand that has longevity, one that engages and serves consumers over time, while delivering returns to the owner of the brand is a really, really difficult exercise, one that very few get right. Sadly, when it is done right, over time, the essential...
2 key lessons from the Facebook embargo
I cannot help but be amazed by (what I regard) to be delusional crap coming out of the mouths of politicians from both sides, after Facebook exercised its power and chopped Australia off the map. Michelle Rowland, the Labor shadow communications minister wondered if...
What does a brand mean to us?
We human beings are hard wired to be social, to belong to a group that reflects in one way or another, the view we have of ourselves. We belong to a family group, for better or worse, then many 'satellite' groups of varying importance to us. A brand is the flag...
The 2 essential elements for a successful strategy implementation
The key difference between a successful strategy, and an unsuccessful one, is that the former is implemented. That simplistic statement does little to acknowledge the challenges in the implementation process. The purpose of this post is to offer a few observations and...
Is now the time to tart it up?
I expect 2021 will be a year where there is a lot of M&A activity as businesses weakened by the impact of the Corona virus are snapped up by rivals with a bit of cash. The simple equation of M&A is that the price to be paid for an acquisition will be...
What is the second most powerful word in Marketing?
Pretty obviously, 'Free' is the most powerful word in marketing. It is the best way to get people to trial a product, make the trial free, no risk, no commitment, no money. However, it is hard to make 'free' commercially sustainable. The second most powerful word is...
How do you deal with someone who knows they are right?
From time to time we all must deal with those difficult people, the ones who believe absolutely in something that is clearly nonsense. They just know they are right, and are hellbent on ensuring that everyone else knows it. I have learnt to feel sorry...
How good was the ‘hindsight’?
The most visited StrategyAudit post of 2020 was the one entitled: 'Hind-sighting the Corona-demic. In that post, I projected forward to the end of 2020, and made a number of observations about what I thought would have happened as a result of the 'Bug'. At the...
What is the first principle of marketing?
I regularly see and hear people suggest that ‘thinking from first principles' is a great thing, a foundation of success. Often when these people are flogging a product or service of some sort, their offering somehow becomes a function of a first...