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...
Is disruptive technology just a myth?
Technology is not disruptive: it is customers that are doing the disruption, technology is just the tool. Just like matches disrupted the flint and steel manufacturing industry, Josiah Wedgewood disrupted the pottery industry, and the motor car disrupted the...
Australia Day 2021
Well, tomorrow we will have made it to January 26, 2021. Phew! As I have for the decade of this blog, I have tried to distil the murky water around us into a few points that I think are worth the consideration of Australians. 2020 was a year in which...
Is planning just an exercise in Probability & Risk?
Our world is as volatile now as it has ever been. Planning assumes some level of predictability, sufficient to make resource allocation decisions that will drive activity in the future, even if that future is next week. Planning in this environment, much beyond...
The 2 essential strategies for a successful remote workforce.
As we come to grips with remote working, we will also have to come to grips with the central challenge, of how do you create the sense of community and teamwork that requires face to face but is not as present in remote work. More particularly, remote working...
Wikipedia’s birthday.
Today, January 15, 2021 is the 20th anniversary of the launching of Wikipedia. It would be easy to pass it over, but few innovations amongst the millions over the past 20 years, would have had such an impact on so many people as Wikipedia. The evolution of...
How not to waste a New Year’s resolution
It is new year, all those resolutions going to waste! It seemed a timely spot to suggest how we can change outcomes, as it is those we want to change, we just call them habits reflecting the action. Let's pick one of the most common: 'I will stop smoking'. The...