Own your digital real estate, or slowly disappear in 2020.
It is getting harder and harder to be seen in the tsunami of stuff posted on various digital platforms. The platform owners are wholesalers of eyeballs, their business is monetised by being the choke point between those who create material, and those who may benefit...
Oh come all ye turkeys
As we hurtle towards another Christmas, the turkeys are out, clamouring to be at the front of the line. Australia's latest quarterly GDP figures were released on December 4, generating a flurry of commentary from all sides of the political and economic tables....
The 3 terminal characteristics of 20th century accounting.
Accounting as generally taught at university, at least when I did it many years ago, and by observation since, does not suit the 21st century. It has served us well for centuries since the double entry system evolved from 15th century monk and mathematician...
How to think critically about your essential investments in marketing
Marketing is almost always seen as an operating expense rather than an investment in the future. This reality poses an absurd paradox. We treat investments in capital equipment for our businesses, and various financial instruments for our own wealth...
How do you predict the unpredictable?
Telling the future is a practise best left to the circus tent, but as strategists we are doing it all the time. The question is not how to avoid being wrong, which means you do exactly nothing, but how do you both increase your odds of being right, and be...
Are brands assets that can be revived?
It is generally accepted that brands are assets, the problem is how we value them. Often the valuation is post some sort of transaction, the business is sold, and the difference between net assets and the sale price is 'goodwill', which is code for stuff we do ...
Succeed, then start. Strategic lessons from a gardener.
My sister is a gardener, a producer of a prolific mass of colour and edible plants year round. It takes work, time, and planning, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding. By contrast, most businesses I work with have a strategic process that starts with a...
Discover ‘flow’ to build scale
The notion of 'flow,' or as we call it, 'In the zone,' is a psychological state first articulated by psychologist Mihaly Csikenmihali, published outside academic circles in his 1990 book 'Flow: the psychology of optimal experience'. From time to time, most of us...
The new Revenue Generation paradigm
When was the last time you made a sale without the customer first doing a google search on their problem, and alternative solutions, before you knew they existed? A while ago I bet! Customers no longer need you, the information you have, and the products you sell,...
The curse of insider knowledge
When we know something, the automatic expectation is that those with whom we are communicating understand it equally well. This automatic, unrecognised assumption can be a barrier, and at its worst, a curse. Participating in a conversation a while ago where I was the...