4 questions to enable you to extract maximum leverage from your marketing investment
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?...
Who will pay for tomorrow’s hospitals?
I did not watch the royal wedding. That does not mean I am a republican, or anti-monarchist, it simply means I am not interested. If they want to get married, let them get on with it, they do not need the approval of the masses. After all, they are both...
How much do I need to spend on marketing my new business?
This 'How much' question was posed to me recently in a networking group by a young professional who had just left the comfort of a large corporate firm to strike out on her own with a business partner. My answer: ‘Depends’. There is never a right answer...
Four strategic questions raised by Manufacturing Week and CeBIT
The juxtaposition of two trade shows, Manufacturing week last week, and the current CeBIT, have raised some questions in my mind about the road on which we are travelling. I spent the best part of two days at Manufacturing week, and yesterday at...
How do you measure culture?
With an increasing regularity, 'Culture' emerges as an item to be 'managed'. I fully expect it to be front and centre before the end of the current Royal Commission into the financial sector, as most of the poor practises we have seen , immoral, unethical,...
Three critical success factors of a newsletter.
A colleague has a newsletter, he emails it to his list on an irregular basis as he has something he thinks of interest to say. When I unsubscribed, he rang me, angry that I had done so, after all I am known personally, and have an interest in the topic....
How will the banks ever recover our trust?
Over the last decade, banks, and other financial institutions have spent billions, I have no idea how many, but guess multiples, on telling us they are our friends, there for us, reliable, trustworthy, yada, yada, yada. That investment has gone. Poof....
6 essential questions from the devil
Having a 'devils advocate' around you is one of the most productive relationships you can have in a complicated enterprise. Such a relationship enables the stripping of any position held back to its core, removing the bias, preconceptions, and power of the...
8 ingredients for an idea stew
Ideas do not emerge from nothing, despite the hype, they do not just appear in the shower. They are always a product of a process, conscious or unconscious that connects and curates thoughts, knowledge, ideas from other domains, that can be used in a...
A marketers explanation of the difference between an ‘Intangible Asset’ and ‘Goodwill’
When you look at a balance sheet, the intangible elements of it are either the outcome of ‘boilerplate’ accounting standards that bear little resemblance to reality, or are the function of a management narrative. Neither is of much use, and both can be...