What does the FMCG future look like?
It is easy to be critical of just about anything, much harder to be constructive, and make suggestions about how to change the things that attracted the criticism. In my case, I have been critical of the retail gorillas, Coles and Woolworths for some...
Is Anzac day still relevant?
Today is Anzac Day, 2018. 102 years after the photo above was taken, and my daughters 33rd birthday. All are significant. It seems to me that Anzac Day is a day when Australians can, for one day a year, have a common view about something, about where we...
Is marketing’s greatest failure in the boardroom?
There have been libraries written about strategy, and particularly marketing strategy. There are now multitudes of tools and templates available to develop and implement, but the gap between the development and successful implementation of marketing...
Have we reached a moral watershed with private data?
Privacy has been a question on the table for some time, pretty much since the dawn of the digital age. However, there has always been a deep paradox between what was generally said, indeed legislated for, and what we did. The aspect rarely considered is...
The two crucial leading indicators of business performance.
‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. So said Steve Jobs and he was not only right, but just one of a long line of people saying similar things. Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Mark Twain, and my personal favourite, a marketing guru of great stature,...
Is Facebooks ‘moat’ the best ever built?
Building a moat seems an odd metaphor in a strategy and marketing post. Some explanation of moats may help. My personal definition of marketing has been 'The identification, development, protection and leveraging of competitive advantage'. Not a...
What have Facebook and Marjory Stoneman Douglas got in common?
Beyond the usual menu of war and pestilence in the Middle East, and which celebrity is bonking which, that usually dominate the headlines, two very significant items have emerged over the last short period. The reaction of students at the Marjory Stoneman...
6 customer service clichés deconstructed.
It seems that every time I pony up for another insurance bill, I get one of those customer satisfaction surveys emailed within 24 hours, asking a few inane questions about my 'experience' and the level of service I received. There is no room to say it was...
Is your mentor asking you these 8 key questions?
Successful people can always point to one, or a few people who over the years have contributed to their success. A great mentor does not tell you what to do, or how to do it, rather they examine motivations, objectives and options to help you determine...
What do Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Smith have in common?
It seems on the surface little, but when you look at it more closely, a lot. Both are (or were) leaders, who found themselves in that place through performance, and the promise of more to come. Both are young, and you cannot put an old head on young...