Will Apples ad barrier slow down Gooface?
In September last year (2016), Facebook conceded publicly that they had over-estimated the average time viewers spent on video on their site by 60-80%. They did not tell us how long they had known of this 'error' but I suspect it was for quite a while,...
How to make a sale without selling
Like it or not, we are all in sales. Not the sales of the aggressive close, but gently, continuously persuasion of those who may have a need for what we can do for them. How many times have you bought something, then wondered, ‘how did that happen?” How...
What is the best headline ever written?
We all accept the advice of 'Madman' advertising guru David Ogilvy , that headlines are the make or break element of any writing, and that we should spend as much time on the headline as we spend on everything else. This was true in the Madman days, and...
The getting of wisdom
As I get older, the world seems smaller, more complicated, but smaller. This is not just the technology we all now have that has shrunk all the boundaries of our world over the last 20 years, putting the all the information anyone has ever had at our fingertips, that...
Finding the sweet spot of organisational cadence.
Last week I watched for the first time in many years Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 'Full Metal Jacket'. Amongst the many parts of the movie that struck me, were the scenes in the first half where Gunnery Sargent Hartman is calling cadence as the platoon...
Peer pressure destroys the power of Advertising
The major consequence to marketers of the transfer of power from themselves to their customers is that the effectiveness of their marketing efforts has been deflated, irrespective of their mix of legacy and digital channels, by the power of peer pressure....
Is the supermarket business model developing terminal cracks?
Are the tiny cracks evident in the current supermarket business model just the beginning of what will become crevasses that will swallow supermarkets, or just annoyances that can be managed? My view is the former, although we are currently a long way from...
The real reason your marketing still sucks.
As a young marketer, then later in my corporate career, there was only one way to get close to your "market". You went there. In my case, it was into supermarkets, talking to consumers as they considered what they would buy, which of the choices they had...
8 unfortunate realities facing every small business entrepreneur
Every time I turn around I see another ad touting the 'laptop lifestyle'. Travel, work occasionally, and have the money rolling in, just because you have invested in yourself and bought a course from a self-styled guru. Of course it does happen, but very...
Branding matters: Best ever evidence.
The darling of the techies everywhere, Apple, is about to release new phones. They are the iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8Plus for outrageous prices, when compared to the offerings from almost any of the other 300 plus companies that produce phones. The...