May 8, 2026 | AI, Marketing
When you see something unlikely, from out on the fringes, don’t just dismiss it as some sort of anomaly. Dig deeper, look for the cause, every now and again that search will deliver a nugget of innovation
The header photograph of goats in trees is typical
There is a particular evolution of flexible hooves and an enhanced sense of balance that has enabled local goats to climb the Agania tree, native to southern Morocco. The motivation for the goats is the fruit of the tree, an important source of nutrition. The goats eat the fruit and spit the pip providing another one of nature’s wonderful collaborative relationships.
When you see something unexpected, unlikely, or just plain bonkers out on the fringes, it makes sense to have a close look to understand why. Sometimes there will be a nugget of truth hiding in the ‘bonkers’.
In this case there is the nugget of truth, but the photograph does not reflect that truth. An enterprising local goatherd ties young goats to the tree, and then hits up the tourists for a tip when they take photos.
Word of the unusual engaging, unlikely, and interesting stuff like a tree adorned with goats tends to spread. Often the unreality of it hides the nugget of truth.
Apr 28, 2026 | Change, Marketing
Steve Jobs told Wired magazine in 1996 that ‘creativity is just connecting things‘. He went on this to observe that ‘ a lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So, they do not have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions’
History has proven him right.
When I look at the practise of marketing as it is currently there is, despite or perhaps partly because of, all the AI tools available a huge hole in the number of dots to connect becomes evident. Most would suggest that the emergence of AI offers an explosion of dots, which is partly true. The problem is all the dots that emerge from the algorithms of AI are linear, while the essence of creativity is connecting dots that have no logical connection.
AI is therefore a source of homogenisation of thought, not of diversity, delivering bland, forgettable pop-ups and boring ‘refreshes’ of previous ineffective campaigns.
So, how do you combat the resulting marketing homogenisation?
Seek out curiosity.
Curious people investigate corners, dark spots, they embrace those with different views and debate them. They are willing to adjust and often change their views when presented with new information, or different perspectives on the current information.
In a homogenising world, curiosity will become the hallmark of people who can add value.
Comfort with discomfort.
We humans seek psychological as well as physical comfort. Evolution has given us strong preference for the usual, predictable, and non-threatening signposts in our lives. In earlier times, the few who felt able to investigate the rustle in the grass to see if it was the wind, or a tiger looking for a feed were unusual. Most reverted automatically to flight, and the safety offered by the small community in the cave. As a result, they never knew if there was a tiger looking for a feed outside the cave or not, and mostly they did not care to find out.
The few that did check out the rustle, knew. Occasionally they were not able to pass on the information, but mostly it was the wind, but they knew. They were comfortable and usually energised by the discomfort of the unknown.
Breadth of interest.
To some this is the same as curiosity, but to my mind it is broader. A person who reads widely across current affairs, history, economics, psychology, feeds the building of the diverse ideas, creates contextual variety, and increases the chances of finding several credible ideas that are inconsistent with each other. This clash of ideas is where the potential for connections in unrelated fields emerges. It is the soul-food of creativity. It feeds the opportunity for two equally true but inconsistent ideas to be held at the same time.
Many workshops I have been involved with make the fundamental error of ensuring little of this diversity. Usually, it is an omission by accident rather than design. However, the value of a workshop that has the objective of surfacing ideas that would otherwise be hidden requires both a catalyst, and minds prepared to take a leap.
Automation and transparency.
Use AI to clear away the obvious, linear additions to the thinking process. It is very good at that, and by cleaning away the linear, uninteresting, and undifferentiated it delivers the cognitive capacity and energy to seek out and examine the non-obvious.
Transparency is the blood brother of automation. When processes are clear, and there is clarity of action and accountability that everyone understands, it acts as a foundation from which you can experiment. Toyota created their production system on the foundation of stable and transparent processes, so that improvement opportunities, even tiny incremental ones, could be seen and tested.
These three strategies can be combined into one word: Education.
Not education in the sense that we have stuff bashed into our heads as kids at school, or the learning of the ‘established rules of the game’ in a profession, but the accumulation of wisdom from experience, both personal and given to us by others.
As B.F. Skinner observed ‘Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten’.
That is when we can connect the apparently unconnected to deliver new value.
Apr 7, 2026 | Marketing
Lead magnets are on life support. The requirement that a responder gives their details before being able to access the ‘value’ behind the wall, is being replaced by ‘no strings’ delivery of real value.
Requiring contact details before delivering value used to work, and sometimes still does. However, you need to be lucky enough to find someone whose exact problem you can solve, who is in the market when they see your tempting magnets. Experience tells us all that following filling in the form, will result in a deluge of unwanted emails, phone calls from disinterested callers with funny accents, and related pop-ups.
Most now think ‘no thanks’ and move on.
Robert Cialdini in his landmark 1984 book ‘Persuasion’ noted ‘Reciprocity’ as one of the drivers of human behaviour. When we give something of value, no matter how small, it sets up a loop in the receivers’ mind that encourages them to reciprocate in some way. This effect has been validated numerous times in tests, and most people recognise it when it applies to them.
So, by asking for an email address before delivering something of value, we are throwing this driver of human behaviour out the window.
Last week in a supermarket I was approached by a very skilled product demonstrator to try her product. It was a blue cheese new to the market, and being a lover of blue cheese, I was happy to try it, and then, I did buy a pack. Had she asked me to fill in a form that gave my name, phone number, and email address before being able to taste the cheese, there is no way I would have done so.
Your failing lead magnet suffers from reverse reciprocity. It is like trying to push two similarly polarised magnets together, it does not work. The rapid replacement of suggested search sites to seek an answer, with the specific answer to a question delivered by AI is the headstone of the lead magnet.
Instead, you should lead with generosity, offer real value with no strings, remove all the friction felt by someone who may be interested, and pique that interest by offering no strings value while making the next logical step obvious.
The strategic challenge is no longer the shape and efficient functioning of your sales funnel. It is now how you attract possible customers into your funnel at all. Attention and tricks are is no longer enough; you need to engage with generosity, which will from time to time, activate reciprocity.
Feb 10, 2026 | Marketing
Creativity does not emerge from the ether. It comes from the many rarely used corners of your brain, and from the collective brains of your networks.
It comes from not accepting the status quo automatically. You look for the edges, the unexplained, the outliers. You ask better questions of customers, suppliers, science, and you are aware of the trends and problems in your surroundings.
Creativity is a process, not a miracle. It takes practice, refinement, and a preparedness to see alternatives where others do not. You need to accept being wrong, understand why you were wrong, and build on the lesson.
Creativity is also a word that means many different things to different people.
To a painter, creativity will most likely be entirely different to the creativity expressed by a mathematician, musician, or entrepreneur.
However, all ‘artists’ no matter their domain, and often not even consciously, ask themselves the same three questions:
Why?
What if?
How?
Issac Newton can only have come up with his theory explaining gravity after the apple bonked him on the head by asking himself ‘Why?
George de Mestral must have asked himself ‘what if I can replicate and manufacture the natural ‘stickiness’ of these burrs on my britches after I walk across the paddock, to come up with Velcro?
James Dyson did ask himself ‘how can I replicate the industrial cyclone technology used in sawmills in a household vacuum cleaner? In fact, he asked himself that question 5,127 times before, on the 5,128th prototype, he cracked it.
Next time you are faced with a challenge, no matter how big or small, I suggest you try asking yourself these three questions.
You might surprise yourself and discover you can be quite creative!
Header cartoon: Obviously comes from the late, great Charles Shultz.
Dec 15, 2025 | Analytics, Governance, Marketing
Marketers must understand the jargon of the boardroom if they are to contribute meaningfully to the critical strategic conversation. Too often they are sidelined by lack of this understanding, resulting in dumb choices being made by those who think strategy development and the deployment of these strategies is some form of hocus pocus.
Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) tell different stories about the quality of the management choices being made.
ROA is a measure of how effectively the enterprise is using the assets it has to generate a profit. It is the ratio of net income divided by total assets.
ROE is a measure of how effectively the enterprise is leveraging the use of the equity, capital supplied by the owners, to generate profits. It is the ratio of profits divided by equity.
Together they measure how well a management is doing at managing the enterprise on behalf of the owners. The major difference is the financial leverage delivered by the debt the enterprise uses to generate profits. The greater the distance between these two ratios the greater is the reliance on debt to fund activities. Conversely the closer they are, the less debt is on the balance sheet. In the absence of debt, the ROA and the ROE would be the same.
Every enterprise faces the choice of funding sources: debt or equity. If they choose to take on debt, or ‘financial leverage’ its ROE would be higher than its ROA only if the company earns more on the borrowed funds than the cost of borrowing.
You will often hear the term ‘financial engineering’. In its simplest form, it is the management of the balance between debt and equity, usually in response to interest rates, and expectations of those rates, and the expectations of dividends to be returned to shareholders out of profits.
I found the following example contained in an explanation of the ‘DuPont Identity’
Imagine a fictional company ABC with the following financials:
- Net Income = $1,000,000
- Average Total Assets = $4,000,000
- Average Shareholders’ Equity = $2,000,000
ROA = Net Income / Average Total Assets = $1,000,000 / $4,000,000 = 25%
ROE = Net Income / Average Shareholders’ Equity = $1,000,000 / $2,000,000 = 50%
In this example, ABC generates $0.25 in profit for each dollar of assets and $0.50 in profit for each dollar of shareholders’ equity. ROE is higher than ROA in this example, as it does not account for all assets, including debt. If total assets were equal to shareholder equity, then ROA and ROE would provide the same result.
As noted, while it may sound like accounting jargon, marketers simply must understand the terminology if they are to avoid being sidelined when it really counts.
Nov 13, 2025 | Branding, Marketing
Most of what passes for innovation in FMCG is little more than range extension wrapped in a new label. Retailers dominate, chasing predictability, risk aversion and quarterly returns. Success is measured by volume and incremental margin gains, much of which is sourced from suppliers.
Much of the blame for being ‘boring’ comes from the supplier base who are simply giving their customers what they demand, failing to see the trap of ‘short-termism’ foised on them. They confuse safety and compliance for strategy. The result over time has been supermarket shelves groaning under the weight of house brands and endless near-identical products.
Real innovation has vanished.
After decades in the trenches, one truth stands out: the products that change markets don’t just add SKUs, they create new categories.
Every memorable FMCG success I can think of didn’t simply introduce something new. It carved out a new space in the shopper’s mind, and on retailers shelves.
That’s not luck. It’s vision, timing, and courage.
Steve Jobs said you can always spot the pioneers, they are the ones with arrows in their backs.
He was right.
If he’d looked at FMCG, he’d have seen that most companies never leave the safety of camp. They mistake caution for wisdom, and substitute another range extension for innovation.
Forty years ago at Cerebos, we had a shot at a game-changer — the first muesli bar. We had everything: the brand, the manufacturing muscle, and the shelf space. We even had the forecast that showed it would work. What we lacked was courage. My sales forecasts for a completely unknown product that was a category creator were way too conservative, failing to reach the Cerebos ROI hurdles, so the project was shelved. A year later Uncle Toby’s launched, and sold a year of my sales forecasts in a month, and created a new category. Our caution cost us the market.
Not long after we test marketed a cereal product we called ‘Light and Crunchy’ in South Australia, again under the Cerola brand. We did not make the same mistake we made with Meusli bars, we made a different one. We badly underestimated the reaction of Kelloggs to an incursion into their patch. They launched a copy-cat product, ‘Just right’ with an ad spend and promotional backing we could not match, so got blown away.
Licking our wounds, we test marketed in Victoria the first pasta sauce into the market. We had the Fountain brand, dominant in tomato and flavoured sauces, Australians were consuming increasing amounts of pasta, but making the sauce themselves. It seemed like a great category generation opportunity. The test failed, for another reason: we bungled the timing of the distribution and modest support package that had been allocated by a sceptical and risk averse MD. A year later, Masterfoods came out with ‘Alora’ pasta sauce since renamed ‘Dolmio’, and created a category.
The pattern is always the same: the timid wait for proof, the bold create it.
If you want to win in FMCG, create a category. That takes foresight, guts, and money, always more than you think.
But it also takes strategic clarity and the commitment to choose and argue strongly for a different future that is not an extension of the present.
There are many more stories of relevance in my long history, all of which contain lessons, for those who choose to look for them.
Header via Chat.
