The ability to adapt and diversify is essential for any organisation to grow. If proof were needed, the National Trust provides a wonderful case study. However, its achievements have also highlighted a challenge of equal importance; ensuring that your brand evolves to reflects changes. By any measure, this unique British conservation body is an unequivocal success story. It’s enjoyed steady growth in membership since the 1970s through a combination of product… Read more →
No matter how intelligent or well informed you are, if you are told something repeatedly, it will eventually become the truth. A popular idea of our time is the notion that publishers and advertising agencies are conspiring to distort our perceptions of beauty in the human form. In particular, the media owners and marketers are creating superhuman images of women;… Read more →
The marketing services sector is in a state of flux. Brand owners face increasing difficulties in selecting agencies and agencies are struggling to define and position themselves. Evidently, the complexity is set to increase. In addition to the many short term fads, there are bigger, macro trends looming that will make it even more difficult for marketers and their agencies to focus.… Read more →
I’m curious. Is true innovation essentially a challenge to convention? Can we ever affect significant progress without clear plan? And, crucially, is the exploration of ‘the new’ always an intrinsically risky endeavor? In life or in business, we view those that pursue markedly different paths as being either reckless mavericks or brave pioneers. Notably, we tend to differentiate such people not… Read more →
It seems to me that the growing chorus of experts highlighting the value of data has resulted in leadership teams getting increasingly twitchy about what they do and don’t know. Round the clock engagement with online communities and MI systems generating reports by the hour mean that most organisations are waist deep a pool of their own stats. Large volumes of data can… Read more →
From earliest trademarks and slogans through to the concept of ‘luxury’ goods; the history of marketing blends inextricably with the history of the tea trade. As a result, centuries of teapots provide a detailed chronicle of how subsistence farming evolved into commodity trading and consequently created a world of multinational corporations and iconic brands. In A History of Marketing in 26… Read more →
I was saddened to read about the death of the comedy titan, Mel Smith. News of his passing reminded me of the occasion when my path crossed with his. Today, I recall those memories with mixed emotions. At the time, I was head of marketing at Carlton TV. I had commissioned a series of commercials which were intended to extol the… Read more →
