The news that Burberry's Angela Ahrendts is to join Apple as their new head of retailing operations brings into stark relief one of the strangest appointments in recent corporate history. Why on earth did Apple bring Dixon's Group chief John Browett in to head their consumer selling arm last year? Browett was Tim Cook's first … Continue reading The John Browett mystery
Category: Themes
I'm currently about half way through Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, David and Goliath. The core of his thinking appears to be that where we often see the underdog as having disadvantage against the overdog, actually what are often regarded as advantages can be anything but. It's thought provoking, and as ever with Gladwell incredibly well … Continue reading The Malcolm Gladwell Effect
I've just seen a billboard advertising Lloyd's Bank, proudly proclaiming that they are "lending millions to first time house buyers every week". That sounds good, doesn't it? Well, let's unpick that number a bit. According to the BBC, the current average UK house price is running at about £242,000. First time house buyers wouldn't necessarily … Continue reading Big numbers, tiny numbers
I somewhat jokingly describe myself on my Twitter profile as "skirting the thin line between polymath and jack of all trades". My career has been one where I've had exposure (and exposed myself) to a number of areas which means that I've found myself often in a position to be able to translate things across … Continue reading The importance of adaptation
I picked up on a Forbes article that ran earlier in the year yesterday about the marketing organisation of the future, which reported on the Marketing2020 research initiative from the American Association of National Advertisers, together with the World Federation of Advertisers and EffectiveBrands. There doesn't appear to be much being published publicly on the findings, but the … Continue reading Spokes, silos and the challenges of change
I had a fascinating few hours of conversation with some folk from various parts of the media industry last week, and it got me thinking about how there is so much talk at the moment about the role of data in marketing, and particularly the use of data to be able to specifically target … Continue reading How personalisation is the media industries’ worst nightmare
I've spoken and written many times in the past about the folly of prediction. It's something that we are seemingly hard-wired to look for as a species (if someone can tell us the future, we mitigate away a whole series of risks); the people who predict the most extreme versions of the future are the … Continue reading The Watford Probability Index
Back in my days of building software for a living, bug-tracking lists were something of a necessity. Build up a list of problems, and attempt to fix as many of the serious ones as you can before you release the software. Rolf Dobelli's book The Art of Thinking Clearly is a bug-tracking list for … Continue reading The Art of Thinking Clearly
So in the space of a few days BlackBerry sells itself and then the analyst group Gartner seems to offer seemingly unprecedented direct advice to its clients - "get the f*** out of there!". (I paraphrase - a more balanced description of what Gartner said is here. I wonder if the demise of BlackBerry … Continue reading The end of the company mobile?
For almost as long as there has been a marketing industry, there's been a split between the scientists and the artists. The scientists see marketing as a planned activity with known inputs and outputs, measurable all along the way. The artists see marketing as being a mix of creativity and magic. At the moment, with … Continue reading Placebos and propaganda
mmitII 