Like many thousands (maybe even millions) of others, I have spent much of this year job hunting. And I have to say, in my long and varied career I have never known a job market like it. The market is over-supplied with very good candidates, so competition is fierce, and rates are depressed. There are people leaving permanent jobs who want to move to life as an interim, and vice versa, and it’s hard [...]
My last four blogs have looked at the lessons we can learn from 2020, focusing on Marketing, Business, The Economy and Society. What's very clear is that thousands of people, and hundreds of businesses, will sadly not survive, so we must look for green shoots and silver linings if we are to learn and to heal. This last year, horrendous as it was, provided a unique and incredible opportunity to get off the treadmill, [...]
Following the first three parts of my 20 Lessons from 2020 - on marketing, business and the economy – part four is a slightly longer read, and looks at lessons 15 through 20, what we can learn from society. The next and final part will summarise what we can all learn from 2020 and where we might go from here. 15. Zoom kept us together I couldn’t write a Top 20 without reference to Zoom. It’s been so prevalent, I [...]
The first two instalments of my 20 Lessons from 2020 looked at marketing and business. This piece focuses on the lessons we can learn from the changes to our economy, highlighting three of the sectors, and the one demographic, that have been hardest hit. 11. Will streaming finally kill off the multiplex? In the late 80s, the death knell sounded for cinema as annual admissions hit an all-time low (around 54m p.a). But it [...]
Well here we are, the start of a brand new year, although for many of us the only evident change is the number on the bathroom scales… Ever the optimist, I wanted to look back at some of the events of last year and see what lessons we can learn as we head bravely into 2021. So here’s part one of my 20 Lessons from 2020, starting with a game on my home turf, marketing. 1. [...]
I recently watched a programme where a group of obese people shared their stories and sought to understand each other’s points of view whilst staying together in a house. Amongst the group was a disruptive ‘body positive’ woman who literally closed her ears to the painful truths the group shared. Not surprisingly, her business model was based on denying the significant medical evidence that obesity had a detrimental effect on health. Also not surprisingly, [...]
Gillette launched their new ‘The Best a Man Can be’ campaign yesterday and it’s brave and brilliant. Some have criticised the marketing wisdom of this and the overt display of ‘brand purpose’. It’s fair to say that brand purpose has been used and abused in recent years (see Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner fiasco for just one terrible example), but here it’s completely appropriate. Ads for male grooming products have traditionally celebrated a mild form of toxic masculinity and sexism. Something [...]
WPP's recent decision to merge the J.Walter Thompson brand into Wunderman, to create Wunderman Thompson, has prompted much consternation in the ad community – especially amongst alumni like me. Discarding such amazing brand heritage is astonishing, particularly when that brand is synonymous with the invention of advertising, and doubly so when it's only four years since they reversed a previous decision to ditch the full name for the more ‘modern-sounding’ JWT, having realised it was [...]
It’s rare that I write a follow-up piece to a blog, but this one seems to be writing itself. The willful deafness of M&S is a business-failure case study in the making. Back in July, I wrote a piece about how M&S were committing the cardinal sin of business, which is to ignore the views of their customers. It clearly touched a nerve, proving to be one of my most popular pieces and receiving [...]
Ah, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Unbelievably, it’s autumn already. Always a funny time of year – the leaves may be going brown and the nights drawing in, but it’s also a time of new starts – back to school with a shiny new pencil case and a renewed enthusiasm. For much of this year, I’ve been recharging my mental batteries by taking some time out from the hurly burly of [...]