Call me King Canute if you like, but I think the digital tide may be turning. There’s definitely a groundswell of considered opinion that marketing’s pre-occupation with their shiny new toy might have been a little over-enthusiastic and maybe we should all sit down and have a bit of a think. Back in 2014, advertising legend Sir John Hegarty grabbed the headlines by saying “the new digital messiahs are like the Taliban – if you [...]
* But both sides must follow them... I was writing a follow-up to my Top Tips for Chemistry Meetings piece, talking to agency directors about New Business and their frustrations with the pitch process, when, in a spooky bit of timing, up popped a couple of client/agency surveys from the intermediary FindGood and ISBA. Clearly this topic remains high on everyone’s agenda (although I do agree with some of the the IPA's criticism of the [...]
The future was bright... Now that EE have admitted they are 'phasing out' the Orange brand, I thought I'd repost this blog written in September 2012 - when EE were carefully denying any such plans. It's just unbelievably sad that corporate 'squabbles' and egos led to the demise of one of the most amazing, customer centric brands of the 20th century.... (Original Post 12/09/12). So yesterday, ‘Everything Everywhere’ started their about-turn on the [...]
There was a little bit of agency news this week that made me very happy. Nine years after they dropped it, JWT is reinstating the name J.Walter Thompson. It’s been announced to mark the agency’s 150 year anniversary – the perfect time to celebrate the uniqueness of this once amazing agency. To those saying ‘so what? It’s just a name’, let me explain. Commodore James Walter Thompson was the founder of modern advertising - turning [...]
So here we are again. Time for the annual ‘retailers post disappointing Xmas trading results’ headlines. This year, I’m not looking at the correlation between their results and their ad campaigns, I’m having a think about the relationship between their results and the in-store experience. With retail sales overall up 5.3%, and some brands delivering up to 20-30% growth online, it shows just how badly the poor performers have done. Over at M&S (down 2.1%), [...]
Unbelievably, this August marked 25 years since I started my career as a lowly graduate trainee media buyer at J.Walter Thompson. So to celebrate this milestone, I thought I’d compile the 12 Deadly Sins of Advertising, as no matter how ‘sophisticated’ our industry has become over the years, there are some crimes that just won’t go away... 1. Pointless Corporate Ads. Fire up the cliché generator and pick, in any order, sweeping shots of rainforests, [...]
For several years, the finest brains at Twitter have been wondering how to make some serious money from their Golden Goose. This week, they announced the launch of a new Targeted Keyword product. The article in Campaign states it will be a “game-changer… early indications are that this will be of genuine interest to a wide range of clients”. I can’t be the only Twitter user whose heart sank at the news. Seriously? Keywords? That [...]
As I’m right in the midst of a big agency screening process, I thought it was a good time to update my Top Ten Tips for Chemistry meetings. Although they’re written for the agency pitch process, they’re relevant to any new business meeting. I’ve run countless pitches for some very big organisations and have watched many a good agency needlessly trip-up in the very first meeting. Fortunately, the most common pitfalls easily avoided with a [...]
'Tis the season to be jolly, so this month - in the great tradition of Campaign’s ‘Private View’ – the MarketingMog has been reviewing the annual crop of retailer Christmas adverts and wondering if any themes have emerged in this depth-of-recession year… First up, John Lewis. The MarketingMog is pretty cynical about these annual schmaltz-fests from a team that seem a little too interested in their own PR, but ‘The Snowman's Journey’ is a definite improvement on last year’s ‘Seven’ inspired [...]
I came across an article the other day that stopped me in my tracks. The latest BrandZ report by Millward Brown has discovered a simple way to achieve a 11-fold increase in business growth, but, amazingly, this tip didn’t seem to have reached the business news. So what was it? Well, it’s actually quite simple. Ensure there are women on your board. Whilst the number of mixed-sex boards is still a shamefully small minority, those boards [...]