The100: disruption, distraction and David Abbot

Learning from the master I’m old enough to remember the great BT It’s good to talk ads. But regardless of age, watching David Abbott – an advertising legend if ever there was one – pitch the idea to BT is a timeless pleasure. We all have to sell or pitch things, but if you want …

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The100: Deep work, storytelling and green eggs

Storytelling: The bad How many strategies fail not because they’re bad, but because they’re expressed in a way that is thoroughly unpersuasive? Martin Weigel (yes, yes, we like him lots) shares 13 pieces of advice to help you craft better strategic narratives. This is particularly smart: Steven Spielberg had long wanted people to experience the …

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The100: Flabby thinking, thinking on your feet and angry hipsters

Flabby strategic thinking “Too many objectives fall into one of two camps. Either they are analytical and devoid of imagination, driven by metrics that are easy to measure rather than necessarily the right things to measure. Or, on the other hand, they are highly evocative but meaningless. You hear them and leave the meeting in …

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The100: Intuition, choice paralysis and Dolly Parton

Binning the blinkers Trusting your intuition is something we’re often told to do. It’s romantic even. The idea that we can ‘just know’. However, this is ceremoniously debunked by Koen Smets. “The assumption that the things that are either common or unusual to us are common or unusual in general is, well, not that unusual.” …

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The100: Cognitive blind spots, polarisation and styrofoam

Procter’s Gamble I was going to write something about the Gillette campaign. And then I read this. You know when people say they couldn’t have said it better themselves? In this case I genuinely couldn’t, both in the literal sense and the metaphorical. Proper vox, not flops Mark Urban (he of the BBC) wrote an …

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The100: self-reinforcing cultures and goats cheese  chasers

We’re back (panic over). Popping bubbles Years past, we’ve talked quite a bit about empathy and understanding the consumer better. You know: the echo chambers, the disparity between what you think and what others think, on why we understand people not-like-us less and less. There is a classic example that’s in the news now: the In/Out …

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The100: Best of 2018

Pensive chin stroking. Light chuckling. Exasperated eye rolling. We’ve hopefully had you doing all of the above whilst reading The100 this year. To wrap things up for 2018, here are the 5 most popular articles from our twice-monthly round up of all that’s made us stop and think, or laugh in the world of Market Research during 2018. …

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The100: fantasies, fallacies and chocolate hobnobs

“Narcissism described as Strategy” Okay, stand back. This is powerful stuff and not for the faint hearted MRXer. It’s Martin Weigel with his Escape from Fantasy talk – and yes, we’ve now built a shrine for him (hand-hollowed out off the wall using unfurled paper clips)  at Watch Me Think towers. It’s next to Dave Trott’s. …

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The100: rotten brands, effective habits and Fenton (FENTON!)

Just say “no” Gareth Kay writes brilliantly about Brand Rot. A 5 mins read. It’s worth it: “Brands that are free of rot tend to exhibit decisive leadership that protects the code that instructs and inspires everything they do. They simplify the experience to do one thing (or a few) well. They remember the old …

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