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 …

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.” …

Pope / Catholic. Bear / woods. Advertising? In crisis? The ever magnificent Rory Sutherland explains this is partly due to the efficiency bubble. His topical tale to exemplify efficiency offsetting effectiveness is golden: A few years ago, the uncle of a friend of mine gave his (now former) wife a huge bunch of roses on …

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 …

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 …

“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. …

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 …

Doubt yourself At our October shindig in London – the Power of Finding your Truth in Marketing – Joe from fullfact.org (the UK’s independent fact checking organisation) was a font of useful ideas including: Tips for challenging claims (30”) How our experience can be used against us (11”) To doubt yourself rather than believe in …

Brand is an outcome, not an output Forget pyramids – your company is a lighthouse. Andy Whitlock presents a new analogy for the brand building process: It makes way more sense to start […] from the inside out: To work out what you’re trying to be and how you can be it. It’s a thousand …