The100: Brand cannibalization, choosing a project and James Bond

Time = Memory How is it that the days drag, yet the weeks pass faster than you can say “20 Fridays until Christmas”? Well, because it’s Quarantime, the explanation of which is surprisingly logical: The passage of time as it happens (days) will be slower because of the monotony of your environment. But the memory of …

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The100: Right answers, messy middles and 3rd order island

Research: using it properly His [Dave] Trott-ness tells the tale of the Indian Mongoose brought in to control the rats in Hawaii. He says it was the right answer to the wrong question: Properly used, research is about finding out things we never expected, things we didn’t know. Which is why Jon Steel says the …

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The100: Brand purpose, prediction addiction and back in the USSR

The benefits of foresight? Do predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies? Does this make predictions dangerous? Should we stop making predictions? Will I ever stop asking so many questions? (I hope not.) Stuart Ritchie has been unpacking Margaret Heffernan’s book on our addiction to prediction. Our fervent desire to know and chart the future – and our …

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The100: Behavioural economics, aspiration windows and The Codfather

The aspiration gap Yup. They’ve done it again. Reach Solutions, whose previous white papers Gut Instinct and The Empathy Delusion made many a marketeer mop their brow, are back making us feel uncomfortable with The Aspiration Window:  Given what we now know about the analytical thinking styles of people working in advertising and marketing and our empathy …

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The100: Cathedrals, scarcity heuristics and sucking sounds

When you’re last, make it a race to come first Mr D Trott esq has a knack for finding anecdotes around people solving problems in unusual ways. Here’s his tale of a wine merchant using the scarcity heuristic to invent a tradition now culturally ingrained. As a columnist from The New York Times put it: As …

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The100: Pneuma, unknown unknowns and batty geniuses

Advertise or not to advertise There’s much debate about whether budgets should be cut. Do we market (research) our way out of this crisis or is everyone right to stop? Mark Ritson argues that the best marketers will be upping, not cutting, their budgets. Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to …

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