Learning from the best Pixar tell stories like nobody else can. No matter the film, no matter the audience. They always make us feel something. (Why does a bit of dust always get in my eye during the opening scene of Up?) They really are the masters of storytelling and here are their 22 rules …

All of this …is ? Emmet O’Briain gives us a well-thought-out piece on the dehumanisation of research. It’s a must-read for anyone in research. Or in marketing. Or in a job, for that matter. My favourite quote came from Richard Huntington (of Saatchi and Saatchi stock): A lack of genuine connection with people’s lives. A …

Game, set, match At first, I thought it sounded ridiculous, but I’ve become more and more convinced after reading Farnam Street’s explanation on how avoiding stupidity provides more of an advantage than seeking brilliance. In professional tennis about 80% of the points are won. However, in amateur tennis, about 80% of the points are lost. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

I presented (at IIEX in Amsterdam) a few weeks ago on how our obsession with data is causing the empathy gap to widen, and it seems that isn’t the only issue it’s causing… Science, *please* meet Art Adam Smith discusses how a lack of access to ‘useful’ data is fuelling mistrust across an already gaping …

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 …