Marketing Is About Giving Your Customers A Story To Tell

We’ve been stuck in a time warp for the past fifty years with a marketing model designed to sell things to our grandparents. A model that’s kept media buyers in jobs and many media outlets afloat. Marketing used to be what we told our customers to believe about us. What matters more now is how…

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Where Wile E. Coyote Went Wrong

Do you remember those old cartoons where Wile E. Coyote is so focused on outsmarting The Road Runner that he inevitably ends up getting in his own way? He spends so much time and energy trying to be one step ahead of the bird that he forgets what his end goal was. It’s easy (and…

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How Disruptive Innovations Happen At The Edges

Think of any business that’s succeeded over the past two decades and especially the upstarts that have left incumbent brands on the back foot. Kodak vs. Instagram, Sony vs. Go Pro, Hilton vs. Airbnb, cab companies vs. Uber, banks vs. Paypal, Borders vs Amazon, Blockbuster vs. Netflix, Chubb vs. Canary and on and on and…

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The Purpose Of Brand Storytelling

Every September while my son was growing up there was a ritual to be upheld. Of course we had the usual beginning of school year things to do and a checklist to follow, but what Adam really cared about more than all of that, was choosing the football boots he would wear for that season.…

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3 Essential Marketing Questions

As marketers we invest a great deal of time and money working out how to tell the story of our products. But if we can agree that marketing is giving people something to talk about, why aren’t we using resources in equal measure to do that. What if we began with a new set of…

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Are You Smarter Than Your Customers?

How do you feel when you click on a banner ad? Do you remember what you said under your breath the last time you accidentally did that? And how do you feel when your local politician cold calls using a recorded message at 7.30pm the night before an election, asking for your vote? (I really…

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How To Disrupt The Market

Do you remember the days when printed news was so valued that there were two editions of the daily newspaper? People waited at the local shops for evening editions to arrive at 4pm and paperboys weaved between cars which were stopped at a red light during rush hour where drivers also waited with exact change…

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What Problem Are You Solving?

Every venture capitalist will tell you that the best startup pitches focus more on the problem than on the solution. A potential investor may give you just a single sentence to make them understand why your idea will succeed in a world where most people have what they need. And yet, as business owners we…

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