Make It Look Like Duarte

It’s possible to hire someone to create a slide deck in the style of Duarte for less than the hourly rate of a half decent designer. It’s no longer good enough to have technical skill in a world where a client can access a million freelancers online and hire based on price and need. Yes,…

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Rethinking The Great Email Smash And Grab

The world has conditioned us from toddlerhood to understand that ‘most’ is what matters. Even a two year old instinctively knows that having just one more chocolate chip cookie than his sister is a good thing. Life teaches you that the people with the most win and so the quest for more begins pretty early…

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3 Questions Every Innovator Needs To Ask

Microsoft is discounting it’s ‘Surface’ tablet just to get traction in the market. Even with all their innovation and marketing firepower Microsoft can’t make people care enough to switch, or belong. Innovation isn’t just about making something that works well, (I’ve never used a Surface, but I’m guessing it does). And marketing isn’t about tempting…

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What Are Your Metrics?

It’s easy to count Facebook likes and numbers of Twitter followers. And we’ve found ways to justify the ‘return on investment’ of a billboard that’s passed by 20,000 people every day. It’s easy to advocate for doing things that we can measure. A metric of any kind feels safe, and it’s got deniability built in.…

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The Most Powerful Person In The World

During the summer of 1994 while on a lunch break at his new company NeXT, Steve Jobs struck up a conversation with some of his team in the lunch room about power. Here’s what he told them. “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda…

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Measurable Or Important

In marketing as in management what we can measure gets done. But do metrics enable us to tick the right boxes, or are we ignoring what’s really important? When I was pregnant with my second son, the local health authority set about improving patient waiting times at antenatal clinics. Performance indicators were set. A nursing…

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Why Starbucks Wins

You could have made a cup of instant coffee at home for a few cents this morning. Or you could even have splashed out on a flavoured Nespresso, brewed in your kitchen at 60 cents a shot. So why did you go to Starbucks and pay eight times that price for a commodity? A marketer…

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You Don’t Need A Marketing Plan

Every business has a plan. Even if it’s written on the back of a Post-it note. The plan talks about the idea. Who it’s for. How to bring it to market, at what cost and how to get the word out. That final piece of the puzzle is your marketing plan, and yes it’s usually…

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Narrow And Deep Vs. The Market Of Everyone

When you were ten years old all any marketer needed to know about you, or the people in your street was that you owned a TV. In a world of limited choices big companies could afford to cast the net wide across the masses. No depth required. This tactic doesn’t work so well now that…

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