How Google Analytics ruined marketing
Creativity is what builds brands and sells products. And activities, not channels, generate ROI. But after Google Analytics defined “social media” and other channels as buckets, and therefore as marketing strategies, people have confused strategies and channels ever since. So remember the strategy, message and marketing collateral matter more than...
What we learnt from Snoop Dog
Is design simply a nice name for thinking about how stuff looks?
Why does it matter? Because psychology says what we see affects how we feel, act and in a sense who we are. Design helps create products, services and experiences that customers want. And if your design is better than your competition – well, you know the rest. If we look...
Don’t forget the ladder…
Remember your basic marketing training, and specifically the concept of positioning and the benefit ladder. The idea of the benefit ladder is deceptively simple. You start with whatever product feature you believe your product offers that is superior or different from the competition – a micro-camera fitted to a toaster...
Think about this - every minute (yes, every 60 sec) of every day 1 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook, 500,000 tweets are posted on Twitter and 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. If you've found your content is being overlooked, remember people can only consume so much. Go back to your strategy and see what other tools your can use.
—Stop! We’ve had enough.
22 per cent of marketers feel that they don’t communicate with their customers enough, but 36 per cent of consumers feel overwhelmed by the volume of communications they receive from a brand across all channels.* In a Columbia Business School experiment, pots of jam were set out on supermarket tables...
Metrics, measures and madness
Social media can be a real challenge – with its massive numbers, but low click through rates means it’s not always a great channel for many advertisers. Have a look at some of these facts: The average click through rate of display ads is 0.1% The Human attention span shortened...
How Pokemon Go proved all the experts wrong!
In the history of the internet and consumer tech, nothing has had an adoption of more than 100 million global users in six days. Everybody said AR couldn’t be a success unless VR headsets or Google Glass took off, but Nintendo and Niantic have disproved that. The average iPhone user...
Zero Budget Addicts
I’m really interested in the theory of Zero Marketing Budgets. Not why it’s done, but why it isn’t done more often. Don’t get me wrong, I love clients who like to spend money, but is it justified, or are they just doing the same as you did last time. Have...
What do the most innovative companies in the world have in common?
The most innovative companies are driven by design. Some people struggle to see the value in design or the return on investment. So an American company created the Design Value Index, that tracked publicly listed companies. Results showed over the last 10 years design-led companies have maintained significant stock market...
What? I thought customers wanted to engage?
Harvard Business Review recently did a study of more than 7,000 consumers and found only 23% of the consumers said they had a relationship with a brand online, and 77% made comments like “It’s just a brand, not a member of my family. Interestingly what consumers really did want when...
How Boaty McBoatface proved the public can’t be trusted
I’ve been fascinated by the crowdsource naming of a new British research vessel. Opening the naming of the boat up to the public through social media must have seemed like a stroke of genius and a great way to engage, but once again social media proved they don’t care. And...