“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut. The answer is usually yes.” This well-known business saying is sometimes attributed to Warren Buffett, the Billionaire US investor. But this modern proverb can be found in an article from 1972 and its roots can be traced back to 1834 (“Ask a barber how to make your […]
I was lucky enough to attend The Communications Council WA ‘Marketing Effectiveness on Trial’ conference on 11th September 2017. Three speakers (Mark Earls, Professor Karen Nelson-Field and Peter Field presented their recent research and conclusions to a large audience of marketers and agency people in Perth. At the end my conclusion echoed Tywin Lannister’s famous […]
A review of the Amazon retail challenge Like it or not Amazon are coming to Australia. For consumers, more choice, great service, lower costs must be an exciting prospect. But for many retailers it’s a potential catastrophe. So what can you do? The Facts – In case you need reminding Amazon, is an American electronic […]
Time and time again the ‘Social Media’ I consume includes headlines and links to content extolling social media as a panacea to all brand communications. I’m sorry to tell you Social Media does not exist anymore. It has gone the way of Web 2.0. It is an outdated business term used to capture the opportunities […]
Although Julius Caesar said “I came. I saw. I conquered” in his ‘I went to the UK, it looked good and it’s ours now’ motto, it could as easily apply to video marketing. In the world of marketing, and the territory that is the Internet, Video has arrived, it is liked and it wins. So […]
A marketing consultancy is a place where you get professional intelligent advice. I don’t mean that we have acquired superior knowledge and skills in marketing over other business people. I mean in the Webster’s dictionary definition of intelligence: marketing consultants have ‘the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as […]
Marketing & Sausages This article was first printed in The West Australian 25/8/14 The marketing author and social media savant, Gary Vaynerchuck has a saying, “A penguin cannot be a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be”. I think this is why I don’t understand why some communications businesses like to add […]
The Marketing Innovation Bandwagon There are few more over used words in business than ‘Innovation’. Today, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull, it has even entered the world of politics and will be at the core of fiscal policies soon. But what is it, why is it important, what is the relationship between marketing / innovation, what […]
Marketing Segmentation A couple of recent articles in Harvard Business Review (HBR) on marketing segmentation made me reflect on one of the basics of effective marketing. In ‘Choosing The Right Customer’ (Robert Simons, HBR March 2014), the Harvard Business School Professor suggests that although there are potentially a number of different groups that could be […]
‘Quality, originality and relevance’ are the new Triumvirate of marketing. An article in The Guardian on ‘Google Search Changes’ started with a reminder that ‘Google’s Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird search algorithms affect around 90% of online searches, according to Search Engine Watch. These algorithms strip out “bad searches” – sites stuffed with keywords, duplicated content […]