When clients ask for bread, give them cake

Too often I hear account directors and those in client service complain that their clients are not ready, not mature enough or not open minded enough for us to deliver true integrated, multi-channel thinking against their briefs; and for this reason the briefs that are delivered to creative tend to be driven towards more traditional…… Continue reading When clients ask for bread, give them cake

Getting ready to ‘Make Digital Work’

In a couple of days I’m taking the 14 hour flight to head to New York for Colorado University’s, Boulder Digital Works Executive Workshop – Making Digital Work. This is the first time the programme has been run outside of Boulder and promises to be a hotbed of ideas and learning. The programme ran first…… Continue reading Getting ready to ‘Make Digital Work’

Youth are the target

If our business is all about making change happen, then this excellent film from Brazilian research group BOX 1824 is a must watch – showing us how the youth in society are, and have always been the catalyst to big changes. So maybe when we launch new products and write new copy we should first…… Continue reading Youth are the target

Treating creatives like adults

For far too long this industry has treated creatives like the goose that lays the golden egg – a mysterious creature that must be locked away, waited on hand and foot, and generally treated like a jewel that must pandered to and protected. But times are changing. Times are changing both for the industry as…… Continue reading Treating creatives like adults

Marketing services should have acquired advertising

I’m slowly coming to the firm conclusion that marketing services (and all that it comprises) should have acquired advertising – and not the other way around which is what seems to have happened in the industry. Marketing Services (despite their appalling name) agencies had one of the most interesting remits of the late 90s and…… Continue reading Marketing services should have acquired advertising

Has home entertaining died?

As my wife and I settle into our new life here in Dubai more and more, we are on the one hand very pleasantly surprised by this hybridisation of European, North American and Arabic cultures, but on the other hand there are things from certain origins (particularly the US) that we are starting to feel…… Continue reading Has home entertaining died?

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Categorized as Dubai

Digital is not a channel, it is part of your product

How about we start from scratch? How about we look at the different pieces of the organisation and figure out how to apply digital, mobile, social, broadband and interactive to the existing structure? How would things look different if we started from a zero sum base? To start with, I think social wouldn’t want to…… Continue reading Digital is not a channel, it is part of your product

Becoming a SIF is a communications opportunity

As my personal situation takes me on the route to becoming a SIF, not a Structural Integrity Field (for the Star Trek fans) but a single income family, it strikes me how much of a communications opportunity this is, and how little work is really done, either on turning these sort of challenges into comms…… Continue reading Becoming a SIF is a communications opportunity