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
Month: November 2010
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
Digital is not a medium
‘Digital is not a medium’ is a post that I have wanted to write for a long time – but that I have repeatedly stopped myself doing because it simply feels too obvious; but obvious as it might seem there are still too many occasions where I am forced to re-explain. So this article should…… Continue reading Digital is not a medium
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?
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
Keys, phone, wallet – what’s in your pocket?
What are the key things that you check are in your pocket when you leave the house? In days gone by, before the era of mobile phones, before credit cards and while some people still had housekeepers, the only important thing to have on you when you left the house was money. This was what…… Continue reading Keys, phone, wallet – what’s in your pocket?
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