You have to feel for Clare Balding, the nation’s darling after 2012. Her success has catapulted her into being the sole presenter of a total fiasco of a programme which has been universally derided. After defending the show, saying “new formats can take some time to bed in with audiences”, the BBC has backtracked on most of the changes and turned it back into a programme about the day’s tennis at Wimbledon. Phew.

What went wrong, Read More

That pouting blonde in the yellow bikini has attracted a lot of attention. Nothing new there. But the row about Protein World’s poster, “Are you beach body ready?” has had a lot more coverage than she has in the poster. Apparently it’s offensive.  I really can’t see why it’s more offensive than a Dove ad.

How can I say that? Dove and its campaign for everyday beauty has been hailed as some sort of feminist icon. Read More

Effective marketing communications are getting harder to do. It can be hard to find anything (other than price) that’s really worth shouting about. There are whole advertising campaigns built around seemingly marginal features. Take The Ford Motor Company. “Keys”, says the woman in the Ford Focus ad, and I start watching because it is charming and true. Or that buff chap climbing the steps to the diving board, to the opening riff of Hawkwind’s Master of the Universe – Read More

Most brand managers want their brand to evoke strong feelings. We naturally want our customers to like the brand, to feel attached to it. Books have been written and careers have been built on the idea of brand love. But let’s be honest: as a human being, rather than a marketer, how many brands do you really care about? Love?

When Coca Cola changed its formulation in the 1980s, Americans rose up in horror, Read More

The trailer for the new Call of Duty game, Advanced Warfare, says it is expected to get a “mature” rating. If an Xbox shooting game is mature, what?s immature?

A film I saw recently warned upfront that it contained sex, violence and ” mature themes”. So sex and violence are no longer considered mature, but shoot ’em up games are. What exactly are mature themes? Whether to buy an annuity with your pension pot? Read More

The UK start-up scene is hot. There are lots of incubators, accelerators and shared workspaces. The biggest growth sector in London is probably TechSeedCityHubbery. There are similar set-ups in half a dozen other UK cities. Both big brands and agencies are keen to get close to tech start-ups, and some are investing, providing mentoring, office space, and more.

I see a lot of start-up and small business pitches. In this post I’ll focus on what I?ve seen in the start-ups themselves. Read More

Marketers should not focus on return on investment (ROI) as their key metric. Why not? Because it is not ambitious enough.

ROI is a helpful way to compare media choices, or different creative options, or even different service models. It is an important tool for marketers to make choices, and to improve. But be careful: it’s also a trap.

Sometimes ROI looks like clear proof of money well spent, to justify budgets to others. Read More

I have a relationship manager at the bank where I have my business account. I wonder what relationship he’s managing.

Is that unfair? Here’s a bank trying to do better. The problem with their monthly courtesy call is that it is content-free. They offer me nothing. No information, no news, nothing that could be useful to me. In truth it’s unlikely they’ll chance upon something I want to hear anyway. It feels like something they’re measuring for their own purposes: “We call all our business customers at least six times a year and check all is well.” Read More

Do you find queueing stressful? For me, it’s not the waiting, it’s the uncertainty. Give me an orderly queue with a guaranteed outcome at the end, and I can wait happily. Contrast that with the Apple store at Christmas. The dudes in their red t shirts and beanies are the same as always, chillaxed and cheerful. But in mid December, most people aren’t there for the joyous experience of a browse through all things Apple. Read More

That American business import, “the C suite”, gets some bad press. In the FT recently, Lucy Kellaway wrote a whole column about how she abhors it, prompted by the appointment of Charlotte Hogg as chief operating officer at the Bank of England. I confess I was a chief innovation officer for a while, though, in my defence, I never really called myself that. I don’t mind CMOs and CEOs, nor even COOs. But I do take grave exception to the latest addition to the C suite, Read More