Where do you stand on the debate about whether brands, in their role as advertisers, should use their influence to make Twitter and Facebook clean up the nastiness that’s to be found there?

Let’s review the situation. Most media channels need advertising revenue. So brands have power and influence. Equally, brands want to reach their target markets efficiently, i.e. cheaply. Media that get attention, for whatever reason, can offer large audiences, which attract brands. Read More

“People don’t want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes.”

Theodore Levitt, legendary marketing professor and writer Read More

This may be the only business book you read that covers Greek philosophy, ancient myths, modern parables featuring Fat Tony and Nero (characters from Taleb’s earlier books) and some personal stories, both from the author’s early life in Lebanon and from his more recent experience as a hate figure for classical economists. It’s a demanding and exhilarating read – skim-read half a page and you could jump two thousand years – but it deserves to be read properly. Read More

“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.”

Beverly Sills, American opera singer Read More

Have you, as a customer, ever had it patiently explained to you by a sales or service person that “it doesn?t work like that”? Don’t you just hate that! To paraphrase Steve Jobs, it’s not the customer’s job to know how it works. On the contrary, it’s the marketer’s job to know how the customer thinks and acts and wants it to be. All the same, it is possible to create customer behaviour that is efficient and smart for your business. Read More

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”

Alice Walker, American author Read More

Last year I wrote in Market Leader about what financial services providers need to do to rebuild trust. Mainly it comes down to the basics of any decent brand or business: figure out what people expect, value and will pay for; offer whatever aspects of it make commercial sense for the business; and deliver what you offer. Implicitly, that means don’t mislead, don’t offer something you can’t or won’t deliver consistently. I mentioned the banks’ Read More

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

Peter Drucker Read More

Ever had a boss who habitually seizes on something another business is doing and says: “Should we be doing that?” Social media is causing the same insecurity complex in the digital immigrant generation. It’s a sort of digital Fear Of Missing Out. Questions often asked include: how many Facebook friends does the brand have? Is everyone moving to Instagram? Will being on Pinterest make us cool? Can we do a partnership with Foursquare? Or, more likely: Now that we have our Facebook page/Twitter feeds/app, Read More

The death of the 30 second TV ad was recently declared (again), this time by an advertising guru, Trevor Beattie. Yes, online overtook TV in its share of advertising spend some time ago, and YouTube is now the second largest search engine, as Google love to tell us. Along with the rise of social media and two-screen activity, Sky+ and TiVo, it seems quite plausible that the TV commercial should be replaced by advertising that we either choose – Read More