External changes force people to change their habits, presenting both risk and opportunity. Pret A Manger’s monthly coffee subscription was launched in autumn 2020, aimed at restoring footfall post-pandemic. It doesn’t cost much to give hot drinks away; the price is mostly margin. Since the average customer buys five coffees a week, £20 a month for all the drinks you want is great value, and should drive loyalty, re-establishing the coffee habit as a Pret habit. Read More

“Never cross a river that is on average four feet deep.”

Curmudgeonly iconoclast Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose ground-breaking books include Fooled By Randomness and Anti-Fragile Read More

Albert Einstein allegedly had a sign hanging in his office at Princeton that said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” As next year’s business plans are being finalised, pay close attention to the measures of success. A recent chilling example, from UK healthcare, shows why it is so critical to choose the right metrics.

This month the review into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust concluded that many lives had been lost there needlessly, Read More

Here is a brilliant story-teller reporting on two exceptional people doing breakthrough work: their lives, their work, their friendship. It’s an accessible and enjoyable grounding if you’re new to behavioural economics, and it’s unmissable for anyone who’s already into BE and wants to understand where it came from. BE got big for marketers around ten years ago with Nudge, embraced by US and UK governments to change behaviour in areas like income tax, pension planning, Read More

“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.”

Marshall McLuhan, academic and visionary author of “Understanding Media” Read More

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Attributed by Paul Samuelson, Nobel Laureate in Economics, to John Maynard Keynes Read More

As you came through airport security this summer, did you pop one of those smiley faces as you scooped up your bags and swung past towards your departure gate? The company behind them, HappyOrNot, says that using faces rather than numerical scores increases positive ratings. That seems appealing. But it misses the point. Positive ratings are over-rated.

There’s a host of reasons for low scores, from ad hoc operational failures through to structural factors that are slow or costly to change, Read More

Age UK are in trouble for doing a deal with an energy provider that raised £6m a year for the charity. It’s tough, and probably feels unfair to them. But this is what happens when the operational needs of the business get dissociated from its core purpose. Fundraising is essential but it is not why Age UK exists.

The charity aims to help everyone make the most of later life. Undoubtedly some older people are confused by energy tariffs, Read More

“Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.”

attributed to Wallace Earl Gray Stephens, American poet

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Everyone’s talking about insight. So what is an insight? It is a discovery about the market which can be acted upon to create competitive advantage. It’s usually a realisation, not a direct data point. Numbers may prompt this realisation, but it has to be thought and articulated before it starts to be useful. It’s the “aha” statement that gets passed around, and enables a business to create shared understanding and take action.

It seems like everyone’s doing insight too. Read More