A brand is a strategy
A brand is a strategy. It should be a framework for making important choices. And not just the obvious ones about what to say and how to say it.
My values, three ways
Brand values should be specific and strategic. “My values, three ways” shows how to do this using me as a case study.
The culture of client relationships
A client who negotiated a fee proposal up rather than down, and what that tells us about the culture of client relationships.
Values as culture as strategy- a case study
Summary Once upon a time I was Planning Director at a now defunct digital marketing agency called Blonde. Our values were Flair, Action, Rigour. We chose those values as a strategic remedy for growing pains in the business. We defined them to affect a shift in culture, underpinned by some …
How to read company culture (unknown knowns)
Defining a brand is an act of realisation. Taking the scenic route to hard-to-reach destinations such as culture and values.
Technology vs Machinery.
Every organisation has “machinery”. It’s a legacy combination of structure, culture and process. New technology and old machinery are seldom a good match. Technology vs machinery.
Six years of agency staff meetings analysed in hindsight.
You learn a thing or two as the managing director of an advertising agency. Like what makes a good agency tick. Like what motivates good people. Like how it feels when the agency’s heart is in the right place. I was fortunate enough to be given temporary stewardship of such …
Facebook people > Facebook culture.
Watch this very funny Blackadder film clip. But watch it with these rules in mind. Imagine the action is taking place not in a Royal Palace but in an unbranded headquarters building in Covent Garden. Imagine that the heavily powdered thespians are actually senior Facebook executives. And imagine that Blackadder …
Hiring better than you
I want someone to mock me, to kick my ass, to make me feel stupid. So said Jasper Westaway of Onedrum.com at TechCrunch Edinburgh on Wednesday last week. He was talking about the value that good product marketing people bring to tech businesses, and how difficult they are to find. …
Politics and elegance
A client apologised for the internal politics of their organisation the other day. But it really wasn’t a problem. Because the nature, the source and the implications of those politics were being explained in detail at the outset of a project. Politics are only ever a problem when they are …