The coherent pitch (making sense out of ambiguity)
A coherent pitch is much more attractive to clients than an extraordinary but unbridled creative idea. Making sense out of ambiguity.
Did I do a strategy?
Did I do a strategy? How can you tell? How do you make sure that your strategy behaves like one? This is a simple checklist for strategists and planners.
Strategy is Your Words : Book Review
Strategy is Your Words by Mark Pollard On page 155 of Strategy is Your Words, Mark Pollard states that, “Strategy is ideas and ideas are made of words.” If he posted that without context as a Tweet, I expect it would be a red rag to Strategy Twitter. However, unlike …
Google Firestarters 16 – The Magnificent Seven
I was insanely privileged to be invited to speak at Google Firestarters 16, as one of the Magnificent Seven CSO’s and Planning Directors curated by Neil Perkin. We each had ten minutes to talk about “The most useful thing you have learned in your career to date”, and to do …
Finding Nemo and why shared problems are better than specified solutions.
Jumping out of a window in a plastic bag filled with water, or feigning death in order to be flushed down a toilet doesn’t seem like much of a choice. But desperate times call for desperate measures and, if you are a wild fish trapped in a tank in a …
In praise of disengagement.
A friend of mine had a video of Deep Purple in concert in California. In a break between songs you can hear one of the band talking to a sound engineer. There’s an issue with the mixing desk. This goes on for a few seconds before another member of the …
Story fracking.
What the frack is fracking? Fracking is an aggressive, invasive technique for extracting valuable raw materials out of hard to reach places. More specifically fracking is shorthand for hydraulic fracturing. Huge amounts (e.g. 8 million gallons) of carrier liquid and other substances are pumped at high pressure into underground rock …
Drowning kittens is bad. But it’s hard not to drown kittens when drowning kittens is so damn convenient.
Every time you say “social media” someone somewhere drowns a kitten. I said this during a presentation at the Social Media Academy‘s “Social Media In Scotland” conference a few weeks ago. I said it with the best intentions. I was trying to make the point that lazy language can be …
Giving clients what they need, not what they want
I’m in two minds about this old giving-clients-what-they-need-not-what-they-want adage. On the one hand it appeals to the image we agency types like to project of being top-table, C-Suite, trusted adviser consultant types. On the other I shy away from the intellectual arrogance that it implies. I suspect that many clients …