In early April I wrote a piece for WARC, looking at the lessons from past recessions and what, if anything, we could learn and bring to this recession/depression in the context of eCommerce. …

After “Strategy”, value is probably the most abused word in marketing. A quick survey of agency, consultancy, studio and creative/strategy collectives’ websites will turn up multiple claims to “create value for clients and their customers”. …

Last week I shared a screengrab of a “mini-primer” of books about strategy on Twitter. Since then I’ve had a few requests for the text version plus a lot of good suggestions for ones I had missed. So here is the list… *Sharpen Brain* Sapient/Homo Deus – Harari Technically Wrong…

Direct-to-consumer brands are “shaking up retail”. They are “disrupting CPG”. They are “killing the big brands” and, in the words of Terry Kawaja of LUMA Partners, they are the reason you need to “Fire your CMO”. The headlines are alarmingly impressive for a +20-year-old channel where no one can agree…

Are strategists allowed to have creative ideas? On the balance of probabilities not really, but that doesn’t stop it happening. In a conversation with some strategy types on Twitter I was wondering what happens to the ideas we have that don’t make it – not because they are “off brief”…

“Amazon is like pornography…everywhere, hard to define, but you always know it when you see it.” Marketing is changing. In a time of data abundance, incredible technology, imaginative canvases, and serious cultural and social conflicts, marketers, suppliers and agencies face increasing complexity and competition. …

Marketing is an industry built, not on science or evidence, but aphorisms. Parroted repetition of popular ideas often leads us to a convergence in beliefs as damaging as any brand endline singularity. Over the last few years it has been impossible to go to a meeting, conference or pitch presentation…

Strategists face increasing pressures as they ply their role in creating communications, products, services or experiences that solve real customer problems against the background of a world of complex and evolving business, customer, technology, media and data forces. When everything is new and we can all be replaced by AI…

Content is the last C word of marketing and digital media — often misused, never defined and frequently offensive to the ears. But content is not “stuff we’re going to upload to the thing”. As marketers we should think of content not as a fashion but as a strategic business…