Holy Sh!tballs, Michael Bublé, Marketing & the Surprise of Listening

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I was sent a link to a Michael Bublé video the other day. I’m not a big fan of his singing – though I readily admit he has a great voice and it makes for decent background music. What I saw surprised the heck out of me and made me rethink my impression of him. It [...]

The Global Village is Missing Its Idiot

Global Village Missing Its Idiot

Companies that refer to themselves as Global do so to illustrate their ability to operate around the world and of course to give the impression of size, reliability and capability. However, I am constantly surprised at the number of companies that refer to themselves in that way but really mean they have operations in other [...]

How Do Others See You?

How Do Others See You

How do others see you is a question that I was asked yesterday. It really made me think, I know how I want others to see me, but do I really know how they actually see me. No of course the “me” I’m talking about is the brand me not the person me. That can [...]

Focusing on Strengths

Focusing on Strengths

There are approximately six weeks until the New Year, I find that this is a good point in the year to spend some time focusing on strengths and decide what next year is going to look like. What are you going to do differently next year? Defining next year is not just about writing a [...]

How To Lose Fans & Annoy Advocates: The Moleskine Story

Moleskine

Over the past week a study in how to lose the respect of your advocate base has slowly revealed itself in the form of a design competition being run by Moleskine, the notebook company. In the world of the Social Consumer in which we now all operate, advocates are far more powerful than Influencers. Influencers, [...]

Will A Lack of Vision Sink Social in 2012?

Social Media Iceberg

There are only a few weeks left in 2011 the year that Social Media was supposed to become “normal” and yet as a recent report by Booz & Company/Buddy Media shows the majority of companies are fixated on Twitter and Facebook. That really isn’t that surprising, especially when the C-Suite are so familiar with status [...]

Social Media Storytelling: Is Advertising better than Marketing?

Social Media Storytelling

Over the past five years or so I’ve seen lots of discussion about where Social Media should sit in an organization. Some will say it has to be in the Marketing department, others insist that it is a PR activity. What everyone agrees on is that the  Advertising department shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the [...]

When They Call Your Baby Ugly

Ugly Baby

Over the past week we saw a social campaign creative team have their baby called ugly. As creatives we know that from time to time this is going to happen. What seems like a great idea to us, something that carries the message in a way that is engaging etc turns out not to resonate [...]

Does Pressure Help You Work?

Pressure

Does pressure help you or hurt you? Like a lot of people I’ve been spending time on Google plus over the past week and a half and yesterday Chris Bailey shared the Nike commercial featuring the US Women’s soccer team. The video is below. The video made me think about pressure that we impose on [...]

Why Social Media Monitoring is A Waste of Time

Social Media Monitoring

Social Media Monitoring is a waste of time and money. There the cat is out of the bag. All those amazing tools that exist like Radian6, Visible Technologies, Lithium, ViralHeat, Social Mention and hundreds of others are a complete waste of your time and money. Let me explain why. Social Media Monitoring Is Pointless Full [...]