The shock of the new A significant - and very much of-the-moment - element of the UNTHNKBL Academy programme for marketing leadership will naturally be dedicated to our future relationship with new and emerging technologies. Marketers are coming to a... Continue reading

A very long speech On May 12th 1789, William Wilberforce MP, in poor health, with just a handful of hurried notes, stood and spoke for some three and a half hours in Parliament, to launch his campaign for the abolition... Continue reading

(The Intelligent Brand - Part Two is here.) A revolution in intelligence […] an evolutionary turning point: one from a straight back-and-forth communications network to a new form of media … The Net began to resemble a complex and highly... Continue reading

(The Intelligent Brand - Part One is here.) Think different System/360 represents a sharp departure from concepts of the past in designing and building computers. [...] This is the beginning of a new generation - not only of computers -... Continue reading

Why this? Why now? “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” Ludwig Wittgenstein A disturbing fracture More than a few... Continue reading

One thing is clear. Whatever we choose to do about it, however we choose to channel our anger, if we’re not “as mad as hell”, we’re missing the point. If you agree with me, here’s a big question. What exactly - for me, for you, for us - could “not taking it anymore” actually mean? The savage satire of Network has come to pass. If the medium is the message, the message has become nonsensical. Continue reading

The narrative model of customer decisioning moves us beyond the long-standing and unhelpful value debate between the traditional neoclassical (rational, conscious, maximising utility) and the behavioural (emotional, semi- or unconscious) models, enabling a quite radical yet common sense understanding of the dynamics of the customer's entirely central role in the realisation of value. Continue reading

(Part One of The Value Proposition is here.) The critical role of the value proposition 10 good reasons why The Customer Value Proposition deserves a lot more care and attention than it commonly receives. When thought through and well articulated,... Continue reading

What we mean by customer value Beyond economic theory Ever since Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in 1776, the economic value that the state needs to produce in order to maximise its prosperity - which was, as the title... Continue reading

Behind the accelerating crisis in advertising lie challenging new rules for building, growing and sustaining brands While the rosé flowed freely at this year’s Cannes Lions, dark and heavy clouds, that have been threatening on the far horizon, suddenly appeared... Continue reading

To experience a creative breakthrough, perhaps, is akin to hearing the best joke you every heard. Closely followed by the profound satisfaction of knowing that you had written it yourself. Continue reading

Last Tuesday my car was clamped in Soho. It happens. But as it also happened, I'd paid for my parking. So my call that followed to the number scrawled on the rather shaming, large poster stuck to my wide window... Continue reading

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Much hand-wringing, and for far too long, about the future of the beleaguered CIO, torn like a pair of Levi's between the two mules of of Keeping The Lights On and enabling - or worse, driving - well ... here... Continue reading

It's everywhere in our culture. Booze. Drugs. Food. Sex. Gambling. Spending. And so on. Anyone who isn't floundering in the net already, or if they're lucky, punching their way out of it, certainly knows someone who is. Addiction is a... Continue reading

I'm pleased to announce the publication of my latest book, The Liquid Enterprise, How The Network is transforming value, what it means for business, and what leadership needs to do about it by Infinite Ideas, Oxford, on the 29th February.... Continue reading

Interesting to read this piece in today's Guardian regarding the response of Paul Polman, the Unilever boss, to the proposed 20% sugar tax which is getting a big push from health groups lately. I think Mr Polman's point - that... Continue reading

There has been a rash of heated discussion in my Linked In feed this week debating whether 50+ thinkers and executives have the right or indeed the ability to write and speak about the current business and technology environment with... Continue reading

Talk to the hand If we fed our children the way we use content in B2B marketing, we'd all be getting a call from the school right about now. Concerns about under-nourishment, attention span, disruption in and out of class,... Continue reading

One advantage of being, well, a man of a certain age, is that one has a sense of the trajectory of recent history. My first serious job was as an assistant at a suburban branch of Our Price records. At... Continue reading

Barbarians in the kitchen It’s a surprise, and something of a concern, that consumer brands are not more publicly focused on the significant potential impacts of automated shopping and replenishment offerings such as Amazon’s Dash and Echo. Such services surely... Continue reading

1. "Not on my gold watch ..." It's entirely natural to resist change. Business leaders who feel lost and disempowered to lead the type of transformation that's now needed, are tempted to bluster and, most importantly, to refuse to accept... Continue reading

I'm surprised that, apart from the usual sporadic social fizz, Amazon's Dash (+ Wand) and more recent Echo services are not causing household brand directors to roll around on the floor foaming at the mouth. And not in a good... Continue reading

Talking the walk The way we talk about anything defines the way we think about it, and in the end, the way we value it. This is important, because marketing and advertising are suffering more than they ever have before... Continue reading

One of my favourite moments in the excellent Ray Donovan, the Showtime series about a family of Boston gangsters making a life in Hollywood, forced to move there following a disastrous one-two of criminal acts by their father - Jon... Continue reading