Beautiful insights #5 Don’t Tell The Bride
The economist historian Avner Offer argues that society we develop certain commitment devices – marriage, the welfare state – that enable us to deal with our frailties. Dan Ariely takes this a bit further. When you spend £25K on a wedding, you’re less likely to break things off when the
Beautiful Insights #6 Millward Brown
An insight about that sizeable purveyor of insights, Millward Brown. Their core product was, and is, advertising monitoring and pre-testing. The results are presented as a series of line graphs that show performance over time. I worked there, very enjoyably, in the early 90s. The original presiding genius, Gordon Brown, would
Beautiful insights #4 How we change needs changing
Move from Big Change to a portfolio of ventures. This isn’t a new insight. But such is the ego and security – driven attachment to Big Change that it needs frequent re-emphasis. Change can no longer be about leaving a rough patch and moving everyone to a happier place (v1
Beautiful insights #3 Confidence is strategy
An example of strategy. In the 1970s, there was an incident during some military manoeuvres in Switzerland. The young lieutenant of a small French platoon sent a reconnaissance unit into the icy wilderness. Almost immediately, a two day blizzard started and the unit did not return. The lieutenant was mortified,
Beautiful insights #2 The Met Police
The Met launched a new operation last week to impound uninsured cars. The police aren’t interested in these cars. What they want to do is put a squeeze on their owners (or more likely, non owning drivers), based on the insight that: 80% of uninsured cars are driven by habitual criminals.
Beautiful insights #1 : the thought behind Prezi
Prezi is a growing and popular presentation application. It doesn’t do away with Powerpoint / Keynote, but it does skewer them on a particular issue – you’re in thrall to the kit your dad used thirty years ago. It’s based on this insight: You are hostage to an antiquated technology
Marketing is opening
The estimable Doug Richards on why, because the sales role is to close (a relatively hostile event) marketing’s role is to open. At its best, marketing makes products great and salespeople honest.
IBM go all marketing
IBM’s big old study of what’s occupying the minds of global marketeers. Once you wade beyond commandments like ‘deliver value to empowered customers’ you get some useful, if not that surprising stuff. The skinny. We’re losing the last illusions of control of the customer relationship, because the buggers can
Gallup get it the wrong way round
Quick thoughts on last week’s Gallup report at the RSA. Gallup’s pitch was ‘Are Chronic Conditions Killing Our Competitiveness?’. As someone astutely pointed out, the evidence, especially on workplace stress, was precisely the opposite: over-competitiveness and what Matthew Taylor called the intensification of work are prime culprits in creating these
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