The six essential copywriting tips.
Over the course of writing 2,500 plus blog posts and many articles and presentations while reading widely on the advice to copywriters, usually published by those desperately seeking to sell some sort of course, the commonality of advice is clear. Without an...
Are FMCG brands facing an extinction event?
When I was a boy in this business, back in the seventies, having a brand was table stakes to be in the game. At that time, there were a number of supermarket chains, and every one was stocked with a suppliers proprietary branded product. There were many...
Is Dunbar’s number still relevant?
Throughout human evolution, we have existed in small groups, tribes and clans. Individuals have worked together for the common good of the small tribe, and often, perhaps most often, been at odds with the tribe across the river. British anthropologist Robin...
What SME management should know before investing in chasing government grants
Most SME's I meet have at one time or another contemplated, and often invested considerable resources in the quest to obtain public grant funds. Rarely do they approach this exercise with any understanding of the disconnect between the way the commercial...
Stop investing in dead horses.
Investing in dead horses sounds like a pretty dumb idea, but it happens all the time. Projects, ideas, products, people, that have little or no probability of returning revenue and margin from the continuing investment should be stopped. Not only do you save...
Scale or Scope: Australia’s strategic dilemma.
Australia is an economy that has allowed the big to get bigger to such an extent that the barriers to entry in many vital and emerging industries are simply too high for new domestically funded entrants to swallow. This has led to multinationals buying their way...
The referendums failure of basic strategic marketing.
There is a notable omission amongst all the verbiage, finger-pointing, hollow triumphalism, and handwringing emerging after the predicted result of the referendum became a reality. That omission is the failure of marketing, at least by the ‘Yes’ supporters....
Australia’s ‘KAP-Gap’ will kill us!
Australia has a problem, a big one. Our KAP Gap is huge and becoming 'huger' by the month. Knowledge-Attitudes-Practise gap is the difference between what people say they will do, and what they actually do. At some level, we understand what needs to be done,...
Is it Complicated, or just Complex?
These two words are often wrongly used as similes. Complicated implies interdependence, you cannot pull it apart, and then put it back together in exactly the same form. Think of a knitted jumper. Complex implies it can be simplified, much as you unfold a sheet...
Do you market to a person, or a persona?
Being able to market to a 'persona' the picture you build of your ideal customer, is a great leap forward enabled by digital. Our ability to define who buys our products, when, why, where, how, instead of what, and so on. However, there is a flip side....