Month: March 2015
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Organisational Structures from Scratch
Ashley Freidlein, CEO and Co-Founder of Econsultancy wrote a recent post on the Econsultancy blog as a first take answer to the question: 'With a blank sheet, what organisational structure would you choose for marketing and digital?'. It's an interesting question, and the answer he came up with incorporated a structure that brought improved customer…
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Distributed and Destination Thinking (Redux)
It's been almost three years since I wrote about the importance of combining distributed and destination thinking into strategies, and quite a bit longer since I first started talking about it. But the concept has become ever more relevant, and I was reminded of it again last week in reading about Facebook's plans for Messenger. It's…
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Google Firestarters 15: How To Think Differently About Advertising – The Event
Monday saw the interested and interesting of UK planning come together for our 15th Google Firestarters event. Our sole speaker on the evening was planning legend Paul Feldwick, who talked about his controversial new book The Anatomy of Humbug: How to Think Differently About Advertising. Paul spent 30 years as an Account Planner at BMP…
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Why Small Teams Work
(N.B. This post is part of an occasional series I'm doing, drawing from some of the thinking that's going into the book I'm writing - any feedback is appreciated) 'From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense…
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The Talent Revolution Survey
I've done quite a bit of work in the digital skills area and one of the things you see a lot, particularly in non-digital-specialist roles, is a disconnect between intent and action when it comes to training, so anything that gives companies more reason to invest in their people in this way is a good…
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Google Firestarters Austin – Engineering Strategy – The Event
Saturday saw our first ever Firestarters event in Austin, held in the Google Fiber space during SXSWi. We'd themed the event around the intersection of user experience design and strategy which, judging from the audience feedback and debate on the night is rich territory for discussion right now. Perhaps unsurprising given the growth in importance…
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The Connector That Disconnects
I saw a charming talk here yesterday at SXSW by Dutch designer Daniel Disselkoen who themed his session around the idea that familiarity with a subject, our environment, surroundings or routine can limit discovery. This provides the basis for Daniel's work in exploring ways to encourage people to notice and observe more, and to be…
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Disrupting Wall Street
I've been in Austin at SXSWi for the past few days putting on our first Google Firestarters here (more on that soon) and so have been attending some of the sessions whilst I'm here. Someone said to me before I came out that it was better to go to the smaller, off-topic (i.e. non branding/marketing/content)…
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Mullet Strategy
21st Century Strategy from Neil Perkin The following is a notated version of a talk I gave last night at the APG Noisy Thinking event on 21st Century Strategy. When the APG asked me talk about '21st Century Strategy' I’d not long before read Emily Bell’s brilliant Hugh Cudlipp lecture about the future of journalism.…
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Google Firestarters 15: How To Think Differently About Advertising
Our next London Google Firestarters event will be happening on March 23rd at 6pm in Google HQ London and I'm delighted to say that we have the legendary Paul Feldwick (above) speaking about his brand new book 'The Anatomy of Humbug: How To Think Differently About Advertising'. Paul's book is quite possibly the most important book on advertising…