Year: 2016
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AI, and the Shifting Value in Mobile
As Blackberry announced that it's finally going to stop manufacturing phones, we're seeing a big shift underway in where the value sits in mobile. One of the slides from Mary Meeker's last Internet Trends report showed how the year-on-year increase in global smartphone shipments is slowing dramatically as the market reaches a higher level of maturity. She's…
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Post of the Month – September 2016 – The Winner
Happy to say that the winner of this months vote is Richard Huntingdon's excellent post on Why we need to adopt whole puzzle thinking. Well done Richard – you join the Hall of Fame. My thanks to all that took part, and don't forget to bookmark your good reads for next month's nominations.
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Post of the Month – September 2016 – The Vote
Thanks for the nominations. So our vote this month is between: Why we need to adopt whole puzzle thinking by Richard Huntingdon Five marketing cliches that make me scream from Mark Ritson It does not pay for advertisers to narrow their targets too much by Ian Leslie (FT) When you change the world and no-one…
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Post of the Month – September 2016 – Nominations
Golly. Time already to open up nominations for September Post of the Month. So if you've read any posts that you thought were especially good over the past month, do nominate them in the comments below or direct. As usual I have a short starting list below but do add to these and I'll stick…
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Data is the new coal
We're in danger of overdoing it when it comes to digital analogies but sometimes they can be really useful in framing something in an instructive way. The 'data is the new oil' metaphor has been doing the rounds now for a number of years, but one of my favourite Firestarters quotes came from Graeme Wood…
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The John Peel Mistake
'Circa 1969, the DJ wondered why one of his favourite albums was not in the charts. "Everyone I know's got a copy," he said. Back came the reply: "No – you know everyone who's got a copy."' Nicely put by John Harris in the New Statesman. I fear that in the adland/digital bubble this is…
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When is a Team Not a Team?
I'm currently focused on meeting my big publishing deadline for the book in mid-October (as well as juggling mortgage-paying work) so blogging is a little more intermittent than I'd like right now, but one of the (many) interesting aspects of the research I'm doing in support of the writing is considering how team-working can help…
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Google Performance Firestarters 13: The Future of Programmatic
Tuesday evening saw another fascinating Performance Firestarters, this time on the Future of Programmatic, which has obviously had a not insignificant impact on media over the past few years and will no doubt play an even more significant role in its future. For this event, we wanted to understand more about where programmatic is headed and…
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When Not to Listen to Customers
I liked the point made in this Quartz piece on Parrot, the French technology and drone business, about when not to listen to customers. We're drilled on the importance of continuous customer feedback but this is far less useful when we're originating something entirely new. It is of-course a myth that Apple don’t do research (as…
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Google Firestarters 21: The Future of Digital Advertising – The Event
The interested and interesting of UK planning came together on Tuesday night to talk about a subject that is getting a lot of attention right now – digital advertising and where it's going. In previous Firestarters we've done a lot around agency futures and models, innovation, data and creativity but never actually focused specifically on…