Monthly Archives: July 2012

Innovation and sex.

Bet that got your attention……… Successful Innovation is almost always the end result of many experiments, resources expended that deliver no result, lots of huffing, puffing, moments of excitement, and from time to time great let-downs. Just like sex. And … Continue reading

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3 aspects of Leadership and responsibility.

Recently my local council took a decision under extremely dubious circumstances, and against the wishes of much of the local community, and their own guidelines. In preparing for my 3 minute opportunity to voice my disgust at the decision, and … Continue reading

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Marketing is a verb!

A Verb,  a word that is something that describes an action, like work, run, achieve, but often, unfortunately when marketing is the topic of conversation, words such as complicate, confuse, dodge, unmeasurable, and such can be added.  Seth Godin sees marketing … Continue reading

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Engage to sell

Sales people are used to being measured by hard metrics, and management is very used to imposing and managing these metrics, and marketers are more inclined now than just a while ago, to have quantifiable measures. Therein lies one of … Continue reading

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Encouraging comments on a blog.

The “social” part of social media is a metaphor for a conversation you would have over the back fence, or in a shop, on the street, and so on, it is just electronic. It makes sense therefore to treat the … Continue reading

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Shopping is social.

Amidst the moans being heard from bricks and mortar retailers, you can still see in almost any store you choose to enter, opportunities to make the experience of shopping easier. If it was more social, friendly, service oriented in stores, … Continue reading

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Fight the war once

Huge amounts of marketing dollars are spent to convince customers to come back. They try the product, leave, or just shop around, so we spend to get them back. If marketing really was a war, as the analogies often go, … Continue reading

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Engage to persuade.

A vast array of marketing & sales activity is aimed at persuading, far less are aimed at engaging. This may appear to be a largely semantic difference, but consider the difference when you see someone undertaking an activity they are … Continue reading

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Cost Vs Value of advertising

Her we go again, another paradigm shift (cliché warning) in media. The basis of the advertising business has always been cost per impression. Doesn’t matter about the medium, that is how the costs have been calculated, however, there is a … Continue reading

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Brand-stretching

 How far can you stretch a brand without diluting the power of the core? The answer it seems is “it depends”. The stronger and more defined the brand, the more it stands for something specific, the less adaptable it is, … Continue reading

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Here comes the future of design

3-D printing has been around for a while, extraordinary technology evolving rapidly offering many “Oohh, Arrhh” moments, as we saw various items like wrenches, and skeletal joints being “printed” as working models. The technology is now going further, watch here … Continue reading

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“You get what you measure”.

It has always been so. The father of the modern manufacturing revolution, W. Edwards Deeming probably said it first in a management setting,  that led to lean, the TPS, 6 sigma, and a host of management articles, cliches, and learned … Continue reading

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Innovative and creative

 Contrary to much common usage, these two concepts are not synonyms, they are very different. Creativity is the process of dreaming up something new, while Innovation is the process of making use of the new stuff. How often has Van … Continue reading

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Scope of Innovation

Fast Company’s 50 most innovative companies of 2012, a pretty impressive list, but most are tech companies in one way or another, which I guess reflects the domain of Fast Company magazine. However, I think the omission by implication of … Continue reading

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Australia Inc. A strategy please!

If Australia was a company, it would be a case study for the need for a coherent strategy as the basis for commercial sustainability. As it is, the place is a shambles, the Directors are held in contempt, clearly they … Continue reading

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