It must be at least 30 years old by now. For the few who have not yet been exposed to this ugliest of acronyms, the BHAG stands for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. BHAGs first came to my attention through my colleagues working on P&G in the 90s. They had been presented with a marketing BHAG […]

As H.L Mencken put it:  “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” The widespread belief that “non-working” marketing expenditure should be sacrificed of the for good of “working” marketing expenditure is just such an answer, wrong. It perpetuates an elementary misunderstanding of how advertising works. Most importantly, I […]

Adweek recently reported that General Millsis one of the latest advertisers to be subject to the outcries of the ad industry for their poor pitch practices. (Their latest pitch process, reportedly included 120 day payment terms for an unspecified number of brands, an unspecified length of contract and the dubious treatment of agencies’ intellectual property […]

Many pitches have been postponed to later this year, so we can expect a bubble in the new business market. How will you ensure that the best agencies will accept your invitation to pitch? Intuition would tell you that the end of this year will be a feeding frenzy for agencies when all the pitches […]

Einstein once sagely noted, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” As obvious as that might seem it is perhaps not so obvious to the marketing and advertising worlds, which appear to continue repeating their aggressive/defensive behaviour when they both wish for different and better […]

My son is coming to the end of year five in his primary school, but like many in his year group he has already finished the year six curriculum. As a parent governor in the school I know the teachers quite well, so I asked my son’s teacher: “Why does the school push them so […]