Gillette the latest brand to succumb to the “marketer’s fallacy”
If you’re reading this, two things can be assumed: You have seen the new Gillette ad You have an opinion on the new Gillette ad Now, for our purposes here what that opinion is doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, this piece is strictly about strategy, not politics. All that matters is the one thing we can […]
Why “big brand thinking” is poison for independents
In spite of everything you read – including here – there isn’t really one right way to run a business. Businesses can become successful via all sorts of weird strategies, including ones that are diametrically opposed to one another. The single greatest fissure of this type is that between independent companies, and group companies. By […]
Steve Jobs is a bad business role model
Choosing A Business Approach That Matches Your Company Don’t try and be like Steve Jobs. Don’t learn from his example, don’t try and copy his techniques, don’t internalise his philosophy. I’m not referring here to his famously aggressive, borderline-bullying, management style. If that floats your boat then go for it. No, here I’m specifically talking […]
The self-loathing business
As has been touched on in these pages before, there is little more insidious than a focus on gaining “market share”. The idea encourages all sorts of self-destructive beliefs, such as: That the market you operate in is zero-sum (markets are far more blurry, fluid, and open than the market share pie suggests) That purchases […]
Marketing needs more cynicism
Frank Zappa, when asked “why modern music sucks”, had an interesting answer which is highly instructive for the degradation of all sorts of artistic disciplines – not least marketing. It’s an answer you wouldn’t expect, but one which once you’ve wrapped your head around it makes perfect sense. He believed the problem began when people […]
The power of an unfashionable business
There’s a theory in music which suggests, broadly speaking, that there have been no significant new genres created since the advent of the internet. Whilst no rock n’ roll song could ever have been written in the 40s, no disco song could have been written in the 50s, and no grunge song could have been […]
Why the future may look more familiar than you think
This piece originally appeared in Arc Digital. The tech revolution has claimed many scalps. Film cameras, video stores, landlines, and adult magazines — these are just a few of the technologies that have been thrown into obsolescence by the digitalization of everything. Less noticeably, technological progress has also slowed for a product that would seem to thrive […]
Does negative publicity matter?
If you’re a big corporation, it now seems more likely than not that you’ll get caught up in a major public scandal. The convergence of 1) rapidly changing cultural norms, 2) increased transparency, and 3) a media climate that values outrage as the most potent currency, means that it’s really a matter of “when”, not […]
In praise of cannibalisation
Hindsight, as we know, is a wonderful thing. Looking back on the great business failures of our time, the likes of Blockbuster and Kodak, and none of us believe that we would have made the same fatal errors of judgement. How could we? Their mistakes were so glaring that surely they would have been obvious […]
The limits of expertise
This piece first appeared in Quillette. “People are sick of experts.” These infamous and much-derided words uttered by UK Conservative parliamentarian Michael Gove express a sentiment with which we are now probably all familiar. It has come to represent a sign of the times—either an indictment or a celebration (depending on one’s political point of […]