How fast do you want it? How fast are you reading this? A meta-analysis of 190 studies suggests the average adult reading speed in English is 238 words per minute for non-fiction (it’s slightly higher for fiction). Whether you are reading this and how rapidly is a function of a…

Advertising agencies are all unusual in similar ways Advertising agencies are all unusual in similar ways. They are organizationally distinct from client companies. They have the traditional accounting and HR but usually their core departments have different philosophies and approaches to the same work. The objective of the agency structure…

How to navigate the flux of culture for commerce WHAT IS THE CULTURE COMPASS? The Culture Compass is a navigation device for understanding, predicting and hopefully capitalizing on shifts in culture. Across any number of vectors, culture swings like a pendulum, gaining momentum in one direction before reaching an apogee, only to swing back with…

Despite increased awareness of behavioral economics in the industry, little advertising is shaped by using it. Does the future lies in attention economics instead. In 2011, Jim Stengel, former CMO of Procter & Gamble, published his book Grow. In it, he analyzed 50 brands with the highest Millward-Brown loyalty scores…

Is Dominos a pizza company, a tech company or a delivery company? Snacking on some television over the pandemic I experienced a pleasing shock of recognition when I noticed that Dominos was using an insight my wife had spontaneously expressed a few days before. We have mostly been cooking this…

But what is brand strategy becoming? Research company Gartner recently announced that, partially at least, in response to the pandemic and its associated uncertainties, CMOs now rank ‘brand strategy’ as their top priority. …

That’s What She Shed Words are alive and well in the internet age, observes Faris Yakob, and their broader cultural effects are more than ever tied to their ability to break free of their intended contexts and become bigger then the ad — here’s how it worked for these brands. …

In 2005 P&G coined the term “first moment of truth” to describe the importance of packaging in their marketing model. Back in the beforetime, a friend of mine asked me over dinner in London if I knew about the Lyle’s Golden Syrup logo. I did not … and was surprised…

Permission Denied Late last year, the decision-maker behind the world’s largest advertising budget made a pronouncement about the future of the industry. Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer for Procter & Gamble, heralded a new age of personalised relevant communication he calls ‘mass one to one’: “It’s not as reliant on…