Amy Nauiokas wrote an article for Quartz titled We’ve Been Structuring Brainstorm Sessions All Wrong.
“Rather than encouraging convergent thinking, as traditional brainstorm sessions do, the goal should be to encourage divergent thinking: the practice of finding new ways to look at a problem and generating multiple solutions. In divergent thinking, the emphasis isn’t to agree on the best idea—it’s to get as far away as possible from the most obvious answer.” Continue reading “Brainstorming and divergent thinking”
Ranee Soundara wrote an article titled Amazon Prime Day Emails are a Dumpster Fire. The article was prompted by some promotional emails from Amazon pitching very lame personalized product selections. With the vast amount of big data that Amazon has available about past purchases as well as searching and browsing history, she notes that Amazon was promoting products remarkably off base—a major marketing failure for a company for a company whose profits come from selling purportedly leading-edge AI/ML technology through AWS. Continue reading “Amazon Prime Day Emails are a Dumpster Fire”
Here is a YouTube video in which Mark Ritson explains a remarkable turnaround story of the Snicker brand, by focusing on distinctive assets. Continue reading “Snickers turnaround”
Mark P. Mills wrote piece titled The Math Behind The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking. 100% green energy is an undeniably desirable objective, but achieving this may be much messier than some proponents acknowledge. Continue reading “The Math Behind The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking”
Kevin Simler posted article called Ads Don’t Work That Way explaining the how cultural imprinting works in advertising. « Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. » Continue reading “Cultural Imprinting”
A humorous Twitter thread about a beehive which hires management consultants.
“Vitamin D is produced by the body in response to sunlight and is often lauded for its health benefits. [University of Edinburgh] researchers found it also affects key cells of the immune system.”
Marketing professor and columnist Mark Ritson wrote an article in Marketing Week titled Ethnography beats focus groups hands-down, but they still serve a purpose. The article recaps an argument on Twitter between marketing professor and author Byron Sharp and practitioners Everard Hunder and Doug Garnett. Continue reading “Ethnography versus Focus Groups”
Faris Yakob, author of Paid Attention, wrote an article titled Marketing Discontent. In 2017, “Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer for Procter & Gamble, heralded a new age of personalised relevant communication he calls ‘mass one to one.’” Continue reading “Marketing Discontent”
Articles of Interest 