Most of the marketing tasks that once took highly-skilled teams weeks to accomplished can now be actioned in minutes by an individual with a smartphone. Even the most complex programmatic campaigns are triggered, delivered and dynamically optimised in milliseconds. But speed isn’t everything. While marketers make every effort to optimise business and human productivity, […]
Category Archives: Innovation
April
13
How I long to be more like you Marketing Automation bot – I think
posted by Mike O'Brien
is your boss a bit botty? In my early career the thought of coming to work to knock out yet another knockout brand ad campaign for a client… made sleeping over in the agency seem worth it. Now, at the age of 59, hardly a day goes by when I feel there is more to working […]
December
03
The 12 A’s of Christmas
posted by Mike O'Brien
Santa has been busy thinking about what you want for Christmas My early Christmas gift to one and all readers is my definitive A-Z list (with a twist ) of marketing in the digital age… the twist is that they all begin with the letter A. There’s optimisation for you. Attention Keeping in touch with the […]
November
03
Winter is coming Don Draper
posted by Mike O'Brien
Are clients cooling their interest in agencies? In July 2006, Unilever started giving the cold shoulder (sorry) to the agency world when it cut its UK marketing and digital agency roster from 20 to 7 shops. At the same time, Unilver quietly announced a review of its global digital roster. Among those agencies who survived the cull were: Agency […]
October
03
The ABC of OVP (Online Value Proposition)
posted by Mike O'Brien
As Leonardo DaVinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” So my as-simple-as-it-gets take on developing a powerful OVP (Online Value Proposition) is… “Be more useful than useless.” The process is as follows: A. Assess what customers find most useful B. Be especially mindful of things that remain useful over time C. Commit to remaining demonstrably more useful than […]
May
23
The agency model is breaking bad
posted by Mike O'Brien
All good things come to an end Advertising, direct marketing and digital agencies have played a pivotal role in turning marketing into a $600 billion a year industry. The memorable ads, mailshots and digital campaigns have done more than simply help advertisers to create brands, sell products and develop ongoing relationships with customers, they have […]
April
16
Get agile or get left behind
posted by Mike O'Brien
On February 11-13, 2001, at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains of Utah, seventeen software developers got together to, as they put it: “Talk, ski, relax, and try to find common ground.” What they produced and signed up to was The Agile Manifesto: a 12-point commitment to optimising the development of software […]
March
27
Marketing automation prepare to be out-thought
posted by Mike O'Brien
Tempus fugit for the mortal marketer Time, the most precious commodity ever conceived by man, marches relentlessly towards the future without so much as a passing thought for marketer or consumer. It is an unavoidably finite resource that needs to become the central focal point for every product or service hoping to survive in an age of […]
March
07
Let’s humanise marketing automation
posted by Mike O'Brien
Marketing Automation is not an extinction level event for marketers There is a growing belief among computer scientists that machines will soon reach the condition of “artificial general intelligence” and match humans in their intellectual capacity. The Future of Life Institute in the US and the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge university, among other […]
February
03
The RISE of the micro marketing machine
posted by Mike O'Brien
The past makes me confused about the future of marketing The Bellwether report for January 2015, found that the “fragile nature of the economy has knocked the confidence of marketers and forced many to adopt “cost-efficient” online strategies to reign in their advertising spend.” It then went on to state that, “Despite the slowdown in advertising spend in […]
December
21
Zen and the art of motivation maintenance
posted by Mike O'Brien
Your feet are up but the mind is still at work. If like me you are looking forward to the Christmas Break but have been insanely busy and a have a head so full of ideas about the next evolution in digital marketing that you have no idea how we got here, this is my Christmas present for you. […]
December
16
Laughing time is almost over for the agency as we know it
posted by Mike O'Brien
In two minds about the future of advertising and marketing Sir Martin Sorrel himself admits if he was starting out again he wouldn’t build the kind of mega agency he runs today. He is busy looking towards China, digital and customer insight to maintain momentum while wondering, like the rest of us, is there a better […]
December
06
Failure must always be an option
posted by Mike O'Brien
Amazon’s A to Z of successful failure. Unlike most business leaders, Jeff Bezos has no problem admitting that he has lost billions of dollars on failed experiments. As anyone involved in innovation knows, thinking up new ideas is easy. Sorting out the good from the bad is the difficult bit. Bezos claims that embracing failure is an important part of […]
