Listen to the Jam Read the Jam Welcome to our Marketing minus the hype Jam.This episode: the shared fictions that built marketing, brands, and maybe civilisation itself. There’s an uncomfortable truth sitting underneath almost every successful brand in the world. People do not buy products alone.They buy meaning. A logo is ink.A luxury watch tells […]
Category Archives: Learning and Development
May
11
Marketing, minus the hype: Why marketing gets you in a spin.
posted by Mike O'Brien
Watch the Jam Read the transcript Welcome to Marketing, minus the hype. This episode: Why marketing gets you in a spin. There is a feeling many marketers recognise. The work never really stops. Campaigns roll into campaigns.Reports follow reports.Ideas are replaced before they are tested. It feels like movement.It looks like progress.But it often creates […]
March
10
Why marketing leadership is broken by Ninja-mad-hatter syndrome
posted by Mike O'Brien
I remember a training session early in my career when my boss laid out the path ahead with genuine enthusiasm. First, we would become marketing ninjas – precise, skilled, lethal in our own lane. Then, once we had mastered that, we would expand – taking on more disciplines, more responsibilities, more plates to spin. Finally, […]
September
23
Dashboards show metrics. Leaders make decisions.
posted by Mike O'Brien
Why We Must Stop Rewarding Description in Marketing Education Why does education matter? It’s not because students can memorise models or copy dashboards. It’s because we want them to make better decisions – the kind that drive businesses forward. But here’s the mistake we’ve been making for too long: We reward description. The comfort of […]
September
23
Teach Digital Marketing Like It’s 2030, Not 2010
posted by Mike O'Brien
If AI can draft essays, summarise case studies, analyse data, and even generate campaign plans – why are we still teaching digital marketing at all? Why not just hand students the tools and let the machine do the work? The answer is simple: teaching in the Age of AI is not about replacing the human […]
September
18
Preparing for anything in a VUCA world
posted by Mike O'Brien
Sir Ken Robinson reminded us: “The role of education is not to prepare students for something; it is to help them prepare themselves for anything.” That single word anything changes everything. It reframes education not as a conveyor belt to a predictable outcome, but as a process of developing autonomy – the ability to shape […]
September
18
Lifelong learning in the age of AI
posted by Mike O'Brien
Lifelong learning in the age of AI: the next 10–50 years We often think of learning as something front-loaded into the first two decades of life. School. University. Qualifications. And then we step into work, as if the main job is done. But AI is dismantling that model. Not just because the technology changes faster […]
July
12
The quantum marketing skills challenge.
posted by Mike O'Brien
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, […]
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 […]
May
13
To err is human, ergo marketing automation
posted by Mike O'Brien
Is human frailty costing business business? As carbon-based life forms, we are prone to making small mistakes which can have big consequences for our businesses. According to a report referenced by Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, the NHS could afford to hire 60,000 more nurses if staff cut out basic mistakes which are costing £2.5bn a year. It […]
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 […]
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
Customer-Centricity – are you listening Tesco?
posted by Mike O'Brien
Time to get back to basics. Phase 1: Get management off their arses. Welcome to the world of Dangerous Dave Lewis, the new CEO of Tesco. A boss who must put the wind up managers by making them get back to the shop floor on a regular basis. Change Management in the real world is much […]
March
08
Tsar Wars – big agency v plucky client
posted by Mike O'Brien
The battle for control between agencies and clients draws near In a galaxy not far, far away: Brand Activation, Content Marketing, Automation, Accountability and Client Training are about to do battle on an epic scale for control of the marketing and communication industry. The shape of the relationship between clients and agencies is about to undergo […]
November
26
Why market when you can UnMarket?
posted by Mike O'Brien
Calling time on the old rule book. Scott Stratten is President of UnMarketing and is, demonstrably, an expert in social engagement. What constitutes the title “Expert in the field?” His client’s viral marketing videos have been viewed over 60 million times. More importantly, his book, Unmarketing – Stop Marketing. Start Engaging (Revised and updated edition), […]
November
23
The future is faster than one click
posted by Mike O'Brien
I am deep in the thought-provoking book, One~Click – Jeff Bezos and the rise of amazon.com. by Richard L. Brandt. It is an engaging read that goes behind the scenes on how a business like Amazon comes into being. This is not a story of a single brainstorming moment of conception. At its heart, the narrative surrounds an entrepreneur with the […]
November
15
Out of the comfort zone and into the event horizon
posted by Mike O'Brien
Feel the fear and read it anyway There are many points of fear and enlightenment on the road to gaining an academic qualification in digital marketing. As a lead tutor on the IDM’s world class Diploma in Digital course, I watch professionals with considerable experience leafing through Dave Chaffey and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick’s brilliant reference work, […]
November
15
The 3.0 world belongs to creative thinkers
posted by Mike O'Brien
Make the world a better place – with marketing – seriously? In 2010, the marketing legend Philip Kotler, together with Herman Kartajaya and Iwan Sitiawan collaborated on the publication of Marketing 3.0. This thought-provoking book explores the transition of marketing from product-based (1.0) through the current consumer-based focus (2.0) and into an age of collaborative […]
