The brands that will perform through disruption are not those with the most sophisticated crisis response infrastructure. They are those whose leaders understood, early enough to act on it, that resilience is not built in the moment of crisis. It is accumulated quietly, over time, through investment in human capability, direct customer relationships, and the kind of genuine authority that travels independently of platform favour. This piece closes the series by making the case that people first is not a soft position. It is the highest-returning long-term investment available to marketing leadership.
Category Archives: Marketing Leadership
May
28
Marketing Leadership Minus the hype 4: the platform trap
posted by Mike O'Brien
Every investment made in optimising for a platform’s current requirements is an investment in a relationship whose terms are controlled entirely by the other party. Search fragmentation is not a discoverability problem. It is a sovereignty problem. Here is what marketing leaders should build instead.
May
26
Marketing Leadership minus the hype 2: The measurement trap
posted by Mike O'Brien
Why the attribution crisis is a leadership problem disguised as a data problem The marketing industry’s response to the erosion of third-party cookie tracking has been, in its broad shape, technically impressive and strategically insufficient. First-party data infrastructure has been rebuilt at considerable expense. Data clean rooms have been deployed to enable privacy-compliant measurement across […]
May
26
Marketing leadership minus the hype 1: Judgment over speed
posted by Mike O'Brien
Time to value human judgement rather than simply accelerate activity There is a contradiction at the heart of modern marketing that most leaders feel but few have named, certainly not in the volume of content currently competing to name it for them. Marketing has never had more capability. More data, more channels, more automation, more […]
May
12
Consolidation and the capability crisis
posted by Mike O'Brien
What the holding company model did to marketing capability Something happened to marketing capability over the last three decades and the industry has been reluctant to say it plainly. It wasn’t a skills shortage in the conventional sense. The talent was there. Brilliant people kept entering the profession, and many of them were genuinely exceptional. […]
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, […]
February
22
A Better Way to Teach Digital Marketing at Level 7
posted by Mike O'Brien
Every postgraduate digital marketing module teaches theory first and uses cases as proof. That is the wrong order. And it is not the only thing wrong with how digital marketing is taught at Level 7. Too many programmes still treat the discipline as channel management. A tour of platforms. A sequence of tactics wrapped in […]
October
22
The New Smog of content
posted by Mike O'Brien
How proposition-less content became the mental pollution of the AI Age There was a time when content had to mean something. When brands and writers had propositions, promises, and points of view. Now, as AI and attention economics collide, our feeds are being filled with something far more insidious: low-grade, proposition-less content – material that’s […]
September
23
Dark Patterns Part 1: Urgency & Scarcity
posted by Mike O'Brien
We’ve all felt it: the ticking timer at checkout, the red text screaming “Only 1 left!”, the banner warning “Hurry – 37 people are looking at this right now.” These are urgency and scarcity tactics – designed to trigger a primal fear of missing out (FOMO). Why it works Behavioural science explains it. Scarcity is […]
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 […]
February
14
Marketing the Illusion of Material Happiness
posted by Mike O'Brien
This blog series critically examines the illusion of material happiness perpetuated by consumerism and marketing, exploring its impact on consumer behavior, marketer well-being, the consumer experience, and the environment, while aiming to illuminate sustainable paths forward.
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, […]
June
12
The creative brief has lost too much mojo
posted by Mike O'Brien
99 times out of 100, the creative brief isn’t really creative enough to inform and inspire great thinking.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
October
26
Ganging up on gangs in the coffee business
posted by Mike O'Brien
Go ahead make my day Kenco I’ve been looking for a campaign to support last November’s post; The World belongs to Creative Thinkers: an article inspired by Philip Kotler’s book, Marketing 3.0 in which he urges us to make marketing a force for long-term good and not just short-term sales. For me, the approach that […]
July
17
Nest on its way to your home and beyond
posted by Mike O'Brien
Big Brother’s toe in the door or the start of bringing Amazon-style customer service into our everyday lives? I am firmly in Nest’s corner on this one. The idea of my home and many of the objects in it anticipating my every need, want and desire is going to be good for our lives and […]
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 […]
February
10
A viral campaign that really pushes my button
posted by Mike O'Brien
You are walking down the street when you spot a big red button sitting in the middle of the square where nothing ever happens. You walk over and in a fit of idle curiosity you push the button. What follows is nothing short of mind-blowing… What this viral ad proves is that the TV station […]
February
10
Angry Birds meets Mad Men – in a polymathic nutshell of useful agile responsivness
posted by Mike O'Brien
Angry Birds meets Mad Men – it’s the new me but a lot more useful than I used to be. After 34 years in brand, direct and digital marketing I am unashamedly addicted to all things digital, demonstrably media-neutral, obsessively customer-centric, passionate about lecturing and ready with a collection of brand agency stories that would […]
February
06
Hands up all those who think the age of crowdsourcing is at hand?
posted by Mike O'Brien
Tapping up the endless funding resource E pluribus Unum (from the many, one) is the motto of the United States of America. How appropriate then that a couple of American editors for Wired Magazine, Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, should be the first to conjure up the now familiar phrase ‘crowdsourcing’ way back in 2005. […]
January
22
Hi my name is Mike and I am an insight infoholic.
posted by Mike O'Brien
How well do you know your customers? Developing deep, actionable insight into the world of customers is fraught with difficulty for small businesses. Those huge databases chock full of accurate, well classified and richly segmented collations of relevant data sets will forever be in our hearts but not within reach of our budgets. So do […]
January
17
Great creative meets customer service meets content meets shock and awesome
posted by Mike O'Brien
It’s a minor miracle. Mind blowing creativity that took the whole business and a plane load of customers to deliver the big idea. Right up there with Avis We try Harder in my books. I read a covering article in which the marketing pundit asked, “It’s all very well, but will it sell seats?” You […]
January
08
Even the longest journey starts with a single leap into the unknown
posted by Mike O'Brien
Falling for brand advertising. I started out over 30 years ago in brand advertising creating TV, press, poster and radio campaigns in the age of mass marketing, when the madmen of Madison Avenue arrived in London. (The concept was everything and the needs, wants and desires of the target audience were of little consequence.) Relating […]
January
07
Cutting the Big Data house of cards down to size
posted by Mike O'Brien
The Big Data equals big capital expenditure lobby has had marketing journalists reaching for ever more hyperbolic factoids about data. A couple of my favourite examples are: “90% of the data in the world was produced in the last two years” (OMG!) and, “More than 2 billion videos were watched online in the last 24 […]
January
06
Strongbow has the bottle to use an RFID chip
posted by Mike O'Brien
In think Strongbow’s Earn it Campaign is great – I wish I had the bottle for the Stand Up Challenge – but this idea to use the bottle cap to trigger events in their new “Starter’ campaign that is rolling out across Europe is a great example of the way the physical and digital worlds […]
December
30
It’s time for Digital to become the marketing thought leader
posted by Mike O'Brien
Digital is beginning to take centre stage in the advertising and marketing process. Where brand advertising creates awareness, digital shapes preference and conversion. Where direct marketing builds customer relationships, digital expedites the process in real time. Resistance from the vested interests of channel-focused silos will soon be swept away by customer preference for the sheer utility […]
December
22
From one way traffic to interpersonal traffic with VW
posted by Mike O'Brien
I love this linear commercial for VW. It’s called 30 years in the making and it shows the changing life of the manufacturers working on the car’s design and production over the lifespan of the car. It’s a perfect example of linear communication. The brand speaks. Tells us a brand-centric story about it’s own narrative […]
December
18
It’s the experience not the budget or the channel that counts
posted by Mike O'Brien
Thinking outside the silo As the age of blow it all on TV marketing driven by the silo-centric interests of mega agency networks sputters in and out of temporal existence, I notice a worrying trend: rumour has it that mobile advertising is set to reap the budgetary fallout. Didn’t we go through this a few years back when TV […]
December
18
It’s briefing Jim but not as we know it
posted by Mike O'Brien
In search of a little mojo I was recently tasked with the job of helping a major mobile phone company rediscover their briefing mojo. The core of this kind of mission is not to underestimate, berate or patronise the group you are working with. Most clients and agencies still work on the basis of … “If […]
December
05
Digital Marketing redefined
posted by Mike O'Brien
In search of a definition I have been working on a Module for an online course which had me scrabbling around for a succinct one-liner describing digital marketing. First time of note is that finding anything outside of Wiki’s version is nigh on impossible. The next issue is the fact that those who bother to […]
November
29
Too young to write briefs for an ageing population
posted by Mike O'Brien
A new twist on an old problem. When I see client and agency teams struggling to get a brief together or push work out the door that is actually irrelevant to the target audience, I am reminded that I too was once young. While a lack of audience segmentation is often at the root of poor […]
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
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 […]
