It’s not big data – it’s intimate data

So many of us are gearing up to collect as much data as we can from our every interaction with consumers and it is true that using this data to create highly personalized products and services is a key component of the Connected Marketing approach. However, we should also consider the nature of that data; not all data is equal …

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The End of Average

Harvard professor Todd Rose recently published “The End of Average” in which he argues that the world of education and business are set up to work for an average person, who simply does not exist. Rose believes that there are principles of individuality that means that a one size fits all approach does not work in the 21st century, if it ever did …

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The Connected Marketing equation

At the heart of the Connected Marketing approach is a very simple equation: Physical + Digital + Sensorial = Emotional. But actually this is too simple really. Because what counts is not just having those connections, but the connections between the experiences there. And even then, they don’t guarantee your consumer will form an emotional connection with your brand. The …

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Who is the Connected Marketer?

Since we started to introduce the idea of The Connected Marketer at conferences and events earlier this year people have asked us who the connected marketer is? What does a connected marketer look like? We think of The Connected Marketer as being a 21st Century version of Renaissance Man. In the 15th century the renaissance movement was led by polymaths; men who …

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The Connected Marketer & The Medici Effect

I explained in an earlier blog how the connected marketer needed to be like Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance man: a polyglot learning many different skills in order to master both the act and art of modern marketing. But that is at the individual marketer level; what does that mean for the corporate marketing body as a whole? Da Vinci operated in …

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Wake up and smell the coffee

Whenever I am asked by people in meetings and events to name a company that is already using a Connected Marketer approach I can reel off a whole list of them, but I almost always start in the same place: Starbucks. The Starbucks ‘Pay & Go’ functionality is perhaps the best example of a brand that has created something that …

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In praise of Marshall McLuhan

I am pretty sure that since I entered the mobile marketing industry 14 years ago, the most often repeated phrase I have heard has been “the medium is the message”. Actually I heard the phrase “this is the year of mobile’ a lot in the first five years, but that seems utterly redundant to talk about now. What has stood …

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What Marketers MUST learn from Brexit

A cursory glance at mainstream and social media will tell you that a lot of people are still very angry about the Brexit decision. As someone who firmly believes that the failure to communicate effectively lies behind the failure of most human endeavor, I quickly applied this thinking to Brexit also. But made a fundamental mistake the same as many marketers …

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The Need for Lifelong Learning

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the changes going on around you? Do you feel like you are underprepared, untrained and under resourced to meet the challenges of digital changes around you? It is not just the volume and speed of those changes, but the fact that everyone around you seems to be on top of the latest marketing technology …

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Predicting the future

The thing about predictions is that they are easy to make because very rarely are you held to account. If you have ever been asked to contribute to one of those books or articles that gather together a group of people every year to make predictions about your industry, then you know this to be true. No one ever comes …

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