SueUnerman

Britain’s Eurovision dreams have been dashed again.  No great surprise that Bonnie’s song came 19th out of 26.  That won’t have caused a total eclipse of the national heart.
What is a surprise is that academic research from a noted music college has conclusively proved that this is a perfectly fair and just result.  Denmark triumphed on merit alone.  European politics had no part in it. According to this recent research, there is no truth at all in the idea (widely believed over here) that the voting essentially involves friendly countries doing each other favours, while countries who may have thrown their military or diplomatic weight around in the past get treated less generously. Read more »

So one of football’s managerial greats has gone.  Ferguson’s era is finally over.  Read more »

In a meeting with our digital heads last week speculation was rife on this issue.  It boils down I think ultimately to functionality, though fashion clearly has a role in establishing who wins this next zeitgeist battle.

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Spring seems finally to have arrived.  There’s blossom everywhere as I write (I am aware it could be snowing again by the time you read this!) and there is smile on the face of Londoners who have been braced against the cold for too long so far this year.

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Media research may be improving in accuracy in silos but overall we are building the Tower of Babel. Read more »

A year ago my co-author Jonathan Salem Baskin told  Economist Summit delegates that the job of marketing was to represent consumer truth within the organisation.  Not to make ads that spin the truth, not in fact only just to make ads at all, but to influence all aspects of marcomms that the consumer encounters, whether that’s CRM, Social, instore or employee advocacy. Read more »

I’ve recently been chatting to one of the all-time gurus of media strategy about the state of planning in the industry.  He worries that good consumer insight is being overshadowed by big data, that the exciting developments in this field will lead to real deep human insight being of less value to marketers and overlooked.  Judging by the debates I have listened to at conferences and seminars over the last couple of weeks, this is a question that is looming over our industry and worrying many.   Read more »

This seemed like a theme that speakers came back to again and again during the Warc MAP conference this month.  (By the way, I don’t know whether to put “siloed” or “silo’d”.  I’m drawn to the apostrophe but decided against it because I know some people get very annoyed by its misuse.)

The two days covered a range of subjects and included David Smith’s vision of global futures (the rise and rise of the middle classes around the world), Colin Strong’s challenge of the smartness of Big Data (needs the perspective of market research), new research technologies based on neuro-marketing and facial recognition and Les Binet and Peter Field’s new take on the IPA Datamine. Read more »

I spent some of this morning in the inspiring company of Mat Hunter, Chief Design Officer at the Design Council .  (If you’re going to be Chief Design Officer anywhere it can’t get better than that job can it ?) We were sharing a panel at a local government digital summit, compered by the wonderful Spencer Kellyand giving our experiences of driving digital change. 

Mat talked persuasively about the key difference good design makes.  Like so much else the secret is to make it relevant and attuned to the customer rather than merely to the needs of the organisation.  Read more »

Twitter by candlelight – highly recommended in case of emergency, keep your iPad charged.