Lab meeting when you don’t have new results

I was once involved in some research into factors affecting decision makers when selecting an agency, & #2 (after commerciality) was sector insight, which makes sense right - risk ↓ certainty ↑. Yet such a small % of agencies position themselves as sector focused. Why is that?

1/2. In markets with a strong digital dimension, there is rightly a sense that profitability will emerge as an inevitable consequence of scale, but for more traditional businesses the notion of economies of scale is often a seductive but dangerous promise.

2/2. If you can’t achieve a healthy profit when doing things small, it’s really bloody unlikely you’ll be able to make a profit when doing them big.

In boring markets it pays to ignore direct competition. They'll encourage you to think small. Instead look for mega brands targeting that audience, even if the product is unrelated. It will ensure you set your own bar uncomfortably high, which is exactly where it needs to be.

Someone give this to me

It’s ironic that the main objection I get to truly big, ambitious content ideas is a lack of budget (even though the budget for channel promotion remains healthy). Surely nothing is more expensive than trying to make a noise with mediocrity..?

Before writing sales copy, remind yourself you're doing the reader a favour. If a friend asked for help & you had some great advice, you wouldn’t feel shy or hold back. You would tell them exactly what to do & feel great about it. That’s what writing sales copy should feel like.

Rules for UX - 1/5 - Keep the basics basic - there are thousands of different car models available in the UK. They all put the steering wheel in the same place.

2/5. Good design does not = good UX. But bad design does = bad UX.

A CMO should be the most inquisitive pain in the ass a business has to endure. We should poke about in every corner of every function. We may not be able to tell them what to do, but if gaps then it’s up to us to shine a big, irritating light all over them. It's all in our remit.

3/5. Test, but not for the sake of testing- testing depends on maximising traffic whilst isolating variables, so for pages with less than 10,000 visits a day, only test one thing at a time. For those with less than 1,000, resort to best practice.

4/5. People scan before they read and they read before they act - if your headers, bullet points and other priority elements in your visual hierarchy aren’t remarkably well chosen, nobody will ever read your copy or follow your journey.

1. There is no question that tech will transform our industry. Frankly, I think it’s fucking terrifying and we should be talking about it more than we are. What I’m less sure about is the hype we’re already attaching to today’s “marketing automation”...

2. where certain very specific events trigger equally specific actions. Robotic automation cannot conjure up new, innovative solutions. It can only accelerate the things you’re already doing. If those things are mediocre, you’re going to become super efficient at being mediocre.

1/2. I understand the need for SEO specialists, but am I the only one that thinks it’s weird there are still entire agencies that focus on pure SEO, even though all google wants to do is rank the best content from the most trusted brands & it’s pretty f**king good at doing it?

Part 2. If you want to improve your rankings, build massive landing pages with loads of rich content, ideally on the same URL, that cater to a broad spectrum of search intents via digestible UX. Then get on with actual marketing.

Pretty sure there are two types of people on this planet; those that instinctively understand why the word “spagbol” should be permanently expunged from our vernacular. And c***s.

Why do we spend so little time talking about the question of what the company actually does - the strategic competencies that define the brand’s position in the mind of every stakeholder. This question is surely at least 900 times more important than values & purpose combined.?

Ogilvy would love today’s world - the visibility of data, the speed with which tests can be conducted, the abundance of information for research. Most of all though, he’d love how little the av marketer makes use of those assets, & what an advantage they could therefore give him.