Banking. Rejigs On The Way?

The Economist talks of an impending round of M&As poised to hit the banking and financial sector. Rumours fly about the blockbuster deals that may soon be done. Lehman Brothers, a Wall Street bank that is desperately fighting to restore confidence in its prospects, is at the centre of many of them. Barclays, Deutsche Bank, [...]

Planners Vs Creatives, Round 2

Who makes better planners, planners or creative people? That was the debate at IPA a few weeks ago, where planner David Golding and creative David Trott slugged it out. The verdict? “Planning + Creative = Good. Planning > Creative = Bad”. Read a wonderfully written post by Rory Sutherland on the Campaign Magazine blog.

Ideas. More Powerful Than Big Budgets

UK clothing brand Howies, like Method (The US-based home care specialist) and Innocent (A range of smoothies that’s making a name for itself in UK and parts of Europe) is a “planners” brand. In the sense that people, account planners mostly, who are at the cutting edge of marketing thinking often talk about these brands [...]

10 Commandments Of Design

In the 1980’s design god Dieter Rams expressed the ten most important criteria for what he considered was good design. His list: Good Design is innovative. Good design makes the product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps us understand the product. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design has longevity. [...]

Advertising Is Magic. Psychology Today

Psychology Today has an interesting story on the power of brands and advertising. Here it is in full.
In the June issue of Psychology Today, we covered a paper from the Journal of Consumer Research demonstrating how the display of brands automatically affects our behavior. In the studies, [...]

Youth Marketing The P&G Way

David Knox, Brand Manager Walmart team at P&G is a specialist in marketing to teens. Speaking at the IEG annual sponsorship conference, David presented a picture of Youth in the US and what smart marketers are doing to connect with this increasingly elusive demographic. The slides of his presentation are up on Slideshare.
Like our philosophy [...]

Look Alike Logos

Looks like it’s becoming more and more difficult to execute original logo designs. No matter how clever the idea, chances are someone has created a very similar logo. We’re all surrounded by the same influences, exposed to the same shapes, forms and patterns. With the importance of branding in the marketplace, and thousands of designers [...]

The Interactive Corporation. Taking Interactive Communication Beyond Marketing

Forrester’s Steven Noble has an interesting story on how the interactive experience can go well beyond marketing. He explains that just about every communication channel within the organization could benefit if they were to adopt digital media to deliver interactive messages. Here’s his story in full.
Marketing is a great place for interactive experts to test [...]

The Web Doesn’t Care

Seth Godin writes, only like he can. The web has little sympathy for brands and marketing        messages. It’s the first mass marketing medium ever that isn’t supported by ads. It doesn’t exist to make the marketer happy. If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. The Net is [...]

The Most Important ‘C’ In Advertising. And No It’s Not Creativity

If it works, people will know who it’s for. If it doesn’t, they won’t,” Ian Armstrong, Honda’s manager of customer communications talking after their path breaking live Honda Skydivers ad.
What comes before the product, before the strategy, before the idea, even before the execution? Really what is the most important ingredient in advertising and marketing [...]