Going along with customer lies can be good for business

Yesterday, child #2 lost a tooth. At night, he carefully placed the tooth under his pillow, for the Tooth Fairy... even though he knows, a-hem, the truth about Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy. And, sure enough, this morning, when he checked under the pillow and spotted something left by the Tooth Fairy, he gave … Continue reading Going along with customer lies can be good for business

What Nash’s work means for Marketing

We learned, at the end of last month, that the mathematician John Nash had died, with his wife Alice, in a traffic accident. Nash’s work on game theory, for which he won a Nobel prize alongside John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten, has relevance to many areas of public life, from international trade negotiations to war … Continue reading What Nash’s work means for Marketing

May 2015 round-up

A belated round up, as the last few days of May (and first ones in June) were very busy, including a couple of big pieces of work due around the same time. Murphy’s law! Funnily enough, my #5pm pictures reflect exactly that: work features heavily in this month’s pictures, either directly (i.e., I was sitting … Continue reading May 2015 round-up

Google research on choice and use of mobile apps

For a customer facing company, there are many potential benefits of developing an app. It can provide valuable customer insight; it offers a vehicle for personalisation; and it can foster loyalty towards your brand, as discussed here. However, with more than 1 million apps available in Apple’s app store, alone, you really need to understand … Continue reading Google research on choice and use of mobile apps

Positioning: be different but familiar

The textbooks will tell you that the key to succeed in the market place is to differentiate yourself from competition; to carefully choose your positioning. And that means that you need to start by answering this question: What is it that only we can do? However, a recent chat over coffee, made me think of … Continue reading Positioning: be different but familiar

Day in the Life of an academic #2: of meetings and parking tickets

My ‘Day in the Life of an Academic’ post was quite popular, generating interesting discussions on and off line. So, I decided to do another one. For my second instalment, I chose Thursday (May 7th) as this was such a different day from the one I previously wrote about. It was also 43 days after … Continue reading Day in the Life of an academic #2: of meetings and parking tickets

About creativity, coffee and the need to think like a customer

Somebody told me about a very interesting TED talk on creativity. I was very intrigued, and decided to search for it when I got home. The person that mentioned the talk, said that the speaker discussed how starting to drink coffee (instead of beer) had had such a positive impact on creativity: people were lucid … Continue reading About creativity, coffee and the need to think like a customer

April 2015 round-up

April is high up on my list of months that just flew by. Seriously, where did the last 30 days go? April was also a month of contrasts: highs and lows, fast and slow, noise and silence… It was a month that gave me a lot to think about, as I was preparing my monthly … Continue reading April 2015 round-up

An historical example of how (even well intentioned) data collection can lead to negative consequences

I was having a chat with the lovely Monika (aka Mum On The Brink) about the risks of blanket data collection. I said that, in many cases, the purpose of collecting data is harmless or even well intentioned (for instance, save time, show information that is relevant…), but that those same datasets could then be … Continue reading An historical example of how (even well intentioned) data collection can lead to negative consequences

The value of social media data is not in data itself, but the interpreter and the use

Tim Kourdi’s comment about the value of information, in my latest blog post, reminded me of an interview with Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey. Jack challenged criticism that the physical constraints of the platform (specifically, the 140 characters limit for a message) would lead to shallow, value-less content being shared. He did acknowledge that the limit … Continue reading The value of social media data is not in data itself, but the interpreter and the use