About a year ago, I wrote an article based on my observation that we are fast approaching a level of total technical availability, deep digital integration, anywhere internet connectivity and connected everyday objects. As a result of this digital ubiquity the idea of smart-things and non-smart-things will become irrelevant. Everything will be smart. Every aspect of our lives will be connected to a system of some form and in turn brands and marketers will need to understan

On September the 11th 2001 I was a junior copywriter working for an ad-agency in central London. As the months passed following the tragedy and the reasons behind the attack and the political responses to it became clear, I found myself fascinated by American politics. Not only was I interested in the political process, quite different than that of the UK, but also the impact US foreign policy has on the remaining 95% of the world’s population (including myself). I’ll leave

As Jeff Bercovici (San Francisco bureau chief of Inc.) noted in his article a couple of weeks ago Facebook has quietly shifted into crisis mode with users sharing less--way less. One of the measures Facebook has taken to increase value (and so engagement) for its users has been with the introduction of Facebook Reactions. My initial reaction to Reactions was that Facebook had played with the one thing everyone knew them for and a swift retraction of the new functionality w

Over the coming months I’m going to keeping a close eye on the reaction to Facebook Reactions. I’m going to be talking to a couple of experts and a load of users to build a point of view on this change. My hypothesis is that Facebook Reactions won’t last and will be removed or significantly changed in the coming months. The ‘Like’ button is that rarest of things - a socially norm'd digital behavior. The only other one I can really point too is ‘to Google it’. Changing it

An interesting infographic producded by the Information is Beautiful studio: #AI #tech #apps #Social #mobile #startup #dataanalytics

In the last few weeks, my business partner and I have ben discussing the initial go-to-market strategy for our start-up bownd™. Like many bootstrapped (or cash-strapped) start-ups we've worked hard on developing a killer Social Marketing approach; as a cost-effective way to gain traction. Given the complexity of the space we've spent time understanding which platforms are best to target our audience on and critically how the ones we are going to use fit together within our

When everything is digital, what next? Well, we’re already here. Everything is digital and the way to ensure your brand can survive/stay alive is to understand that you are no longer in a product/service business, but in an experience business, no matter what business you are. Think of your favorite activity, today a large part of the experience will be digital – watching TV (Netflix), movies (trailers on Youtube), restaurants (reviews, pics on Instagram), even something ph

Great infographics from @RadiumOne #Social #mobile

Almost a year ago, I did a lot of work on why we share. Re-reading the work I found this pretty cool #infographic on how we share, by age, across the primary #social channels. #Social

Start right = finish right: Spending time to get to the right insight will pay dividends in the end. The only thing Cannes winners have in common are great insights to the audience they are trying to change the behavior or perception of. Killer insights = killer briefs: A brief should be the central point to any creative ideation. It gets the client and the agency on the same start point, it gets the creative/technology teams understanding the objectives to be met AND it se