Nothing beats good customer service

As memories of a carefree summer fade and the coming winter revs up its engines, so the storms of complaints about businesses seem to have become deafening. From bitter disputes on trains about autumnal service glitches and painful season ticket price rises, to the furore over 10% fuel bill hikes, it seems that everyone has something to moan…

The New Boy

It has been 7 years since I started a new job and 3 months since I last worked full-time so I guess it was no surprise that finally starting in my new role at Havas Media on Monday was slightly disorientating. The countdown had begun weeks before with the desperate attempt to keep ‘up to…

Adblocking

Wow. That was easy. I just got rid of all the ads on the internet. Before: After: All within 20 seconds of installing the Chrome extension AdBlock which is apparently now “The #1 most downloaded extension for Google Chrome and Safari”. Quartz.com reported that over a fifth of internet users are using some form of adblocking…

The difference is in the data

The commoditisation of media management is creeping ever upwards towards the top of the value chain – data management. In a world where measurable value is everything, it all comes down to the data; how clean and complete it is and how you handle it. Despite the pleas of creatives and content evangelists, they will always be…

The Accidental Death of the Media Planner

[First published on Google+ 20/02/2013] So there I was at another through-the-line campaign briefing and I suddenly felt like I was in the wrong century. Planners from every channel were stepping up in quick succession to reveal with gushing enthusiasm how they intended to spend millions of pounds of nameless client budget. This is all…

2012: When online marketing becomes marketing

[First published as an UpFronts column in Figaro Magazine on 3/01/12] This year opened with the predictable news that online marketing budgets were on the increase once again (72% of companies said they were increasing by 35% on average) and much has been made of the increasing budget allocated to online channels, mainly at the…