Monthly Archives August 2014

August 29, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Guru in a Bottle, Thought Leadership  No comments

At its peak in 2007, the virtual world known as Second Life had in excess of 5m members.

Everything about this world could be customised – latest cat walk fashions, drinks in a bar or a luxury mansion could be bought for real money. IBM bought real estate, American Apparel opened a virtual shop and Reuters paid for journalist Adam Pasick to be an avatar who reported on virtual happenings. Countries even opened virtual embassies. Yes, really!

The news media thought this parallel universe would become the way in which millions around the world would find ‘self-actualisation’ to borrow the term from US psychologist Abraham Maslow.

In 2014, the number of members in Second Lif...

August 15, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Thought Leadership  No comments

There’s a view that companies are built to do only three things: make profits, pay taxes and obey the law.

The rest is window dressing.

Well, those managers who subscribed to that point of view are probably now retired as the business world is increasingly being expected to take a lead role by its customers, clients and employees in making a net contribution to society rather than simply taking as much as it can for the benefit of its shareholders.

Zoroastrian philosophy

This enlightened self-interest isn’t anything new.

I belong to a tiny ethnic group – the Parsees – whose most famous export is in fact one of the most successful organisations in the world...

August 13, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Public Relations practice  No comments

In the world of American basketball, John Wooden is a legend. He coached UCLA to win 10 NCAA national championships in just 12 seasons. And he achieved this feat because of his ability to constantly adapt to new players, new rivals and new styles of play.

In our own industry, marketers and PR professionals need to be open to learning from failure.

Business leaders are continually being faced with complex changes: an aging population, the rise of the middle class in emerging economies with a different attitudes and beliefs and constant technological advancement of the web and mobile technologies that disrupt well-established business models, to a name a few.

What we’ve learnt ...

August 12, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

Men and women think differently. Ask my wife and she’ll explain this in some detail. But why we do think differently is another mystery.

Going back in time, one possible theory is that when we were hunter/gatherers different skills were required. The men spent time away from camp, tracking animals and fighting off intruders. Women needed social skills to bring up children.

Yet there are bound to be many other factors at work for this variation to survive into modern times.

The latest research suggests that living standards and access to education probably bear more responsibility for cognitive disparity between men and women than genes, nursery colours or the ability to cat...

August 12, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle  No comments

It was just a few weeks’ ago that we were celebrating the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing in the Oval Office.

But according to the latest evidence, Americans have fallen out of love with space missions and that’s a terrible indictment on our thirst to further explore the boundaries of our tiny universe.

An 18-month enquiry by the National Research Council (NRC) has concluded that the project to put a man on Mars to be “unsafe, underfunded and doomed to fail” in its current form.

A real kick in the pants for NASA that must feel like it’s on the longest and loneliest spacewalk mission in history.

Apparently Americans were always ambivalent about reaching for ...

August 9, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

On the 18 September 2014 the Scottish people (pop. just over 5m) will make an historic decision. They will vote whether to remain as part of the United Kingdom or to separate from the union that has bound us together since the Act of Union 1707.

Historical background to this important referendum

This is probably one of the most important decisions that the Scottish people have had to make in the last 700 years. To understand the importance of this historic vote, it’s helpful to take a look at the events that happened over 700 years ago and in particular the Battle of Bannockburn.

Today, the Scottish town of Bannockburn lies immediately south of Sterling...

August 5, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Sales practice, Social marketing practice  No comments

While most marketers and retailers are familiar with the online shopping concepts of “showrooming” and “webrooming”, new research by e-consultancy Red Snapper suggests that the majority of UK online consumers are now “boomerooming” which is the habit of researching online, visiting a physical store to check out the physical product and then returning online to make a purchase at a lower price.

By comparison, “showrooming” occurs when consumers examine products in-store and then go online to find a cheaper price, while “webrooming” is the practice of researching products online before buying them in a bricks and mortar store.

According to researchers, almost two-thirds...

August 2, 2014,  Consumer behaviour  No comments

MRI scans indicate that physical pleasure is experienced by the brain when we give; when people co-operate with us; when we believe we have a good reputation; or when we receive recognition. Being treated fairly by others also lights up reward pathways.

These triggers can be equally or more powerful as those for receiving financial reward.

Yet, comments Jan Hills in her excellent new book Brain Savvy HR, the remuneration policy at most firms appears to be based on two fundamentally incorrect assumptions: work is an economic exchange with time and skills given in return for money; and people are narrowly self-interested, focused on gaining benefits for themselves and avoiding ...