Tommy

I hope some of this has been useful. Apologies if not. But I have one final thought based on our collective pursuit of death to shit ads. We’ve used these handles forever, but I wonder if words like ‘creativity’, ‘creative’ and ‘risk’ do us more harm than good when we’re trying to win support from stakeholders who are wired somewhat differently to ... See more

Nassim Taleb frames it as the Theory of Antifragility - investing in one high-risk software company is fragile, investing in ten high-risk software companies is robust.

David Walsh is a statistical genius, and he makes his business decisions based on the statistical theory of asymmetric upside, where you take lots of bets with high upside and low downside. Nine might fail, but one will pay out big time, and the business progresses in a purposefully nonlinear and unpredictable direction. I simply applied that same ... See more

We can all see it. Thanks to technology and social media we’re experiencing a rapid homogenisation of culture, which is reflected in brand behaviour as well. Everyone copies everyone else. At Mona we called this the drift to the middle, and the instruction from David Walsh was always to keep Mona “on the fucking edge”. When the middle comes towards... See more

Creativity absolutely has to be applied to all four Ps, and not just to the promotional P. Otherwise, the ads are just lipstick on a pig. It’s a lot more fun when your product is ‘the world’s rarest beer’ instead of a slightly more hoppy IPA, or when your distribution mechanic is a travelling beer roulette vending machine and not just shelf facings... See more

But let’s be real, the biggest challenge every CMO faces is to get their business to adequately invest in brand. That’s where growth comes from (future demand). Not from relentless performance marketing to your existing audience, not from a splatter gun of random tactical ideas, but from building excess share of voice in your category by continuous... See more