NEED insight

I still love an occasional LinkedIn spat.   The latest one was prompted by a presentation by Mark Ritson in New York, where he again bemoaned how marketing people don’t know enough about marketing.   He’s often found doing this in the weeks before his next Mini MBA course (£1,949 + VAT).   The focus was a recent four-country survey that said, among other findings of ignorance, that 36% of marketeers can’t list the 4 P’s.   It was a summary of this speech by Tom Morton that pr

What exactly do we mean by a light buyer?   Do we mean an occasional buyer or a non-buyer or both?   Is it a light buyer of a brand or a category?   If it’s category, do you mean your view of the category or the buyer’s?   And are we talking once a month, once a year or once a lifetime?   I always try to imagine people I’ve actually met in a research group.   To start with, if they only buy a brand once in a blue moon, they’re going to be a nightmare to find.   Unless that on

Anybody else noticed Chat GPT or Claude starting to get a bit exasperated with them?   Like many brand strategists, I’m often guilty of overthinking things, particularly when it comes to a positioning.   As I endlessly circle back around the direction and the wording, more than a hint of impatience can creep into my LLM of choice.   “That’s it!” “Now we’re cooking!” “Perfect!” “You’ve got it!” “Done?”   Once even: “Does this feel right? Or are you going to keep second-guessin

This much I know. Brands live in people’s memories.   They’re also in companies and on balance sheets. But they’re primarily a set of associations that people remember, consciously or not.   What I don’t fully understand is how memory works, despite the best efforts of folk on LinkedIn who try to explain it to me.   I get that memory is dynamic. It’s rebuilt in the moment it’s needed. So context matters, as does relevance to your needs, all shaped by prior expectation.   But