Consistency matters, but nobody wants to get a customer service apology written like a LinkedIn motivational speech. Somewhere in a marketing department, somebody is reviewing a perfectly reasonable social media post. It’s friendly. It’s engaging. It might even make somebody smile. Unfortunately, there’s a problem. It doesn’t sound exactly like the company’s website. Which doesn’t…
Because the internet doesn’t need another 40,000 articles written by robots pretending to be thought leaders. Content marketing is dead. Again. Apparently, artificial intelligence has finally finished it off. Why spend hours researching, writing and developing useful content when an AI tool can produce 2,000 words on The Seven Secrets of Transformational Business Growth before…
Looking for the best marketing podcast? Congratulations. You’ve found it. Probably. Of course, declaring The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing the best marketing podcast is a rather bold claim. Especially when about seventeen million marketing podcasts already compete for your attention, most of which promise to revolutionise your business before you’ve finished your morning coffee.…
Protecting the brand can become a dangerous adventure involving corporate blue, approved fonts, and several increasingly nervous marketing executives. Somewhere in Britain, a marketing executive is staring at a perfectly good campaign idea. It’s creative. It’s interesting. It might even persuade somebody to buy something. Naturally, they’re terrified. Not because the campaign is controversial. Not…
An extraordinary tale of corporate identity, creative paralysis, and a logo that must never be moved three pixels left. Somewhere in a corporate office sits a document of enormous importance. It contains 137 pages. Seventeen stakeholders have reviewed it, three committees have approved it, and it has been revised so many times that nobody remembers…
When brand guidelines matter more than customers. Somewhere in a marketing department, a perfectly good creative idea has just been rejected. Not because it was offensive. Not because it was misleading. Not even because it was particularly expensive. They rejected it because the logo was four millimetres too close to the edge of the page.…
Because purchasing decisions are rarely as sensible as the people making them. Human beings are wonderfully complicated creatures. We can build spacecraft, perform brain surgery and develop artificial intelligence capable of writing an entire marketing strategy in approximately eleven seconds. Yet we can also spend £85 on a shirt because it has a tiny embroidered…
Because there’s a fine line between being recognisable and becoming wallpaper. Somewhere in a marketing department, right now, someone is having a serious conversation about whether a social media graphic uses the right shade of blue. The colour has been carefully selected. It has a reference number. It appears in a 196-page brand guidelines document,…
How to spot the modern marketing guru in the wild, preferably before you buy their £997 masterclass. The modern marketing landscape is home to a remarkable variety of creatures. There are strategists, consultants, specialists, practitioners and people who have genuinely spent decades understanding how businesses grow. And then there are the marketing gurus. You can…
Doing less requires far more thinking than doing everything. Marketing has a peculiar relationship with simplicity. Everyone claims to want it. Business owners want simpler strategies. Marketing directors want clearer priorities. Customers want straightforward messages. And marketing teams would love to finish a Friday without discovering they’ve somehow taken on responsibility for another social media…