Can you get shoppers to buy slightly more?   At this year’s US Masters Golf tournament, Ernie Els walked up to the first green on the first hole of his round. He had just chipped his ball to about 3 feet from the hole. He was left with a simple short putt for a par. […]

Are you encouraging shoppers to make active choices? Can you remember the days when suits used to be standard office attire for men?  Dressing for work was easy.  Buy 3 suits, a few shirts and ties.  Rotate the combinations.  Job done. Then dress down Friday was introduced. Suddenly Friday mornings became hard.  You actually had […]

Do you see what the average shopper sees? Behavioural Economists have identified a number of biases that influence the way we think and make decisions.  One of these is something called ‘confirmation bias’.  It is the tendency to search for, remember and interpret information in a way that confirms our preconceptions. The simplest form of […]

Are you thinking broadly enough? Let’s start with a couple of puzzles to get you thinking. Firstly, a man is lying dead in a field. Next to him there is an unopened package. There is no other creature in the field. How did he die? Secondly, a woman has two sons who were born in […]

Are you too close to your categories & brands? In Zen Buddhism, there is a concept called ‘Shoshin’. To properly understand it you will need to read the rest of this blog sitting cross legged on the floor, breathing deeply and slowly humming. Only joking. Shoshin means ‘beginner’s mind’. It refers to letting go of […]

Are you fighting the right battles? Why are we here? Don’t worry we’re not about to go into a deep discussion about the meaning of life.  We mean, more practically, why we are all here?  Well, without boring you with all of Darwin’s theory, we are here because humans have been particularly good at the […]

Are you looking at things in the right way? Look at the picture above. What did you see? The old woman or the young woman? If you saw the old woman, look again, can you see the young woman? And if you saw the young woman, can you see the old woman? And if you […]

Are you selling in the right way?   Last week we talked about things that are overrated and underrated. We used the example of sport – Oakland Athletics & Leicester City – to show how focusing on underrated (but important) factors can lead to big success. This isn’t just true in sport, but in all […]

Are you spending time and money on the right things? A few of you may have read the book ‘Moneyball’ by Michael Lewis or watched the film starring Brad Pitt. Moneyball tells the story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team and their general manager Billy Beane. The central premise of Moneyball was that the collective […]