How ‘sticky’ is your category strategy? In August 2001 the US airline industry achieved a record number of monthly passengers – 65 million.   A few days later, passenger numbers dropped dramatically and took years to recover.  9/11 took place.  People became afraid to fly.  They started to do a lot more driving.  That was the […]

Are you clear on the behaviour change you are trying to drive? Last week we talked about what makes a good Category Strategy.  Knowing the issues you are trying to address, knowing what you need to do to address them and knowing specifically how you should do it.  Then expressing this as a simple story […]

Is your category strategy set up to succeed? If you do a search on ‘strategy’ on Amazon you get 227,772 results. Even when you filter it just to Business, Finance & Law, you get 52,520. There are a lot of people out there writing about strategy. Some of you may even have read one or […]

Are you focused on what won’t change this year? So, here we are, starting another New Year.  We are only 8 days in and already you will have been bombarded with advice on how to live a better life.  The top 3 things you need to do to transform your relationships, leadership, health, fitness – […]

What is your 4 minute mile in 2016? In the 1940’s the record time for running a mile was 4.01 minutes.  The record had stood for 9 years.  The conventional wisdom was that the human body was simply not capable of running a sub 4 minute mile.  The ‘experts’ thought it was impossible.  And dangerous. […]

How many real buyers do you have? One of the biggest insults you can give a football supporter (well perhaps not the biggest, some of those aren’t repeatable here…) is that they are not a ‘real’ fan. They are a good times supporter and only come out of the woodwork to watch their team in […]

Are you leading with the leaders? The golf fans amongst you will remember the ‘Miracle of Medinah’ – the 2012 Ryder Cup.   Europe were 10-5 down with one match left on course on the Saturday afternoon.  In this match Ian Poulter birdied the last 5 holes to win a point for Europe.  It gave Europe […]

Are you giving NPD enough time to succeed? It feels like we are well into the Christmas season already and we are still 5 weeks away.  Kylie Minogue turned on the Oxford Street lights at the start of this month, Starbucks have been playing Christmas music for the last 3 weeks and all the big […]

Are you visible from a few metres away? Last week I was in Cost Co.  We got to the checkout and realised we hadn’t got toilet rolls.  So, I quickly went back grabbed a pack and then we finished checking out.  I picked up the toilet roll pack 4 times – once off the pallet, […]

Which small products can you explode? There are many things in life that could, or should, be big but remain small or niche.  The small restaurant tucked away down a side street that does much better food than the chain restaurant around the corner.  Or the specialist coffee shop that does far superior coffee but […]