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Articles - Alex Murrell

Articles - Alex...
Thinking rationally about emotion In advertising, using emotion is entirely logical. Creative agencies have made this case...
6 months ago
83
6 months ago
In advertising, using emotion is entirely logical. Creative agencies have made this case consistently. But in 2013 Les Binet and Peter Field bought some much-needed data to the discussion. In their seminal report, The Long and The Short of It, the duo analysed 30 years of...
Articles - Alex...
The age of average (encore) The shift to music streaming has led to songs getting shorter, music getting less melodically...
11 months ago
77
11 months ago
The shift to music streaming has led to songs getting shorter, music getting less melodically diverse and lyrics getting more repetitive. Or to put it another way, just as our visual culture has become more homogeneous, so too has the music that accompanies it. Let’s run...
Articles - Alex...
The age of average In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid hired a market...
a year ago
34
a year ago
In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid hired a market research firm to survey the public on what they wanted in a work of art. Across 11 countries they then set about painting a piece that reflected the results. Each piece was...
Articles - Alex...
Magpie marketing We believe we work in turbulent times. A quick skim of the industry press and you’ll learn that...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
We believe we work in turbulent times. A quick skim of the industry press and you’ll learn that ecommerce is upending retail. Social media is uprooting advertising. Private labels are replacing brands. Advertising is dying. And TV is dead. We believe change is the new...
Articles - Alex...
The errors of efficiency We live in the era of efficiency. The advertising industry is infatuated with it. Intoxicated by...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
We live in the era of efficiency. The advertising industry is infatuated with it. Intoxicated by it. Enamoured and enthralled by it. We want our teams to be lean. Our processes to be agile. And our output to be optimised. Instead of focussing on making our work bigger, we...
Articles - Alex...
Big questions for big data Big data is big news. Search for it and Google will return 75 million results. That’s a different...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
Big data is big news. Search for it and Google will return 75 million results. That’s a different article for every 100 people on earth. There are also 18 million videos on the topic. At 5 minutes each, it would take 170 years to watch them all. Then there’s the one million...
Articles - Alex...
The pitfalls of purpose Purpose is polarising. There are those who promote it as a paragon of positioning and a...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
Purpose is polarising. There are those who promote it as a paragon of positioning and a silver-bullet strategy for success. Then there are those who refute purpose’s power and dispute its capacity to connect with consumers. It is clearly a debate that divides. For every...
Articles - Alex...
What’s the big idea? To make a big impact, we need a big idea. In brand communications, coveting the ‘big idea’ is...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
To make a big impact, we need a big idea. In brand communications, coveting the ‘big idea’ is commonplace. We look for them. Long for them. Laud them and lionise them. And yet, despite its ubiquitous use, the ‘big idea’ remains incredibly ill-defined. This article is an...
Articles - Alex...
The Millennial myth It seems that a day doesn’t pass without another article hitting the headlines exposing the...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
It seems that a day doesn’t pass without another article hitting the headlines exposing the shortcomings of the Millennial generation. It seems we are obsessed with the concept of demographic cohorts. Or, to put it more specifically, we are obsessed with the idea that...
Articles - Alex...
Adland is an island We spend eight hours a day thinking about the brands we build. Many of us more. We consider our...
over a year ago
21
over a year ago
We spend eight hours a day thinking about the brands we build. Many of us more. We consider our clients’ companies and the categories in which they compete. We visit the sites in which our products are produced and the stores in which they are sold. We analyse their adverts...
Articles - Alex...
The ageism in advertising The advertising industry is addicted to youth. We are obsessed and possessed. We crave it in our...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
The advertising industry is addicted to youth. We are obsessed and possessed. We crave it in our agencies and we covet it in our audiences. We believe younger staff are more creative and younger consumers are more valuable. But this is nothing more than received wisdom....
Articles - Alex...
The forecasting fallacy Marketers are prone to a prediction. You’ll find them in the annual tirade of trend decks. In the...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Marketers are prone to a prediction. You’ll find them in the annual tirade of trend decks. In the PowerPoint projections of self-proclaimed prophets. In the feeds of forecasters and futurists. To understand the extent of our forecasting fascination, I analysed the websites...
Articles - Alex...
How to ride a recession A storm is coming. In 2020 Britain suffered its deepest recession in over 300 years. Two years...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
A storm is coming. In 2020 Britain suffered its deepest recession in over 300 years. Two years later and the UK’s economic picture is not much prettier. This article argues that whilst recessions are a threat to some businesses, they are an opportunity for others. It argues...
Articles - Alex...
The digital dark side The advent of digital media promised so much. Savvy shoppers would no longer be surreptitiously...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
The advent of digital media promised so much. Savvy shoppers would no longer be surreptitiously swayed by advertising alone. The internet would enable them to research products. Social media would allow them to share their experiences. And ecommence would provide the power...