August 10, 2006

Strategy cow

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

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Strategy cow

Having just posted about the value of doubt I have to point to the attractiveness of certainty… as embodied in the binary wisdom of Richard Huntington’s splendid strategy cow.

My eldest son has this toy. It is a cow (I think) which normally stands erect but when you push the base upwards it collapses. It perfectly describes how I feel when I come across lacklustre or cliched thinking – flacid, deflated and lacking in the strength to perform simple tasks like standing up properly.
From now on I will submit the strategies of the moment to the Strategy Cow for her to pass judgement.

Waterfalls and chaos

I linked to this paper on wicked problems the other day and Chris Corrigan commented “there’s a lot in that paper eh?”. Which is true.

Unhurried marketing

I’m experimenting with marketing less and listening more

Passion brands bring people together based on common interests and excitements. I’m particularly interested in ones created from the bottom up, as opposed to driven by producers concerned mainly with profit.

Medinge Moments

Just back from another extraordinary gathering at Medinge where the community that has produced Beyond Branding meets each summer. I was planning to keep this

The volatile chemistry of trust

Interesting research from Stanford suggests that exciting brands get more trusted after making mistakes and putting them right whilst more “sincere” brands start with more trust but lose it more easily. Perhaps the sensible interpretation is that second-guessing customers can be a waste of time!

Customer-centricity: is it the answer?

Michael Hammer’s new book, The Agenda, is about the rise of customer power. But is customer-centricity really such a good model for business and society?

What brand are you?

Thanks to Matt Tucker at Smith Associates for telling me about What Brand Are You. It strikes me that lots of companies waste money on

Just Undo It?

The AntiBrand: blackSpot sneakers, a project by Adbusters attacks Nike directly. In doing so they take on what has become one of the great icons

Putting humanity into branding

We live in a world of too much marketing and too much branding. People’s faith in advertising has fallen to new lows as we simply

New Abbey

So the Abbey National is rebranding itself this morning. As I write this entry, they are revealing their new look, their shortened name (just “Abbey”)

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links for 2006-05-08

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I don’t know

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Strategy cow

Johnnie Moore

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