I recently distributed to my database, an article entitled “Frustrating Western Australia”, asking the question, why are businesses in Western Australia so conservative? I received a number of responses, all of which I think were very thoughtful. All of which agreed with my proposition that businesses in Western Australia are conservative. [...]
Frustrating Western Australia
A senior member of my team recently resigned after 2 years with the firm. She joined LINC after working for 10 years in a similar role in United Kingdom. When asked why she was resigning, she said that it had nothing to do with LINC, nothing to do with [...]
Pitiful Election Campaign
I have said many times that good marketing is first and foremost about having a good product. That in turn involves having a product that the target audience can believe in, have confidence in and will willingly want to buy. The way I see it, the product offering of all major political parties [...]
How Much Does the Brand Matter?
The marketing and advertising industries go on and on about the importance of branding. There have been more articles written on this subject than probably any other in the area of marketing. Building brands is seen by many advertising agencies, as evidenced by their websites, as their primary function and [...]
Category Killing Politicians
I recently heard a national press club address on the ABC, in which one of the subjects addressed was the image of politicians and politics in Australia and more broadly, around the world. The speaker highlighted a conversation that he’d had some months previously with the marketing manager of Burger [...]
Consumer Research: The perfect storm
The demands on consumer insight teams are changing out of all recognition, so marketing directors need to be clear on the mindset and skill-set needed in the coming years. David Smith questions whether insight teams are ready for the increasing complexity of the consumer environment and advises on what is needed. Everything must have a [...]
Restaurants – A memorable experience
In my experience, there are two kinds of restaurants, those you eat in and those you dine at. With restaurants you eat in, the primary considerations are convenience, taste, price and possibly health. If all four requirements are satisfied, there is every likelihood you’ll go back again. More interesting to me however are those restaurants [...]
Reducing Marketing Spend Without Reducing Results
One of the first casualties in a difficult economic environment is an organisation’s spend on marketing. Unfortunately, most of them reduce their expenditure at the expense of results. Indeed a recent international survey showed that there was a very strong parallel between the reduction in marketing expenditure and the reduction in enquiry levels. Notwithstanding this, [...]
Australia Behind on Online Retail
A recent report on the ABC suggested that Australia was 12 to 15 years behind most European countries when it comes to online retailing. The same article suggested, and everything I read supports the view that failure to embrace online shopping, has contributed significantly to the decline of Myer and David Jones. I saw Bernie [...]
No Future For Advertising Agencies
The future of advertising agencies is in some doubt, as evidenced by a decline in recent years. It is reasonable to suggest that advertising agencies in their current form are an endangered species. Can you tell me of an advertising agency that is as profitable today as it was ten years ago? The problem with [...]