“Marketing is Useless” “Marketing is Strategic” “Marketing Drives Sales” “Marketing Creates Brands” “Marketing Defines Products” … A tug of war that nobody wins You don’t have to have been in the industry for very long, to have heard these and other sweeping generalisations. And you’re most likely to hear them, when marketing, sales and advertising/PR …

It used to be that for every good customer experience, you told one person, but a bad experience meant you told seven. With social media making it easy to speak to the entire world – instantly – what implication does this hold for your brand? It wasn’t that long ago that we gathered around the …

Establishing strong relationships is crucial to business success, especially in an industry as fickle as ours. So as marketers, what can we do to ensure we always get it right? Pushy sales tactics have long been the domain of the used car salesman and real estate agent – and luckily for customers, such a purchase …

There are few professions where all possible candidates are asked to do the work first, allowing the buyer to choose which one to compensate for their efforts. Just consider the response if you asked a dozen lawyers to write a brief for you before choosing which one to pay. Speculative creative work (provided without contract …

No doubt you’ve put much thought into your corporate colours. Or have you? If you’re red, you could be making customers hungry. Which is great if you’re a burger chain. But not if you’re a bank. It’s well documented that colour affects mood and our response to seeing it. Apply this wisdom to brands, and …

Ah, turkey. Delicious on a festive table, and the star of Thanksgiving. But what would it say as the representative of your brand? While nations often adopt animals as symbols – China has its dragon; Russia the bear – this ridiculed bird was once touted as the ideal national emblem of America. Despite the bald …

I know what you’re thinking; times are tough, we’re just coming out of a recession and my budget’s been cut. How am I going to reach the same targets with less to spend? It’s a known fact that companies who continue to advertise during an economic crisis, when competitors are cutting back, can not only …

Let’s face it, sometimes it feels like you and your Agency come from different planets. What you say isn’t what they hear, and what they present isn’t quite what you had in mind, right? In most cases the planet theory is probably true. We, from Planet Creative, think in visual terms, concepts, pictures, colours and …