Archive for the 'Blog' Category



The perfect client

I was on a flight a month ago, thinking about the perfect client. Who are they? What do they do? What do I do, to nudge them to be the perfect client?

I caught Ana Milicevics presentation on how to find the right vendor or kick off vendor partnerships in the right way.

That’s the thing. The right partnership is a combination of the technology and expertise to supercharge your internal value chain.

Seth Godin has another analogy on it, his is, are you pushing a stone uphill to close deals, or rolling it down a hill. Creating those conditions for the perfect client, leads to more rolling than pushing.

As one of those partners, it’s helpful to define what a perfect client is. Once established we can work on creating and maintaining the ideal conditions and environment.

So for me, what is my perfect ideal client?

A clear understanding of how our partnership can drive value.

A clear north star, or goal, that we can work towards.

Something we can both spark or learn from.

Cultural fit.

Have fun but stimulating work.

An appetite to improve, to be the best in their area of the world.

Not all clients will be that, each can bring new and unexpected dynamics but it’d be a spoilt position to start each relationship from.

Give it a think, how would this apply? How can you do an experience audit, to make sure you are creating these conditions or the right environment for it to happen? How can that experience speak to and acknowledge your unique lens, or POV on the world?

This kids store had a ‘kids only’ door, that part of the experience sets the tone, kids are valued here, and in turn so are the parents that share that value. An obvious but subtle nod – that also creates enjoyment. That’s the kind of output from the exercise.

May 29th, 2019

When does a human cross the threshold to become a bot?

It’s a question we were faced with recently. I don’t typically share long form pieces on the blog, but you can see it over on Medium for the full write up.

In a world of automation, we see these tools also bridge to all sorts of use cases. And in a recent campaign, we saw automation or assistant tools, in turn being used to inflate user numbers for a brand.

The vanity metrics looked great – but the real metrics did not.

There was also a piece a while back on how someone created a bot to fulfill tasks on Mechanical Turk. Or used AI to respond to are you a robot CAPTCHAs.

These are the signs of our times and will continue. That’s why things like blockchain are counter responses to this. As more and more systems and processes digitize, more will become bots so to speak.

May 17th, 2019

The rise of private intelligence

Everything zig zags online, in recent history our brands intelligence has been more public, you can see it on Facebook. The zig.

But what we’re seeing now is the development of private intelligence, the zag. The shift (and maturing) of brands to build up their internal processes, to execute novel media (and content) tactics, to combine public with private data.

I’ve been thinking about it from a product perspective too. How Apple handles machine learning is the perfect analogy, the learning is done on device, protecting your privacy (rather than in the cloud). Google yesterday mirrored this intention. This is the private intelligence.

This is the exciting time, as it’ll produce richer and different types of investments in the digital eco-system. I’m excited to see what eventuates.

May 9th, 2019

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