Show Me The Monkey
Challenger Brands and the many virtues of product demos.
Adam Morgan
Why Does Status Always Have To Be So Serious?
A classic Challenger reminds Adam that having a personality is as important for Challengers Brands in the luxury market, as in any other category.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Start your Engines
Recently, the Morgan family dinner conversation has found itself turning to the topic of engines. It is not that we ...
Surprising Relatives
Your cellphone has eighteen times more bacteria on its surface than the flush handle of a urinal. Taking ecstasy is ...
Bite me
I’d like you to imagine you are the marketing manager of a mobile communications company. You and the CEO are ...
Making the Invisible Visible
Our latest publication. Where are the opportunities for Challengers to amplify their point of difference by making something hitherto invisi...
The Power of Vulnerability
I was talking last week to Elle Harrison, the author of ‘Wild Courage’. Once an Innovation Leader at Unilever, she ...
Both Sides of Against
Amy posted about Illasmasqua last year; and I have been keeping an eye on them ever since. This is the ...
challenger lighthouse big ad
The Patisserie of Dreams
From the Duty Free shop in Orlando, I flew to Paris. And while Hendricks had created an oasis of old ...
Silently imprisoned cucumbers
The scene is Orlando airport. Thursday night, late. I mooch around, looking for something to do, trying to avoid Sea ...
Why Productivity is the Enemy of Insight
As marketers we have, crudely speaking, two competing pressures on us. On the one hand we need to be more ...
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Bring Me the Head of Industrial Lager
I was in Cape Town last week, and a friend took me to a bar called & Union. Started by ...
Don’t give them a tin of what they want. Give them a tin of what they need.
Getting Better at Failing
They say the test of a civilised society is how it treats its citizens at each end of their lives: when they are children on the one hand, and when they are old on the other. And the most interesting ...
Tell me how it’s going to work. And I won’t fire you.
I saw a very interesting presentation by a guy at J&J once. They had developed an ad for one of ...
The Theatre of Authenticity and Origin
Two Italian restaurants in the last two weeks have been looking to make their authenticity and story of origin a ...
A Business Book that Saves Lives
We talk to Michael Bungay Stanier, Senior Partner at Box of Crayons and author of 'Do more Great Work', about his new project - a book to 'End Malaria'.
Do Your Best Jagger
There is a charmingly vicious game three guys in our office play called ‘Do your best Jagger’. The rules are very simple – each of them can challenge any of the others at any time, anywhere, to ...
The Secret of Selling
So I am having lunch with a group of car dealers. All wealthy, successful businesspeople, selling a rapidly growing challenger in the luxury car market. The man on my left runs the largest and most ...
A Drop of the Strong Stuff
I was struck by the use of the word ‘shame’ in this ad from Pret a Manger in Heathrow last ...
Amplify our differences. And keep them amplified.
The icons of popular culture tend to be people with a naturally brilliant grasp of how to brand themselves, and how to distinguish themselves from their competition.
Precision Swearing
Precision swearing can be a powerful thing. But it does have to be selective, strategic and precise.
How fast should your brand go?
Disneyland. Your favourite band coming on half an hour late. The ‘Incredibooth’ app on your iPhone where your retro photobooth-style images take minutes to appear. What do they all have in common?...
The Trouble with Insight
Adam learns a lesson from his sons about the difference between truth and insight.