Creative advertising effectiveness – When ad awards don’t mean sales
The most effective protection against creative-commercial misalignment is the brief itself. A properly constructed brief makes commercial objectives explicit, measurable, and non-negotiable while leaving genuine creative latitude in how those objectives are achieved.
Influencer pricing guide – From free products to fair compensation
Smart brands in 2026 are building hybrid compensation models: base rate + performance bonuses + product. This structure aligns incentives and respects the creator's time while acknowledging that influencers genuinely enjoy testing products. Everyone wins when the mathematics work for both sides.
Humour in marketing – Why laughter Is your most underused asset
Humour in marketing isn't unprofessional - it's underutilised. The same psychological mechanisms that make people share jokes make them share branded content. The same emotional response that bonds friends bonds consumers to brands. Most marketers know this intuitively but fear executing it. They've been trained to avoid risk, and humour feels risky. It is. That's precisely why it works.
Crisis communication strategy – When silence is your best response
The crisis playbook says respond immediately. Address concerns. Control the narrative. Show leadership. In most situations, that advice is correct. But in a meaningful minority of cases, speaking up transforms minor incidents into major crises. The skill most crisis communicators lack isn't crafting statements - it's knowing when to stay quiet.
SEO – Why Google rewards content depth over keyword density
There's a persistent fantasy in content marketing that you can write your way to the first page of Google by simply mentioning your target keyword fourteen times and hoping for the best. This approach worked around 2009. It stopped working shortly after Google hired actual engineers.
Reputation management – When brand monitoring becomes obsessive self-sabotage
Here's the paradox he can't see: the obsessive monitoring he believes protects his brand is actually damaging it. Every overreaction signals insecurity. Every defensive response amplifies criticism. Every hour spent hunting negative mentions is an hour not spent building things worth praising.
Cross-brand collaborations – Difference between profitable cooperation and money-burning
The difference between collaborations that print money and those that burn it isn't luck or timing - it's strategic fit, audience overlap analysis, and understanding that one plus one only equals three when the mathematics of brand value actually align.
Bad product launch timing can kill the potential of good product
The expensive mistake is treating your launch date as the endpoint of product development rather than the result of market readiness calculation. The companies winning aren't necessarily building better products. They're launching at moments when market readiness, competitive landscape, and stakeholder psychology align. Sometimes that means delaying a ready product. Sometimes it means launching imperfect versions to establish category position before the window closes.
Why high audience overlap signals brand partnerships low value
Complete audience overlap means you're spending collaboration resources reaching people you could already reach through your own channels. You've invested in a partnership to achieve what your existing marketing already accomplishes. Meanwhile, the growth you hoped for - new audiences, fresh markets, expanded reach - never materialises because you partnered with someone whose customers are already your customers.
How much to spend on boosting posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok
"Just boost it" has become the default advice for underperforming social content. The logic seems sound: organic reach has collapsed across platforms, paid amplification is accessible, and surely any investment beats zero visibility. But "just boost it" without a framework is how marketing budgets quietly haemorrhage into the void.
Posting frequency mistakes that are killing your social media engagement
The posting frequency obsession has created a content treadmill where brands exhaust themselves producing mediocre posts to hit arbitrary schedules. The result: audiences trained to ignore you, algorithms that deprioritise your content, and marketing teams burnt out from feeding machines rather than building relationships.
Gamification marketing – When points drive purpose and when they fail
Gamification works when it aligns with intrinsic human motivations - competence, autonomy, and relatedness. These aren't buzzwords; they're the foundational drivers identified in Self-Determination Theory, research that's been validated across cultures and contexts for decades.
