What I learnt this year: 2023 edition

There are dozens of reasons for an outcome. It’s not always the thing you end up fixated on. Don’t be too proud to ask yourself ‘what should I be doing differently?’. What got you here so far, won’t be enough to take you forward and into the future. Evolve. Find a thing you can contribute…

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The anatomy of an ad: Hotel Hassler Roma

I haven’t critiqued one of these in a while, but as I was flicking through the current edition of Conde Nast Traveller, I saw this advertisement for Hotel Hassler Roma. Apparently, to market a luxury hotel experience these days, all you need is an anonymous rooftop view with what is effectively a fancy sun lounger…

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Target Audience Research: Part 2

This is a continuation of a two-part series we started a few weeks ago on target audience research. Customer research is essential for understanding your target audience on a deeper level, enabling you to uncover insights about their preferences, behaviors, needs, and aspirations. This understanding helps you create effective marketing strategies, deliver more personalized experiences,…

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How to choose a brand name for my business

What’s in a name? Mercedes was named after the daughter of a business partner. Acclaimed make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury is the face and name of her beauty brand. Cisco is a derivative of the city of San Francisco, where the company originated from. Spotify is a made-up, portmanteau word combining ‘spot’ and ‘identity’. Unsurprisingly perhaps,…

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Just do it in the Metaverse

I consider Nike’s advertising best in class. There are very few brands capable of capturing the public mood in their advertising as successfully as the Nike brand. Tapping into sub-cultures, market-specific zeitgeist and culturally significant moments with authenticity, has allowed the brand to earn its place in the hearts and minds of generations of consumers….

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Applying a ‘Test and Learn’ approach to Marketing

For every marketing team, experimentation is essential to understanding the efficacy of our marketing. The concept of ‘test and learn’—the process of conducting various experiments you can monitor, measure, and evaluate—helps create the data insights necessary to make decisions about where and how we spend our marketing dollars. Sometimes, there’s a misconception that test and…

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My non-fiction travel reading list

Like most people who are time poor, I find travel offers the perfect opportunity to decompress with dedicated reading time. Admittedly, I struggle to make a dent in what is increasingly becoming a long list of business-focused books, and when you pepper-in fictional narrative for balance, the list becomes even longer. But I do love…

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Can a luxury fashion brand be sustainable?

Last weekend I watched a documentary film called Fashion Reimagined. It’s been occupying a lot of my headspace this week for being fascinating, informative, and terrifying in equal measures. Fascinating because it gave me a front-row seat into the inner workings of an industry I don’t have first-hand experience. Informative for providing insight into what…

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