Colourful Thinkers

Recent Blogs.

• WHAT ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING AND FEELING? September 20, 2021
  When I first went into marketing I was fascinated by Ernest Dichter, the American psychologist, described as the “father of motivational research”. His analyses of why people did what they did and his books like “The Strategy of Desire” seemed more interesting than the quantitative beasts like Gallup and Nielsen, research firms that just counted […]
• COMMON SENSE AND THE UNEXPECTED September 13, 2021
  The Oxford English Dictionary definition of “common sense” is blessedly to the point:“the ability to think about things in a practical way and make sensible decisions.”Recently I read something that Tony Blair said. He’s 68 and a somewhat discredited blast-from-the-past. His think-tank (The Institute for Global Change) claims that consistent,  widespread, but relatively small changes […]
• DO WE REALLY KNOW BETTER? September 6, 2021
  As technology hurtles us along a path of unending knowledge advancement something odd is going on. We seem to know less and less and we’re making more mistakes. Big ones. Whoppers.I’m so enthralled by this I’m taking a week off to let my mind empty of assumptions. I shall be eating, drinking, listening to fine […]
• HARD WORK NEVER KILLED A MAN August 30, 2021
  Advertising legend David Ogilvy said: “Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.”For much of my career I was an apostle of Ogilvy, a believer in the 24/7/365 school of martinets. I even designed a 24 hour training programme to see how people performed under that sort of […]
• NOTHING MUCH TO LAUGH ABOUT August 23, 2021
  I was unsurprised to hear a joke that must have been around for ages during the Olympics.A man walking through the Olympic village sees a tall guy carrying a long aluminium tube. He sidles up to him and says:“Are you a pole-vaulter?”“Nein” says the man “I’m a German … but how did you know my […]