Malcolm White
Opinion
30 August 2018
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The consequence of not having sufficient perspective is that it’s easy to start believing your own publicity, therefore, Malcolm White says, an agency’s most valuable strategic service to their clients is to put the client brief through a constructively sceptical filter.
Opinion
05 July 2018
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It has now come to the point that brands have started stretching storytelling too far, turning it from a good way of thinking about themselves into a bad way of trying to connect with consumers, says Malcolm White.
Opinion
30 May 2018
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Aesop’s Fables have become embedded in everyday conversation but, says Malcolm White, some of the tales can be used to help solve a number of today’s business, marketing and communications problems, and offers some examples of how they apply.
Opinion
01 May 2018
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With a growing negativity towards strategy, is it time to take the strategic debate in a different direction, asks Malcolm White? He thinks strategy can be looked at in an entirely different way and offers a formula to do this.
Opinion
04 April 2018
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If words reflect their cultures, then Malcolm White suggests, we need some new words to reflect the reality of the current marketing communications culture. It is time to rename the chemistry meeting.
Opinion
07 March 2018
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In the creative communications industry, it feels vital to find exactly the right words but, Malcolm White asks, why not use malapropisms as a resource to define a brand’s essence and values?
Opinion
31 January 2018
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Malcolm White believes that marketing communications should strive to be useful, rather than entertaining, which could also have the knock-on effect of making what marketers and communicators do be regarded as more useful, and maybe more valuable, too.
Opinion
04 January 2018
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The eponymous Venn diagram should not be seen as a mere PowerPoint decoration but, Malcolm White explains, can and should be used as a creative thinking tool to unlock potential or seize opportunities.
Opinion
30 November 2017
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Malcolm White argues that the diminishing respect being afforded the advertising industry by clients has led it to develop a form of 'impostor syndrome'.
Opinion
31 October 2017
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Like the Zeppelins of old, many of today’s technologies fit a ‘pathological’ profile, argues Malcolm White, and more of us need to take control of the way we use our tech, instead of being used by it.
Opinion
03 October 2017
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When it comes to addressing the work-life balance, Malcolm White believes advertising should take a leaf out of William Morris’s book and find ways to make work more satisfying, instead of just encouraging people to work more flexibly.
Opinion
28 August 2017
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Malcolm White discovers the truth about a legend of broadcasting history, and finds that the only hysteria caused by the 1938 broadcast of ‘The War of the Worlds’ was the one cooked about by a competing medium - newspapers.
Opinion
13 July 2017
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Malcolm White wonders how more communication went from being the force for good that would bring humanity together, to being something altogether more divisive.
Opinion
29 May 2017
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Malcolm White wonders if marketing's love affair with crowdsourcing is creating a fake news problem for commercial creativity. He looks back 600 years to a lesser known work of Chaucer for guidance.
Opinion
01 May 2017
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Long ago, I had an interview in New York with a well-known advertising agency. In the last of a round of interviews, the head of human resources used a phrase that I've heard with increasing frequency over the intervening years. She said: "Malcolm," (for that is I), "we try to make sure that we employ more Radiators than Drains."
Opinion
23 September 2016
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OK, that's not strictly true. Actually, it's not true at all. But it made you want to read on, didn't it? Or perhaps not?
Opinion
07 July 2016
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If I were to suggest that almost every conversation you have about brands is influenced by the thinking of a Viennese psychologist, you'd probably think I was talking about Sigmund Freud. You'd be almost right, but not quite. Actually, I'm referring to the man who was sometimes known as the 'Sigmund Freud of the supermarket age' - a certain Ernest Dichter.
Opinion
17 May 2016
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I've just come out of a dispiriting advertising research briefing and I wish I could time-travel back to 1974. The briefing was dispiriting because we're in danger of testing an early-stage, pre-production, TV advertising execution with qualitative research when we should be using the research to understand how the execution works in the hearts and minds of our target audience, and to provide objective feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of that execution. This research should be an aid to decision making, not act as judge and jury, handing down a 'Go/No Go' verdict. It's this idea of 'testing' that is so dangerous. And I've said all this.
Opinion
12 April 2016
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Malcolm White looks back ... at Rosser Reeves' legacy, not just his fallacy.
