The Strategy Review

"Polisse" - if you love film, you have to see it ...

Will data finally kill the newspaper star?

Here's my latest column for today's MediaTel's Newsline, an exploration of the - seemingly - profoundly negative implications for quality journalism that derive from personalisation services on one hand, and so-called targeted advertising on the other.

A pretty bleak picture, I'm afraid ... I continue to find that wherever I look, data is clearly not much of a friend to media.

And I can't help but grieve a little - as one must also for the parallel casualties in music, literature and film - for the collapse of "quality for quality's sake" that this trajectory forces on our culture. Would the great journalists of today and yesterday ever have emerged, let alone made a living, in such a punishing climate? Of course not.

Bowling and Pinball ... the ball rolls on!

Very pleased and flattered to see the good old Bowling and Pinball meme that I pushed out in 2007 taken forward into fertile territory by my close friend Peter Sieyes and colleague Rob Malcolm in this very useful piece for Wharton: Knowledge In Action.

It astounds me - in a good way :-) - that the thinking should have such legs ... Though somewhat alarming to imagine my headstone in (I hope) the very distant future: "You know ... the bowling and pinball bloke"!

Here, by the way, are the videos I first used when explaining the model to the great and the good of media and marketing.

The bowling ... and the pinball.

Misconceptions holding back digital, social and mobile marketing

I'm very pleased indeed to have this comprehensive article featured in the July issue of Market Leader.

It combines what I believe to be some of my most incisive observations of the current media and marketing zeitgeist, pointing up the critical conceptual blocks, and providing I hope some meaningful clues for the way forward to credibility, significant brand investment, and of course, growth.

I'll also be speaking around these insights in the coming months, so if there's a slot in an event schedule that might fit the bill, please do let me know.

Download Bayler on Digital Disruption and Value

Download Market Leader cover July 2012

Here also, in a connected vein, is an account of yesterday's panel at Mediatel's excellent Media Playground event, questioning the relative value of data in marketing vs advertising. A hot discussion, too.

More on the "behavioural backlash"

Clearly the subject du jour, consumers' increasing discontent with the new targeting, and the implications for advertisers, are examined again by the excellent Liz Jaques in today's Mediatel Newline.

With astringent thoughts from your humble author for extra zing ...

The new window-smashing French intellectuals ...

For some months now I've been admiring the writing of Frederic Filloux and Jean-Louis Gassee, the French co-authors of The Monday Note.

Today's TMN edition has prompted a rare post in this blog ... Filloux writes a searing yet icily-argued attack on assumptions re Google and Facebook's respective futures in ad revenue terms, using the Do Not Track controversy, and Microsoft's apple-cart-upsetting declarations, as his departure point.

Connected to this, but standalone in terms of its vigour and urgency, is Gassee's equally thoughtful yet brutal body check to what he calls "The $20B Opportunty Mirage" of mobile advertising. I've leave you to read it, but it's bracing stuff.

Overall, their positions (a) that ownership and manipulation of data confer no intrinsic value or entitlement, and (b) that simply pointing to how enormous mobile advertising could/should be consitutes proof of commercial potential, are very much in line with my own views.

They also bring a wealth of evidence to their arguments that make this work credible as well as invigorating reading.