Nigel Malone

In the final post in this popular series, Nigel Malone shares his thoughts on creatives in a business context. “Many a client has told me the creative process is foreign to them, and they don’t really understand how ‘creative people’ do what they do. By the same token, many creatives, to their detriment, fail to understand the consumer and prefer to operate in an artistic vacuum. And if some clients pitched their wares directly to the consumer, well they’d lose interest pretty quickly.”

In the ninth post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

Anyone in sales will tell you it’s a process -- and they are dead right. But what is that process? Enter the Sales Funnel, another of my favourite slides.

In the seventh post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

In the sixth post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

In the fifth post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

In the fourth post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

In the third post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

Nigel Malone keeps his favourite ten keynote slides related to strategic business development – his “Ten Commandments” – close to his chest at all times. Okay, sometimes he puts them down to bathe, but they are never far from his thinking. His favourite slide number 2 is Wind and Webster’s ‘Six buying roles’ model. Developed initially in the 1970s, it was designed to explain the many buying roles within a large organisation, but is equally applicable to a family unit facing the challenge of deciding upon what to eat for dinner.

Nigel Malone keeps his favourite ten keynote slides related to strategic business development – his “Ten Commandments” – close to his chest at all times. Okay, sometimes he puts them down to bathe, but they are never far from his thinking.

With technology making it easier to connect with one another through social media, the general impression is that we are all coming closer together. However, as Nigel Malone heads off on his first holiday in four years, he considers whether perhaps the reverse is happening -- that our increased social networking capabilities make it harder to leave work behind.

We laugh at the people in Australian Idol auditions who are completely oblivious to that fact that they can't sing. But hang on... These people pop-up in business all the time. You might even have had an 'Idol moment' yourself when you were younger.

Just being a facilitator won’t satisfy or even make sense to many corporate marketers. I’m not suggesting that you put your head in the sand, but recognise social networks for what they are, and what they are not.