One of the most common errors, and we all make it is failing to learn from history. Even if history isn’t quite as much bunk as Henry Ford would have had us believe, each generation decides that they know best and that this time it will be different.  Read more

Hello – no Cog Blog post this week as I am on holiday. Enjoy the break from being berated by me..

One of the reasons why this blog is read as often and as widely as it is comes down to the fact that I am in a position to express my views on anyone and everything. I’m lucky enough to be able to write things that others might very well think but feel unable to express, at least not publicly. Read more

It was 1993. Carat was the dominant agency in France, with 11 separate agencies in different central Paris locations. In the US (where I lived and worked at the time) the all-powerful full-service agencies’ media heads referred sneeringly to ‘the French disease’: buying media in bulk, packaging the inventory up and reselling it to clients without revealing the margin. Read more