In these uncertain times, businesses of all sizes must recognise that what worked in the past may no longer be a recipe for future success. Recent examples such as Focus, Kitchens Direct and Habitat offer a stark warning to businesses who don't evolve with a changing landscape - especially at the sharp end of the downturn...

333,978 Managed client websites
£1798.62 Raised for Marie Curie
500+ White paper downloads
136% Increase in search on clients keywords
56 Bottles of wine drunk at the Cognition Christmas party...

Cognition's focus has always been centered on one thing – helping our clients make more money by de-risking their marketing decisions.

With this in mind, we have launched a new Cognition brand that better reflects the way we work. Our new strapline 'Sharper minds' emphasises our entrepreneurial attitude and a proven method based on evidence, psychology and testing.

Black is the new orange…

How can you chain a circus elephant to a stake in the ground using nothing more than a thin piece of rope? It’s quite simple as long as you understand elephants. When the elephant is young, you tie it to large stakes using chains. At first, the elephant uses all its strength to break free.

 

Marketing is not a science. Terms like ‘return on investment’, ‘metrics’, ‘measurement’, ‘data analysis’ are all important in providing an empirical base for assigning responsibility for the success or failure of specific initiatives, but that does not make it a science. Of course, many agencies may attempt to sell what they do as science but that’s just good marketing!

 

‘It is not the strong, nor the intelligent who survive,’ wrote Charles Darwin, ‘but those who are quickest to adapt’.

Take your average peacock. Why has he evolved to make such extravagant displays when all it seems to do is to make him more conspicuous and hence more vulnerable to predators?

While that’s true, it ignores the perspective of the peahen. A peacock’s display is the means through which males compete with each other for female attention.

 

There is a very good reason why SMEs are suspicious of motivational/performance training companies that say they will increase staff motivation and performance: the technical term for it is cognitive dissonance.

To you and me that means you know something is of no business benefit at all but somehow you were persuaded to pay for it and now you’re doing you’re best to convince yourself, against every last drop of your better judgement, that you made the right decision.