Adventures In Utopia
Fiona Cullen reviews the world’s most popular music festival: Glastonbury 2025 It’s a peculiar kind of heartbreak, the end of Glastonbury. Each year, as the last strains of music fade and the sun rises on fields trampled by 250,000 revellers, I find myself repeating the same incredulous mantra: I can’t believe it’s over. The festival’s […]
Carpathian Calm
Tim Healey’s week of yoga in remote Romania ticked all the boxes for a full mental reset. It had been an exciting, but none-the-less demanding year. Following a crazy month of international marketing events and working at Glastonbury Festival, a yoga retreat had never seemed more appealing. A short Ryanair hop to 35 Celsius Bucharest, […]
AI Without Anxiety: A CMO’s Guide To Improved Productivity
If you’re a CMO, you’re likely eager to add AI and automation to your workflows so your people can focus on the real, human work that builds your brand. You know those tools can help your team eliminate repetitive tasks: summarising emails, drafting social posts, or scoring leads. But you hesitate because you wonder: Is […]
Behind The Curtain: The Behavioural Experiment
After day one of MAD//Fest, the real experiment begins. Join us for an exclusive evening of behavioural science, where you’ll step behind the scenes to uncover the hidden forces shaping human decision-making, and explore how these insights can power smarter, more human digital strategies. What drives human connection? Join the Human First Collective, behavioural-science-led agencies, […]
The Rise Of The Answer Engines
Richard Palk. seasoned marketer and Little Grey Cells Club report author reviews the AI-driven evolution of Search, and four related implications for brands. Achieving a Search milestone In May 2025, at the first annual Web Summit Vancouver event, the high-profile marketer and entrepreneur Neil Patel presented some remarkable data on global Search behaviour, that rapidly […]
Not So Gentle Giant
Little Grey Cells Club’s Event and Community Director Fiona Cullen reviews Mark Rosenblatt’s electrifying new play where John Lithgow portrays beloved author Roald Dahl’s much darker side. ‘Giant’ is a play centred on an uncomfortable truth – Roald Dahl’s antisemitism. As a lifelong fan of Dahl’s work, I was excited but simultaneously nervous to see how […]
One Team. One Vision. Real Impact.
Why Marketing Still Struggles to Talk to Itself: and How to Fix It For an industry obsessed with communication, marketing teams can be surprisingly bad at talking to each other. Silos still dominate: even within marketing departments. Brand doesn’t speak to digital. Media works separately from creative. The CRM team barely overlaps with content. Everyone’s […]
Creators: Your Shortcut To Cultural Relevance
Balwinder Bhatla (aka @mrwhisper) is a multidisciplinary creator, and social first creative director with over a decade of experience helping brands navigate the evolving social media landscape. Here he lays out the opportunity for brands to better connect with their audiences by collaborating with creators. If your brand is still unsure about working with creators, […]
Surviving The Hiring Freeze
(Why Revisiting Your Processes Might Be Your Salvation) The current landscape for many businesses is challenging. Hiring freezes are becoming a reality for numerous teams, leaving marketing departments stretched thin. With budgets tightening and the need for innovation rising, the question is: How can marketing teams stay efficient and continue to drive results without additional headcount? The answer often lies in an overlooked solution: optimising your processes. By revisiting and refining your marketing workflows, you can boost productivity, eliminate waste, and do more with fewer resources. Here’s how you can survive and even thrive during a hiring freeze by focusing on operational excellence. 1. Re-evaluate Your Existing Processes Why it’s a problem: When things get hectic, it’s easy to fall into routine. However, your current workflows may have grown inefficient over time, leading to unnecessary delays, missed deadlines, and burnout. The Fix: Perform a comprehensive process audit. Map out all major workflows and identify where bottlenecks are occurring. Is there a redundant approval process? Are there manual steps that can be automated? By eliminating inefficiencies, you can make every task count. Ask yourself: When was the last time you assessed your processes for opportunities to streamline or automate? 2. Automate Repetitive Tasks Why it’s a problem: Marketing teams often spend too much time on repetitive tasks that take away from strategic work. Whether it’s scheduling social media posts, managing email campaigns, or generating reports, these time-consuming tasks could be handled more efficiently with automation. The Fix: Invest in tools that automate mundane tasks like email marketing, reporting, and content scheduling. This frees up valuable time for your team to focus on more creative or impactful work that directly contributes to business growth. Ask yourself: What percentage of your daily tasks could be automated to free up time for high-value work? 3. Leverage Project Management Tools to Maximise Efficiency Why it’s a problem: Without proper project management tools, teams can become disorganised, leading to missed deadlines and confusion. This is especially critical when you’re running a lean team during a hiring freeze. The Fix: Adopt a project management tool that helps visualise workloads, allocate resources, and track deadlines. This ensures that every team member knows their responsibilities and helps eliminate the need for constant check-ins and status update meetings. Ask yourself: Are you fully utilising your project management tools? Is the team aligned on how to use them effectively? 4. Prioritise and Focus on What Matters Most Why it’s a problem: When resources are tight, it’s easy to get distracted by low-impact tasks that don’t move the needle for your business. Without clear priorities, teams may find themselves working on tasks that could have been delayed or eliminated. The Fix: Establish clear goals and prioritise projects that align directly with business objectives. Introduce an impact vs. effort framework to evaluate incoming requests and focus on the high-return initiatives. Align your marketing efforts with strategic business needs to ensure […]
1:1 AI Executive Coaching
Transformative AI skills for CMOs, Customer Leaders, and Go-To-Market Executives. As part of our community goal to help top-tier marketers continually upskill and lead with confidence, we’re delighted to present Ian Crocombe’s 1:1 AI executive coaching. Ian impressed us with his AI knowledge at out April 2025 briefing and is now offering a chunky discount […]