What can agencies learn from REAL people?

* This is a guest blog  from Roger Warner, Managing Director of social media agency C&M

Advertising legend Bill Bernbach and footballing philosophy legend Socrates figured out that there’s a lot of value to be had in asking real people real questions.

We’ve been doing quite a lot of it lately at C&M via our consumer panel research and – just as importantly – asking searching questions of people on the street. Continue reading

Is social capital the new currency or a pile of Somaliland shillings?

Last summer I had an adventure and flew to Addis Ababa from Mumbai and then travelled through Ethiopia on African buses to the Red Sea and spent a week in Somaliland on the way. Right up there with the best of life.

I had to hire a soldier for $15 per day, had a few problems with child-soldiers off their tits on qat (a masticated opiate), saw amazing cave drawings at Las Keel, nearly lost a finger when ‘my’ soldier macheted a fruit melon and had my first ‘dry-swim’ in the Gulf of Aden, in temperatures of 50°C. Continue reading