Following the recent genuine and heartfelt apology by young Australian tennis player Daria Gavrilova, I wrote this piece for the Drum that explores how public apologies are usually so unsatisfactory.

All too often the public apology has been generated to an apparent template by a publicist and appears to be crafted to ensure that the perpetrator takes on as little responsibility or blame for their actions as possible whilst fulfilling the minimum public expectation for a display of remorse.

I’m sure that the publicists think that it is all very clever, but I actually believe that these “I’m sorry that you got offended” type non-apologies at best do nothing to rectify the original offence and could even make the situation worse.

In my article in the Drum, I highlight some recent bad examples as well as try to explain what I believe a real apology should deliver.

As both a distributor and creator of brilliant content, a world renowned consumer electronics company and a media platform developer, Sony is in a unique position to create a self sustaining marketing ecosystem.

In this post on The Drum,  (http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2015/11/05/ultimate-branded-content-hotel-transylvania-2s-surprise-star) I discuss a recent example of Sony doing just this in Hotel Transylvania 2 and what it might mean for their brand strategy moving forwards and whether there implications for branded content in general.

I’ve been a fan of videogames since I was about 7 years old when my Dad bought a ZX Spectrum, and things have come a long way since then. One thing that never really seemed to come on though was the way that these products were marketed. In the mid 90s the industry seemed to settle on a fairly formulaic PR  plus trailer model that reflected the movie industry and since then they have pretty much stuck with that.

However, since then, many games have become huge brand franchises in incredibly competitive market places, but for the most part their marketing strategies were still very similar.

In this post on The Drum http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2015/09/15/video-game-advertising-coming-age-moving-trailers-proper-brand-ads I discuss how two recent advertising campaigns give me hope that maybe this model is being broken and that videogames are entering the world of grown-up long term brand marketing.

The world of digital media is growing exponentially and is a part of virtually every campaign we do,  but I often find that the traditional and digital media elements of a given campaign struggle to be truly integrated. I believe that the biggest barrier to seamless planning across all media is the lack of a common language and currency.

This is particularly true for probably the most important  group of media, those delivering audio visual messages. From pence per guaranteed view on Youtube to buying TVRs and “opportunities to see” on TV, it is challenging for anyone to compare apples with apples in our AV landscape.

In this blog post on the Drum,http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2015/09/10/ongoing-challenge-comparing-cost-and-true-value-traditional-and-digital-media  I discuss a number of the challenges in AV planning and some potential thought starters for a solution.

Let’s stop trying to define ‘native’. If you want to sell me something new, just think of a new name

I recently discovered an alarming disparity between observed and claimed media behaviours that could really change how you think about your media plan. See my post on the Drum about it here