Strategy & Craft
Splitting an ad budget: the 70-20-10 rule
Seventy per cent on what works, twenty on scaling, ten on experiments. The rule is old, simple, and violated in almost every account.
2 min readMay 9, 2026
Section
Strategy & Craft
Briefing, positioning, copy, design, media planning and measurement.
Strategy & Craft
How much advertising budget is the right amount
Percentage-of-revenue rules are widely quoted and mostly wrong. The answer comes from your own numbers in four steps.
2 min readMay 7, 2026
Strategy & Craft
The brief agencies actually need
A bad brief produces bad work at full price, and the client pays twice. Eight questions, two pages, three hours of your time.
2 min readMay 5, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Positioning before the first ad runs
Advertising amplifies whatever you already are. If that is indistinguishable from four competitors, the budget amplifies the confusion.
2 min readMay 3, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Defining audiences without the clichés
Age, income and interests describe a category, not a customer. Three better questions produce a definition you can actually target.
2 min readMay 1, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Sell the benefit, not the feature list
Customers do not buy specifications. They buy the change the specification produces, and most advertising never mentions it.
2 min readApr 29, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Writing advertising objectives you can measure
An objective without a number and a date is a hope. Four components turn it into something a campaign can be judged against.
2 min readApr 27, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Brand building alongside sales activation
Performance advertising harvests demand. Brand advertising creates it. Run only the first and the harvest gets smaller every year.
2 min readApr 25, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Competitor analysis in five steps
Half a day, no tools required, and it reliably produces two or three things you were not doing. The point is not to copy but to find the gap.
2 min readApr 23, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Choosing an agency on hard criteria
Portfolios are curated and chemistry misleads. Six checks that predict the working relationship better than any pitch.
2 min readApr 21, 2026
Strategy & Craft
In-house or agency: doing the maths
The comparison is usually made between an agency fee and a salary, which is the wrong comparison and always favours hiring.
2 min readApr 19, 2026
Strategy & Craft
The twelve-month advertising plan
One page, twelve columns, six rows. Built in an afternoon, it prevents the two most expensive habits in advertising.
2 min readApr 17, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Advertising through a recession: cut or hold
Cutting advertising in a downturn protects this quarter and costs the next three years. The evidence on this is unusually consistent.
2 min readApr 15, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Writing copy that sells
Good advertising copy is not clever. It is specific, short, and about the reader. Six rules that survive every format.
2 min readApr 13, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Headlines that hold attention
Four out of five people read only the headline. Which makes it four fifths of the work and usually the last thing written.
2 min readApr 11, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Writing a call to action that works
The most-clicked button in the world does not say Submit. Three words decide whether an interested reader becomes an enquiry.
2 min readApr 9, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Storytelling without the schmaltz
Every brand is told to tell a story, and most produce a founder legend nobody believes. A usable story needs a problem, not a mission.
2 min readApr 7, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Defining tone of voice
A tone that exists only in a brand document changes nothing. Made usable, it is three word pairs and a list of banned phrases.
2 min readApr 5, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Developing a claim and a slogan
A claim that could sit under a competitor's logo is decoration. Four tests, and the reason most firms should keep the one they have.
2 min readApr 3, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Design basics for non-designers
Five principles that separate amateur layout from professional. None require talent and all can be checked in a minute.
2 min readApr 1, 2026
Strategy & Craft
How colour actually works in advertising
Colour psychology charts are largely folklore. What is measurable is contrast, consistency and context, and those matter more.
2 min readMar 30, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Typography that gets read
Type is not decoration, it is the interface to the text. Six settings decide whether the copy you paid for is actually read.
2 min readMar 28, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Picking images that actually work
Generic stock photography is worse than no image. Your own mediocre photograph of real work beats a perfect photograph of strangers.
2 min readMar 26, 2026
Strategy & Craft
Keeping a brand guide alive
Most brand guides are a PDF nobody opens. A working one is four pages and a folder of ready files.
2 min readMar 24, 2026