Uncommon Sense

Insight not ideology | Marketing Agency
Evolutionary Consumer Psychology
"The heresy of heresies was common sense."

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

"Brands sell things. That’s the job. A harder and more honourable one than the purpose industry admits. A manifesto is what you write when you’ve run out of reasons for anyone to buy your product."

The graveyard of fallen brands is growing. And increasingly, the cause of death looks the same: ideology.

Read our latest article.

https://t.co/iDnbhYOzhK

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

Your brand is not a manifesto. Written badly enough, it becomes an epitaph.

We went through the wreckage of the century's most expensive rebrands, and not everyone will like the conclusion:

https://t.co/tNBCdvalbO

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

Branded an "anti-woke hero", Ryan Breslow warns that entitled employees who have abandoned common sense will be the death of every company

“Listen, HR wields a lot of power in an organisation, and some people can wield power judiciously, of course. But when you have unqualified people holding a lot of that power...”

Read the full interview ⤵️
https://t.co/cwSqku9GxV

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

Where do millions of ambitious minds go to sharpen up? Modern Wisdom.

3.2M monthly views. 1.15B all time. An audience built on self-improvement, not scrolling.

For sponsor enquiries, contact us below:

https://t.co/rMcbHhqZRi

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." - Peter Drucker

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

“The reality is that podcast advertising has never succeeded simply because people couldn’t skip it. It works because of something far more powerful: trust.”

In our piece below, we discuss what Spotify’s new “skip ahead” button really means for podcast advertising.

You can read it here:

https://t.co/7z5YgA1idw

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

Spotify is testing a one-tap "Skip Ahead" button for podcast ads.

Is this the end of podcast sponsorship? We don't think so.

The best podcast advertising has never relied on listeners being unable to skip, it succeeds because audiences trust the host. That's where the real value lies.

Read our thoughts:
https://t.co/7z5YgA1idw

Looking to sponsor some leading podcasts? Let's talk: https://t.co/NOJdd0FpSa

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

The value of a conference has never lived in the number of seats filled at 8am; it lives in what the room sets in motion.

Read our article below, reflecting on the three days we spent at CPAC GB.

@CPAC @cpac_gb @danwootton

https://t.co/nsXgZFhFEy

[Lee Taylor @Lee_MakesSense]

The mainstream media wanted CPAC GB to fail.

It didn't.

https://t.co/PKn0vtt5uG @trussliz

[David Atherton @daveatherton]

Lee Taylor is in coversation with @joshxhowie about the classic advertising campaign mounted by @rickygervais for his new Dutch Barn Vodka.

I am off to London, I musn't forget my stab vest.

Eight months later we are still talking abut it.

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

The press reviewed CPAC Great Britain by counting chairs. It was the wrong measure.

Announced in Texas in March, delivered in London by July. Set against a fifty-year-old American institution it looked small. On its own terms it was one of the most serious gatherings yet of a British movement the mainstream keeps underrating.

The agenda was set on stage and carried into the corridors, tested by people who chose to be there. Behind it, a media economy the press still won't take seriously, and a movement growing whether they report it or not.

The press can keep counting chairs. Something larger is being built.

Read our full piece below:

https://t.co/mBufqWRFLL

@cpac_gb @CPAC @Jacob_Rees_Mogg

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

"People and planet before profit, always." A proposition that cannot survive its own first question. If it were true the firm would be a charity. It isn't. A value you cannot test is not a value; it is decoration.

Read our latest piece below:

https://t.co/GmqVHtLNw7

[Lee Taylor @Lee_MakesSense]

"People and planet before profit, always."

If that were true, you'd be a charity. You're not. Profit pays the people and funds the planet virtue signalling, and everyone in the room knows it.

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

Every agency now recites the same line: "people and planet before profit". Take it seriously for four seconds and it collapses. It's either false or it's fatal. Our new piece on the sector's favourite slogan:

https://t.co/GmqVHtLNw7

[Liz Truss @trussliz]

Thank you to everyone who joined us at the first ever CPAC GB! Watch some highlights of the event:

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

This week's publisher spotlight is UnHerd, a home for unheard ideas.

Long-form journalism, video and podcasts that challenge the consensus on politics, culture and ideas, read by a highly engaged UK and US audience.

Want to reach them?

Get in touch below.

https://t.co/NOJdd0FpSa

[Lee Taylor @Lee_MakesSense]

Podcasting has 4.5 million shows. Roughly one in ten still releases episodes. A third of new ones are dead within a year.

And most podcast ad money is spent on bundles across dozens of shows at once, hand-picked by nobody.

[Uncommon Sense @_UncommonSense0]

Margaret Thatcher read chemistry at Oxford and later qualified as a barrister. Neither fact explains a single day of her leadership.

Her authority was built somewhere no course can take you. The 1975 leadership contest against Heath, when almost nobody senior gave her a prayer. The long argument with her own cabinet. The Falklands. The miners' strike. Whatever you make of her politics, and people feel it strongly in both directions, nobody followed Thatcher because of a framed award. They followed her because she had been tested in public, repeatedly, and had not blinked.

That's the thing the leadership industry keeps missing. Authority isn't a body of knowledge you can transfer in a module. It forms under pressure, when the decision is yours alone, the consequences are real, and the country is watching to see whether you flinch. You cannot examine someone into it. No assessor can mark it.

Thatcher is a clear example. Loved or loathed, she was one of the most consequential leaders in modern British history, and not one page of it came with a certificate.

Which raises a fair question for the rest of us. If the people who shaped the country were forged in real fights rather than classrooms, why do we keep believing a qualification is what makes a leader?

Our latest piece makes the case: you cannot certificate your way to leadership.

https://t.co/IptQUBPk2H