You realise you've grown up, when the bank manager asks you the same question as your mother: "When are you recouping?" Matteo Grandi Generation Z is very much talked about. If you compulse social media in the last week, you will find 2230 mentions (considering Italian only) of this age cohort, which is the stone... Continue Reading →
In one of his best known works, Edward Bernays (perhaps the first spin doctor in the contemporary sense) explains that "the very essence of the democratic process is the freedom to persuade and suggest" and defines it as "the engineering of consent". He further adds: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and... Continue Reading →
A year ago, images of queues in front of supermarkets burst into a somewhat spectacularised narrative. Two aspects were completely overlooked. One symbolic and one substantial. On the symbolic side, I did not see any comments on a society which, although it had always made consumption (its abundance, maturity, diversification and even awareness) its distinctive... Continue Reading →
Considerations on "Correlation is not causation" Lately I have been promising myself to avoid balance sheets (which is a very serious activity, not by chance carried out by professionals) and New Year's resolutions (an activity that I find mainly useless, often misleading, and I must tell you, even morally questionable). Some scattered readings have pushed... Continue Reading →
Baruffe chiozzotte in digital sauce There is an interesting aspect of the storm in a teacup that exploded with the invitation of Matteo Salvini (a politician in Italy) to prefer small businesses to Amazon for Christmas shopping. The interesting aspect does not lie in the communion of loving senses between a right-wing nationalist political leader... Continue Reading →
Reflections on doing market research in time of COVID19 The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge Daniel J. Boorstin Deprivation Studies are a research methodology initially developed among psychologists at an academic level, which aims to "prevent" an organism or a subject from benefiting from something it wants... Continue Reading →
In the last few delirious months of crossing and chasing each other of information on infections, hospitalisations and deaths for ("of", "with", "in conjunction with"…) Coronavirus, those who, like me, deal with data - their collection, their selection, their modelling and interpretation - have watched astonished at the peremptoriness with which conclusions were drawn (in... Continue Reading →
Recently a person informed me about a study published on Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: Music training alters the course of adolescent auditory development. THe scientists observed a group of 40 adolescents: 20 of them chose in-school music training. Please wait: I will tell you what other... Continue Reading →
There are a lot of legends in corporate world. "Companies must be customer centric" is one of them. I will write about it in the next post. "We are social" is another one and it is a typical claim by any given company. Companies often mix up "to have social network pages" with "being social".... Continue Reading →
I participated to the annual ABI (the Italian Association of Banks) Conference "Dimensione Cliente" (in italian, Dimension: Customer) in 2012 and in 2013. The Conference hosts several speeches by bankers, consultancy firms and MR agencies. I read some papers by 2014 edition. And I continue to think "Something doesn't work". Bankers talk us about different... Continue Reading →
The Constant Researcher 