The first true twinkles of December frost appearing in the fields reminds me that its time to review 2012. The year was not easy for many and perhaps more about challenge and tricky opportunities for most. But it was a year with some great stuff too. I’ve here compiled my list of top articles, research and comments from 2012 covering marketing, collaboration, innovation and partnerships. What were your top articles of the year? Who would you pick? What would you recommend or suggest I add?
In no particular order… here are my top picks for 2012
The Best Marketing Articles And Blogs From 2012
In Traditional Strategy is Dead – published as an HBR blog, Nilofer Merchant confidently and succinctly explains why the new era of social business is about a lot more than social media.You can see my blog piece about this here
Team Geek – by Fitzpatrick & Collins-Sussman brilliantly looks at the challenges and opportunities of managing highly talented and creative people. The book includes my quote of the year too “working in isolation, leads to disappointment”. You can see my full review of the book here.
Capgemini’s Innovation Leadership Study provided an interesting look at the challenges of innovation from around the world – and the difficulties many large organisations face when trying to create an innovative culture.
IBM’s Global Marketing survey also reinforced that social media, big data – and the need to build collaboration across silos would continue to be a hot topic for marketing leaders.
The Collaboration Imperative – published in Ivey Business Journal in February highlighted that the best leaders and innovators are those that understand and nurture effective collaborations – with a focus on customers, listening to others and building strong relationships across their businesses
The Best Marketing Sites 2012
Innovation Excellence – continues to be a great source of comment, trend news and smart writing too. Great year of work with pieces by Tom Peters, Steffan Lindegaard and Braden Kelley.
The Financial Times – proves that if you have great content you can charge for it. Not cheap but the research, rigour and great writing of people such as Luke Johnson and Lucy Kelloway make for superb reading
HBR Blogs – which can be accessed for free, provides a constant stream of diverse range of articles including some of the most influential business thinkers and researchers. Always something useful available.
Strategy+Business – published by Booz And Co is consistently excellent and a fine free source of the latest research and thinking.
TrinityP3 – Darren Woolley and the team at TrinityP3 do not pull any punches when it comes to jabbing some of the sacred but often under-performing fashions of agencies, digital marketing and business communications. The truth sometimes hurts…
And My Year In Marketing Blogs?
The Challenge Series of White Papers were developed by me with Duncan Thomas from Pomegranate Group with each piece featuring a different set of contributors and experts. They have so far featured both Steve Hemmings and Paul Sloane, one of the world’s leading experts in lateral thinking. In 2013 we’re looking to publish future versions of this Series and so if you would like to feature – please get in contact with me.
How Superteams Can Help Marketers… was written for TrinityP3 after I heard the excellent Khoi Tu present on Superteams at The RSA in London. Tu’s view of what it takes to make a high performance team struck a chord with my recent look at both the need for collaboration – and the increasing challenge that marketers face to balance uncertainty, complexity, data and metrics.
Why We Need More Conversation – And Less Brainstorming. This piece was published in TrinityP3 builds on a previous article by Darren Woolley – and my work developing the Marketing Café Workshops, designed to help marketers and innovation teams build smarter, more focused conversations.
In Building A Collaborative Business – I reviewed ‘ COLLABORATION’ by Morten T Hansen and explore the concept of T-Shaped people and what this means for marketing and innovation teams. This was the piece that many people discussed with me – and it continues to get feedback.
In The Partnership Paradox – I looked at General Electric’s Innovation Barometer and the key marketing dilemma it highlights. Whilst collaboration, partnerships, alliances and better relationships are acknowledged as the driver for innovation – most people and businesses are not very good at it.
A Noisy Problem With Susan Cain’s Quietness – explores the challenges of balancing both introvert and extrovert behaviours in a business culture that needs innovation and collaboration. Cain is right that the world is too fast and too noisy and the time to think, review and analyse is more valuable than ever. But is isolation the answer?
And Finally. It’s Christmas. Exercise The Chuckle Muscle…
Buyral Viral – The classic and rather cheeky video from Adobe that casts a cheeky nod to the obsession with viral marketing stats and clicks. And, Buzz Word Detector. Or should that be BS Detector? Another rather funny (but scarily true) look at the often poor strategy and ideas that tag the latest digital jargon
Thanks to all for reading and following, Tweeting and forwarding, linking and hosting, the comments and the coffees.
Have a very Merry Christmas all, enjoy the holiday break with friends and family – and here’s to more, great conversations in 2013.
All the best,
Andrew Armour
Related articles
- Challenging Marketing Summaries; Gamification, Collaboration And Innovation (andrewarmour.com)
- Why Superteams Win In The Social Era Of Business – ‘Superteams’ by Khoi Tu (andrewarmour.com)
- A Year of Blogging And Tweeting (andrewarmour.com)
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Andrew Armour's Benchstone Blog 
A great resource for all marketers and collaboration enthusiasts, thanks Andrew.
Useful collection of marketing collaboration articles. I particularly liked the article you shared on having more conversations and less brainstorming!