I started work in advertising just over 30 years ago in October 1975. I remember well my first day at an agency. There was a sense that I was not just entering an office, but a kind of cultural and creative emporium of our times.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the belief that a single number can be used to assess marketing performance is persistent. Some say that top management can only handle a single number, or silver metric, so we must choose the least bad one.

As with all parts of the marketing and communications sector, the market research industry has spent the past decade considering how to respond to technological change.

How do you unlock sales revenue by harnessing word of mouth? Forget the usual suspects – buzz, viral and stealth marketing.

In 1999 the Cluetrain Manifesto stated, 'Five thousand years ago, the marketplace was the hub of civilisation, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels – and fabulous stories.

Think back just 13 years. The year is 1993. John Major is Prime Minister. The Tories are in government. Tony Blair still looks like Bambi. Bill Clinton has just become President of the United States. Nobody has heard of Monica Lewinsky.

As we stand today, diamond industry manufacturers – the global organisations that buy and polish rough diamonds – are more than $10 billion in debt, a figure that represents rather more than 60% of their annual sales.

There are ten simple – but not always obvious – social principles that I’ve found useful while working in digital media for the past 20 years.

Thirty years ago US anchorman, Walter Cronkite, would end his hourly news broadcast to the nation by saying, 'and that's the way it is'.

The cash for peerages inquiry prompts me to wheel out yet again my brilliant single solution to three huge national problems: the honours system, the funding of political parties and the reform of the House of Lords.