Bad habits to ditch in 2013

After the excesses of Christmas, the traditional January purge kicks off in earnest. Nicola Kemp picks 13 common bad habits that marketers should forgo this year.

1. THE MIRE OF MARGINAL THINKING 'If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it' Henry Ford

2. SETTLING FOR LESS'The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it' Steve Jobs

3. THE ENDLESS PURSUIT OF MEANINGLESS 'LIKES' 'Now is the Wild Wild West in social media' Chris Hirst, Grey London

4. EMAIL DEPENDENCY 'Sending emails has become more "the thing" than actually "doing the thing"' Ajaz Ahmed, AKQA

5. HAVING IT ALL 'My ego aspires to make it happen, but my authentic self is not sure it is worth it' Female respondent to the McKinsey 'Unlocking the Full Potential of Women at Work' report

6. THE DEAD END OF DISCOUNTS 'If you follow the road of price promotions, you will quickly realise it's a dead end, with no profits' Thierry Billot, Pernod Ricard

7. BELIEVING IN BUSINESS AS NORMAL 'Change is often seen as a threat, but to an entrepreneur, it's oxygen. It's what being alive and enthusiastic about business rests on. When the established way of doing things is in turmoil, new energy has the best chance to step in and succeed by doing things better than they've always been done before' Sir Richard Branson, The Virgin Group

8. LATENESS: SPARE US THE 'BUSY-OFF' 'There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late' Og Mandino

9. CAMPAIGNS 'Long-range planning works best in the short term' Doug Evelyn

10. ASSUMPTIONS 'It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail' Abraham Maslow

11. GREENWASH: BEYOND CSR 'We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance don't belong here' Enron's 'Visions and Values' corporate policy

12. PROCUREMENT ABOVE ALL THINGS 'My favourite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time' Steve Jobs

13. THE MORAL VACUUM 'Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Read more from Nicola Kemp on the Marketing website.