I wrote this book for client-side marketers. Folks like me. The goal is to offer up some humble views that may help your own decision-making. The decisions we face year in, year out. I write here about brand positioning, about acquiring new customers and about keeping them. I dip into the complexity of advertising decisions. Making ads. Getting ads approved. There is arguably a very fine line between bravery and unnecessary risk. I dig into the evidence of what works, and try to answer honestly why, at times, I ignored it. Yes, this is comparatively easy. Foxes dig shallow holes in lawns, bowling greens or playing fields when they are hunting for earthworms and grubs; they eat a large number of cutworms (the caterpillars of moths) and beetle larvae, such as wireworms.These only come near the surface of the lawn in wet periods and so this sort of damage is seasonal. It occurs mainly in wet springs and warm wet autumns. Foxes moult once a year; this starts around April and they lose much of their fur, so they look extremely thin and scruffy.Often only the grey underfur is left, so that they have large grey patches on the shoulders or flanks.

While relationships between political and business leaders are normally transactional, Lindsay Fox is fiercely loyal to the people he does business with. Kelty says once Fox identified Andrews as a leader who could get things done, it naturally followed that he would develop a strong, personal affinity with the Premier and his interests. Seat of power: The Fox compound in Portsea where Daniel and Catherine Andrews dined at the start of the year. Credit: Eddie Jim No. Rabies was eliminated from this country in the early part of the 19th century and Britain is currently one of only a few countries without rabies.Sometimes fox cubs may be living in an adjacent property but playing in your garden, trampling flower beds, stealing washing off lines, jumping on and breaking cloches or getting entangled in garden netting.Invariably the cubs play very close to their earth and so they will be living a few metres away, under a neighbour's shed or in a patch of rank vegetation. Urban fox populations are far greater than those in rural areas, mainly due to the fact that a far greater amount of food is readily available.The most likely reason for a fox to enter your garden is in the search for food, removal of the food source will reduce the attractiveness of your garden to the fox. We know from Cerridwen’s story how important the animals are and how the transformation takes place through them. Looking at animals we see the dance of life and death most clearly.

Foxolutions recommends Scoot, a fox repellent that fools a fox into not recognising its own scent markings so it believes another fox is claiming the territory. Was it a bad decision? Or just a poor outcome? I’ve subsequently learned that it is better to evaluate decisions based on the actual decision-making process you use – not the outcome. A decision to drive a car without a seat belt is a bad one. Just because you didn’t crash this time, doesn’t change this. It is possible to make a good decision and the outcome still not go your way. One way to think about this is to ask if, given the opportunity to make this decision again, would I? With this campaign, I would not. It was a bad decision. A final note. Many of my stories involve advertising. The simple reason for this is that much of my experience, my mistakes and learnings included advertising or communications of some sort. But marketing and advertising are not the same. I would hate for this book to add to this misunderstanding. Advertising is just one piece of this. And a far smaller piece perhaps, than I once believed. Even if advertising is not part of your marketing world, I’m hoping you see this as a specialist book that offers up nuggets of general wisdom.

Due to limited resources, we are unable to sponsor two trail races this year. We are looking forward to the Knobstone Trail Run in October. Sayers, who personally pitched the Elenium kiosks to Andrews, owns an eponymous business investment and advisory company that acts as a consultant to Elenium. The Fox family owns 14.5 per cent of Sayers’ firm and Bassat is also an investor. The new winter coat grows throughout the summer and this process is usually only completed in September or October. If the damage is not too severe you can ignore it and it will cease as soon as the weather changes. You can then repair the lawn. Otherwise, you can remove the grubs and earthworms in the lawn using a commercially available insecticide and vermicide available from garden centres and DIY stores. This course of action should only be considered in extreme circumstances, due to the need to reduce the use of all pesticides in the environment. Since dumping animals like this is clearly inhumane, such action could well be an offence under the Abandonment of Animals Act 1960.

Linfox put serious time and energy into the proposal, enlisting the expertise of its newly appointed president of government and defence, former Victoria Police assistant commissioner Doug Fryer, to bolster its pitch. Most cities in southern England also have urban foxes, as do a few cities further north.For most towns and cities the fox population reached its carrying capacity (ie: the maximum number of animals the habitat will sustain) many years ago and contrary to popular belief, the population is stable, with no significant increases or decreases. There are only a few cities where fox numbers are probably still increasing and these are ones that have only recently been colonised. The only recourse is to ensure that you do not leave such items in your garden overnight if foxes frequent the area.Controlling urban foxes is difficult, expensive and never successful. In the past, a number of local authorities tried this, particularly in London but most have now given up any form of fox control.The problem is that foxes have been in urban areas for so long that they have reached a state of equilibrium and regulate the size of their own population. A large proportion of the foxes do not breed each year and litter sizes (average just under five) are comparatively small.

The fact is, most marketing lessons that get shared come from successful campaigns; marketers are too afraid to be honest about mistakes. But everyone makes mistakes in and there are hugely valuable and unique lessons to be learned from taking a closer look at failures big and small. Other people believe that foxes are particularly short of food in the winter and so need feeding.Again this is a fallacy, as winter poses no problem for foxes.The proposal was ultimately not adopted, but its genesis reveals the Fox method of doing business with the Andrews government. So I have learned a lot about the life and behaviour of wild animals. And Reebus has been that teacher. But I have to start from the beginning.