A feel good story of the modern age

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In this high-tech interconnected world, it’s all too easy to take for granted the tools at our disposal, tools such as: smart phones, wi-fi connectivity, search engines, websites and even online ordering. Here in the UK, and across the majority of the world, we can sit on our derriere’s and order takeaway food and have it delivered to our homes without barely moving a muscle. Putting the obvious lack of exercise and human interaction to one side for a moment, all these tools are there to help us make the most of every available second of our time. But on Saturday afternoon, as I was driving home from Leamington Spa with my son, we’d be able to use most of … Read More >

Retail Discounting – The Road to Ruin

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Discounting - The road to ruin

It’s tough on the high street right now, really tough. You may have heard the expression when people say things happen in a certain way because all the planets just line up right for them? Well I’d argue that at the moment that lining up of planets is having the opposite effect. Many retailers who have been struggling for some time with digital, have subsequently had GDPR to contend with and the rights of access of personal data, followed by Brexit and the general political climate both here and in the US and China. Then, on top of that, they’re now seeing the additional impact of a lack of footfall, caused through personal financial anxiety or environmental challenges (such as … Read More >

As a retailer, can you afford not to invest in marketing technology?

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Consumers with money to spend

According to Forbes, ‘The World’s Top 20 brands show that tech firms are on the rise and traditional businesses are having a hard time’ https://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/#tab:rank. If you are a retail business, either traditional bricks and mortar store, or one that only sells in the digital space, you’ll invariably be using social media and email to tempt consumers to spend again. You’ll probably be asking them for product reviews and social ‘likes’ whilst simultaneously struggling to cope with a deep understanding of the data you ultimately possess? You may not yet have identified it, but your exhaustive efforts and long days/weeks are beginning to look remarkably like the last one. If that sounds like you, don’t be surprised, judging by the … Read More >

Marketing needs a capital ‘M’!

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Some quarters of the marketing profession have been suffering for quite a while. They’ve been suffering from a poor image which many practitioners have allowed to happen, either through a lack of confidence or ability in their own skills or due to restrictions placed on their roles by their paymasters which stifle curiosity and endeavour, in other words…a lack of positive change.   In a recent article in Marketing Week (Sept 18), former CMO and author of ‘The 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader’ Thomas Barta stated, ‘If marketing were a brand, you would fire the CMO’. This is because in many firms up and down the land, a lack of understanding from business owners (and indeed many marketers) marketing … Read More >

Policies – Just don’t drop the ball!

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We live and work in an age where the freedoms you may have once had in building your business have become increasingly tied to regulations and legislation and they permeate every discipline. Most are robust and are designed to leave no room for manoeuvre, whilst others may allow a difference of interpretation that doesn’t immediately lead to a financial penalty. Either the difficulty you have is that the policies you produce on the back of these should be clear and unambiguous and act to position the relationships with your stakeholders, be they customers or employees. Yet despite this (obvious) understanding, mistakes seem to be made from the very largest of organisations to the very smallest. A few months ago, the … Read More >

“Experts built the Titanic didn’t they?”

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Astronomer or Astronaut - who has the most experience in space

Over the last twenty-four months there’s been a lot of dialogue and feverish activity in some quarters surrounding the introduction of the new European data protection regulations (known as GDPR), the aim of which is the safeguarding of personal data in a business context. During this time, I’ve come across a variety of business responses that follow several marketing models, from those who rapidly adopt anything and everything that’s new to support their business positioning, through to those who significantly lag behind. I’ve spoken with a Chairman who believes it’ll be nothing more than a damp squib, likening it to Y2K, other large operators that ignored it until the last two months prior to introduction, some who have copied Privacy … Read More >

The Transition to a Truly Sustainable Business

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Businesses are constantly coming under increasing pressure that continues to challenge their very existence, so it’s easy to appreciate that issues which arise during the course of any given working day will invariably outweigh the opportunities of tomorrow. Pressures that come from regulation, local government controls, competition, consumers, lobbying groups and even a firm’s own employees, make running a business today a highly complex activity. These pressures combine to apply further pressure on the goods and services offered and the prices charged. But businesses that have the capacity to place themselves at the centre of their environmental and societal obligations, can use this aspect to manage the impact of their activities and ultimately drive cost benefits to the bottom line … Read More >

To Charge or Not to Charge?

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20th century social thinker & philanthropist

We live and work in an age where competition for market space has never been greater, so whether you’re selling coffee or cars it’s inevitable that most businesses feel compelled to provide schemes such as, ‘try before you buy’, ‘buy now pay later’ and ‘interest free’ offers. These schemes may be particularly relevant if you are trying to leverage your product amongst a wider group of consumers (such as those mentioned), but I’ve begun to notice that these initiatives are becoming more prevalent in the area of consulting too, and not just amongst the new entrants desperate for a piece of the sector. I accept that any business regardless of size may want to do adopt a range of initiatives … Read More >

The Research That’s Generally Overlooked by B2B SME’s (your competitor’s customers)

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Ask most consumers to tell you what they know about market research and they’ll invariably recall one of the many questionnaires they’ve received into their email account or smart phone after a recent shopping experience. Ask the same of the SME business-to-business environment and we often see an identical response, that of a business owner who cites a personal consumer experience. So why would a business owner not reference a business example as his/her first thought, and what does this tell us? Here’s four learnt conclusions; – Members of the SME business community rely instead on turnover and profitability figures believing these to be the only valid indicator for current (& potential) success. SME businesses who have used off-the-shelf tools … Read More >

‘Revving-up’ Customer Engagement in the Automotive Sector (Event)

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Revving-up Customer Engagement

According to internationally acclaimed journal Automotive News, the automotive sector accounts for 20% of the World’s largest 100 advertising companies with an ad spend of approx. $47bn, and included seven automotive manufacturers within the World’s Top 25 advertisers in 2015. This resultant expenditure highlights just how much manufacturers needed to spend in order to compete for a share of the 88 million vehicles sold the following year (Source: PwC). Volkswagen spent $6.6bn and was the largest ad spender but they still failed to appear in the Top 10 automotive manufacturers on brand value after the emissions scandal hit the news in 2015. So, we can’t underestimate the importance of automotive marketing to the consumer which will be the subject of … Read More >