Monthly Archives July 2013

July 27, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

This year’s PRCA Awards 2013 looks like being a record year for entries and I’m absolutely delighted to be involved in assessing the quality of the work of some of the best and brightest PR agencies in the world and I expect the standard of entries to be even higher this year.

The two categories that I’ve been asked to judge are International Consultancy of the Year (UK) 2013 and Large Consultancy of the Year 2013.

It’s also a fantastic opportunity for those of us who’ve been in the industry for some time to recognise the brilliant work of those who are the next generation of leaders for the industry in the future.

I’m very honoured to be joining a high powered group of...

July 26, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

Few would argue that the nature of social media, communication, information and the global economy have merged to transform the way we must now communicate and prospect for customers and clients.

In many respects, the strategies that are often employed to predict and manage customers’ or clients’ purchasing behaviour have been spurred on by the growth of online data, which in itself has its own challenges for the sales and marketing professional.

As I discuss in my new book, High Impact Marketing That Gets Results, what started life within the airline and hotel market segments has rapidly been adopted across other market segments that now database and online strategies pr...

July 20, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  One comment

Adventurer Bear Grylls is Chief Scout in the UK

The Scout Association one of the UK’s leading youth organisations, has been ranked as one of the most highly trusted institutions in the UK and second only to the Armed Forces. The Scouts overtook the NHS that had previously occupied the second slot but now drops to third place as a result of the surge in hospital scandals over the previous 12 months.

The recent poll of 1000 respondents, conducted by nfpSynergy, shows that 66% of people now trust charities ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ which is an increase of 2% on last year’s results and the highest figure for the sector since 2010.

Half of respondents in the surv...

July 19, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

Ian Smith, UK Head of Marketing, Harris Interactive reviews High Impact Marketing That Gets Results for B2B Magazine:

The strength of this latest book, from the successful Guru in a Bottle series, is in its blending of tried and tested marketing models from the academics, with bang-up-to-date examples and anecdotal evidence from seasoned marketing practitioners. This is then consolidated with a variety of relevant, informative and interesting case studies from both B2B and B2C brands.

I found this book to be well written, with Kolah making even the most complicated of topics accessible and entertaining...

July 14, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

New global research that I recently carried out on behalf of the British Government identified GBP 5.9bn in incremental new business opportunities for UK sports marketing and consultancy services sector across 55 one-off single global sports and entertainment events over the next decade.

These findings are being used by the British Government to inform its strategy for the future development of the UK’s professional and business services sector, published Thursday 11 July 2013.

The UK’s professional and business services (PBS) sector is a global success story and the growing UK sports marketing and consultancy services segment is set to be worth of GBP 1bn over the next deca...

July 14, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

The psychology of online persuasion is one of the fastest growing marketing disciplines in the world today. There are now more than 1 billion websites and this is expected to exceed 2 billion by 2015. Studying  online consumer behaviour is critical for marketers seeking new ways to drive  sales of products and services.

Attracting the right kind of customer or client to a website isn’t simply a matter of whether or not they can afford to purchase your product or service, as important as this is. It’s  more scientific than that. In fact, it’s neurochemical.

Scientific research explains that your customers experience the world through each of the five senses, translat...

July 10, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

Did you know that women and economic growth is a reality that has played out quietly for centuries to the point now that women globally are a market segment bigger than Facebook?

Yes, really. And large enough to rival China or India. A real, not virtual, economic superpower in their own right, dubbed the ‘Third Billion’ by analysts at Booz & Co.

Whether this reality has taken place in the world’s most advanced economies or those that are beginning to emerge on the world stage, one constant remains – the participation of women in economic activity keeps the world spinning on its axis.

As a result, the influence of women as the world’s most valuable customer segment is ...

July 8, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

It’s often very difficult to know what makes a news release work and what doesn’t if you haven’t been doing it for that long. For those of us who do it for a living, we’ve witnessed some major changes in the art and craft of getting the message across to desired audience and customer segments. Today, PR is a very different business to what it was even a couple of years’ ago.

For me it comes down to taking a hard-nosed approach and increasingly that means understanding what we’re trying to achieve with using PR as a business tool rather than leaving it to chance and Lady Luck.

PR used to be about what I call the “transmit” mode of communication...

July 7, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update  No comments

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the furore over the UK phone hacking scandal in 2011 engulfed the owners of News International as well as politicians of all political parties, the Government and law enforcement officers, the issue of privacy and electronic communications has become a national obsession.

The public revulsion that followed the disclosure of the hacking of private phone messages of murder and terrorist victims and war widows didn’t just rip apart the UK’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper the News of the World but also raised serious questions about the legal safeguards in place to protect an individual’s right to privacy whilst at the same time protecting freedom of...

July 4, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

In my 20-year plus career within journalism, public relations, marketing and social media I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with some of the most successful global organisations in the world including Andersen Consulting (Accenture), Disney,  BBC,  The Scout Association, Shell, Ferrari, the International Cricket Council and the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

Very often it’s been my job to train chief executives on how best to put across their messages to audiences ranging from several hundred employees and millions of TV viewers.

Whilst all of these communication skills are very important – what we aren’t taught either at school or indeed when we work wit...