Monthly Archives January 2014

January 31, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Legal update  3 comments

The Seattle-based company successfully obtained a US patent on Christmas Eve 2013 for what it calls “anticipatory shipping”. This was the gist of the news item that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (17 January 2014) that’s caused something of a stir on social networks, such as Slashdot. According to the WSJ, Amazon in the US may box and ship products that it expects customers in a specific area will want based on previous orders, product searches, wish lists, shopping cart contents, returns and other online shopping practices it gleans from its customers’ shopping patterns, even before they’ve clicked ‘buy’.

Amazon has worked out how to cut delivery time...

January 29, 2014,  High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, News  No comments

Earlier this week I attended a fascinating insight given by the Accenture analytics team and former England rugby player and now BT Sports Rugby Expert Ben Kay on how the individual performance of a player is capable of being improved through the use of cutting-edge technology and sophisticated algorithms that give ‘real-time’ feedback whilst the game is in progress.

Accenture is the ‘Official Technology Partner’ for the RBS 6 Nations Rugby Championships (2014-17) and the sports sponsorship is something of a shop window for the world’s largest management and technology consultancy...

January 27, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Events  No comments

January 27, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

All of us around the world should remember those who suffered and died in the greatest act of evil ever committed in mankind in the 20th Century. There was the following Prayer found written on a piece of wrapping paper at Ravensbruck concentration camp in Nazi Germany, which is truly inspiring:

“O Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill but also those of ill will...

January 23, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Guru in a Bottle, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Sales practice, The Art of Influencing and Selling  No comments

There was a time when global brand owners thought all that mattered was their own brand. Coca-Cola led the way in showing how powerful the monolithic brand of its eponymous carbonated drink can be around the world. And of course the same could also be said of other great global brands like McDonalds, KFC, Levis and Microsoft.

However, the assumptions about power of brands and the way they need to be built in emerging markets are being turned on their head.

Let’s take the humble cup of coffee and what US-giant Starbucks is doing in India right now to get Indian consumers to drink more coffee rather than just tea...

January 19, 2014,  House of Illustration, News  One comment

The House of Illustration, a national arts charity of which I’m a Trustee, will soon open its doors to the public later this year.

The charity was founded and supported by Sir Quentin Blake and focuses on graphic illustration in all its forms with the aim to reach as wide an audience as possible through exhibitions, events and national programmes.

Our new location will be at 2 Granary Square in the heart of London’s King’s Cross.

The building in this picture was designed by Lewis Cubitt (1799-1883) in 1850 who was also the architect of the fabulous King’s Cross Station that was built in 1851-2...

January 17, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, News, Sales practice  No comments

This year will mark a watershed in the way in which sales and marketing knowledge is shared across the world as technology continues to shape the way we work, play and learn.

The following predictions on how e-learning might trend over the next five years (2014-19) is based analysis of key business drivers across different territories; learning and development (L&D) challenges facing many sales and marketing professionals and the interest in new methods of learning such as ‘gamification’ as well as ‘byte-size’ learning.

Open access for workers who want to improve their sales and marketing expertise

Europe and USA

In mature markets such as Europe and US, e-learning an...

January 16, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Essential Law for Marketers, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Social marketing practice, The Art of Influencing and Selling  No comments

Mobile device adoption is growing exponentially and if you look at almost any industry metric the trajectory for mobile growth over the next five years is stratospheric.

In fact, it’s so ubiquitous it’s hard to image a time when there wasn’t a cacophony of cheesy ringtones chirping happily away in the pockets and handbags of its owners signalling another email, text message or in-coming call.

Along with the growth of the mobile platform has been a lot of hot air and nonsense about mobile marketing or what it’s now more frequently referred to as m-marketing.

Myth #1: To do mobile marketing you need an app

This is the biggest myth and a few years’ ago a bunch of devel...

January 15, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, Public Relations practice, Social marketing practice  No comments

This week, our friends at Vocus hosted a fascinating webinar that looked at how to build better relationships with bloggers and the media with a bunch of experts in the field.

Sharing their thoughts on this and other topics were Ben Davis, content and community producer at eConsultancy, Chris Dawson, co-founder and publisher of Tamebay, San Sharma, digital manager at small-business community Enterprise Nation and John Hayes, an expert in email marketing and social media at Vocus.

We covered the following areas in the webinar which you can listen to here by registering your details.

These are some of my own thoughts to the questions that were asked in the webinar which I ho...

January 12, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Essential Law for Marketers, Legal update, News, Social marketing practice  No comments

One of the most engaging and powerful aspects of B2C and B2B customer marketing and communications is prize promotions, competitions, promotions and incentives.

And they are also some of the most difficult things to get right, requiring an understanding of a complex web of competition, data protection, and media laws and regulations as discussed in Essential Law for Marketers.

However, given the appetite of regulators to want to tighten data protection across a number of areas including sales and marketing practices, the use of prize promotions, competitions, promotions and incentives as a way of lead generation is the latest to fall victim of new controls.

As I discussed a ...