Category Marketing practice

February 26, 2014,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, Marketing practice, Public Relations practice, Sales practice  No comments

Sales and marketing practices of online retailers selling similar products and services of well-known brands will need to change after the High Court ruled that online giant Amazon can’t use a Google Ad Word of soap and beauty brand Lush to lure customers to its own retail site for alternative products as this amounts to a breach of the Lush trademark.

Lush has built a brand platform based on its own code of ethics – something which it jealously defends and contends that Amazon doesn’t subscribe to.

As a result, Lush decided it won’t sell its products on the retail giant’s website and probably never will...

February 21, 2014,  Essential Law for Marketers, Events, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, Marketing practice, News, Sponsorship News  No comments

So the question on most marketers’ lips at the half-way stage of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games 2014 is who’s winning brand gold and who’s coming last in the multi-million dollar sponsorship stakes?

Well, this picture sums up the problem, doesn’t it?

An Olympic Official at Sochi with duct tape sticking it over the Apple logo of the laptop belonging to Associated Press director of international video Mark Davies. As if this pretty innocuous indirect view of an Apple logo on this laptop justifies this type of treatment?

Well, it’s bonkers really but then you need to understand the reasoning behind this extreme form Olympic brand protection.

Non-Olympic partners such as ...

February 9, 2014,  High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Marketing practice, News  One comment

Over the past eight years the South Korean giant has gone from being a virtual unknown on the high street to one that’s on the cusp of becoming Britain’s ‘most loved brand’ and has come up with a brand marketing platform that’s as good as anything its rival Apple could’ve dreamt up.

‘Launching People’ is an advertising funded programme (AFP) series to be broadcast in Spring 2014 where stars from film, music, photography and cooking mentor promising new talent on the back of a nationwide competition.

It’s a neat way for Samsung to humanise its brand rather than constantly rely on technological innovation to get people talking as the product gap between itself a...

February 6, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice  No comments

Romance with privately-owned companies and their brands looks like going from strength to strength in most global markets but the same can’t be said of the public’s view of governments where urgent action is now required to reverse a global ‘trust deficit’ among political leaders.

These and other fascinating findings are contained in the 14^th Annual Edelman Trust Barometer 2014 that maps trust and other sentiment levels among 33,000 respondents from around the world.

The online survey, the largest of its kind in the world, was conducted towards the end of 2013 and the early part of 2014.

It sampled the views of 27,000 general and 6,000 informed respondents aged betw...

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 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 9, 2014,  Marketing practice, Sales practice, The Art of Influencing and Selling  No comments

The primary difference between a poor and a great ‘pitch’ is in its delivery.

It’s not just what’s being said but how it’s said that can really make the difference. 

But that doesn’t mean you have to put on a gorilla suit to get noticed!

If you’ve ever been in a situation where there isn’t much time to deliver a ‘knock em dead’ sales and marketing pitch fear not!

By following these Top 10 Tips you’ll soon become an expert at delivering the perfect ‘pitch’.  And you can read more about how to make a great pitch in The Art of Influencing and Selling!

#1: Conquer your nerves

Most people get nervous when doing a sales and marketing pitch and that’...

January 9, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Guru in a Bottle, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Marketing practice  No comments

As technology continues to evolve and re-shape sales and marketing practice you may be forgiven in thinking that traditional print media is a thing of the past.

In fact, the print industry is having a boom time on both sides of the Atlantic and flipping the perception on its head print sales and marketing looks likely to grow in 2014 thanks to technological advances that allow for more freedom in the way it’s deployed.

According to researchers in the US, direct mail (DM) continues to be used heavily with a 43% share of total local retail advertising and around 76% of small businesses reporting that their preferred sales and marketing strategy is a combination of both print ...

January 7, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, High Impact Marketing that Gets Results, Marketing practice, Social marketing practice  No comments

As more consumers are engaging with brands on social platforms, it’s essential that brands start to develop their own online personalities depending on the digital platform in order to help build lasting relationships with their desired customer, client and supporter segments.

This ‘personality transplant’ that brands undertake often involves using brief snippets of conversation and humor to engage with their desired audiences in much the same way as Guru in a Bottle does!

And this isn’t as silly as it sounds.

According to a report from strategy consultants Bain & Company, consumers who engage with businesses through social media channels are likely to spend 20-40% more mo...

December 31, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, Marketing practice, News, Sales practice  No comments

UK-based companies will face a major shake-up in how they conduct consumer sales and marketing activities over the next 12-months in the wake of a raft of new laws and regulations emanating from the UK and European Union (EU). The following is a quick guide to some of these key legal and regulatory changes and more guidance is available in Essential Law for Marketers (2^nd edition).

Direct marketing and e-commerce practices

A radical shake up in this area is already underway as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has signalled a number of important changes that effectively erode the reliance by marketers on an ‘opt-out’ as a strategy for driving direct marketing (DM)...