Category News

March 16, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

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 12, 2014,  Essential Law for Marketers, News, Social marketing practice  No comments

Entrepreneur, lawyer and international deal-maker Clive Rich spotted a gap in the market for delivering high quality legal services to small-medium sized companies at the fraction of the fees that would normally be charged by a high street law firm.

The difference was that this legal advice would be delivered online and LawBite the brand was born.

But rather than go to a private equity provider or a bank in order to bankroll the new venture, Rich decided to use crowd sourcing to finance the enterprise.

In fact, seeking investment from the same small-medium sized companies that would want to use these legal services in the first place was a stroke of genius.

This deceptively s...

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,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

This may be unbelievable but true. The Mayor of Winter Olympic and Paralympic host city Sochi has said gay people do not live there. Anatoly Pakhomov told the BBC’s Panaroma programme: “We don’t have them in our town.” When asked if he was sure, he remarked: “I’m not sure, I don’t bloody know them.”

Russia’s law banning the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” has provoked widespread international condemnation since it was introduced last year.

Predictably, its also caused something of a diplomatic incident with many prominent people across the world saying they will stay away from the Sochi Olympic Games because of such draconian laws.

Sensitive to world pub...

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 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 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 ...

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)...