Category Public Relations practice

Lush declares war on Amazon with landmark ruling at the High Court

I-feel-dirtySales 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...

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How to build better relationships with bloggers and the media

Guru-blog3This 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...

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Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic clamp down on blurring advertising with editorial content in 2014

weighing-scalesGiven the tendency for over-indulgence during the Festive Season it’s not surprising that some brand owners of diet plans, slimming and low fat products will think their Christmases have all come at once in the New Year as millions of us try to shake off the excesses of eating and drinking by trying to lose some weight!

Marketers may be tempted to do what Flora pro. activ (owned by Unilever) did a few years’ ago in the UK by inviting a national journalist to ‘fight the flab’ and exercise alongside a calorie controlled diet and keep a daily record of her progress.

This may sound like a great way to connect with consumers who may feel they need some encouragement to do ...

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A ride to the dark side

Alex GibneyThere can be few ironies in life compared with the following story.

As a film maker in my spare time, I realise that the best laid plans can often go awry thanks to the tendency of real life events to play out in unpredictable and surprising ways.

This is exactly what happened to Oscar-winning film maker Alex Gibney when earlier this year it looked as if his world had fallen apart.

You see, Gibney was in the middle of making a documentary film, narrated by Hollywood ‘A-list’ Matt Damon, about the seven- times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and his triumphant battle against cancer to reach the pinnacle of his sport.

Except of course it was all a big lie as Armstrong...

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