Category Thought Leadership

July 29, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Guru in a Bottle, Thought Leadership  No comments

With British Muslims celebrating the festival of Eid al-Fitr over the coming days, new research suggests brand owners may be missing out on the sales opportunities presented by this and other cultural events. According to an online poll of 1,000 UK adults by creative agency Haygarth, nearly 30% of Asian or British Asian respondents intend to go shopping for Eid and Ramadan, the month of fasting that precedes it.This amounts to 3% of all UK consumers, leading Haygarth to warn that the retail calendar is becoming increasingly complex because of changing demographics, cultural trends and marketing techniques. It found another 3% of UK respondents intend to shop for the Jew...

May 22, 2014,  Events, Guru in a Bottle, News, Thought Leadership  3 comments

Indian voters are pinning their hopes on their new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Hindu nationalist BJP, to make good on his promises – a factor that eventually forced the Congress Party to lose its grip on power and suffer crushing defeat at the hands of its rival.

Former India PM Manmohan Singh claims that the legacy of his presidency is a far stronger Indian economy compared to that when he took office a decade earlier.

But the octogenarian became susceptible to a string of corruption scandals within his own party as well as political paralysis where he was seen as being too aloof to stop.

Modi will be sensitive and mindful of the short-comings of his predec...

May 13, 2014,  Brand marketing, Thought Leadership  No comments

Strange, but true…

Unilever will continue to use the peace logo in promotions for its new Lynx fragrance but is making an undisclosed donation to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) after the protest group slammed its “callous” use of the iconic symbol.

The FMCG company said the “universally recognised symbol of peace” is a key part of its bid to raise awareness of peace globally, which forms part of the marketing campaign for its new “Peace” sub brand.

The campaign, which has seen 70ft peace signs tagged on various landmarks across the capital, was slammed by CND as being a “disingenuous”...

April 11, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, The Art of Influencing and Selling, Thought Leadership  No comments

Choice is now something we all take for granted – from the type of product or service we desire, the features we look for that best suit our particular needs and requirements and even how much we’re prepared to pay for this.

Traditional marketing thinking went something like this: “Increase levels of customer satisfaction and give customers more of what they want is the key to commercial success.”

Well, the reality is somewhat different in 2014.

Much of the time, most of us don’t think too deeply about how happy we are about the product we’ve just bought at the supermarket or the service we’ve received at the local shoe repairer or whether it completely fulfils our ne...

April 4, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, Public Relations practice, Thought Leadership  No comments

According to American anthropologists Clyde Kluckhohn and Alfred Kroeber, culture “is a shared social blueprint for life – the constellation of values, assumptions, beliefs and behavioural norms that define a group of people.”

Well that’s the academic perspective for you, but how does this work in practice? Let’s say you have a prospective major customer in Germany and arrange to meet in Berlin over lunch.

Knowing how to read and speak German will be an obvious advantage when it comes to ordering lunch or entering into discussions but how will this serve you in being able to recognise the communication patterns of your guests that goes beyond the difference in la...

March 15, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Marketing practice, Public Relations practice, Thought Leadership  No comments

At the end of last year, a new book by Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington hit the shelves and caused a bit of a stir. Brand Vandals was a polemic about the dangers facing any organisation as it struggles to manage its reputation in the face of determined vandals out to destroy it on social media.

“Media has become a two-way weapon. Nobody can control it. It’s anarchy.”

Assuming you didn’t suffer nervous shock or call the emergency services after reading the first chapter, the book goes on to describe a world where luckless PR managers are fighting an ever losing battle against brand vandalism...

March 7, 2014,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, Thought Leadership  No comments

UK-based companies 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).

With a closer focus being taken by UK and European legislators on the individual’s right to privacy, marketers face one of the toughest marketing regulatory regimes in the world.

So keeping up-to-date with a torrent of guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office and ever more prescriptive drafts of the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation is now essential in order to stay one step ahead of the competition.

We are kicking off our firs...

March 7, 2014,  Guru in a Bottle, Innovation, Thought Leadership  No comments

Well, obviously you’ll see yourself as a ‘thought leader’, don’t you?

But actually, what does that mean? And can you make money out of being a thought leader?

Thought leadership means a lot of different things to a lot of people and for some it boils down to the creation or adaptation of an innovative concept for direct or indirect business advantage.

If you happen to work in a marketing or PR agency, the value of your time can be measured directly in proportion to the quality of your intellectual and creative output and the outcomes you deliver for the client. On that basis, thought leadership can be very profitable indeed.

But you don’t have to work in an agency to...