August 20, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

The over 50s currently account for 80% of the wealth of the UK – some £300 billion and spending by households including someone over the age of 65 is £109 billion. These figures will only get bigger as the shift towards an ageing population gathers pace.

Today there are 10.3m people in the UK aged over 65, by 2020 that figure will be 12.5m and on current projections that will have increased to 16m by 2030.

Within that group, older segments are the fastest growing and by 2050 it is estimated that there will be more than a quarter of a million centenarians in the UK.

But this growth isn’t confined to the UK.

For example, in the US, the number of people over 50 will have t...

August 18, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

One of the buzzwords of 2013 has got to be “big data.” I was recently in a boardroom meeting where talk of leveraging “big data” was a popular favourite around the table.

This made me smile. Over the last 20 years I’ve been involved in understanding how sport and entertainment can be used as a powerful brand communication and marketing platform. Many organisations and businesses have a lot to learn from sports rights owners who’ve been exploiting data for gain competitive advantage for many years.

Whether its athletics, soccer, F1, swimming, tennis, basketball or baseball, “big data” has been at the heart of developing a winning strategy in this industry.

It s...

August 17, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

To understand why it’s so critical that women play a key role in building—and rebuilding—economies around the world it’s important to consider the rise of talent as a dominant business issue.

In the digital economy, human capital replaces natural resources as the basis for growth. The businesses and countries that will lead in this century will be the ones that are best able to harness the innovation and creativity of their people. Countries like India, China and Brazil stand to potentially make some of the biggest advances here.

Women are undoubtedly a growing force in the global talent pool...

August 8, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

I’m gonna put my cards on the table and declare unashamedly I’m a massive fan of American culture! As a kid growing up in a small town in Essex on the edge of London, my escapism from the boredom of living on a council estate was through the black and white TV set in the corner of our living room!

It was here that I started to develop a taste for everything American – from the brilliantly funny Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as the Flintstones and Top Cat; the wacky ‘60s series starring Adam West as Batman with Burt Ward as Robin; the surreal and wonderful world of Captain James T Kirk and Spock in the original 70s series of Star Trek and then onto the remarkable Lou Gra...

August 8, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

There’s a principle in law that applies around the world. And it is that everyone is entitled to a fair trial.

Start messing with that and you could end up in deep trouble as 29-year old Joseph Beard recently found out to his cost.

Beard was called to serve as a juror in Kingston Crown Court in Surrey but hadn’t counted on appearing in the dock himself before Sir John Thomas of the Queen’s Bench Division at the Royal Courts of Justice and ended up with a criminal record in the process.

But that’s exactly what happened.

Beard was in the fifth week of a criminal trial estimated to take six weeks...

August 8, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

AK: What marketing trends have you seen on both sides of the Atlantic?

JB: If you’d asked me this question 25 years ago when I was working in the UK in the pharmaceutical industry, I would’ve said there was a distinct cultural approach to how we marketed products in the US versus the UK.

Fast forward 25 years and it’s amazing to see the cultural divide has basically evaporated which I would attribute to globalisation of the economy and I don’t think you can avoid the impact of the internet has had on markets and competition.

I think it’s interesting to note that the changes in marketing we’ve witnessed over the last five years have trumped the changes that have taken...

August 7, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle, News  No comments

Advocates of using the email marketing to drive sales tend to have a small library of well-chosen facts at their fingertips.

Check-out these eye-popping stats, for example.

Global email traffic stands at 166 billion emails a day; there are 3.84 billion email accounts – three times as many as all of Facebook and Twitter combined – and around 72 per cent of all users check their in box at least six times a day.

With a global average open-rate of around 20 per cent, about 5 per cent of these users click through to a web site in order to make a purchase and 83 per cent of this customer segment tend to have a higher propensity to spend more per transaction when marketed and sold...

August 7, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

In Part 1 we started to explore the different strategies for helping you create a bargain with a customer or client that will help close the deal.

Top Tip#6: Be a patient bargain hunter!

All too often in our desire to close a deal, as marketers we can often miss vital clues along the way when we want to strike a bargain with a customer or client.

We can also rush through the bargaining phase as well, particularly in light of our own sales and marketing targets!

The danger is that we are making premature judgments about what the options are as well as taking stock of what the customer or client actually wants.

It pays to remember a vital point made in my latest book, The Art ...

August 7, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

Let’s assume that you’ve reached a point where the customer or client is ready to buy!

You’re not home and dry until they’ve signed on the dotted line, are you? So how fast or slow this takes depends on how good you are at striking a bargain.

You may think this is easy, but it’s where deals are often lost. This is the period between negotiation and close of sale.

For example, let’s take the scenario where you’ve negotiated hard but can’t get the other person to cross the line. So you decide to ‘split the difference’. But this may not always work.

There’s a famous example of two sisters arguing over one orange left in the fruit bowl...

August 5, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  4 comments

‘Global opportunities for sports marketing, infrastructure and consultancy services to 2022’ shows that UK companies could benefit to the tune of GBP 5.9 billion partly as a result of the 2012 Olympic Legacy.

The 260 page Report, with detailed analysis across ALL global markets and 17 specially commissioned infographics is published by International Marketing Reports  and is available as an immediate download at GBP 995.00.

Currently, the UK sports service sector earns around 50% of its income overseas and the London 2012 Games helped to provide the expertise to chase major international contracts worth GBP billions.

The report identifies opportunities for companies i...