Minimum price for alcohol

The news today includes the Supreme Court ruling that the Scottish Government can set a minimum price for alcohol, ending a five year legal battle – link Whilst I understand the reasons behind this in terms of potential benefits for health, as a marketer it seems wrong to impose a minimum price, or actually any […]

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The joy of 140!

The announcement from Twitter that they are increasing the character limit for most users from 140 to 280 is disappointing for many people, causing lots of discussion on the platform. To me the real joy of Twitter is the brevity – it works two ways, it gives the chance to scan a lot of information […]

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Digital Diploma in Professional Marketing qualification

We are really pleased to be able to offer the new CIM Digital Diploma in Professional Marketing – we will be offering this as an evening course in both Leeds and Sheffield from September and will have a distance learning programme available later this year. Details are available here or please contact us if you […]

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Job vacancies

We occassionally hear about marketing job vacancies and have had a couple of emails from people recently telling us about  positions so thought we would share them here. South Yorkshire – LEP 3 posts which are: Strategic corporate affairs manager ( has marketing involved) Strategic marketing manager Press and communications officer. Details are available at www.barnsley.gov.uk who are doing […]

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Commendations

Well, here we are in April and all the plans I had to blog regularly this year seem to have been thwarted for lots of reasons, some good and some definitely not. But this blog is to share some good news, we got commendations for the performance of our students in the December 2016 CIM […]

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New logo – the story

The logo and font style for SPA Professional Academy has remained the same for quite some years so I felt it was probably time for a refresh, but that led to the problem many marketers have of what to adopt. Fortunately, whilst considering the change something turned up that made the decision really easy in […]

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New Year, New Logo, New Office

Happy New Year! It is change time for SPA Professional Academy as we welcome 2017 with a new office and a new logo. Our new office address is: Churchill House 29 Mill Hill Road Pontefract WF8 4HY Our phone number remains the same – 01977 649000. The delivery locations for our workshop based courses in […]

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Is going back a good strategy for the future?

Jaguar are using their heritage to produce a “new” car – a continuation of a model made 60 years ago. But for a forward looking organisation does this give the right impression? There are strong arguments for why Jaguar should do this but having changed their positioning and image over recent years to produce a […]

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Product, packaging and physical evidence

I received a package through the post today which demonstrates very well how packaging can enhance the perception of a product. As a background I answered a questionnaire from Bremont (an English luxury watchmaker – link here) for which I received a voucher for money off in their accessories store. I decided to put it […]

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18 years of SPA!

It has been so busy recently I missed out on a celebration for 18 years of SPA – October 8th 1998 was the first day of self employment which led to where I am now. It has been great so far, really enjoying life and meeting some great people through the CIM qualification courses we […]

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Commendations from CIM

We really should have published about this before but for various reasons haven’t done – for every study session The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) issue commendations to study centres who have achieved high pass rates on assessments which have had minimum numbers of candidates (you don’t get a commendation with a 100% pass rate […]

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Busy times!

Wow, life has been hectic recently from both business and personal sides meaning I haven’t made time to write any blog posts – my list of topics to cover is getting longer all the time so I thought I should at least post something here to let you know we are still active! Last week […]

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