Had an unusual thing happen this week in relation to free pens and how they can be valued. In the office building where I work there is a sign-in sheet in reception – but very rarely a receptionist. A week or so ago the cheap pen which had been there for ages disappeared so I […]
In my last blog post I mentioned having attended a CIM Future Focus event in Leeds – the discussion is now available in a document which can be seen here – hopefully interesting reading, I certainly found it useful to review the comments again. There is even a picture of me included along with the comments […]
Yesterday evening I attended the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) FutureFocus event in Leeds as part of their #Marketing2025 Hackathon launch. During the evening there were many interesting discussions about the role of marketing and what this might be in 10 years time. One theme which kept recurring was the actual role of marketing. One […]
There is a great podcast in the BBC Radio 4 ‘The Bottom Line’ which includes great examples of a few regularly used marketing models – the podcast, entitled Single Product Companies was braodcast on 26 Jun 14 and featured interviews with senior staff from WD40, Maclaren and Crocs. Each of these organisations has a very limited […]
I’ve been in Liverpool today for the 2014 CIM Northern Conference – a great day with some really useful insights from the speakers. Here are some of the ones I thought were great: Everton Football Club (Richard Kenyon and Robert Elstone speaking) Everton have been using social media to engage with local communities and […]
We are delighted to announce that from September we will be delivering the new Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) qualifications for the Certificate and Diploma in Professional Marketing in Sheffield with evening courses to enable professional marketers to gain the qualifications in under 12 months for each. Full details available soon or contact us for […]
Having read an article about a new app this morning it got me thinking about whether apps should be used as a substitute for good personal service. Apparently Flypay – http://www.flypay.co.uk/ – have received £1m in funding for their app which will enable people to pay restaurant bills without the waiter being involved. There are claims […]
I recently heard about a new initiative from Booths, a supermarket chain based in Preston with stores predominantly in North West England which has implications for both Booths and other shops local to their stores. Booths operate a loyalty card scheme and have recently changed the offers to include a “free daily regular hot drink […]
I just saw this heading and had to write a quick piece about it – this is the sub-heading of an article in Autocar magazine this week which discusses hybrid powertrains for Rolls Royce cars, but it is the wording of the sub-heading which caught my attention. Why would anyone want to do something which […]
When it comes to customer service and building relationships it is often little things which make the difference, something which I experienced recently highlighting this. There are times when I use DHL for deliveries of parcels and so get to chat briefly with the drivers who collect and deliver the packages. I’m a bit late […]
Price is always an interesting and complex area for marketers to deal with and get right but today I saw an example which shows how price isn’t always proportional to the amount of product received. At a mainline rail station and wanting some water to drink I looked at one of the station vendors and […]
Amazon have just announced what appears to be a great differentiator in a crowded market which should give a more compelling proposition to customers. Only available in the US at the moment but they are offering a free cloud based mp3 version of music customers have bought on CD from Amazon since they started business […]
