Blog
Times, they are a-changing. And according to reports it is harder than ever to keep track of just who are your customers.
Although vaguely aware of more men of all ages shopping on their own in food supermarkets, the subject was brought home with a shock when I spotted a young man bottle-feeding a very young baby while bagging his goods and manoeuvring his trolley single handedly.
There is nothing like a muddled message to get a guaranteed nil result.
That’s what happened at the recent Bahrain Grand Prix, when the politicians got into the act and stole the headlines. Instead of racy entertainment and excitement the lasting memory is of a protest against an authoritarian government – definitely not the result the F1 organisers wanted.
With the recent announcement that the UK is officially back in recession, it may appear a strange time to be contemplating spending in virtue in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
However, there is a clear economic benefit for businesses that want to practice what they preach and deliver against mission statements on company ethos and charitable giving.
We’ve been celebrating our first birthday this month following an impressive first year growing clients within the B2B and B2C sectors.
With smartphone and tablet usage growing feverishly among consumers, the way in which we consume media is changing forever. Increasingly, people are reading and digesting news on the move, driving a demand for easily digestible news in bite-size chunks. Just as the Independent introduced its new ‘i’ newspaper last year as an ‘easy to read’ commuting paper with an almost ‘web’ like content format, so communications professionals, publishers and newspapers are being continually forced to consider how best to package news and make an impact as concisely as possible.
If the boss is leaving tweeting the company news to someone else he or she could be making a big mistake, according to a new survey.
With the PRSA’s new definition of PR it’s ‘all go’ for the PR industry as we hear that PR agency MDs and finance directors are considerably more positive about 2012 than their counterparts in other marketing sectors. There was a strong sense of optimism reported among the PR contingent of the 150 marketing consultancies surveyed by accountancy firm Kingston Smith. PR bosses revealed that they were positive about profit levels, with 71 percent forecasting increased year on year sales.
Jeff Skoll, the former president of eBay, was here in Oxford last week hosting the Skoll World Forum on social entrepreneurship. More than 900 entrepreneurs and senior business professionals converged in the city to discuss entrepreneurial approaches to the world’s great social challenges. With such a prestigious collective gathered so nearby, it set us thinking, what makes entrepreneurs tick? What is it that sets entrepreneurs apart from the average person and sends them soaring to success (or failure!)?
As the PR and marketing media continues its frenzied coverage of social media’s latest success story, Pinterest, we wonder how the lessons learnt from the digital world’s newfound celebrity can be applied to the professional services sector. After all, surely a social media site that has grown by 4,000% in the past six months shouldn’t be ignored.
We were interested to read that trust in social media has shot up 75%, according to the respected Edelman Trust Barometer. Increasingly, it seems that people are turning to each other for news and views, leaving respected journalists in the dust. When researching who were credible as spokespeople, ‘people like ourselves’ had rocketed up to take third place behind ‘academics’ and ‘experts’. Similarly, trust in ‘regular employees’ has increased to 50%, reflecting a shift in who is perceived to be the trusted voice within an organisation.