I rarely use support tickets with online service providers, preferring to research their knowledge base of articles instead. But when I get an answer like this with the log “Deemed Solved” it just makes me mad.   The details of my issue were not resolved by the first ticket I submitted.  Then, in order to [...]








One of the buzz marketing phrases doing the rounds is “Inbound Marketing”  and we find that many brands and businsses hope inbound marketing will fulfil all their hopes for new enquiries and drive up the sales funnel effortlessly. It doesn’t work like that. There certainly are many agencies who sell themselves as inbound or content marketing specialists. [...]








Recently I’ve become very conscious of images as part of the brand mix online and offline.  There are brands who create visual icons – take a look at my ‘Marmite’ Pinterest board created for a client celebrating the fact that New Zealand has run out of Marmite(!)- true story. And so I think we’ve changed [...]








Migrating your marketing online and integrating new elements of social media into a traditional brand strategy is not easy.  Today we showcase a client and their challenges and a book and a blog post.  Together they give you the one principle you need to write a B2B online brand strategy. How to get customer community integrated into your [...]








Yesterday we launched into a new interview with Paul Roetzer about his book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint. In the book you use the phrase “Hybrid agency” – is this commonly used? It’s not yet common. There’s another PR book coming out describing us as hybrid professionals which I have read a preview.  But I do [...]








Paul Roetzer is a striking, energetic man.  We met after I’d read his first book, the Marketing Agency Blueprint which explains how he has founded a PR agency in a 21st century mould. You worked in a traditional agency – how did they view biz dev? They didn’t really have it – they were reliant [...]








This week I’ve been invited to two separate new business apps to try out and both have been a disappointment. Talent.me A Facebook app that sets out to connect you to business partners. I joined, it connected me to all my contacts (I know them already) and then set about asking me to endorse people… [...]








Since we wrote the report summary on mobile shopping, we also found this report from marketing agency, Head London, in which they commissioned research into retailers’ online stores. The Customer Experience Deficit White paper Online retail experiences have to become brand specific, highly relevant and personalised to each shopper. Retailers need to make better use [...]








There’s been a profusion of interest in the new(ish) social media site, Pinterest – see my boards . One of the advantages of Pinterest – compared to Facebook you can’t create a page where people find your interest easily, unless you’re already connected to each other.  On Pinterest you can search for Tennis shoes, or Apple accessories [...]








We just found this new site called Let’s Talk About. Using a FB login, it allows you to set topics and add friends and other users interested in joining your discussion. Good points on Lets Talk About Simple display of topics. You can’t see any topics unless you join that list. You get an alert [...]