Brand or demand? That was the question posed by Gyro HSR at its half day conference on February 23rd, held in the gothic splendor of Manchester Town Hall. The global B2B agency had assembled an impressive range of speakers from its varied client portfolio, all focused around where marketers should be focusing their attention: building their brand or generating demand.Personally, I thought the premise for the event was excellent, and the speakers offered some genuine insight and elaboration on the theme. Gyro HSR even managed to get Lord Heseltine (B2B by association of his involvement with Haymarket Publishing) to do...

It’s now back to reality after a fantastic Christmas and New Year break, the latter part of which was spent with friends skiing in the French Alps.  Don’t worry, the irony of returning to the UK in the midst of the most extensive snow fall for decades was not lost on me! That said the skiing was great and the company excellent. I went with a group of friends, a couple of whom are business owners. One of whom had organised the accommodation (yes all sourced and booked online), and very nice it was too, but knowing him as I do,...

By Anna Goldie, online editor The time of year is upon us when some of us start thinking about our New Year’s resolutions and I want to hear about yours. No, I don’t want to hear about you resolving not to clean your finger nails with your pen lid anymore or finally admitting that you are more than a social smoker. I want to hear about the resolutions that are really important in 2010— the ones about the world of B2B marketing. Maybe you have learnt a valuable lesson in 2009 that you are determined to put into practice in...

That was indeed the question I mulled over when travelling home from the recent B2B Marketing conference on lead generation. It’s not often that I think about breasts, and that may have been the result of too much wine, but the parallels between lead nurturing and breast feeding suddenly struck me. You see, there is a line. Like breast feeding, you can nurture for too long and before you know it you’re the subject of a Channel 4 documentary with two seven year olds clamped limpet-like to your teats. You enjoy the contact, the interaction, the reliance and it makes...

Don’t you just hate clichés? Don’t they drive you up the wall? Let’s face it; marketing is full of them. And here’s one that I bet all marketers have heard over the last nine months: ‘work smarter’. In my book, it’s right up there with ‘win-win situation’ and ‘adding value’ in terms of its annoyance potential, but unfortunately, it does have resonance in these times – which makes it all the more irritating. Everyone’s being asked to go that extra mile, to work that bit harder to meet targets and to achieve objectives. And if they value their job, most...