B2B Marketing Blog
Recently by Francesca Brosan

Does marketing need to be 'official'?

August 2, 2010 11:30 AM | By Francesca Brosan
So it’s official.  Relationship building websites work.  At least that is the finding of a study on P&G’s customer experience website in Greece (the equivalent of www.supersavvyme.com). This was one of the papers presented at the Academy of Marketing Conference, a convention of academics who study and research what we practitioners do for a living.   The paper showed that broadening the customer-company relationship via the website increased positive word of mouth towards the website, and intentions to increase purchase of the company’s products.  So far, so good.  Except they haven’t compared it to other relationship building websites.  Or outside Greece. ...
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Tweet-sized B2B

July 14, 2010 10:39 AM | By Francesca Brosan
B2B marketing often faces being pigeonholed as the  ‘undefinable’ – or worse, the ‘boring’ – sibling to the glam of B2C marketing. But B2B is on the rise. As a group, we’ve embraced digital. Integrated social media, microsites, video, mobile and web apps have all become a big part of a lot more marketing mixes (of course, true to our nature, not without very careful consideration first, asking ourselves ‘is the investment worth it?’). But even though we’re rising up, it still seems we struggle for an accurate definition of the work we (as a whole) do. Last week, a...
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Not another World Cup blog

June 14, 2010 12:00 PM | By Francesca Brosan
Anyone who’s listened to 'You and Yours' recently may have heard their spot on ‘the worst World Cup marketing ploys’, in which they read out press releases from unsuspecting PRs.  Hilarious.  My favourite so far is the law firm offering advice about how not to infringe copyright laws in their use of World Cup and FIFA promotional materials.  Masterful.  I can really see our local publican giving a stuff,  but perhaps there is someone in the local council with the specific responsibility of monitoring World Cup copyright infringements.  Or perhaps, given the state of the public purse, that’s one of...
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Where’s the waste?

May 24, 2010 10:39 AM | By Francesca Brosan
So George Osborne is in the act of cutting £6bn of ‘waste’ out of the economy.  I like the idea that civil servants will have to give up 1st class rail travel (some of us did that long ago).  I like the idea that David Cameron is walking places rather than using his official car.  Until I wondered what that meant for the official car hire company.  Have they have taken a drop in earnings?  Is his official driver out of a job?   And there’s the rub.  What’s waste to some people is employment to others.  I read (over someone’s shoulder...
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What’s the role of an agency in social media?

April 27, 2010 5:24 PM | By Francesca Brosan
'Disintermediation' is a term normally applied to the Financial Services industry when people talk about the demise of the IFA (greatly exaggerated in my view).  But last week I heard it applied to agencies.  The argument goes that if social media is taking over from traditional media as the marketing channel of choice, and it’s something that clients themselves are keen to manage internally, why do they need agencies? Typically, it's believed that the best people to blog are the customer service department or the CEO and the best people to Tweet are the marketing department or the logistics company. ...
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Go B2B agencies

April 20, 2010 12:24 PM | By Francesca Brosan
Back in March I blogged my thoughts about awards - do they matter.  Glad to say that on Thursday night in Manchester, Omobono won the award for Marketing Services Company of the Year in The Drum Marketing Awards. So we were delighted, not only to be recognised by  The Drum, one of UK’s leading creative magazines, but by their very distinguished panel of judges from across a variety of industries and organisations. Some big names on that list and we’re humbled to have their esteem for the work we do. Clearly we’re big fans of the work we do but it is...
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Does Winning Awards Matter?

March 17, 2010 3:07 PM | By Francesca Brosan
Dead chuffed as have been nominated for Marketing Services Company of the Year in the Marketing Week Engage Awards.  This follows hard on the heels of the nomination in the same category for the Drum Awards and in the B2B Awards last year.    Do they matter?  Yes, in my opinion. First because of course it’s good PR.  Our staff and our clients get positive reinforcement of their choice of employer/supplier.  Second, it’s good to compare yourself against others in your field and see if you pass muster.  When you’ve got your head down on client work and are going full...
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What Women Want

March 8, 2010 3:38 PM | By Francesca Brosan
International Women’s Day today.  Where to start?  Anyone who's been watching Mad Men knows women in our industry have come a long way (as Peggy Olson is learning).  When I trained the mantra of (male) creatives was 'The consumer is not an idiot.  She is your wife."  It was meant to be complimentary but seems, in retrospect, somewhat insulting.   Despite that only 1 in 4 FTSE board directors are female, which is leading the Government to talk about legislation to force big business to hire more women.  But I wonder if the problem is not so much that there is...
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Have you seen the Muffin Man?

February 25, 2010 10:09 AM | By Francesca Brosan
Spent Tuesday at a CBI Council meeting.  As always, fascinating to listen to how a wide variety of companies are dealing with the world as we know it.  The good news for agencies is that service businesses in the main came out well – perhaps because they are more agile and able to adapt their services to what’s needed in the current marketplace.  So law and accountancy firms are seeing a reduction in contract briefs but an increase in resolution or winding up orders.  All sounds a bit ambulance chasing but it means that they’re still in business, still employing people...
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I'll tell you want I want, what I really really want

January 27, 2010 2:24 PM | By Francesca Brosan
At the beginning of the 'recession' I was interviewed by Radio 4's World This Weekend about what we wanted the Chancellor to do in his first recession budget.  I said nothing.  I don't mean that I didn't say anything, I mean that I said could he please leave us alone.  Instead they increased NI to a laughable amount which penalises anyone like us who wants to hire people and put up taxes for high earners (great, thanks for that).  Have just asked local MP (Jonathan Djanogly, Conservative) what they will be doing for business if we all vote for them....
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