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...

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...

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...

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....

Attended the 50th Marketing Society Conference yesterday, 'Marketing: the next 50 years'.  Held in the spectacular Floral Hall of the Royal Opera House.  Fantastic venue, some brilliant speakers and, despite its primarily consumer focus, was some really excellent food for thought.  Oh, and a star turn by Boris Johnson.    So what can B2B marketers take out?   How do marketers need to change?      ·         “Get back to being obsessive about products and services.  Forget about the gloss, just do good stuff.” Jeremy Bullmore  - always worth listening to.   ·         “If you’re not serving the customer, you’d...

Attended the Financial Services Forum Conference on Tuesday.  As usual an high calibre event with an impressive turnout of senior bods and some good speakers.  For those of you who specialise in Financial Services it's well worth being a member.  http://www.thefsforum.co.uk/ .  Although the subject was the changing nature of brands, many of the conversations turned to the importance of customer service.  Or the lack of it.  'Nobody manages to provide an outstanding customer experience', according to Mark Choueke, editor of Marketing Week. Which begs a question.  Are brands now more about what you do, rather than what you say?...

The good thing about having a blog is apparently that you can have a rant.  So here goes. Utterly depressed to read the FT article “Companies plan to cut marketing agencies” .  Not for the obvious reasons, because in our heart of hearts we know that clients work with far too many agencies. We just want it to be us, not the competition, which is why we go on trying to get in the door.    No, the real reason I was depressed was the comment from Hugh Burkitt, CEO of The Marketing Society.   “Online and direct marketing are...

Before starting to write this blog I took a bit of advice, from two of the girls (Ladies?Women? - why don't we have such good collective nouns for more than one woman? Guys and chaps are so much better) who constitute The Travelling Geeks (see www.tg2009.com for more details of their recent visit to the UK) - Susan Bratton and Renee Bloggett (I promise that really is her name). Both said the same thing. Be yourself. Be transparent (I think that means don't try to slip in stuff about how brilliant I am or my company is). Find a 'voice'....