B2B Marketing Blog
Recently by Joel Harrison

Halifax FM? Now you're REALLY having a laugh

July 16, 2010 2:49 PM | By Joel Harrison
Has there ever been a worse marketing campaign than the current one for Halifax, featuring ‘wacky’ radio station Halifax FM? Each time I’m unfortunate enough to watch it, I’m aghast at the cringe-worthy dialogue and the ham-handedness with which the actors, posing as DJs at the bank’s radio station, josh with each other in fake bonhomie, and then clumsily plug one of the bank’s products (“Isa, Isa baby.”) It’s a car-crash marketing moment. For the Halifax, it’s just the latest in a long line of truly awful ads – remember Howard the singing bank manager? Or worse, the X-Factor-lite dancing...
5 comments | Full story

BT: bloody terrible

July 16, 2010 2:30 PM | By Joel Harrison
Personally I’m not a fan of journalists using their lofty positions to vent personal grievances. However, I’m going to except myself from my own rule based on my recent experience with BT. The only way to describe it is ‘Bloody Terrible’. I know that BT spends a lot of money on marketing, particularly to businesses, which it is trying to convince that it is a credible service provider. However, it’s wasted effort and investment when the service that it offers is so abysmal. I should qualify this: the individuals my colleagues and I have met have always been scrupulously polite...
4 comments | Full story

BP is beyond the pail, says Greenpeace

June 8, 2010 11:46 AM | By Joel Harrison
As a marketer, you will undoubtedly have had criticisms of high-profile brands and their marketing from time to time, and you’ve probably thought that you could do a better job. Last month, Greenpeace provided a rare opportunity to do just that for BP in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster. The environmental pressure group’s campaign entitled ‘Behind the logo’ asked “designers and industry experts” to “redesign BP’s logo to better reflect its attitudes abroad”… particularly those with negative environmental consequences. It was launched by Greenpeace using its typical guerrilla marketing style publicity stunt (including masked me...
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Business travel loses its lustre

June 7, 2010 2:45 PM | By Joel Harrison
 If the last 18 months has taught us anything, it is that the world is a lot less of a certain and safe place than we thought it was. We’ve gone from a world in which the Prime Minister hailed the end of boom and bust, and a happy-ever-after financial future for us all, to one where his replacement has had to make swingeing cuts as part of an emergency budget. The removal of certainty has also been evident in the business world. Decision makers have come to take for granted the availability of frequent, efficient and reasonably low-cost...
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Is Twitter killing the goose that laid the golden egg?

April 28, 2010 12:01 PM | By Joel Harrison
So Twitter has sold out, and is now offering 'advertising' in the form of 'promoted tweets'. It's a decision that has caused much consternation amongst the tweeting classes and social media aficionados. What does this really mean for the future of Twitter? Is it betrayal of trust or the start of an inevitable commercialisation required if the platform is to survive? Of course, it's the latter: despite all the altruism and enthusiasm, Twitter could obviously never continue to exist without an income stream, and although the clever people who invented the platform played their cards regarding monetisation close to their...
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SMEs: the great disenfranchised audience of 2010?

April 27, 2010 10:06 AM | By Joel Harrison
Regardless of who ultimately wins (won) the election, as co-owner of a small business, I’m frankly shocked by the fact that none of the political parties seemed to make any attempt to communicate with me as such. Sure, I got the usual literature through my front door, caught some of the debates on TV and got thoroughly bored by the never ending parade of polls and pollsters, all claiming a new insight. But no-one seemed interested in promoting themselves as being particularly pro-small business. I find this particularly bizarre given the growing level of appreciation of SMEs as the...
1 comments | Full story

Data Q&A: channel data

April 16, 2010 12:43 PM | By Joel Harrison
Indirect channels are a key route to market for most organisations, but particularly those in the technology sector. What are the issues with collecting and managing databases of channel partners, and how does this compare with customer data? What tips and guidance should channel marketers consider?...
4 comments | Full story

Social Media: right here right now, or one for the future?

April 14, 2010 8:36 AM | By Joel Harrison
Social media is the big opportunity in the B2B space right now – very few people would even question that statement. The potential that it offers decision makers and influencers to by-pass traditional vendor driven product and service information and gather views, opinions and attitudes direct from contemporaries promises to fundamentally change how must B2B brands conduct marketing, and how they communicate with their audiences. But potential is one thing: what about the reality? How much impact is social media really having right now on the decision making process at every stage? Remember, requirements and consequently usage will change significantly...
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Time to give Second Life a second chance?

April 6, 2010 5:49 PM | By Joel Harrison
If there’s a universal list of inventions that were billed to change the world, but which have spectacularly failed to do so, Second Life is surely on it. Back in 2006 the virtual world platform Second Life was a massive deal. It was everywhere – even on the cover of the Sunday Times Magazine, which was a massive coup. It was going to change everything: within a matter of months, we’d be spending all our time flying around this new world with our avatars, ‘meeting’ new ‘people’ from around the globe and even doing business. Real life, by comparison, suddenly...
3 comments | Full story

Data Q&A: Goneaways

March 23, 2010 2:49 PM | By Joel Harrison
With marketing data eroding at an increasingly rapid rate since the recession, what’s the best way to identify goneaways in your database, in order to cut down on marketing wasteage? Are there any new online techniques which could help this problem?...
6 comments | Full story
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