May 2024
Ahead of Paula Vennells joining the Post Office in 2007, I worked closely for her in two companies – Argos and Whitbread. In both cases, my role was to manage brand transformation projects (which she had board responsibility for), plus other brand and marketing related work. This was over a roughly six year period, so […]
June 2023
When I set up my business some 24 years ago and having worked for Argos in marketing for the 20 years before that, my main focus was on contract corporate work. This was typically managing brand strategy, development and identity implementation, with my clients including Whitbread (then owning Costa, Premier Inn, TGI Fridays, Brewers Fayre, […]
August 2022
Back in January of this year, Meta implemented a number of changes to its Facebook and Instagram platforms which removed the option for detailed ad targeting based on, what it saw as, ‘sensitive’ topics such as race, sexual orientation, political allegiance and religious persuasion. Shortly after this in April, Meta then implemented changes to the […]
July 2022
Over the last few months and motivated by a number of factors which include trying to help clients minimise the negative impact of the current and somewhat dire economic climate, I’ve been on something of a mission to get minds focused on all-things customer-centricity. Before going too much further, let’s be clear on what being […]
December 2021
Using Facebook’s advertising platform can be an incredibly cost-effective and successful marketing tool to deliver certain marketing strategies. I use it extensively for two of my clients, and although the strategies behind that use are very different for each (principally because one trades through an ecommerce offer and the other through physical showrooms), none the […]
August 2021
The idea of a celebrity, be they from TV, sport or whatever, has long been popular with brands to push their products or services. There are some great examples of this strategy being successful, with a standout one for me being Gary Lineker’s long-term relationship with Walkers Crisps. He’s also done rather well out of […]
July 2021
Although I don’t talk that much with non-work friends about how I earn a living, they of course know I work in marketing. So it often comes up in conversation, with a common topic being their amazement around how they see adverts online for products and services they’re actually interested in – and as if […]
April 2021
Back in September and October 2018, I wrote a two-part blog which outlined the principles of the STP model – which stands for ‘segmentation, targeting, positioning’. The model is a fairly central tenet of marketing strategy, with the basic idea being that you a) segment your market into relevant groups (e.g. segments might include discerning […]
February 2021
Although I have and continue to work in a very diverse range of business sectors and specific industries, if I had to pick a favourite it would be retail. This passion unquestionably stems from my early career, with my very first job over 45 years ago (essentially in-store marketing) in a department store in south […]
January 2021
I’m rather ashamed to admit that this is the first blog I’ve written in some 15 months. My somewhat inadequate excuses would include being massively busy (less so right now), plus ever-moving goal posts in our Covid world at times making me think that my advice might almost immediately become out of date. However and […]
August 2019
I’ve recently carried out an especially enjoyable piece of marketing consultancy for a transport business. It was especially enjoyable because firstly the management team were a great bunch of people (straightforward, unpretentious, keen to learn) and led by an exceptional MD, and secondly – and very much helped by the first point – we got […]
June 2019
The nature of my consultancy offer dictates that not only do I work with a lot of very different clients across a wide range of sectors and industries, but I also work with a very considerable number of other consultants (typically in areas such as business strategy), tactical specialists (e.g. PPC management and social media), […]
May 2019
Although a fair chunk of my work is one-off projects such as reviewing a client’s marketing and leaving them with a strategically-led plan, I also support a few clients on an on-going basis. This sort of relationship typically suits SMEs who aren’t quite big enough to justify a fulltime marketing director or senior marketing manager […]
March 2019
If there’s one thing which underpins my approach to client work, it’s a near-obsession for making it evidence-based. Be it metrics from Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, qualitative customer research or market intelligence, I want to know it in order to shape marketing decision making. From that short and certainly not exhaustive list above, the one […]
February 2019
Although the start of any new year tends to see a raft of media attention around eating less, eating better, getting fit and losing weight etc., this year we had the added fizz of veganism becoming trendy. I was going to write ‘mainstream’ but I’m not sure we’re quite at that point yet, with, arguably, […]
November 2018
Back in April this year, Trustpilot was hit by a somewhat predictable scandal when a BBC 5 Live investigation revealed that fake 5 star reviews were being traded on eBay – which an investigator was able to purchase. Of course few people – be they working in marketing or just Joe Public – were especially […]
October 2018
There’s been a fair bit written of late in the marketing trade press about a trend towards ‘chief customer officer’ (CCO) replacing ‘chief marketing officer’ in large companies, or more typically having both positions in place. Some in our profession are of the view that if the latter are doing their job, then you don’t […]
September 2018
Last month I outlined the strategic marketing model of segmentation, targeting, positioning (STP), and went on to provide an overview of the principles of market segmentation. So this month I’m going to cover the other two elements of targeting and positioning, albeit only at a fairly top-line level, so if you want more detail then […]
August 2018
With much of my work these days being for SMEs rather than carrying out project-based contracts for very large companies (a conscience decision driven by a desire to stay sane in the latter part of my career), a fairly consistent pattern I see is a lack of understanding and therefore lack of approach to market […]
July 2018
Anyone who’s read even a few of my blogs in recent years, will probably know that few things irritate me more than the narrative from some supposed marketers that all you now need is digital. What’s worse, they talk about ‘digital marketing strategy’ when, patently, there’s no such thing anymore – there’s just ‘marketing strategy’ […]
June 2018
About 3 years ago when I was carrying out an interim marketing director position for a relatively small FMCG food company, their commercial director gleefully gave me a book entitled ‘social media is bullshit’. His motivation for the gift – and he’d purchased enough copies to furnish all of the board of directors – was […]
May 2018
As I have done before in similar circumstances, I took a break from my monthly blog as a result of taking on a four month interim contract as marketing director for a long-standing client. But that four months is now over, so working life is starting to get back to normal – meaning I’m not […]
January 2018
I’m currently in the process of recruiting a marketing manager for a long-standing client. It’s a task I relish, and in part because it’s an opportunity to meet smart young marketing professionals and discuss the challenges of our chosen industry. And not forgetting of course, I also enjoy the process because, if I get it […]
December 2017
Well few would argue that the John Lewis ad was a bit of a flop, though in fairness to the retailer it was a hard act to follow given what we’ve enjoyed them over the last five years or so. In addition, others have jumped on the heart-string-tugging bandwagon (e.g. Sainsbury’s) so the style of […]
November 2017
About 10 years ago I was carrying out a brand strategy project for Sodexo. If you don’t know the company, then essentially their core business is food services and across every sector you could think of. For example, canteens, restaurants and cafés for schools, universities, military sites, hospitals, factories and office blocks. They’re a global […]
October 2017
I’ve recently been helping a client knock a marketing plan into shape, and this following the appointment of their first marketing manager at the beginning of the year. The draft plan was, on the face of it, fairly impressive: well structured, detailed, and certainly a lot of effort had gone into it. However, it largely […]
September 2017
A month or so back an email dropped into my inbox with the following opening sentence . . . ‘We are writing to advise that we have a few places left on the brand new Modern Apprenticeship in Digital Marketing. These are for 16 to 19 year old employees and enables them to help to […]
August 2017
There’s long been a perception with business owners and folk in the world of marketing management, that if you want a top job doing on your visual identity, new website, FMCG packaging etc. then you have to go to a big agency based in a big city – and notably London. Indeed, for many decades […]
May 2017
For what seemed like decades, Lennie Henry was the advertising face of Premier Inn. In a succession of long-running TV campaigns and supported by online, he told us about the virtues of choosing to book a room at the near-ubiquitous hotel chain, and specifically how comfy the beds are – which is true by the […]
April 2017
About 20 years ago and around the time I became corporate design manager at Argos (I had a 20 year stint at Argos in the marketing dept. and had numerous roles over that time but left to set up my consultancy business over 16 years ago), I was given the challenge of producing a promotional […]
March 2017
I’ve been fortunate to work with clients in an exceptionally broad field of sectors and industries since becoming a consultant more than 15 years ago, and that’s very much a theme which continues today. Such is this level of diversity – and working in both B2B and B2C markets further adds to it – there […]
February 2017
There are a wealth of stats available online for the level of small businesses that fail in the first year and subsequent years, and they all represent depressing reading. Although there’s some inconsistency in the stats, it seems to be the case that around 20% don’t survive one year and around 50% don’t make it […]
January 2017
During the first year of having my own business about 15 years back, I was approached by an old friend who, like me, had left Argos to set up on his own. He’d made the break about two years before me, though his profession was management development. The reason for him coming to me was […]
December 2016
Given the enormity of events in 2016 and specifically the BREXIT vote and Trump’s election, talking about marketing seems a tad trivial and irrelevant. However and as I stated in last month’s blog, the nightmare of both Brexit and Trump becoming the most powerful man in the world owed much to marketing – albeit not […]
November 2016
Unless you voted for Brexit and also read the Mail, Express or Sun, then chances are that you’ll have been as horrified as me when the news broke about Trump winning the US presidency. And come January, the reality of the situation will really sink in as the ignorant, vile, science-denying, right-wing bigot takes his […]
October 2016
Let me start with a brief explanation of what verbal identity is. We often think of brand identity as being a visual thing – so a logo, a certain colour palette, specific typefaces etc. – but actually there are at least two other elements for our senses to latch on to: sonic identity and verbal […]
September 2016
I’ve been pressing two of my clients to invest in training on how to get the most from the LinkedIn social network platform for their sales teams. One of these clients operates in purely B2B markets, with the other both B2B and B2C. But in both cases the clients are seriously underusing LinkedIn, and instead […]
August 2016
Up until very recently, I’d always seen Google as a champion for the SME. For one, both organic and paid search were a relatively level playing field against a corporate giant – provided of course that your website was optimised to the maximum for the former and you had the money to compete on the […]
July 2016
If you know me or indeed read my last month’s blog, then you’ll be aware that I was none too happy about the Brexit vote. And I’m still not, albeit I am a tad less grumpy than I was for the days immediately after the tragic event. Reflecting on those heady days when the reality […]
June 2016
It’s often said that the digital age has left businesses and institutions with nowhere to hide if they tell lies and don’t do a good job. In part that’s certainly true, and there’s no better example than the way TripAdvisor has raised the standards in the hotel and restaurant industry. But ‘nowhere to hide’ is […]
May 2016
My first reaction to the news that the Co-operative Group was reverting to its original visual identity and Co-op name for its grocery chain (and funeral business) was one of near disbelief. Like most people, my usual exposure to the brand is in the shape of a local store to buy various food items during […]
April 2016
I’m not sure quite how many design, branding, marketing, web, PR and advertising agencies I’ve worked with in my career, but if it was less than 500 then I’d be surprised. Some, and ahead of setting up my own business, I’ve had forced upon me, some I’ve inherited when I’ve taken on a new client, […]
March 2016
Back last autumn I had an annual planning meeting with one of my longest standing clients, with her marketing manager also in attendance – someone I’d helped recruit earlier the same year. The client’s business is very successful, an SME, largely B2C, with garden and wildlife related products sold through an ecommerce offer and via […]
February 2016
I recently read an excellent article in Marketing Week about Anthony Thomson and his new venture of setting up mobile-only Atom Bank (he previously founded Metro Bank). So not only will there be no physical branches, but account access will purely be through mobile devices. To some, and certainly those that have grown up in […]
January 2016
I’ve never kidded myself that my monthly blog has a massive following, but I do know that it has a limited one plus, appropriately enough, my Google Analytics metrics show that the content delivers traffic to my website for searches relevant to individual blogs. But, in any event, my motivation for writing it has always […]
February 2015
For many businesses, PPC (pay per click) has become a necessary evil. And it’s viewed as an evil because, and in particular in very competitive markets and where online search is important for customer acquisition and immediate sales, without it there would be a sole reliance on organic clicks which are unlikely to be sufficient […]
January 2015
I was recently reading two conflicting articles in Marketing Week, with one advocating that marketing roles should all now be specialist – e.g. PPC management, SEO and social media etc. – with another suggesting that there was more value in employing generalists. This might be a worthy discussion for large businesses, but for most SMEs […]
December 2014
As most folk working in marketing no doubt always knew it would, the past year has seen a further shift towards sophisticated digital marketing tools, with programmatic and specifically real-time bidding (RTB) for online ads being a notable candidate for the one making the biggest impact. And if that terminology is new to you, then […]
November 2014
The ubiquitous Facebook symbol is now so much so on business websites, that it almost becomes conspicuous when absent. But yet, when it is absent it often means that someone has actually thought about whether or not this particular social media platform is appropriate to its target customer, and rightly concluded that it isn’t. But […]
October 2014
The last 6 months or has seen me working on an especially diverse mix of marketing projects, with these including products such as smoked salmon, industrial sliding gates, street furniture, beef jerky, kitchens, bathrooms, bird food, holiday cottage rentals and industrial supplies. I’ve also worked on an especially interesting project which has essentially been to […]
September 2014
Some of you reading this will already know that I live in the north of Scotland, and anyone reading this from anywhere in the world will know that this month has seen a momentous day in the history of Scotland: a referendum to determine if the country should remain part of the United Kingdom or […]
August 2014
A modern day myth which seems to prevail across far too many businesses is that you absolutely must have a Facebook page. You don’t. Or at least you don’t if your customer base won’t be interested in it, and therefore you’ll end up with five followers and zero engagement for the posts you put on […]
July 2014
This month marks a fairly significant anniversary in my life: I’ve been working in marketing for 40 years. Such a length of time is a truly sobering thought, and one which has inevitably made me reflect on the highs and lows of my career to date. But more than that, it’s made me think about […]
June 2014
This is something I’ve written about before, but I’ve been prompted to revisit the subject because I still experience an almost constant reluctance by some SME owners to access, analyse and use readily-accessible data as a foundation for marketing decision making. And this despite the fact that, without it, marketing spend is often wasted because […]
May 2014
As ever, my monthly blog isn’t here to tell you all the technical stuff you need to know about a certain digital discipline – in this case local SEO (search engine optimisation). What it is here to do, amongst other things (including a platform for me to let off steam now and again), is to […]
April 2014
One of my real personal success stories in recent years has been to help turn around a previously failing holiday property business here in the Highlands of Scotland. Being part of a larger business which owns and runs three Highland estates which the properties are located on, the nine holiday properties were not always the […]
March 2014
I recently made a trip back to the high street where I got my very first job nearly 40 years ago. It was Sutton High Street in Surrey, and I was there because I was staying in a hotel in the town having travelled down from my home in the north of Scotland to meet […]
February 2014
Chances are that you’ll already know exactly what a ‘responsive’ website is. But just in case you don’t and anyway for absolute clarity, a responsive website is one which responds to the device it’s being opened on and resizes and reformats content so it’s easily readable and functionality remains easy. If that still isn’t quite […]
January 2014
Come July of this year, I’d have been in the marketing game for 40 years – a figure which perhaps exceeds your years on this planet. It is a long time. In fact a very long time, and one which, I don’t mind telling you, is a tad scary to fully come to terms with. […]
December 2013
For my last blog post of 2013, I’m going to give you a link to another site which contains a short video. All I’ll say ahead of you watching it is this: As we enter another year where brands will have to work harder than ever just to stay on the pace of advances in […]
November 2013
As some readers will know, I spent nearly twenty years of my working life with Argos’ Marketing division, and left just over twelve years ago to set up on my own. In many ways my time with this somewhat quirky retailer now seems like a distant memory, but in other ways it doesn’t and certainly […]
October 2013
Back in January 2010 I wrote about a truly outstanding local retailer, Lindsay’s of Golspie, which is close to where I live. Nearly four years on and after countless successful and rewarding shopping trips since, I can report that my view is now even stronger. This is a local retail brand which gets it right […]
September 2013
(Third sector definition: the part of an economy or society comprising non-governmental and non-profit-making organizations or associations, including charities, voluntary and community groups, cooperatives, etc.) Our regional press carried a story a few weeks back about a local charity, involved with recycling household goods and waste, which was forced to close down and make its […]
August 2013
By something of a coincidence, I already had in my mind that I was going to write about Red Bull this month. The thought that I would stemmed from an article in Marketing Week which discussed the brand’s unusual, but highly successful, strategy of shunning normal advertising and, instead, largely putting their marketing spend into […]
July 2013
A few days back I was completing some forms for a business which, effectively, is the new middleman between government money and potential contracts for me. They’re replacing another firm who I’ve been allocated work from over the last few years, and, certainly so far, I’ve been very impressed with the new broom. So I’ve […]
June 2013
I generally resist making direct comparisons between two specific marketing tools, and this because any decent marketing strategy and plan should seek to align the most appropriate tool(s) to a specific objective. In other words, it can be an apples and pears comparison because two different marketing tools can be there to deliver two different […]
May 2013
In last month’s comment I asserted that the British Independent Retailers Association (BIRA) were out of touch and doing little or nothing to help secure a viable and long-term future for their members. I quoted their CEO and highlighted the utter naivety of his comment that independent retailers should “Embrace new ideas such as internet […]
April 2013
During the last week I’ve enjoyed presenting to a group of business people at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast event. My topic was ‘Why having a marketing strategy has never been more important’, and the reason I ultimately gave was that there is now such an overwhelming choice of marketing tools to use, that if […]
March 2013
You may have seen the recent BBC2 Horizon documentary ‘The age of big data’ but, if no, then perhaps you’re anyway familiar with the term. No to both? Well ‘big data’ is, as the term suggests, about a whole lot of data, but it’s more than that because it becomes ‘big’ when you combine data […]
February 2013
I guess we all have a specific aspect or element of our jobs that we are especially interested in and like, and for me that would have to be straplines. So that short string of words that normally sits below a brand’s logo and is the embodiment, or at least should be the embodiment, of […]
January 2013
Back in November 2011 a long-established client I had informed me that they were appointing a PR firm on a one year contract for 2012. This was a bit of a surprise, because it was hard to see what value any PR firm – even a really good one – could add to the core […]
December 2012
There are few things I like more in my work than a real challenge. And although I’ve had many in my time, I often think about different potential clients and the sort of outlandish strategic challenges I could tackle for them. But in the last few weeks I got to thinking about what could be […]
November 2012
It won’t need me to tell you that in the social media age we live in, there’s nowhere to hide for a brand when it screws-up. But of course, there’s the relatively small screw-up when something upsets a few customers and the negative publicity gets a bit out of hand on Twitter, Facebook and perhaps […]
October 2012
It never fails to entertain me when business folk in the south of the UK think that the further north you live the less clue you have. We’ve all heard of the ‘north-south divide’ – which Wikipedia sums-up as ‘refers to the perceived economic and cultural differences between Southern England and the rest of Great […]
September 2012
Way before the furore which marked the flotation of Facebook on the Nasdaq back in May, many in the world of marketing were saying that this social media platform, and despite its mind-blowing stats on users, was not one where investors were going to make their millions. In very crude terms and when compared to […]
August 2012
If Virgin does end up losing the West Coast rail franchise – which seems the likely outcome and despite the current legal attempts by Richard and his team – then you might conclude that this will be highly damaging for the Virgin brand. But the Virgin brand is not like most other brands, and indeed […]
July 2012
Travelling on a rather long train journey between Inverness and Newark in Nottinghamshire this week, I pondered the topic for this month’s comment as I gazed out the window on a landscape which progressively changed from mountain to flat field. I reached my destination in Newark some 7 hours after leaving Inverness, but with no […]
June 2012
The on-going support side of my business and for companies which don’t have their own marketing person or team, means I’m often at the pointed end of marketing operations (rather than just the strategic bit behind it). I rather like such a position as it ensures I still have an eye on actual output, plus […]
May 2012
Regular readers of the Hughes monthly blog will have noted a slight visual update in my website. Actually though, the more significant change is in the ‘back office’, with this allowing for easier updates and for the site to be better optimised for organic search. Like many professionals, I’m great at telling clients and potential […]
April 2012
It’s been an especially interesting and enjoyable last month at Hughes Consultancy, with work being dominated by a brand and marketing strategy project for a high-end kitchen manufacturer who sells direct through their own showrooms. And how has such a project contributed to the enjoyment and to a point over and above most other projects I take on? Because, culturally, this is a family business that is not only everything a family business should be, but actually everything any business should be.
March 2012
If there’s one topic I discuss with clients more than any other, it’s around what they should or shouldn’t be doing with social media. Not surprisingly, social media is also the topic which most features in the weekly marketing press – both print and online.
February 2012
I had an interesting meeting with someone a few weeks back, who’s both a client of mine and I’m a client of his. I won’t bore you with just how such a relationship came about, but I will say that it’s worked pretty well for both of us. That isn’t to say that we see […]
January 2012
If there’s been an overriding theme to this blog in the last few years, it’s been around the need for businesses to keep up with the pace of change in all things digital marketing. And in this context I’m talking about things such as SEO, social search, mobile search, email and data collection as just […]
December 2011
(Or if not ‘products’, then services or whatever else it is they’re there to deliver in the first place.) It’s often said that branding is, ultimately, about differentiation. X Factor has built its brand over many years and has differentiated its offer not only against previous and other contemporary talent shows, but also more generally […]
November 2011
If the world of consultancy has taught me one thing, it’s that you never know quite what’s around the next corner. I do have a number of long-term clients, so in that respect I do know pretty much what’s coming up with them, but for new clients – and in particular when it’s a one-off […]
October 2011
Ten years ago this month I left Argos to set up on my own. I must tell you that the ten years has passed at a scary-fast rate, but no doubt anyone reading this and the wrong side of 40 will say just the same about their last ten years. Also scary, as I recall […]
September 2011
My old dad, who turned 80 earlier this year, has never been one who likes change – in particular if the change is in anyway related to technology. Growing up in our small terraced house in the 60s and 70s was probably more akin to doing so in Victorian times: It was bleak (rarely decorated), […]
August 2011
When I started my business nearly 10 years ago copywriting wasn’t part of the deal. In fact I’d barely given it a thought, even though I knew I was none-too-bad at the written word. However, what was certainly part of my offer was brand strategy and a specific output of that is tone of voice […]
July 2011
There aren’t many things I dislike about my job, but there is definitely one: being seen and treated as the enemy. So when does this happen? Well it certainly isn’t the person that takes me on, but, and in very large organisations where politics rule, potentially can be almost anyone I encounter. For SMEs this […]
June 2011
Some months I seem overwhelmed with ideas for what to write about in my monthly rant. When that happens, avid followers of my website (there are a few…) will know this is the case because the piece appears relatively early in the month. If though, like this one, it’s right at the end of the […]
May 2011
I’ve long held the strong view that employee attitudes, both at senior and the most junior level, are a central component in a brand’s success. Which in many ways is entirely obvious, though clearly isn’t to everyone – or, if it is, then some who could take action against the militant and negative few who […]
April 2011
Projects I’m involved with often mean working with other consultants and indeed I sometimes initiate this for the benefit of the client. This typically comes about when a project has a strong element of trouble shooting, because if brand and marketing issues need sorting then chances are they won’t be the only ones a business […]
March 2011
If you’re outside of the garden industry, you could be forgiven for not having heard of a brand which launched last autumn – Peckish. And even if you are in the garden industry, you could also be forgiven for not having heard of the Peckish brand. Why? Because it’s been an almighty flop and always […]
February 2011
My long corporate life never really brought me into contact with the sales person who also masqueraded as a marketer, or at least if I did meet a few they sensibly managed to keep the marketing bit a secret. In my nine and a bit years as a consultant though, I’ve met more than my […]
January 2011
One of the truly great things about my job is the broad mix of businesses I end up working with, and these currently include a Highland estate, premium food brand, leading wild bird-care brand, an industrial conglomerate with interests as diverse as security fencing and machine guarding (think something which stops a worker being killed […]
December 2010
Like many, I get a tad reflective as the year draws to a close – both personal and business. The personal stuff I’ll spare you (what goes on in my head might not necessarily be good for enticing new clients) but the business stuff I’ll happily share. Overall, 2010 was the year that new media […]
November 2010
I wondered if it was just me who thought the Argos TV Christmas ad, which has Bing Crosby beat boxing (not sure if that’s one word or two…), took Argos to new lows in terms of it scraping around for direction in its lost retail universe. But having spoken to friends and colleagues in the […]
October 2010
I’d originally intended this month’s comment to be about trade shows and the reasons behind the falling number of people attending them, but all that became quickly irrelevant and somewhat mundane, as the unprecedented rescue scenes unfolded of the miners in Chile. Now if you were anything like me, the whole epic drama of the […]
September 2010
In over 35 years of being involved in marketing and with 9 of these in my own business, I’ve had very little to do with advertising in local and regional consumer press. Yes there have been a few things for a few clients, but nothing which brought me regularly into contact with the ever-eager telesales […]
August 2010
My last month has been dominated by one very important digital marketing discipline – search. I’ve had one client who is all over it like a rash, another who hasn’t quite grasped the importance of it and is also being let down by their web agency who aren’t on top of their game, and a […]
July 2010
Recent months have taken me to a somewhat varied group of towns and cities for business and pleasure, including Glasgow, Llandudno (a little bizarrely the latter for business and the former for pleasure) Birmingham airport, Solihull and Inverness. The only common link is that all had at least one Wetherspoon pub. ‘So what?’ you might […]
June 2010
When I started out in business on my own about 9 years ago, I was full of brand talk. Fresh from the success of heading-up Argos’ re-brand, I was keen to tell the world just how much I knew about brands. Actually I know rather more now than I did then, and, with my current […]
May 2010
Marketing, arguably, has never been the easiest of professions to prosper in, but then it certainly hasn’t been the hardest either. However, our digital world has unquestionably made it a whole lot more challenging. Senior marketers working in large businesses and marketing directors working in any size business have something very specific in common with […]
April 2010
The most used function on my Microsoft word programme is changing the default language back to UK English. Why do I have to do this at least 10 times a day? Because firstly, Microsoft, being a US company, apparently thinks that their version of our language (guys, the clue’s in the name ‘English’…) is superior […]
March 2010
It doesn’t seem that many years ago that John Lewis was lumped together with the few other department store chains in the UK and viewed as an ageing dinosaur. These years were when ‘etail’ really started to take a hold on UK shopping habits and the high street showed signs of long-term decline. But anyone […]
February 2010
The fate of two brands has been much in our news this month: Toyota and Tiger Woods. The media has gone after both with its usual vigour and general lack of balance (certainly for Toyota), but the demise of one seems rather more deserved than the other. I’ll start with the one which seems less […]
January 2010
Depending on where you live and also how you choose to shop, the local independent retailer will either figure in your life or it won’t. ‘Where you live’ might actually be the main reason on its own – perhaps you’d love to pop into a traditional fish monger in your local high street, but if […]
December 2009
Passengers who will, after all, now be able to fly with BA over the Christmas break and therefore see their loved ones, can, ironically, thank the apparent incompetence of Unite for their unexpected good fortune: It seems a daft error in the union’s planning for the action saw them ballot some members who had actually […]
November 2009
Usage of price comparison sites has risen by nearly two thirds this year – a figure that will surprise few given the nation’s new-found mindset of prudence. But perhaps it isn’t just about our changing priorities in life, but also that one or two of the emerging price comparison brands are doing rather a good […]
October 2009
At a time when the banks are back in the news for making unimaginable profits (or at least unimaginable a year ago) and those that supposedly took the ‘risks’ to make these profits are being paid unimaginable bonuses again that apparently outrage the Jones’ and the Smiths next door, it’s worth reminding ourselves of what […]
September 2009
I think I may have found something which the vast majority of SMEs in the UK have in common and regardless of business sector: Most have a horror story to tell about BT. The words from my wife when we sold our house and secured a new one some four months ago, are still ringing […]
August 2009
I’m not entirely sure what got me thinking about it quite so much, but of late I’ve given rather a lot of thought to the characteristics I least like in the people I know. Perhaps it was turning 50 last year and, believing I was older and wiser, started to instinctively analyse the years that […]
July 2009
About 12 years ago I moved to Towcester (pronounced ‘toaster’ not ‘tow-sester’) with my wife and daughter. The move had all sorts of benefits to the family, but one specific one for me was some proper pubs in the high street. And by ‘proper pubs’ I mean ones which served real ale and didn’t have […]
June 2009
The Hughes’ will, if the shortcomings of the English legal system allow, be shortly moving house and business premises (anyone that’s ever sold a property to buy another will know what I mean about ‘shortcomings’ – you never really know you’re sale is okay until the day you move out). But the uncertainty such a […]
May 2009
In last month’s comment I suggested that social networks ensured that there was now nowhere to hide for brands who try to pull the wool over the eyes of consumers. Make a mistake and don’t come clean, or don’t do what you should be doing and get found out, and just one person now has […]
April 2009
Anyone with even a very basic understanding of branding will know that trust has always been a key component part in a successful brand’s DNA – i.e. if people trust you they’re more likely to buy your products or services. In fact this is true to the point that many brand owners have simply taken […]
March 2009
Or, arguably, at anytime and including in boom years, but in the current economic climate it has to be plain commercial suicide. So for this month’s comment three stories: Two about great customer service and, thankfully, just one about a level which can only be described as rubbish. Which at two-to-one is probably not a […]
February 2009
I have a mental list of topics I’d rather like to write about in these monthly columns. However, economic events over the last six months or so have largely ensured that topical issues have taken precedence over those on my ‘now that would be nice to write about some day’ list. On that list, is […]
January 2009
The recent monthly comments on this site have been rather more to do with large businesses – though smaller businesses can always learn from what’s happening with the bigger boys of course (and visa-versa for that matter) – so to start the New Year the focus is very much on SMEs. New Year resolutions are […]
December 2008
It might have taken the early effects of the recession to push both of these brands over the survival precipice, but few in the business world will have been surprised at their downfalls – it’s been coming. The media though – and with its instinctive trait of simplification for the supposed benefit of Joe Public […]
November 2008
It is perhaps the sheer pace that things have changed over even the last month or so which has surprised us all. Yes we’ve been hearing about the ‘credit crunch’ for a year or two, but it’s probably fair to say that both the effects and speed of the effects of this now household term, […]
October 2008
Anyone reading this will probably have at least some knowledge of marketing and branding. That being the case, you’ll know our industry has more than its fair share of terminology and acronyms. Some of these are good and add both value and clarity, and some are rather less useful. One term I especially like though […]
September 2008
Without question, the whole sustainability issue – and of course behind it global warming and the very real threat of climate change – has exploded into the lives of us all in recent years. Also without question, is the fact that many brands have simply jumped on a ‘green bandwagon’ and made all sorts of […]
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