Friday, January 31, 2014

Unsung Hero Award goes to Andy Collier at The Stage annual awards event today


At The Stage's annual awards event at Dury Lane today, we are delighted to report the award to the late Andy Colllier.

"The annual unsung hero award, which recognises figures in the performing arts industry who operate outside the limelight, was presented posthumously to theatre consultant Andy Collier.

Chair of the judging panel, The Stage deputy editor Alistair Smith, said: “It was another really tough year for the judges across all the categories and, really, any of our shortlisted organisations would have made worthy winners, such is the quality of theatre provision across the UK.

“However, these were the best of the best, and the judging panel would like to congratulate all our winners for everything they’ve achieved over the last 12 months.”

The winners in full are:

London theatre of the year, sponsored by Haagen Dazs
Hampstead Theatre
Regional theatre of the year, sponsored by Audience Systems
Sheffield Theatres
Fringe theatre of the year, sponsored by Encore Insure
Southwark Playhouse
School of the year, sponsored by Nick Hern Books
National Youth Theatre
Producer of the year, sponsored by Ticketmaster
Michael Grandage Company
Unsung Hero, sponsored by the Association of British Theatre Technicians
Andy Collier"

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Is UK business and employment changing?

With the UK economy now growing at the fastest rate since 2007 we ask, has the business landscape changed since the days before the credit crunch?

The BBC reports today that "the UK service sector - which makes up more than three-quarters of economic output - rose by 0.8% in the fourth quarter, the ONS said, matching its performance in the previous quarter. And the manufacturing sector grew by 0.9%."

Looking back to previous recessions it is not simply a question of seeing  sales volumes ramp up as the recession ends, but possibly the return to growth is driven by some fundamental restructuring of how businesses are organised. And how this has changed is important to b-2-b marketers to ensure marketing communications are now delivered to the right target audiences through the right channels.

It was recently reported that "a quarter of scientific and technical professionals .. work on a freelance basis, choosing which project to apply their skills to, according to research cited by PCG, the freelancing association." Apparently there are 1.72 million such freelancers contributing £95 billion to the economy! Freelancing is offering ways for companies to grow while minimising risk and cost.

Meanwhile consider another statistic, "2.5 million businesses are now using a home base." Those businesses now represent 52 per cent of the total number of small companies in Britain according to research by Direct Line.

Working with freelancers from a home office myself it is easy to relate to these figures and it is unsurprising that 99.2% of all UK  businesses are classed as small, employing 50 or less and 74% have no employees at all! Why is this not surprising? Entrepreneurs and professionals don't necessarily want to spend their time managing staff and dealing with a raft of employment legislation when instead they can focus on selling their own expertise using a growing pool of networked freelance talent digitally connected to mobile or home based devices. As the Prime Minister said recently, "Our country owes a huge debt of gratitude to those who make their living as freelancers and entrepreneurs. You have not only taken your own future into your own hands, but you are the engine of our economy and economic revival."










Friday, January 24, 2014

B-2-B not just boring business to boring business anymore

An interesting article about b-2-b marketing – read the full story here
"Times change. The b-to-b sector accounts for over 50% of the U.S. gross domestic product."
 “B-to-b often got kicked around as the poor stepchild of consumer advertising. While exceptions abound, the stereotype was always that b-to-b marketing was boring. B-to-b companies did little TV advertising and spent most of their media dollars on trade publications. You had industrial companies selling boring products to other boring companies. All that anyone cared about was price and product features.
As a category, b-to-b makes a huge contribution to the economy, job creation and innovation. Now marketers are just as likely to engage with business customers on personal channels like Facebook and blogs as we are to engage with them in trade publications.
Today, no one would call b-to-b anybody's stepchild. With the explosion of social and content platforms, most consumer and b-to-b companies have access to the same communications channels and can compete on an equal footing. 
… the convergence of consumer and b-to-b creates exciting opportunities for both clients and agencies who want to break out of old marketing habits." 

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Is social media becoming more relevant to B-2-B Marketers?

B-2-B marketers have traditionally used tools like White Papers to inform, educate and nurture prospects for their products and services.

But a new study featured in Advertising Age suggests, "Buyers expect to soon give more weight to social content than editorial and white papers." Research by IDG Connect amongst IT buyers is quoted as saying, "When compared to editorial content and vendor-created content, social media is currently the least critical source of information for IT buyers. But in two years, buyers expect that equation to flip as they increase the weight given to social media from 31% to 37% for influencing investment decisions. In the same period the weight given to editorial and vendor content will drop to 31% and 32% respectively." The study also noted that 86% of the group now use social media in their purchase decision process. Buyers engaging in the social media networks are apparently more interested in educational content than transactional or promotional content and this flags up the importance of providing a clear path to the appropriate content, which of course might be a white paper on the company web site!

One impact of the growing importance of social media is the need for B-2-B marketers to have expertise in both traditional marketing and in these new areas of digital marketing. And of course to make space in the marketing budget as digital channels are not necessarily displacing traditional routes but are fragmenting the communications opportunities.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Digital marketing - what is being said about your products?

Back in the 1990s the term 'new media' was spoken about in advertising agencies to describe creative work that typically ended up on CDs rather than in print. Today the term 'digital marketing' is more commonly in vogue. Digital marketing is used to describe the use of content delivery via social media to some form of computing platform, mobile device or smart phone. Interestingly it is creatives  who have coined the terms rather than engineers. Engineers would more likely consider 'digital' as an alternative to 'analogue'.

It is not just terminology but the whole mindset associated with digital marketing right from creation to consumption and subsequent analysis that is changing. I  have visited a few digital agencies in the last few months which still  make a nod to the minimalist decor of the traditional advertising agency plus what appears to be a nursery playroom in one - for the young code writers perhaps. Then at the other end of the process there are the analytics providers. Well it isn't just analytics but aggregation of what is happening out in this digital landscape that is talking about your brand or product. It is not merely response to what you or your company put out and have some type of control over, but conversations about your stuff between users who don't include anyone from your company at all. And it is not just about looking at numbers as with say Google Analytics, but tapping into conversations which might be ill informed and harmful to the brand. So you need to know what they are saying.

Some pretty smart software helps company marketers get some handle on what is  going on out there by aggregating news, chat, comments and reviews - even down to identifying requests for information from potential prospects. Options to join in a number of global conversations allow relevant content to be re-tweeted or posted to other social media channels and no doubt negative comment responded to positively. It offers real time interaction, but did the typical b-2-b marketer expect this is where digital marketing might go and are they set up for instant content creation?

Thursday, January 09, 2014

Content creation and delivery

As digital marketing expands, the demand for quality content grows.

 For the last few centuries, news, information and knowledge was primarily printed on paper documents such as newspapers, magazines and books. The life of newspapers was short, of useful books much much longer. Today few would think of commencing a search for information amongst the dusty shelves of a library. Most people go straight to a computer, smart phone or tablet and then to the one all knowing oracle - Google. And what they want is good quality, relevant information - quickly.
Where that information is research prior to a purchase, unless it is a subject the person knows well, the process may start with 'education' that explains and outlines options to create a better informed purchase decision - before checking out actual product models, price and availability. If that educational entry is provided by an expert in the field, then that may well create trust when later on the buying phase begins.

Although we talk about a proliferation of media, in reality the only divide is between storage on paper and digital storage. Advertising agencies  have slowly evolved the terminology from talking about 'new media' to being a 'digital' agency. The gateway to the digital archives is dominated by Google and unless your search result comes high up on page one, who is going to scroll through the next few hundred, thousand or million results? Quality, relevant content is rewarded by high ranking, you only have to see how highly Wikipedia appears on most searches.

Creating compelling content that takes the moral high ground can be the foot in the door, once the role of field salesmen to hook a prospect early in the purchase process. This may be assisted by placing content on sites that already enjoy high ranking and get links back to your on website in return for providing expert content that improves their position. So not only is there a growing need for great content, but also the means of delivering that collateral to the right prospects.