Business

Business / 31 May, 2017

How IBM stabbed their workforce – and themselves – in the back
In light of IBM’s decision to repeal their famous ‘work-from-home’ policy, I hope you’ll forgive me for asking the question: have they completely lost the plot? According to Geoffrey James of Inc., they may well have. He writes, ‘You'd think that IBM's executives would realise that the company's unparalleled record of financial growth and innovation...
Read more
Business / Diversity & Inclusion / 23 May, 2017

The Heineken advert and the importance of diversity of opinion

You have to hand it to the advertising team at Heineken for managing to scrape together a five-minute commercial with social and political (and, I suppose, drink-related) themes at its centre and avoiding disaster, especially when you consider the fact that it was only a month ago that Kendall Jenner and the creative types at…

Read more
Business / 17 May, 2017

After the NHS cyber-attack, are you doing enough to protect your business?

On May 19th, one in five NHS trusts were victims of the global ‘WannaCry’ cyber-attack, freezing computers used to share patients’ test results and forcing the cancellation of operations scheduled for Monday at a number of major hospitals. The National Cyber Security Centre soon after warned that more cases were likely to be reported at the…

Read more
Business / Diversity & Inclusion / Strategy / 08 May, 2017

4 reasons why diversity should be on your strategic agenda

Have a skim over any corporate Twitter feed and you’re likely to encounter a healthy dose of diversity messaging. While few are doing anything as disastrous as Pepsi’s recent faux pas, much of what appears is little more than a box-ticking exercise with no real substance behind it. For me, this represents a huge missed…

Read more
Business / Thought Leadership / 18 Apr, 2017

Why the Millennial workforce is disenchanted –
and what we’re doing about it

Why are so many millennials quitting the well-paid and well-regarded jobs they worked so hard through uni for? That’s the question Lucy Kellaway tried to answer in her piece in the FT last week, Don’t blame millennials if you can’t hang on to them. Kellaway blames the ‘widest gap between expectations and reality that the…

Read more
Brand and Customer Experience / Business / Strategy / 11 Apr, 2017

Unfriendly Skies: How United Airlines failed at customer experience and lost $1 billion in market value

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that a man was dragged from his seat on a United Airlines plane on Sunday evening because his flight, which was bound for Kentucky, was overbooked. An eyewitness said the man was a ‘Chinese American doctor’ who refused to leave his seat when asked because he had to be…

Read more
Business / Strategy / 30 Mar, 2017

Why the best agencies will reject your brief.

What does a good agency look like to you? Pretty much every agency website you visit promises to deliver simplified content, engaging designs and strategic responses. So, do you go for the disruptors, the innovators, or the safe pair of hands? The answer is: none of them. You should be on the lookout for the…

Read more
Business / Content / Strategy / 29 Mar, 2017

5 B2B marketing trends for 2017

We know the feeling. You’ve barely recovered from Dry January, but the end of Q1 is already staring you in the face. For those of you who are feeling a little behind the times, we’ve put together a list of the big trends we think you should have your eye on. 1. Virtual Insanity As…

Read more
Business / Content / Strategy /

5 signs you need a restructure not a rebrand

One of the first questions I ask any client who comes looking for a rebrand is: “Why?”. I don’t just ask this because I’m contrarian, but because all too often they are looking for the solution to a problem that can’t be solved by brand alone. A repair isn’t as sexy as a rebuild…

Read more
Business / Diversity & Inclusion / Strategy / 28 Mar, 2017

Why Your B2B Marketing Content is Probably Sexist

Last week, while watching the video of Mary Beard’s excellent London Review of Books Winter Series lecture on Women in Power, I was struck by her focus on language – in particular on the way in which language that excludes women from power has become part of our everyday lexicon. Women, Beard points out, are…

Read more