Take a little time…a little time to get to know me.

I feel a song coming on. Or not. Either way, really. I was speaking to a group of franchisors the other day. (For those of you who don’t know the term, a franchisor (person or group/company) sits at the head of a franchise. They are the people everyone else buys their franchise from. They own [...]

Paying attention to customer service starts with paying attention…

OK. I admit I’m not a food critic. I’m not a chef and I’m not in any way qualified to write restaurant reviews. I’ll put my hand up right away and admit all of that. Setting those facts aside, this may be a slightly odd post – half restaurant review, half customer service advice. You [...]

It’s never too early to ask for some help…

…but it may very well be too late. In some ways I’m going to have to tip the old hat in @craig_mckenna‘s direction. His latest blog about the responsibilities that consultants have to their clients played out in my mind as I have been working with a new client. How many businesses suffer because they [...]

Sometimes it’s my job to tell you that you look fat in that dress.

I was sitting down for coffee with a fellow marketing man the other day. To be fair, I try not to do that too often, but every once in a while it’s ok, right? Anyway, there was a bit of a sales pitch on his side of the table, but he was a nice guy [...]

You got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them. Know when to walk away, and know when to run….

I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, this isn’t really a post about Kenny Rogers (as much as I might wish it to be). Quick back story. I was actually walking to the train station this morning and I pressed the play button on my iPhone. It randomly selected some Kenny Rogers. Me being [...]

Last I checked, you and Tesco didn’t have a lot in common…

Last week I was asked to speak to a small group of business owners who are currently in the (torturous?) process of trying to grow their own businesses. They were covering marketing that week, and I was brought in for a couple reasons (eye candy,? Ability to creatively curse?), but the primary one was to [...]

Junk mail, email spam, fax spam, telesales and now: social media spam!

Hurrah! Or alternatively, if you’re anything like me, sigh… This won’t be particularly shocking to most of you. For those of us who work in the field (well, marketing in general) it’s even less so. I think we’ve finally reached the point where spam is starting to outweigh the good in some of our favourite [...]

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

I have to admit – normally when I hear that phrase it’s in some sort of ‘b’ movie and it’s being uttered by a concerned parent or grandparent to their, somewhat wayward, daughter. But that’s not the story for today. No, today it’s a perfect summary of one of my pet peeves – doing speculative [...]

Treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen

This may be a bit of a schizophrenic post, as I’m trying to reconcile competing emotions and ideas into one (oh so subtly named) article. You can probably guess, but the underlying message/topic today is about customer service and communication. I like Apple. A lot. I have a 100% Apple office, and I’m what I [...]

This just in: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is!

This could also go under the ‘if it looks like shit and smells like shit – it’s probably shit’ heading, but hey, I’m trying to clean up my act a bit (and my mother tells me I curse too much anyway). Onwards and upwards. I’ve been asked to speak about Social Media at a couple [...]