Catapults are a great piece of engineering. They can be small and simple enough for a child to use. They can be intricate and building-sized for an army to use. They can hit a target a few feet away. They can zone in on a target hundreds of feet way. Catapults are built to hit whatever you’re aiming for with the least amount of fuss. Couldn’t businesses benefit from more catapult builders?  

I’ve been looking at a lot of businesses lately and watching with interest as they adapt (or don’t) to today’s business world. Some are managing the transfer (Coca Cola, Ford, Four Seasons), while others seem to be struggling (BP, Nissan, Nestle). And these are the big boys that should be able to provide the budgets to create a successful strategy – yet as BP, Nissan and Nestle show, that’s not always the case. So why are companies still struggling to…

When I took my marketing degree back in 2001, part of the course was learning about the Four P’s of Marketing – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. These terms have been the mainstay of marketing since the 1950′s, when Neil H. Borden published an article called The Concept of the Marketing Mix , although the actual phrase The Four P’s was coined by E. Jerome McCarthy in 1960. Marketers have used the Four P’s to plan marketing campaigns, measure and…

Social media is free. Social media is inexpensive. You don’t have to outspend your competition. Social media saves time. Social media will save your business thousands, if not millions. These are all quotes I’ve seen from various voices recently. Each one pretty much agrees with the other – that social media is a great tool for you to implement into your business because it’s so cost-effective and will give you quicker results. Sadly, it’s not true. Yes, you’ll save on…

Marketing to a law firm is very different to marketing to a butcher’s shop. Implementing social media strategy for a school is not the same as implementing social media strategy for a school for spine surgeons. Flying a kite is not the same as flying a three hundred passenger Boeing. One size fits all solutions? No such thing.  

Old often equates to age, and wisdom. Old shows staying power and stamina, and hard battles fought and won. New often equates to eagerness, and a willingness to experiment. New shows paths yet to be journeyed and successes to come. Mix old and new and you have the wisdom to journey the right paths. The staying power to battle to success. Old and new are two different words but they don’t need to be two different worlds.