Category Archives: business

business, Management

Leadership Doing What One Says

It has been interesting week here in Great Britain, we had some local elections and the current Labour government lost a large majority of their seats. It has been interesting to watch Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour party. I had the impression that with so much experience he should be able to handle the job. It appears not with the recent blunders in government. He has not shown leadership more sort of being led by public opinion.

 

Whether one likes Tony Blair (ex Prime minister) or not at least he had some idea of what he was doing and did not pander to criticism. Leadership is about Leading and ultimately to greater things.

 

 

 

 

business, Relationship

An Interesting Email from Thomas Cook (Brand Keywords)

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 Bidding on keywords to increase your  market is an interesting concept. For example I like Virgin Cola, I decide that I am going to start my own Coke Cola company called Leo Cola. Of course for my product to be successful I am going to have attract some of the Cola drinkers in other markets. For example Coke Cola, Virgin Cola. How do I do this? I buy advertising on key search words like Coke Cola, Pepsi.  This would seem fair to me. Now Thomas Cook think that if you are selling advertising on your web site for them that if you bid on key words you are effectively making an easy sell. I would agree with this view point if Thomas Cook were paying me a flat fee for their banner being on my site say (£600) . Instead they are paying on a click and earn basis it would seem that the affiliate is the duper. Below is an excerpt from the email.

“As I’m sure you are aware, as of Monday 5th May, Google are making some changes and removing their Trademark restrictions on brand keywords. The Thomas Cook Group (TCG) would like to clarify our position on our Affiliates brand bidding policy. We want to make our policy as clear as possible to ensure everyone is aware of what can or can’t be done.

If you run any paid search activity, please take the time to read this to prevent any repercussions in the future;

– Thomas Cook does not allow any affiliate to bid on our brand terms. This includes brand terms, variations or misspellings.

– We will not be operating any closed groups to allow brand bidding.

– We do not allow direct linking or the use of our display URL or any variations of this.

– We do not allow affiliates to bid on competitors terms when promoting the TCG – we will not be bidding on our competitors brand terms and expect our affiliates to follow the same rules. Some examples of these include “Thomson”, “First Choice”, “Expedia”, “Cosmos”.

I can not stress enough that any affiliate caught doing any of the above will face being removed from the affiliate programme and having commissions reversed from any sale made from violations. With the aid of Commission Junction, we closely monitor our brand terms as well as using our own bespoke tools.”

All in all a bit harsh.

business, Relationship, sales

The Startup Review

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The Startup Review  Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials  I just came across this at Mashabel, the boys their have been busy sending me emails. I signed up about three or four months ago and have been visiting the site recently. they are obviously working hard on creating a  community. I am still not sure what it is exactly. For example a couple of the people I have been in touch with seemed interested in dating.  Anyway what I did notice is that they are promoting a reviewing services a bit like Techcrunch. It looks promising here are some of the details below. A 100 word description should be do-able.

* Must be less than 1 year old
* Must never have received coverage on Mashable.com before
* Must have something to showcase to our readers (active site/product)

To be considered, please submit the following to our editorial staff at: startup [at] mashable [dot] com:

* Company Name
* Company Logo
* Company Website
* Company Location
* 20 word description
* CEO’s 100 word description

business, Relationship

Very Clever Programming, The best Marketing in the World

SOUND ON, just in by email!

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam . Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands . HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany . In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.

Take a look at HEMA’s product page . You can’t order anything and it’s in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens.

This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer. I want one….

http://producten.hema.nl/

Consultancy, Relationship

Center of Excellence

The Isle of Man is doing well. Part of the success that we enjoy is that we have our own hospital. A hospital that costs a million pounds a day to run. For only 80,000 people it does not represent value for money. With any small community one has to build a reputation for certain skills sets. The Isle of Man has established a financial reputation in the world market. We are also working on becoming e-gaming center. But we are lagging behind at the moment. Today’s thought is how to make our hospital more cost effective so that it could become a center of excellence in a specific medical area. As certain hospitals are known for heart surgery, children etc. Maybe the Isle of Man could become an expert in the field of dermatology?

brand, Marketing, Relationship

Company Car Advertising the Minus and Pluses

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A lot of successful companies have resolved there advertising problem by purchasing a company car or two and putting their company logo on the car.

This is a highly effective way to advertise your business for the following reasons:

1. For the price of petrol (£50) per a week a high number of people will see your company logo out and about
2. It lasts for a long period (3 years)
3. It is a perk for your employee.
4. It can motivate your employees if they can use it in there free time
5. You do not need to arrange other forms of advertising or less of it
6. The money you saved on advertising is going into your own company

The negatives are:

1. The driver will have to be a shining example of a good driver, or he could damage your companies reputation
2. There is increased company liability
3. Repairs will be expensive as the car will more than often be driven harder than it should.

I am thinking of doing a Wcx company car any suggestions for design please comment?