Marketing and the supermarket ‘price war’
You’ll be well aware that this Christmas the supermarkets are trying hard to lure customers with bargain prices. Pricing is of course a vital component of the marketing mix, perhaps especially so in the current economic climate. Investigative journalists on the BBC show Panorama have been digging deeper; to see if the supermarket offers are all they seem…
read more...»Olympus Epic Fail
The scale of the failings in corporate governance at Olympus is breathtaking. The company has misled, shareholders, banks, auditors, stock markets, Japan’s government, and staff about the true state of its finances over a 20 year period. It is Corporate Social Irresponsibility on the grandest of scales.
read more...»Corporate Irresponsibility at Olympus
Recent problems at Japan’s Olympus Corporation highlight the importance of corporate culture, ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility and management responsibility to shareholders and other stakeholders.
How PepsiCo are trying to control diseconomies of scale
Big firms often face huge organisational difficulties that can slow them down and cause costs and problems to spiral. So I was drawn to a BBC article the big businesses learning how to think small which appeared soon after Steve Jobs’ death. His insistence on “no committees” and talking to everyone at least once a week was, he said, enough to keep Apple focused, efficient and successful.
I don’t know if that’s true, but for big corporations, with their vast resources and bewildering bureaucracy, operating with the attitude of a technology start-up is a distant dream (but with exciting possibilities). Poor communication, low levels of motivation and a shortage of innovative ideas are classic diseconomies of scale that are typical of larger organisations.
read more...»Selling Bread - Classic Adverts
The humble loaf has long been the centre of creative adverts on television often designed to pull at the heart strings, evoke a sense of place and tradition and remind us of the humanity that goes into making every single bap, french stick or loaf of white sliced.
Warburtons has established itself as the second most highly rated grocery brand in the UK - some distance behind Coca Cola but perhaps that will never change. Their adverts are beautifully crafted and might work a treat in lessons on branding and the effectiveness of television advertising. Here is a small selection of my favourites together with a short video on the background to a Warburtons marketing campaign to launch a new product
read more...»De-layering: do firms need middle managers?
Middle managers have had a tough couple of decades. Many large firms sought to cut costs by removing levels of hierarchy from their organisational structure. Often it was the middle management ranks that felt the squeeze the hardest. Academics praised ‘flatter’ organisations and people like David Brent (from comedy TV series The Office) became the butt of jokes.
read more...»Marks & Spencer’s new look
A great article here for those of you with a passion for retail and an eye for design. M&S boss Marc Bolland is spending £600m on a revamp. The firm is wheeling out an array of props including mopeds and pasta machines as part of a refit of its shop floors, which will see stores within stores created for its clothing ranges and the return of delicatessen counters.
read more...»Designing an effective work place
When I first glanced at the link below my initial reaction was that the recession must nearly be over. When firms start to advertise the benefits of the office you could be working in, it’s usually a sign that they are having trouble finding recruits for their organisation. But watch it anyway as the clip raises several interesting points about how work place design could influence workforce performance.
read more...»Secrets of the Superbrands
There’s been loads of good business material in the first couple of shows in this three part series, so that it’s recommended viewing if you have some time over half term.
read more...»Are call centres the factories of the 21st century?
When you think about Business Production (or Operations Management) it’s always easy to imagine some type of factory setting. But I try to increasingly think about service sector environments, and when I saw that “More people have worked in call centres than ever worked in the mining industry, and I researched that in 1998,” (according to an author who wrote a novel based on his experiences in a call centre) I read on.
read more...»Burberry bounce back from a damaged brand
Fashion is one of the UK’s premier exports: according to a recent article in The Economist newly prosperous foreigners will probably want at least a few things that Britain supplies better than most: higher education, financial services, popular culture and fashion: the country boasts influential street stylists and vibrant chain-stores (such as Top Shop), plus some coveted luxury brands, such as Burberry.
Yet a few years ago the Burberry brand looked catastrophically damaged – but it has bounced back with a 27% jump in revenue to £480m for the last quarter of 2010. How has it managed the turnaround?
read more...»Advertising standards and misleading claims
Coca-cola is the latest in a (very) long series of firms to have been caught out by what you can say/what you can’t say in an advert. This is a classic constraint on UK business which operates within a reasonably rigid legal framework. Here are a few links to recent relevant cases and where you can go to find out more.
read more...»Starbucks and our hostility to rebranding
I doubt I can say anything new about the Starbuck’s rebranding exercise (that Michael Owen covered here) but there has been some interesting coverage discussing why consumers seem to get be so enraged when rebranding occurs and new logos are launched.
read more...»Business secrets and Wikileaks
It’s not just governments that fear the widespread sharing of secrets. Firms are beginning to realise that their confidential information is at risk too.
We’ve heard about the recent problems at Santander who have inadvertently distributed account details to the wider public. That was the result of a mishap. But what if companies begin to find that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep hold of sensitive information?
Is ‘working from home’ a skive?
I’ve stolen the title for this blog straight from an article asking the same question as the current cold weather keeps commuters indoors. It’s a long running issue that speaks volumes about leadership, management, motivation, the nature of work and the whole viability of the ‘teleworking’ concept.
read more...»Cash for Tweets
Range Rover has signed up more than 40 global “trendsetters” to tweet about their forthcoming city 4x4. The idea came from an ad agency who are anxious to point out that “no one has been paid to tweet”. However, the lucky trendsetters did get a free loan, and in some cases were given, a Range Rover.
read more...»48 old adverts that would be banned immediately these days
I love this nostalgic review of a collection of old newspaper and magazine adverts that would struggle to get past the advertising authorities in the business world of 2010. Some crackers in here and certainly worth showing to students who are used to a very different and more sophisticated style of media advertising.
read more...»Advertising booms (but not if you’re a newspaper)
When the recession came along, advertising expenditure plummeted. The worrying question for the ad agencies was if this was a temporary state of affairs, or the sign of something deeper. Would marketing money return to all media, or just a few? The answers are becoming clearer.
read more...»Business and the blogosphere
Firms can’t ignore Twitter, Facebook and the rest any longer. There’s a great BBC page all about how firms watch our online moves with ever greater interest. There has been a huge shift taking in place in the balance of stakeholder power. As the article begins, “once upon a time companies could afford to be rude. Unhappy customers would grumble to a few friends, withdraw their custom, but there was little else they could do. Today, they still tell their friends, but they do it online, using social media websites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter”.
read more...»Best Global Brands 2010
The updated list has been published by Interbrand (the people who brought you the slogan “a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play”) and they describe it as the ‘definitive ranking of the world’s most valuable brands’.
read more...»Time wasters of the world unite
Are you finding that Facebook is eating up time when you’re at home when you should be revising? Perhaps it’s as well that most schools try to block the site and that way we get some work done. One recent blog looked at how firms might try to monitor their employees that work from home and here’s a couple of other observations about ICT time wasting.
read more...»How IT is changing the jobs market
Some futuristic ideas take a long time to arrive. There have been predictions for perhaps 20 years that soon a huge number of people will be working from home using ICT – an idea often referred to as ‘teleworking’ or ‘telecommuting’. Now there’s evidence that as the web blooms and the recession bites, it might really start happening.
read more...»Build a Tower - Build a Team
I haven’t come across this particular Marshmallow Challenge before (there is the standard one about eating as many as you can in 2 minutes or stuffing your mouth - diminishing returns?) But it could be a terrific exercises to use with Economics and Business students at any point during the school year! Here is a TED talk on some of the surprising results from around the world - and there are more details available here from this blog.
Adverts that know where you are
If the tabloids tell us where Cheryl and Ashley are at all times, it should make life easier for jewelry thieves lurking near their house. That point makes some people anxious about constantly revealing their location. Others are far less concerned, which could be a real bonus for advertisers.
read more...»Autocratic, demanding or bullying?
We spend a lot of time thinking about leadership and management styles. The news is full of it at the moment, with a particular focus on the style used by the Prime Minister towards his subordinates. You will appreciate that the first, most obvious point about leadership styles is that they must be adapted to reflect the situation. Leading a group of creative workers through a brainstorm is very different to being a senior fire officer at a warehouse blaze, or a senior social worker managing an office supporting a demanding range of clients and cases.
But back to the current headlines: when does someone overstep the line from being firm and demanding – into a bullying monster?
read more...»Starter activity - teaching communication
The topic of communication at both GCSE and A level lends itself to a fantastic range of activities. Here are a couple I recently tried and they went down an absolute storm.
read more...»Business Communication - Quiz 1 (Easier Grade!)
Here is a 14-question multiple choice quiz with some relatively straightforward questions on business communication
