Year: 2015

Author: Lucy O’Dea

That’s three times in a week now that I’ve heard about the virtues of putting down phones and tablets in favour of picking up a book. The first was when I received the latest newsletter from the headmaster of my daughter’s new school. He has just introduced a dedicated 10 minute, school-wide silent reading initiative whereby all electronic devices are discarded in favour of the book. As he wrote in his weekly missive, “All electronic devices were put away, phones and photocopiers fell dead and almost seven hundred pairs of eyes began to concentrate on a text in front of them. It was genuinely magical.”

Author: Michael Grass

Ever imagined having Basil from Fawlty Towers or House of Cards’ Frank Underwood give you a lecture on content marketing? Probably not, but we do live in a world where one half of Harold & Kumar ended up working for the Obama administration’s PR team, so anything is possible.

Author: Cerys Traylor

Over the last three years, visual social media platforms, Instagram and Pinterest, have doubled their number of users. As an avid user of both, this definitely doesn’t surprise me.

Earlier this month, Periscope – Twitter’s livestreaming app – boasted it had over 10 million users. A phenomenal figure, given the platform’s short life of just six months (or perhaps not, given the fact the social media platform fads seem to grow faster by the day).

I must admit, over the past 18 months I’ve become rather giddy over packaging. Friends have started to look at me oddly when I tell them about the latest bubble wrap innovation (strong enough to be run over with a lorry and not pop!), or void fill solution (the bits that keep your latest eBay splurge secure in the box).

I have recently returned from a two month adventure in the US, whereby I travelled through a total of 20 states, many of which I had never been to. As you can imagine, I relied heavily on any information that was available to help me find my bearings and ensure I maximised my time in each place.

You know a package is doing a good job when it manages to engage you in such a way that you’re inspired to buy the product. Take our Ellie for example, who recently purchased a Zewa box of tissues. She bought them not due to the brand’s credentials in the paper handkerchief sector, but because the box could be folded into the amusing shape of a pig. (That’s one for the consumer behaviour studies, right there). 

As of last week, Apple Pay – the Californian tech giant’s entry into the world of contactless payment – is now active in the UK for RBS, Natwest, Santander and Nationwide account holders, with many more banks joining soon.

Having recently become the obedient servant to a rescue cat (yes, cats don’t have owners, they have staff), I am naturally besotted with my new furry companion. So one recent piece of direct mail that dropped through my letter box particularly grabbed my attention.

There are a number of things to expect during rush hour at Waterloo station: queues, a lot of shuffling, elbowing, perhaps the odd bit of swearing if you miss your train. What you don’t expect is to come across a bunch of velociraptors.

May 1215

The communications consultants tell me that the issues with my leadership style are reaching crisis point. ‘Overly autocratic’ is the expression they keep using. They’re concerned about my ‘credibility with some of our key stakeholders’; apparently they’re looking for more transparency on the financials, they’re not entirely bought into the strategic direction, and they’re moaning that I’m making arbitrary decisions.

I don’t understand the time-worn squabbles between advocates of digital communication and champions of print – especially when each side can be overly defensive about its preferred medium.