Blogs

Have you ever tried to write a novel, or anything else for that matter? There’s an old adage that says everyone has at least one book in them. That may be so and many have tested the theory, but not many have proved its accuracy. Not through a lack of advice on the subject though. Type into your browser the words ‘Creative Writing’ and you will be astonished to see the number of hits…over fifty eight million! I thought for moment that I had misread the figure but I hadn’t.

 A year ago I wrote in my very first blog that. “As a general rule I believe dinosaurs should remain a part of their own time frame. There they have a relevance to each other and to their environment.” I was reminded of that thought yesterday when I visited one of the finest old estates in the South of England, owned by The National Trust. I could see very clearly the link between the social dinosaurs that ran the country when the house was being built and those who have inherited their legacy.

There was a programme on television last Friday evening that caught and held my attention. It was called “High Street Dreams”. It featured the hopes and ambitions of two quite different characters who hoped to take a product they had created to the marketplace and make their fame and fortune. They were discovered and advised by those who had successfully travelled that route themselves. The participants couldn’t have been more disparate. One, a male Doctor of Quantum Physics; the other, a female Blacksmith/Artist in metals.

As a marketing exercise it was brilliant. As a PR campaign outstanding. In every shop the Three Lions appeared on the packaging of virtually every kind of product and service you could imagine. Beer and Barbeques filled the isles of the supermarket at prices never to be repeated. Well they weren’t supposed to be repeated but I bet they will be now the furore has died down a bit. The flag of St George and England was on cars and flew from all sorts of posts and windows in every town and village. The Media was full of it, and still is.

I read during the week that the London Evening Standard has broken even financially. Both it’s circulation and readership has risen dramatically, all since it was acquired, at a cost of £1, by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, who promptly turned the title into a free newspaper. Of course all the pundits said it wouldn’t work. But he seems to have proved them wrong. I have mentioned a number of times in previous blogs that I believe newspapers owned by corporations somehow lose their voice.

What an incredibly exciting, exhilarating and quite frankly exhausting week at Cariad Towers !!

With a cocktail of new business appointments; client appointments; networking meetings juxtaposed with hours spent on SEO campaigns, new website releases, client eMail campaigns; new website proposals, interviewing for staff and keeping up with our ever-busy clients; by close of play Friday I was ready to drop - but hugely proud of all that had been achieved in the week.

Does the media set trends or follow them? The question arose a while back when I read in one of the newspapers the results of a survey into what people thought of programmes on television. The enquiry was mainly concerned with audience attitudes to the growing use of foul language, excessive violence and explicit sex scenes on our screens. Is there too much of it? Are people offended by it? Does it change people’s perceptions of life or encourage the use of etc, etc, etc. It seemed to me, a chicken and egg question.

The game of football must surely be one of the marketing industry’s greatest successes. In a relatively short time it has moved from being a humble ‘working man’s’ game in England, to a world wide business played by men, and now women too, in every part of the world and at the same time become a multi-billion pound industry. How did it happen? It couldn’t have been planned, well not all of it anyway.

Simon and I were delighted to attend the launch of the Herfordshire Business Awards at Beales Hotel in Hatfield.

Okay, so today is a busy day for Networking

First up was the Viva Business Networking event in St Albans followed by the launch of the Hertfordshire Business Awards in Hatfield.