Manchester band The Get Out Clause used CCTV as PR – and then were publicised on Sky News! With the help of public relations expert Liam Walsh of AskMe PR, the band performed under Closed Circuit TV cameras in various places around Manchester – then demanded the footage from the CCTV operators under the Freedom …
Category: Recent Posts
Cate Blanchett ‘Sparkles’
Congratulations to one of my client creative businesses, Sparkle Media on their successful projects in Australia ! The visual effects and animation company has recently worked in Australia with Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, producing video footage for the multimedia theatrical performance Minutes of a Separation. Sparkle Media also worked for Reebok whilst …
Creative Times: Leading Creative People – it’s like herding cats!
Leading Creative People … “We say it’s like herding cats!” was a comment about leading and managing creative people when I was a guest speaker at the Munich meeting of MAGNET – the Marketing and Advertising Global Network. My presentation to the owners of advertising agencies from around the world was on the subject of …
The Price of a Bed
Would you pay 50,620 Euros for a bed? (That’s over £40,000 GBP, about $78,000 USD) Probably not. But apparently some people do. Why? What’s going on here? I’m fascinated by pricing strategies and run workshops for creative businesses on the subject. There are different ways to decide on your pricing strategy and I’ll be writing …
Carnaby Street W1
Westminster Council bought the copyright in the design of its iconic street signs (pictured). This means that it can now generate income fom licensing this intellectual property to businesses. The designs were created by Misha Black in 1967 and the copyright remained with the designer until his death, when it passed to his estate. Black’s …
Don’t Co-operate
In contrast to the business strategies of collaboraton or Co-opetition, there is another strategy to consider: ‘Don’t Co-operate’. This is one of the characteristics of the success of Apple Inc., according to Wired Magazine in an article called ‘How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong’. The article shows how Apple breaks several of …
Beware ‘Copyright Grabs’
Photographer Chiz Dakin (Peak Images) asked me to warn other photographers about the problem of ‘copyright grabs’. Chiz is concerned about the trend for businesses, particularly large corporations, to “grab copyright in any image they can get their hands on”, as she puts it. This practice is a hazard for photographers who don’t carefully read …
Paul Arden RIP
Advertising genius Paul Arden died on 02 April 2008. Some of his most influential work was done while he was executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi for 14 years. Paul was responsible for advertising campaigns for clients such as The Independent (“The Independent. It is – are you?”), Toyota (“The car in front is …
Freemium: Give it away free!
Creative entrepreneurs often ask me how they can make money from their music or computer games when MP3 files and software is so easy to copy. One answer is to use the fact that people copy your stuff to change a threat into an opportunity. Banda Calypso’s music is copied onto CDs and sold on …
Let your heart drive you…
A creative passion is often the driving force for creative entrepreneurs. My advice is always to recognise this, in order to understand our own motivations in business. In other words, what ‘makes us tick’. I was asked recently by Putte Svensson from Rockparty in Hultsfred, Sweden, what would be my advice if someone said they …