Tag: creative entrepreneur

Business Creativity Speech in Chiang Mai, Thailand

David Parrish gave a Business Creativity speech in Chiang Mai, Thailand, at the ‘Punspace’ workspace creative hub for digital nomads, startups and creative entrepreneurs. He made a presentation entitled ‘How to Profit from Creativity in Business: Think Creatively to Achieve Success’, drawing on his own experience as an entrepreneur and his work in more than 50 …

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Strategic Planning Workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia

Commissioned by the EU-Eastern Partnership Culture and Creativity Programme, David delivered a Strategic Planning workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia. Working in partnership with the British Council in Georgia, David designed and delivered the workshop with Georgian expert Shorena Lortkipanidze. Workshop participants were leaders from the cultural industries and creative enterprises in Georgia. The strategic planning workshop …

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Customers are ‘ploggers’

Customers are powerful. We can’t control customers and we can’t control what they say. All we can do is guide them to some extent. We can provide them with the stories they will tell. It’s interesting to look at the progress of this thing called ‘marketing’. Around 50 years ago, marketing communications was all about …

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Don’t do Market Research!

Marketing is all about looking at things from the customer’s point of view. That requires understanding customers and, indeed, listening to customers. Don’t do market research! Listening to customers is the term I tend to use, instead of the phrase ‘market research’. That’s because ‘market research’ tends to conjure up the idea in people’s minds …

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not all customers are good customers

Strategic Marketing avoids Bad Customers

Not all customers are good customers! Strategic Marketing will avoid and deter bad customers. Customers can be bad customers for all sorts of reasons. They can be unprofitable or troublesome. They can waste your time or cause stress. Some interfere too much. Some aren’t worthy of including in your portfolio. Others pay late, or never. …

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Ten years of ‘T-Shirts and Suits’ book

The first edition of the book ‘T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity’ was published in the UK in November 2005 by Merseyside ACME in Liverpool. Since then, the book has been reprinted in a revised edition in the UK, published as an eBook in various formats, and published in translations in …

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Ansoff’s Matrix for Creative Business Development

Strategies for creative business development and growth using Ansoff’s Matrix (or Ansoff Matrix). [Note: this article was updated in a response to the COVID-19 Crisis. See updated article which includes a new ‘COVID-19 Diversification Matrix’, adapted from the Ansoff Matrix, to devise strategic responses to COVID-19.) When advising creative and digital businesses about strategic marketing …

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Speaker at Business Wisdom Summit in Ukraine

David was the opening keynote speaker at the Business Wisdom Summit in Ukraine on 24 September 2015. He spoke on the subject of “How to Profit from Creativity in Business” to an audience of business owners, chief executives and senior managers of businesses in the creative industries and other sectors of the economy. David spoke …

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The ‘3Ms of Marketing’

The best way to illustrate the technique of using the 3Ms of Marketing most effectively is to use a true story. Julie, a jeweller, asked me for some marketing advice. With a limited budget for marketing communications, she couldn’t decide whether to invest in a better website or in a printed brochure to promote her …

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Don’t be a ‘busy fool’ – act strategically

Are you a ‘busy fool’? We avoid doing difficult things by occupying ourselves with trivial things. We deal with urgent trivia instead of what’s really important. Keeping busy like this allows us to avoid having to make important decisions. In my work, advising and training hundreds of  businesses all around the world, I see too …

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