I was recently advising a creative entrepreneur in the USA. We discussed various options for devising a suitable business model for him and one option was to sell designs not products. Chris Mansell is a creative individual, developing new ideas and products, using Arduino based electronics, specialising in interactive addressable LEDs, along with 3D design, …
Tag: Intellectual property
The Trade Mark Challenge
The other day I was advising a client about a trading name for a new creative enterprise and the registration of a trade mark. There was a danger that the name she had chosen could infringe the trade mark rights of another business – so she decided to choose a different word for her new …
Saudi Arabia Creative Economy Conference
David Parrish was the international keynote speaker at the Ejadah Saudi Arabia Creative Economy Conference at King Abdullah Economic City near Jeddah. The Ejadah Creative Economy Conference and Exhibition (Confex) was the first of its kind in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. David said: “I am delighted and honoured to be invited to speak at …
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. …
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 …
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 …
Your Competitive Advantage
What’s your Competitive Advantage? Knowing what you can excel at in relation to competitors – and then building your business strategy around that focus – is probably the most important element of any successful business strategy. If you are competing in a market place by offering the same thing as many other rivals, then you …
The Curve: from Free to Superfans
Download and read the free eBook ‘10 Ways to Make Money in a FREE World‘ from Nicholas Lovell, author of The Curve. I’m recommending The Curve to my consultancy clients in the creative and digital industries. This free eBook is a great short introduction to the The Curve. It contains specific references to creative industries …
How to Price a Service or Product in the Creative Industries
Pricing policy has both immediate and long-term consequences on a creative business and has an impact not only on the economics of the enterprise but also on the perception of its products and/or services. In the video and article below, David Parrish offers his advice about how to price a service or product in the …
Ideas are not enough!
One of the points I make in my training workshop ‘How to Make Money While You Sleep’ is that ‘Ideas Don’t Make You Rich”. I quote multimillionaire Felix Dennis, publisher and poet, who wrote in his book ‘How to Get Rich’: “Ideas don’t make you rich, the correct execution of ideas does.” In other words, …