Tag: raising finance

Say No to customers

Paradoxically, great art lies in what the painter chooses to leave out as much as what s/he decides to put in. Similarly, the art of business strategy is not just about deciding what you are going to do; just as important is deciding what you are not going to do. Having a ‘must not do’ …

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‘Lateral-Thinking’ Leadership

The most effective leaders learn from other industries and sectors. “Most [executives] think they are in touch with the outside world if they play golf with the vice-president of another company in the same industry.” – Professor Peter Drucker. Management Guru. (Financial Times. London. 16 November 2004.) Research commissioned by the UK Government’s Department of …

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Protecting – and profiting from – your Intellectual Property

How do you protect your creative works? And importantly – how do you generate income streams from your intellectual property? Creative people are rightly concerned about being ripped off, so we need to know more about how to protect our works by understanding and using intellectual property rights (IPR) such as copyright, trade marks, patents …

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Selling hope, wrapped up in t-shirts

Cassandra Postema and Dong Shing Chiu (pictured) are in the business of selling hope, wrapped up in t-shirts called ‘Hope Tees’. Their Hong Kong creative enterprise is called ‘Dialog’ because it embodies an exchange of conversations between marginalised Asian textile craft wisdom and modern western design. The result is an attractive and fun range of …

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What are you selling, really?

If you’re a creative business or cultural enterprise, you are selling goods or services to customers, whether it’s graphic design, fashion, architecture, music, crafts, theatre, film or books. But what are you selling, really? Or to put it another way, what is it that the customer is really buying from you? It’s often the case …

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Don’t Advertise! Let your customers do the plogging

Advertising is so last century! Advertising doesn’t work any more. Instead, customers talk – like never before. continue to full article… Download article (PDF, 92KB) Download let_your_customers_do_the_plogging. David Parrish. T-Shirts and Suits. 240407.pdf

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Buzz Marketing

Buzz Marketing is another term for ‘Word of Mouth’ marketing, ie creating a ‘buzz’ as people spread the word about a product or service. Buzz Marketing could be described as turbo-charged word-of-mouth marketing. The difference for me is that word of mouth advertising can happen at a low level. It’s great, and many creative businesses …

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Viral Marketing

The term ‘viral marketing’ describes any strategy that passes a marketing message from one person to another – and goes on to spread ‘like a virus’. In other words, the message must spread automatically as one person contacts another (like a virus). To be able to do this, the marketing message must be built into …

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Let your customers do the Plogging

Advertising is so last century! Advertising doesn’t work any more. Instead, customers talk – like never before. It used to be the case that the advertiser was in control of the message. That was when the advertiser had more power than customers and could control the message. Nowadays, customers are in control. Customers have always …

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Identify the Important Few from the Trivial Many. The ’95:5 Rule’

Creative Times. January 2007 The Pareto Principle, also known as the “80:20 Rule”, states that 80% of results flow from 20% of causes. In practice it’s more like the “95:5” rule. For example, 95% of business may come from just 5% of customers. Read more about the 95:5 Rule

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