It amazes me how people react when you do not take up their service or product after you send them a quote.
You make the initial enquiry and they cannot be nicer. They respond to calls, messages or emails ASAP, they have a lovely tone with you on the phone, they just couldn’t be nicer. Then [...]

It came to my attention lately that some people just don’t want the business they go out looking for.
As our office was expanding earlier in the year, my colleague asked an acquaintance at a networking event to call them regarding sorting our telephone systems out. “Yeah sure” the chap said and took their card.
The next [...]

I attend many networking events, last night I was attending such an event, a lady stood up and told everyone her company name and announced that due to her becoming a limited company she was no longer able to trade under that name and had to change it.
Not only is this a pain when you [...]

Google has demonstrated several times clever ways to launch new products.
When it launched Gmail, you could only get it if invited by someone who already had it. And users only had 100 invites each.
Restricting the availability of Gmail in this way made it a “must-have” product with some people clamouring to get it. It also [...]

On a recent easyJet flight I read in their onflight magazine about a new product launching.
It was exactly what I’d been looking for and I was really excited! So I ripped the page out of the magazine and stuffed it away, finding it again this morning.
When I logged onto the website it said the product [...]

While shopping in Milton Keynes at the weekend, my wife and I were approached by promotional people from a well known electronics company.
They had a large promotional stand, to help them push a new electric toothbrush and electric shaver.
So, what was the main purpose of the stand - to get us looking at the product? [...]

Wembley Stadium has thrown a wobbly after a company projected its logo onto the side of the building, a classic guerilla marketing stunt (MediaGuardian, free registration required).
Lets hope no-one else loses their sense of humour and makes this a trend.
Good publicity for the company that’s been sued though… more than they would have got otherwise…

People buy things for one of two reasons: either to feel good, or fix a problem.
Yesterday I picked up my new car, a second hand Maxda MX-5. To my horror, this morning I spotted a chip in the windscreen, in the driver’s line of vision (which means a new windscreen…pah).
Google ‘chipped windscreen’ and you get [...]

Neither my wife nor I are particularly mechanically minded. Over the last few years we have got to know and trust a very friendly garage, giving us huge peace of mind with our cars.
But at the weekend we discovered two of my wife’s tyres were on the edge of illegal, and decided to take her [...]

I’ve been talking to some potential clients over the last few months. They entered a quiet cosy market where not much had changed for a long time, and - purely through the energy they have brought to it - they are shaking the market up.
The existing big players have significantly upped their game to stay [...]