I am kicking off September with two conference presentations. First, I discuss the role of commercial organisations in detecting and preventing terrorism, in Leeds. Two days later, in Cambridge, I present on the risks of doing business with criminals. If you think that this is an odd topic for a marketing academic, read on to … Continue reading An odd one for a marketer

Some time ago, my better-half bought a Groupon voucher for a professional photo-shoot with Jackie (pictured above). In this post, Jackie answers questions about the results of the Groupon campaign and offers useful advice to business owners considering using such deals. Based in Oxfordshire Jacqueline is well known for her Social Media photography, where she … Continue reading Considering Groupon? Consider this.

I am in a great mood. I have just put the final touches in a paper that I have been working on for a looooong time and sent it to a colleague for comments. I hope to submit it to the academic journal that I have in mind before the end of the month… and … Continue reading Writing with passion and courage

In this post I reflect on the value of qualitative insight. I propose that marketing managers step way from questions such as ‘how many’, ‘how much’ or ‘how quickly’ and focus, instead, on ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’. The obsession with metrics has taken over social media. Firms monitor fervently the number of comments on blog … Continue reading Not everything that counts can be counted

Now and again, an organisation will engage in a marketing communications campaign that you can’t help noticing but… which leaves you wondering ‘What’s the point?’ Some marketing communications initiatives have great entertainment value. They are beautiful or technically elaborate. Who doesn’t remember the Sony Bravia adverts featuring 250,000 brightly coloured balls bouncing down a San … Continue reading Big impression, poor results

How a simple button is changing sign-in attitudes and behaviours Last Thursday I realised, quite by chance, that I had posted 1,002 tweets. The 1,000th one had been posted earlier that day and was a moan about not being able to attend Wimbledon because of work commitments *sigh* It seems a long way since my … Continue reading The era of the webtarts

In this post, news about a research project that I am developing at the moment. But before that, apologies for the delay in posting... Contrary to common perception, an academic’s work does not stop (or, indeed, slow down) when there is no teaching. There are assignments to mark, module reports to prepare and dissertations to … Continue reading New Research Project: Social Media in Segmentation

Recently, I called my mobile phone operator to activate a service. The following day, I received a text message inviting me to complete a customer satisfaction survey. The survey consisted of 3 questions: That has to be good, right? Not really. For customer satisfaction surveys to be useful they need to ask the right questions. … Continue reading Asking the right questions

Organisations invest considerable resources in getting customers to acquire their goods and services. They will promote their products in a variety of media, hand out samples or engage a sales team, for instance. In addition, some organisations will map out the steps that their customers go through when using the product. That allows firms to … Continue reading Value at the end of the line