The bigger they are, the bigger their mistakes. 

We all see brand names or logos that make us shake our heads and ask: what were they thinking? Or smoking? Some make us cringe: Nissan Tiida and BenQ Joybook. Some make us laugh: Wii. Some make us frown and ask: they spent how many million on a that new logo and brand? A case in question was the  London 2012 Olympic logo. It looked like smashed pottery and the supporting mascots Wenlock and Mandeville were attracted deserved ridicule.  Read more

The most under-rated resource. 

Nothing is more convincing than a customer who’s happy to tell the world that your product solved a major problem in his business. You might say that case studies are a pain to create – especially with the often tedious, multi-layered, time consuming approval process – but we’d say the pain is more than worth the gain. Case studies (or success stories if you like) have multiple uses throughout the sales cycle and elsewhere:  Read more

Rise and plummet. 

The ABC ran a documentary this week that charted the rise and fall of Australian wine exports to the UK. ‘Chateau Chunder‘ was made by local production company Electric Pictures, in co-production with Brook Lapping, for the ABC and BBC. The title comes from the early days, when Aussie wine in the UK was called Chateau Chunder from Down Under.  Read more

A philosophy lesson to change your life
  Read more

They don't 'read' anymore. 

The digital world's information glut have caused people to stop reading. There just isn’t time, so visitors to your website or blog will skip-read or just check the headlines. They'll look for things that stand out and grab attention. They want to ‘cut to the chase’ and make snap decisions about what to read, keep, share or delete.  Read more

‘God save us from vague generalizations.’ So said Anton Chekhov. 

Great writers like him know the importance of using words that exactly convey their message. I hadn’t seen the word ‘specificity’ outside of bio-chemistry until I read Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing, the best bible for real writers - bar none. Particularity is another key element in Stein’s book, but that will wait for another post.  Read more

Get some filler word therapy. 

Workers in so many professions need public speaking skills these days, whether it’s for radio interviews, presentations to clients, speaking at conferences or making videos. With video facilities on every camera and mobile phone, everyone wants to be an actor, but good actors aren’t born: they’re trained, coached and practised. That’s why we’ve added training in public speaking and presentation to our services; poor presentations, especially by senior technical people, can derail the sales process in an instant.  Read more

Twitter power  Read more