Marketing Eye

A day in Milano walking the streets and shopping at some of the world's most famous stores, I came across an advertisement which took me by surprise.

In Europe, there are many historic landmarks. As an Australian, our short history means we don't have the depth of historic value as our European counterparts. Many Australians travel to see these landmarks and learn about their historic value.

In Milan, the most famous landmark is undoubtably the city's gothic cathedral called Duomo which was commissioned by Bishop Antonio da Saluzzo in 1385.

To the side as you can see with this picture is a very big billboard for Mercedes. I was shocked. Not because the billboard said anything particularly alarming, but because it commercializes a major landmark in a way that I feel tourism does not.

What do you think of this billboard for Mercedes? Is this position right?
Published in Marketing
Wednesday, 03 October 2012 18:53

How does a marketing company market themselves?

We've all heard about 'why companies fail to grow' with literally thousands of books, blogs, articles and shows talking about why businesses have failed to grow or have had a sudden death.

When you ask someone who has had a business fail, why, they usually give you one reason. We all know that there is never one singular reason why a business fails, it usually is combination of things; market size, competition and demand all feature highly on external factors while operations, leadership, complacency, technology, marketing and lack of investment feature highly as internal reasons.

But the real story that we all should be following is 'why businesses grow and succeed' because in that, there are lessons and patterns we all can follow.
Wednesday, 03 October 2012 17:35

Prospecting leads to the gold clients

This story is published in Australia's leading newspaper in Sydney. We thought it may be interesting to our marketing blog readers;

By Christopher Niesche - smh.com.au


EVERY small business should have a prospect list - a database of existing and potential customers where the business can focus its marketing efforts.

But it needs to be more than just a list of names and email addresses. It has to contain people who are in the target market for your products.

Here are tips on how to build up a prospect list.
Recently, I ventured out to a Turkish Hamams as part of an off-site adventure organised by a conference that I attended in Istanbul.

As I readied myself for the excursion, I packed a bathing suit, took off my makeup and put on some comfortable clothing attire. That's what you do, right? Well, almost.

The bathing suit is not required. In fact, if you bring it along, and you go to a traditional hamams you may be confronted with an old Turkish woman telling you to put the bathing suit away "not needed". Then what do you do? You are there for an experience, right?