BMW was 100 years old last month. Despite such a momentous birthday from one of the world’s largest brands, the only car news story in town is Tesla’s new Model 3 launch. This California-cool car company isn’t a household name just yet, but looks set to become the next Google or Apple in its ubiquity […]
Croudfunding is revolutionising the investment business. Individuals fed up with meagre returns from interest rates or pension pots can invest directly into companies at their embryonic stage in order to seed and see them grow along their product life cycle. They don’t need to be high net worth folks either. Common wisdom would be to […]
Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk wrote a piece in the Telegraph recently that said, “To become a world leader in broadband, we must prioritise competition as much, if not more so, than infrastructure.” Surely he’s mistaken in thinking anyone believes these factors are isolated? It’s obvious that infrastructure without business, consumers, government and charities adopting […]
Tech’s Big 4 want to own your digital life and this land grab has developed in recent years away from digesting lines of code (by browsing on Amazon, searching on Google etc) to a physical tie up via hardware. The old days were ruled by Gateway and Dell with their desktops and laptops. Now it’s […]
Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and other tech giants will have to reply to Google’s Glass project, but I shudder to think about the court cases over patents that’ll follow. The only folks wealthier than the company board members will be the lawyers that represent them. These glasses (and their many successors) won’t be for the nerds, […]
I was asked to call out some examples of those using digital innovation well. It’s very easy to say Dell are making money via Twitter and the new Old Spice videos are viral winners but here’s half a dozen less-heralded examples that might tickle your marketing fancy: Company: Disney Category: Social Media promotions What: Toy […]
I attended Doug Richard’s School for Startups recently. The title is a bit of a misnomer as the day had nothing specifically to do with starting a business, but it did have plenty of action points for marketing. The day was fast-paced with lecture-style talks from Mr Richard and three colleagues. Let’s be honest, you […]
News Corp’s readership numbers are on the up since they introduced their paywall last July. Surely that’s all good news? The Times and The Sunday Times has grown from 50,000 monthly digital subscribers in October to 79,000 at the end of February. They seem to have brushed under the carpet the fact that the growth […]
Silicon Valley can get carried away with the Angry Birds’ Series A round of investment and Apple’s iAds, but Denmark are giving us a great example of digital innovation helping the man on the street right now. From 1st April the Danes will be able to text a number that will reply to the phone […]
Do you like business books that inspire you to move into action, or books that break down what someone did in their business? If it’s the former then this month has seen a couple of excellent releases for you: Gary Vaynerchuk is a hustler. His second book, The Thank You Economy is out this week. […]
The Internet has only really been around for the masses since Microsoft brought us Windows 95 and the ever-present Internet Explorer. But over 15 years on, digital and digital marketing still remains a bolt on for many businesses that should really know better. I’m always amazed when strong marketers tell me their marketing director (not […]
Answers.com sold this week for $127m. This coupled with the growing buzz around Quora, highlights the fact that Q&A sites are the poster-boy targets on the web. Added to that firestorm is Mahalo giving up on human powered search and pivoting to answers. Although it looks like they’re going for ‘how to’ queries more than […]
Neil Thompson is the MD of Microsoft UK and Ireland and I recently saw him speak about his 18 years in innovation. He ran through his career in one of the world’s most influential companies; from exaggerating his skills at his job interview to today’s cutting edge. It was a walk down memory lane for […]
I posted previously about how I saw the web unfolding in 2010. One of my pointers was about on-site search and how bad it is in general. I recommended that the big players team up with the search engines to get it right. Well, Google beat me to the deadline and launched its Google Commerce […]
A lot has been made of Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple’s board. The short version: he’s also CEO of Google and these two tech giants are really starting to cross swords. While Google are undoubtedly an increasing ‘problem’ for Apple, I think most reports are in danger of missing the elephant in the room: Nokia. […]
We’ve all got a good design idea in us. You know, the one that’s been at the back of your mind for years. You’ve told your friends about it but the task of developing it, sits at the bottom of your to do list (along with that parachute jump and learning French). Watch this simple […]
Dustin Curtis was so appalled by his experience at American Airlines’ website that he drew up a redesign and sent them an open letter. I did exactly the same thing recently. My aunt’s ouiji board is more in touch with web design and best practice than what a company had created for a young, energetic […]
Richard Branson recently launched PitchTV to help entrepreneurs find investors – a mini Dragons’ Den if you like. The hopeful amongst you can upload a two minute video which gets voted online and the favourites will be broadcast on Virgin planes. Getting your ideas seen by business travellers would be a huge coo (for exposure […]
The Old (Barrichello), the Pretender (Button) and the Skint (the Brackley team) have pulled off a spectacular one-two in Melbourne to kick off the Formula One season. Continuing the B fest, they’ve shown: Belief – evidently they kept working hard when a full closure was more than likely. Brains – the clean sheet of ‘09 […]
The New York Times blinked first and opened its 2.8 million articles allowing users to build things with its content via API. But the Guardian has suddenly become the pie-piper of the newspaper business by opening up its data more fully. The Guardian trumps NYT by allowing for-profit use of the data (opposed to NYT’s […]
My local Greggs’ bakery is a massively busy shop. So much so its small car park is log jammed from 11am to 3pm EVERY day. From day one I said they could have designed a drive-through system and probably made themselves even more successful (and certainly more efficient). Well, it seems fast food won’t have […]
Crossing machine and cinema gives you machinima. It’s a geek’s bedroom hobby that’s breaking into Hollywood. Companies like Rooster Teeth show game content and skew it to a story rather than playing the game itself. Halo and World of Warcraft are classic petri dishes for this art. Well, things look to be going all Sky […]
Plenty of bloggers are spouting New Year’s resolutions. Most are quaint rehashes of being less avaricious, and showing greater care to one’s fellow man and the weighing scales simultaneously. Forget resolutions, try predictions. J.K. Galbraith said ‘there are two types of forecasters: those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know’, but […]
Newspapers are in their twilight years. With every print run, they step closer to oblivion. Of course, you’re smart and you know full well that they exist for advertisers, not news, and there lies the rub: ad revenues are dwindling at an alarming rate. Oh, but what to do with that high brand equity and […]