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Triggers that can get humanisation on the corporate agenda

by Yannis |May 17th, 2011

Most of the our new business in the past 3 months falls under the corporate/internal communications umbrella. The briefs that have come out of these wins have a common underlying requirement that is worth discussing as it follows a recent shift in how corporations communicate. The requirement is to humanise the organisation. In the grand scheme of things there is nothing notable here; consumer brands jumped on the humanisation bandwagon a few years back with blogs, Facebook and Twitter. However, in the corporate world humanisation is a topic that has just started to creep up in the marketing and internal comms wish lists.

In other aspects of life, accepting you have a problem is half way towards the solution, but that first step can be the hardest one to take. The need for humanisation is not one that comes naturally  to a corporation through a slow evolutionary process and for that reason what triggers such change makes an interesting topic.

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Corporate sales presentations: CXOs love the iPad and put a spanner in the works

by Yannis |March 13th, 2011

When it comes to sales presentations this is the story so far: whether in media and publishing, professional services, or technology, our clients have been facing similar frustrations: long stacks of slides, uninspiring content, unclear messages and lack of impact. We have been responding to such frustrations by planning, writing, designing and building sales presentations in PowerPoint, or Flash that grab the audience by the lapel and give them something to think about.

In the past 6 months the iPad has entered the board room and is becoming the gadget of choice for CXOs. The knock-on effect is that our clients, partially responding to pressure from above, have been making noise about adding iPads to their sales presentation kit, which of course raises the question of how on earth do you get sales presentations to play on iPads. If you are a one man/woman outfit and want to switch your presentation hardware to iPads, you can get yourself the Keynote iPad app for £5.99 and you are sorted. At an enterprise level though the situation is complicated and unfortunately at the moment there is no simple solution.

It is worth reviewing afresh the main presentation creation tools,  what they are best suited for, and their iPad compatibility.

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Sheridan&Co appoint Skyron to devise Social Media Strategy

by Yannis |December 1st, 2010

Sheridan&Co, one of UK’s leading retail design agencies, are looking to strengthen their market position as innovators and thought leaders and to expand their brand reach online. Skyron has come onboard to device a Social Media Strategy that will help Sheridan&Co redefine their corporate communications. Sheridan&Co’s unique proposition and strong brand personality make them the perfect candidate for community building and content marketing.

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MarketingSherpa: Expected Changes in B2B Marketing Budgets for 2011

by Yannis |October 20th, 2010

MarketingSherpa ChartInteresting figures from MarketingSherpa. This definitely reflects our experience so far this year. Companies we have been talking to about such activity over the past two years now decide to act, whereas others who preferred to turn a blind eye now they are all ears.

MarketingSherpa: New Chart: Expected Changes in B2B Marketing Budgets for 2011.

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SharePoint 2010: The perpetual user journey on tap

by Yannis |June 16th, 2010

Had a hands-on session with SharePoint 2010 yesterday and experienced the vast amount of cross-linking that dominates the new version. Documents, people, knowledge, expertise, actions, disciplines, locations, are all weaved together into a (what appears to be) seamless network that can easily transform a quick intranet visit into a never-ending journey.

For years now we have been removing dead ends from user journeys in intranets and B2B websites. Each confirmation page invites further involvement, each content page features strong calls to action and cross referenced information and even the whole website is not a dead end, but it links to Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Skype or mobile downloads (I looked into this process in an earlier post about the “engagement cycle“). The objective is of course to make each journey even more valuable to the individual and to strengthen their relationship with the brand.

Numerous community websites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Wikipedia have achieved stellar success on the back of this simple principle of inter-connectivity that leads to the perpetual user journey. SharePoint 2010 puts this amazing functionality “on tap” for any organisation ready to make a transition into this brave new world.

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5 steps to transforming your consumption of B2B news with mobile RSS

by Yannis |May 17th, 2010

Search for “B2B Marketing” on Google and this is what you get:

  • 390,000 results in the last 30 days
  • 124,000 in the past 7 days
  • 18,700 in the past 24 hours

This staggering flow of information consists of content such as  white papers, research, agency solutions, advertorials, case studies, blog posts, editorial stories, news and real-time content. You’d be forgiven for feeling intimidated, out of the loop, ill informed or left behind. I asked a number of industry professionals, clients and business friends how they keep up with B2B marketing and industry news each week; most can manage just a quick flick through a magazine and a skim  through a couple of email newsletters.

Enter mobile RSS. I switched from web-based to mobile RSS a year ago and it has transformed the way I consume business-related content. Mobile RSS has allowed me to browse and read more content, to easily archive and retrieve items of interest and to constantly optimise my list of feeds so that I read what’s relevant to me and weed out what’s not.

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