Awareness of the environmental impact of our professional and personal lives is at an all time high, and for most of us we make a conscious effort to reduce our carbon footprint and do our bit for the environment. We recycle our waste, proudly carry our bags for life to the supermarket, use public transport and car share to reduce our emissions. Our efforts carry on into the office where we print less and e-mail more, video conference instead of drive to meetings, and make the best use of techn... [More]

Imagine, if you can, that you do want to buy me flowers. Perhaps the first place to go, as you don’t live nearby, is online. And you might think, as you look at the search engine, who do I know who sells flowers? You might well type in the name ‘Interflora’, as that’s quite likely to pop into your head. So you might then be surprised if the top link took you through - not to Interflora’s website - but to Marks & Spencer’s. Marks & Spencer, using all t... [More]

A cautionary tale for small businesses emerged when cake maker Rachel Brown offered such a good deal on her cupcakes that her business almost went bust. Rachel, owner of the ‘Need a Cake’ company, normally sells 12 cupcakes with a range of designs and flavours for £26. In a drive to attract customers, Rachel used the online discount voucher site Groupon to offer the same order for £6.50. Usually baking around 100 cupcakes a month, Brown was delighted to begin with and the... [More]

For some searches, Google is no longer showing ads on the right hand side of the page, but instead at the bottom of the page. The recent changes to PPC ads have been fairly radical and Google are working hard to keep updating and improving the service they offer. Changes to ad placement have been the most recent of these updates and, while not yet confirmed as a full rollout, Google appear keen to use the data it collects to keep a good balance between it’s revenue and the user experienc... [More]

Why did companies like Woolworths, Zavvi and The Pier fail during the recession? There isn’t one simple answer to the question, but something that all three arguably shared was a lack of marketing-led innovation. Woolworths was predicated an out of date model; it appeared tired and shambolic to customers, despite carrying a wide range and a perception of being good value. The Pier did little to change its offering for too long; it had an excellent quality product, but it didn’t innov... [More]