Tag: Blogs

Every year, whether they are successful or not, entrants in business awards programs sing the praises of just completing the process. Johanna Baker-Dowell reflects of a year of commercial self-discovery.

RunPee provides full-bladdered users with several suggested movie “break” times during which not much happens plot-wise. Users start a timer as the movie starts, get told how long each interlude lasts and can access a full plot rundown of what they miss.

I used to Google hairdressers, plumbers, cafes. Now I ask my Facebook and Twitter connections who to go to, because a personal recommendation tells me a lot more than someone’s website can. SEO is doomed. In the format we know it, at least.

In the third post in this series, Nigel Malone shares the contents of another of his favourite business keynote slides, drawn from a cross-section of sources that includes some of the great business, brand and military planners of all time.

There are way too many people out there in business bullshitting to themselves, their staff and their customers. The simple truth is that if you run your business like its amateur hour, no matter how much you want to fool yourself and your customers into thinking that you’re smart and good at what you do, eventually you will stumble and the truth will out.

I am bombarded daily by email, direct mail and print advertisements that are all promising to reveal the secrets of… well just about everything. ‘Zero budget marketing secrets’; ‘Free media exposure secrets’; ‘Sales secrets for those that hate cold calling’: the list goes on. They’re dragging us all down.

With Australia’s economy now well and truly on the rebound, the next five years are set to deliver strong growth in many sectors. And growth, of course, delivers job and investment opportunities.

Nigel Malone keeps his favourite ten keynote slides related to strategic business development – his “Ten Commandments” – close to his chest at all times. Okay, sometimes he puts them down to bathe, but they are never far from his thinking. His favourite slide number 2 is Wind and Webster’s ‘Six buying roles’ model. Developed initially in the 1970s, it was designed to explain the many buying roles within a large organisation, but is equally applicable to a family unit facing the challenge of deciding upon what to eat for dinner.

Whatever your stance on deliberately-fast clocks, you have to love this clock designed for tardy time-shifters by Italian design house Fabrica Design. The long hand on On-Time clocks deviates three minutes ahead to encourage you to get a move on.

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, I have very little patience for marketing campaigns that can't give me a definable and measurable result, which is why, I thought it might be helpful to write a post about how we, at Anthill, and I have personally used Twitter over the past 12-months for business related purposes. Let me start with a confession.

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, I have very little patience for marketing campaigns that can't give me a definable and measurable result, which is why, I thought it might be helpful to write a post about how we, at Anthill, and I have personally used Twitter over the past 12-months for business related purposes. Let me start with a confession.

Protein One, winner of the Commercial Creativity Award at the 2009 Anthill Cools for its Ask The Butcher creative campaign, unexpectedly stormed up the iTunes charts over the holidays with its 'Ask The Butcher' iPhone App.

Protein One, winner of the Commercial Creativity Award at the 2009 Anthill Cools for its Ask The Butcher creative campaign, unexpectedly stormed up the iTunes charts over the holidays with its 'Ask The Butcher' iPhone App.

People have their best ideas in the oddest places, but one of the most common places is the shower (perhaps all that singing gets the creative juices going). This proved sufficient inspiration for Aquanotes, a waterproof notepad, pencil and suction cups to ensure that you never, as the website says, "let another great idea go down the drain!"

Nigel Malone keeps his favourite ten keynote slides related to strategic business development – his “Ten Commandments” – close to his chest at all times. Okay, sometimes he puts them down to bathe, but they are never far from his thinking.

If you developing a product or service that’s designed to meet a consumer’s need, here’s the reason why you can’t just be better than what currently exists. Or you can’t just be really useful. You have to be insanely, grossly, massively, obviously, simply and wonderfully useful.

The New Year is a great time to take stock and prepare your business to gear up for a new operating environment. Westpac’s Sian Lewis provides the following New Year’s resolutions to kick-start your business for the year ahead…

With a domestic marketing of 300 million customers, the United States represents an alluring yet often an elusive opportunity for foreign entrepreneurs. Phil Rogers explains why it is vital that foreigners doing business in America understand and respect US business culture -- from nuanced buying processes to seasonality, ethnicity and evolving attitudes towards selling.

People who say social media is a fad have a profound misunderstanding of the internet and the reasons why people love it so, writes Leela Cosgrove.

Anthill print editions always had a pass-on rate -- i.e. how many people read the same copy -- that was well above the industry average. In other words, they had a great shelf life. However, it seems that, in some people at least, the desire to continue sharing Anthill back issues is more pressing than the desire to wait patiently for their collection to mature into a golden egg.