SEO content
How artificial intelligence can help retain customers
It’s a well-known fact that it costs far more to gain a new customer than it does to keep one you already have. In fact, it costs between five and seven times more. It stands to reason, then, that companies that understand the lifetime value of a customer and seek to...
AI is our best chance yet of building a crystal ball
Forget virtual assistants and chatbots, the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is seeing into the future. In recent years we have begun to see how AI applications have established themselves as a staple in business. Alongside cloud computing,...
Five ways to future-proof your startup
You launched your own business to make money. So as long as you’re generating cash, everything’s fine, right? Well, not quite. The fact that you are successful in business today does not mean you will still be succeeding five years from now. Markets are in constant...
Learn these four essentials before you start investing
If you’re thinking of making your first investment it’s natural to hesitate. You may be thinking: is this the right time to buy? Prices go up and down and if you don’t have experience of following the tickers it can be hard to know whether or not you’re about to make...
The science is in: sports are great for the mind
We all know sports are great for your physical health. Whether you enjoy some alone time working out at the local gym or prefer to meet friends for team sports, the benefits are the same. Not only do they boost your strength, stamina and physique, they help with heart...
Planning a trip to San Diego
From the latest in authentic street food to blazing sunshine, there are a hundred and one good reasons to visit California’s southernmost city, San Diego. With an average temperature of 70 degrees and 70 miles of sun-bleached beaches, San Diego just oozes good times....
Analysis
The zero moment of truth: win internet pre-shopping
When people search Google for the kind of products or services you offer, what’s the very first thing they find? If it isn’t you, you need to read on. A consumer’s decision to buy is increasingly being made by gathering intelligence online — before the buyer ever gets...
Sharing is the new shouting
What works when people are busy online is remarkable content, shared by someone they value Worldwide social media revenue will grow by 50% year on year in 2012, led by advertising sales, according to Gartner research. Gartner estimates the figure will rise from a...
Buffett fires £500m warning shot to Tesco CEO
If you're as influential as Warren Buffett, all you need to do to raise the value of an investment is increase your stake. But it's not enough to recoup his Tesco losses ... US billionaire Warren Buffett has swiftly raised his stake in Tesco from 3.21% to 5.08%,...
Troubled Fnac unveils new strategy
Fnac's chief defect is that it sells things people no longer buy ... French retailer Fnac has seen its operational profits halved, according to . The retailer blamed a lack of elasticity in its cost structure along with pressure on margins due to a strong drop in...
Delhaize loses its Bloom, and other US stories
A&P in purgatory, Fresh & Easy struggling. And now for the news: Bloom is closing ... Last time I tried to take a couple of weeks off, India agreed to retail FDI. Luckily, by the time I was back at work the government had performed a swift U-turn, so I'm glad...
Premier offloads Brookes Avana
Clock is ticking as first divestment barely diminishes Premier's debt ... Beleaguered UK food manufacturer Premier foods has managed to sell its lossmaking chilled foods business Brookes Avana to 2 Sisters Food Group (owned by Boparan), for GBP 30 million. The maker...
70% of brands useless, report claims
If marketing is about selling a dream, have consumers finally woken up? ... A majority of consumers would be perfectly happy if 70% of brands disappeared, according to new research from Havas, a media buying group. The survey, which polled 50,000 consumers in 14...
What’s left of Sara Lee?
Can you divest non-core assets if you don't really have a core? ... US food and beverage group Sara Lee has sold its North American coffee business to JM Smucker for USD 350 million. The business, which generated USD 285 million in sales this year, was part of the...
The Great Correction: How the Euro Crisis parallels our worst business models
Short-term thinking will send us all off the cliff in the long run ... Not too long ago I sat in a meeting with a company CEO, who was outlining the (let's call it) strategy for the upcoming year. The model was this: greatly increase service fees, accepting that there...
Why no SKUs is good news : Private label marches on
Private label news: The FT had a rather interesting take on the SKU-editing trend. Responding to the revelation that Unilever is to cut 40% of its range, the article maintains that the manufacturers' "trend towards less complexity is helped by the support of...
Keep calm and sue : copyrighting the public domain
Brand news: A rights battle is raging over the British wartime slogan "keep calm and carry on", the FT reports. Mark Coop, owner of Keep Calm & Carry On Ltd, has been selling items bearing the slogan since 2007 and acquired the EU trademark in April. However, he...
Supermarkets: the low-key wow
Good lord — for once I don't fully agree with Seth Godin. Godin posted a piece yesterday about new media and how it's hard to succeed these days unless you can provoke a "wow". That may be true, but Godin used the example of supermarkets to contrast the elsuive and...
Killing Steve Jobs: the future for Apple
The Economist had a couple of interesting articles last week. The first was yet another speculative piece about how Apple will fare after the departure of its iconic founder and CEO Steve Jobs. This article was notable for attributing to Jobs' replacement, COO Tim...
The scramble for Africa
Will Tesco buy Pick n Pay? Now that the authorities in South Africa have cleared Walmart's acquisition of a controlling stake in Massmart, the CPG world is abuzz with speculation about further retail incursions into the Sub-Saharan region and South Africa in...
You are what you watch
Can a child really get fat from advertising? No one really denies that obesity is a growing problem. In the US alone, 64% of adults are “overweight or obese” today, while 26% are classed as “obese”, according to the North American Association for the Study of...
On feeding the world
"The end of food" In February 2011, wholesale food prices jumped up 3.9%, the biggest one-month increase in 36 years, causing scare headlines about the end of cheap food to be brought out of storage, where they have been since 2008, when they were put away in favour...
Is green over?
Will consumers pay more to be green? Sales of eco-friendly products are fading as economic troubles pull consumer confidence down. But are we telling the green story in the right way? A few years ago, I went for an espresso in a London branch of one of the many coffee...
The end of hypermarkets
Is it over for hypermarkets? Increasingly urban, time-pressed and tech-savvy, consumers are shopping ever smarter and closer to home. In this context, has the hypermarket become irrelevant? We ask three senior retail analysts. Spend enough time poring over company...
Why Marmite matters
Unless you grew up in the UK, a news story claiming that Denmark had banned a British product called Marmite from sale, because its fortification with vitamin B fell foul of Denmark's regulations, will probably leave you cold. But for Unilever, the company that now...
Insolvent retailers
More retailers are becoming insolvent Are we paying attention to the warning signs? The decline of the CD has been a long train coming. The first publicly-available MP3 converter appeared in 1994. MP3 music files immediately began to circulate across the internet. The...
Opinion
Why small businesses stay small
A power culture is crucial for startups, but you can't scale when power is concentrated. Things break because, at scale, owner-managers can't decide everything in real time. To scale without breaking you need a role culture with devolved expertise and power. Letting...
Why things don’t get done
Have you ever been in a meeting when it becomes apparent that all anyone in the room is going to do is describe problems? People around a table will compete to describe things in increasingly obfuscatory language until others recognise in that language terms they have...
If you were ethical from the outset, GDPR is already done
I've been highly amused at the passive-aggressive tone of some of the GDPR related comms I've been receiving here at Delevine Towers. The awful Myspace wannabe Reverb Nation flounced off an ultimatum worthy of a manipulative teenager. "It's been too long since you...
This process is broken
Process 1. Diagnosis — Broken You're in Starbucks. You order your coffee. They ask you your first name. Reluctantly you give it (OK, I confess I always say my first name is Mr Customer). The barista writes your name on the cup and passes the cup down the production...
Process: when rules cause more harm than good
Workflow rules: we put them down for a good reason, to create a uniform, standardised outcome. Sometimes, however, adhering to a rule in your workflow creates an outcome that is worse than the "non-standard" alternative. We recognise these paradoxes and so create...
The coffee subjugation
I’ve been sitting for 25 minutes at Soho Coffee Co in Bristol Airport. And here’s the thing: every single empty table is filthy. Covered in the crumbs, unidentified liquids and waste packaging of the previous occupants. I was surprised that the upscale-looking...
Futurology is so last year
The future isn't what it used to be. Someone sent me one of those "future trend" reports. As with the majority of such reports, it's not a view of the future so much as a summary of existing (in some case, long-existing) trends. But past performance is no indicator of...
Facing climate change is cheaper than denying it
Whatever happened to Bob's Buggy Whips, purveyor of finest accessories for the horse and carriage? Well, we know what happened to Bob's Buggy Whips — and I feel the same lancing sense of dramatic irony when I see Cuadrilla literally blowing up the floor to extract the...
Quality is a feeling
The great irony about quality is that, as soon as someone asks you to conform to a benchmark, they are forcing a product that is by definition generic. That leaves the space open for someone to compete with something genuinely outstanding. Quality is why the...
Short view / long view: why business is broken
Bob has a pie shop and four staff who all make pies. A makes the best pies. B and C make good pies fast. D is competent but neither good nor fast. Bob needs a supervisor for production but can't afford to hire. Which of his staff will he promote? Short view Well,...
The great content Ponzi scheme
I can tell you how to earn six figures working from home. Just read this post about how to win at content marketing — which is in itself a piece of content marketing — and join my mailing list to get a free download. Does anyone ever click on this awful stuff anymore?...
I’ve had it with mandala salesmen
I've had it with mandala salesmen. It's not the item that bugs me. I'm pro-Mandala. It's the oh-so arch pricing model that seems to be the exclusive preserve of sellers on Amazon Marketplace, eBay and Etsy. You know the one: "Only £0.50. (Plus £9.50 shipping)." We're...
Turned out niche again
A writer friend announces he’s working on a history of game shows. Someone critiques: “A bit niche isn’t it? Wouldn’t your efforts be better spent writing a telly show?” The implication is that, when a project is being pitched, the ultimate goal should be broad,...
Introducing the Delevine Freemium Bird-Feeder
It’s Christmas time so I put some free food out for the birds. I say free— The birds could get their beaks on the seeds only after agreeing to give me access to their list of family and friends, private bird photos, the GPS coordinates of their nests and control of...
Facebook to tip off state surveillance targets
Espionage news In an interesting twist to an ongoing story, Facebook has revealed it will now tip off people whose profiles it suspects are targets of espionage carried out or "sponsored" by nation states. Users whose accounts have been compromised will now receive a...
Gotcha marketing is over
But did anyone get the memo? Two sales promotions caught my eye recently. One was from French retailer Relais, who offered “Your choice of sandwich plus any drink for 5,20€”. When the cashier asked me for 7,30€ I mentioned the offer and he pointed to some tiny print...
Why Google logo haters miss the point
A well-known company has only to change its logo in order to activate a flood of tired journalistic tropes. First off is the “How much??” story, in which non-designers say the cost was ridiculous. “I’d have done it for a tenner,” says a man with Photoshop on his...
Why serious freelances avoid online “marketplaces”
The best freelances are not on Upwork. Or Hopwork. Or Bipwork. Or Bopwork. There’s a reason you went into business for yourself and it wasn’t to give away your margin, your terms, brand equity, story and client relationship to someone else. If you want to hang around...
Why the New York Times doesn’t need Facebook
Know the value of your assets. I was reading this article on TechCrunch about the New York Times making a deal to allow Facebook to “host” its “content” for free. And I had multiple problems. The writer (Tom Goodwin, no less) asks: “So does the New York times [sic]...
The coffee entitlement
Why prices are elastic Here’s one. A friend complains on Facebook that it costs 14 dollars for a coffee from room service in the small hours at his luxury Chicago hotel. To be fair it's just a humblebrag. But someone bites: “Why not just go out to an all-night diner?”...
Shopper insights and the case for burritos
Six ways to win that don't require a pie-chart ... Consumer insights are big business for those that sell them. At conferences we crowd around the data, frantically snapping powerpoint slides with our iPhones (don't tell me you use a Samsung) and craning our necks to...
30 Ways to Say Nothing
Our seasonal guide to hiding your poor holiday trading from the press ... It's Christmas and I don't feel like working. Sorry, what I meant to say was: I'm experiencing some softness around blog-posting during a challenging trading period. Given current consumer...
Life without Steve
I don't want to clutter the web with my addition to the obits for Steve Jobs, who died earlier today. As I sit typing on my MacBook Pro, listening to iTunes in a café in central Paris, using a wifi connection I found using an iPhone app, I hardly need remind anyone of...