Herdman Jones Associates Ltd

The Art of Shaving store opened in Manhattan in 1996, focusing on providing the best shave by devloping a protective pre-shave oil which ultimately lead to the company achieving a goal of creating a a new shaving system -  “The 4 Elements of the Perfect Shave”. Within 6 months The New York Times devoted a full-page story to the little shop which helped promote rapid growth of the company. Today the company has 39 stores throughout the United States of America and sells high-end natural shaving products online and at department stores worldwide.

The most impressive developments the company has undergone is how it has has servitised its products. So the question, how much does a normal shave cost you – 10 – 20p?

A Royal Shave at the Art of Shaving – will cost you $55! – Customers are more than willing to pay for this exceptional service – the ultimate indulgence for men, as an experience!

Social media has been growing massively in 2010 in the UK – this video has been produced by Simply Zesty

How many people do you think it takes to photograph a pizza 1? 2? 10? – TRY 150!

Watch this!

As part of my dissertation for my Masters Degree in Marketing, I am undertaking a survey on the uses and benefits of social media to businesses.

Hopefully this also will yield some quality case studies to be used in an upcoming book.

I am looking for participants who are currently using social media as part of their business activities. The survey consists of 21 short (mainly multi-choice) questions and will take 5 – 6 minutes to complete.

Thank you very much for your help and please promote this on your social network, the more responses I get, the more value the survey will be.

Click here to take survey

Anyone not thinking about using Social Media? Watch this and think again!

This advert sent shivers down my spine when I first saw it! I have seen the previous adverts, which while very impressive for their CGI alone, they did not really inspire me. I am not that interested in televison technology, but this advert somehow has, for me anyway, a kinesthetic communication. I can’t stop watching it! – enjoy! Please let me know if anyone knows what the music is!

This is a great illusion that certainly seems to have caught everyone’s attention. Well done KLM!

I attended an excellent CIM event yesterday, hosted by the Business School at The University of Northumbria. An presentation delivered by Mark Stuart, Head of Research for the CIM. Some of the interesting facts given regarding the rapid development of online marketing: -

• 17% of companies spend more on on-line than off-line advertising
• Facebook now has over 400M users
• Twitter is growing at a rate of 1,382%
• Dell has reported as making $3.5M in 6 months as a result of a Twitter campaign providing special offers
• Yahoo collects 10TB of consumer information per day – the same amount that Tesco collects in one year with their renowned store cards

Every time I attend similar events, I can see some huge potential for a number of the clients I work with, however I take heed to Paul Smith, PR Smith’s advise – “create credibility before visibility”.

Again there was a huge amount of information I took away from this, some of the key messages include: -

• Online marketing that “does not seem like marketing” is most successful and the key to the future
• The collective word of complete strangers can have the greatest impact of all on consumer purchase decisions
• Consumers do not look for what they want
• Businesses need to get their staff online – where their customers are

An excellent and informative presentation, thank you CIM!

Have a great weekend.