February 4, 2012

4Networking is coming to Lincoln

IMAGE - funky crowd silhouette

I have good news! If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that I’ve been working on setting up a networking event in Lincoln for some time.

Well, after weeks of planning, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve got a venue and date sorted for the launch of 4Networking in Lincoln and it’s going to be fantastic.

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4Networking really is a different way of doing things. You have three one-to-one appointments at every meeting and members can attend any one of almost 200 groups across the country.

This is your chance to become part of a 20,000 strong network – sharing information, solving problems, building relationships and doing real business.

Fancy joining us for the very first of many Lincoln 4Networking events?

Here are the details:

  • Date: 24th September
  • Time: 8am – 10am
  • Location: Pride of Lincoln (map)
  • Price: Just £10 for entry and a cooked or continental breakfast

To book your place, either register on the 4Networking website or contact me.

We already have businesses from around the country booked in, so it’s well worth two hours of your time.

In the meantime, if you would like to know more about 4Networking, please head over to the 4Networking website where there’s plenty of information about the club and why it could prove so valuable to your business.

And while you’re there, check out the very active 4Networking online forum. The forum works in the same spirit as the live events, offering a place to share ideas and find real business opportunities.

See you there…

Rewarding innovation in science and technology

Star award red and gold

The iawards 2009 are presented in partnership with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to honour businesses in the UK’s scientific and technological sectors.

There are 13 award categories:

  • Life sciences
  • Transport
  • Energy and Environment
  • Places to Live and Work
  • Digital Communications
  • Entertainment and Media
  • Consumer Product
  • Cross Application of Technology
  • Best collaboration
  • Best British Inside
  • Inward investment
  • Best Technology Startup
  • The Next Big Thing

One finalist will then be chosen to receive the iaward of the year.

Each entry must demonstrate how it addressed one of the following challenges innovatively:

  • Healthcare and our ageing population
  • Global competition and national growth
  • Improving public services through technology
  • Global security – ranging from our national duty to tackle global poverty to the threat of international terrorism
  • Conserving finite natural resources in the face of a growing population

The 2009 awards are open to projects which launched between 1st July 2007 and 30th June 2009, and the closing date for applications is the 16th September 2009.

Visit the iawards for further information.

Celebrate your sustainable success

Fields and sky

The Green Business Awards 2009 acknowledge the work of businesses who demonstrate effective and innovative methods in coupling commercial and environmental targets.

There are 18 awards available across three categories.

Carbon management:

  • Emissions Reduction Achievement and Ambition
  • Finance
  • HR-Employee Engagement
  • Marketing Communications
  • Reporting and Accounting
  • Buildings, Facilities, and Energy Management
  • Procurement and Supply Chain
  • Fleet Management
  • Business Travel

Environmental management:

  • Overall environmental management
  • Pollution control
  • Waste reduction
  • Biodiversity protection
  • Water management
  • Materials efficiency

Green business:

  • Green product
  • Green service
  • Green job creation

The deadline for entry is Friday 14th August 2009, and all entries are free of charge.

Visit the Green Business Awards 2009 for more information.

Diagnosing weak marketing: a good cause for heart failure

£1 Challenge for the British Heart Foundation

The £1 Challenge was a noble idea: get one million people to donate just £1 in the space of four months to raise £1m for the British Heart Foundation. In the end, however, the attempt was dubbed by its organiser, Steve Trister, as a “catastrophic failure”, raising just £2,329 and receiving very little media coverage.

Raising over £2k for charity is not to be sniffed at, but it is a long way from the £1m target, and in the video from Steve that draws a curtain over the challenge, he is visibly disappointed.

From my perspective as a marketer, here are the main five reasons I think the campaign failed to launch:

1. Uninspiring challenge

The idea of raising £1m is interesting but, frankly, a bike ride is not. The tie in between healthy exercise and healthy hearts is a no brainer, but there was no stunt to inspire the hearts and minds of the national press and social media trend setters. A campaign like this needs to be visual and exciting from the outset – the £1m target was not an exciting enough concept by itself.

2. Local cause

Steve suggests that perhaps a cancer charity would have fared better, but I think it was the locality that was the problem. An international charity would have encouraged international donations, and thus broadened the reach of the campaign. That said, if the UK media and online community had got behind it, I believe it could still have succeeded with a UK cause.

3. Lack of celebrity

Steve Trister seems like a great guy with some great ideas, but he’s not a known face. Journalists are looking for a hook that will interest the masses, and a famous face early on could have helped the cause. Some celebrity endorsement was secured, but it was low key, and too late.

4. Over-reliance on social media

There were lots of earnest social media users helping to promote the cause in the beginning, but without the PR to support it, this ran out of steam. Some press coverage would have ignited and reignited public interest and helped drive the campaign on.

5. Lack of planning

Steve acknowledges himself that the campaign could have been a success with more planning. The problem is, when everyone is donating their services for free, there is only so many hours they can realistically offer. Strong media relations was needed in the months before campaign went public to get nationals to back the cause and help launch it with a bang.

Steve has promised to come back with another challenge in six months, and I wish him luck – I just hope he spends the next six months taking his own advice and planning carefully to make the next challenge a full-blooded success.

What price news?

Newspapers

So, Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for all online content from News Corp, which includes The Times and The Sun.

On the one hand, eyeballs are increasingly moving online, so this form of news has to be monetised if publications are to pay journalists’ wages. On the other, news is everywhere, from an abundance of sources, so should the chosen few really have the right to charge? More significantly, would you pay to retain the right to read, or simply go elsewhere?

I posed these questions over on Facebook, and I think the answers are worth reproducing here as they pretty neatly tackle the key issues.

Protecting copyright

David Bennett picked up on the associated copyright implications of charging for access to online content:

My take is that If news costs to produce, why shouldn’t the producer be entitled to charge for it if there is a demand?

I notice that the final para of the article in the Guardian states ‘He accepted that there could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere: “We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point.”

And that I think is the nub – easy and unauthorized redistribution on the web.

So, how will News Corp police the passing of information it uncovers into the public domain? We can’t own news, just the way it’s presented.

A little rewording and the pulling together of a few additional sources and bloggers could easily push the content into the free domain with little danger of being prosecuted, successfully at least, for copyright theft.

The micro-payment holy grail

But people seem to like their news primarily from the big, established sources with professional journalists. And, as David points out, we already pay for printed media, so how will this pay-per-view system be implemented? And can it be implemented successfully?

Gaz Bailey doesn’t think so:

This is good news as far as I’m concerned, certainly regards the Sun and The [News of the World].

Adopting this model will cut the number of people accessing the content down to the much smaller number who are prepared to pay for it removing more casual readers from the pool, and if NewsCorp et al plan to litigate against anybody they perceive to be recycling ‘their’ content, God forbid that might actually clean the internet up of cretinous celebrity news a bit.

Wayne Smallman has fewer doubts about the micro-payment model in theory, but questions whether it can work it practice:

Now that micro-payments are both practical and acceptable, the idea is doable, but I just can’t see this working somehow.

As a businessman, I totally agree with Murdock’s intention of making money from the web. They are producing the news, so why not?

In practice, and when competing with blogging, micro-blogging and social media, it’s hard to make a business case for what is mostly free.

The genie is out of the bottle…

Subscription model?

So, if we accept that news is worth paying for, says Darren Gallagher, the question is, how much is it worth?

Everything will eventually end up, in majority, online. So paying for online news is a natural progression. Free newspapers are becoming a thing of the past, especially high quality ones.

So the real question is, how much are you willing to pay for news? I personally, would be willing to pay a subscription to access the paper I buy daily, but instead of picking it up from the newsagents, accessing it online.

This is because I trust the quality of the articles, editorial opinion and the overall content. I also believe that journalists should be paid for their content. So I wouldn’t begrudge paying a subscription one little bit, as long as the standard remained high.

And Rob Bennett points out that the subscription model is already working out rather well for one media giant:

There is, of course one organisation out there now who have the resources to produce totally ‘free’ regional, national and international content (TV and web) to the same level and volume as News Corp by forcing every television owner in a very large country to pay for the content it produces whether they watch it or not. I currently subscribe to the BBC for £139.50 a year.

Personally, I wouldn’t really mind a pay-per-click model since the cost would be reasonably weighted in favour of the sources I like best and use most. Yet, subscription seems the more likely model since News Corp needs to ensure a minimum bottom line.

In the end, the proof will be in the pudding. No doubt ‘old media’ will be watching with bated breath to see if News Corp can pull this off. And if it does, there can be little doubt that the rest will follow suit.