GREENblog

Bully-Banks take on banks over mis-selling of Interest Rate Swap Agreements

Ian Green — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:11:03 +0000

More than 50 small-business owners, who have been mis-sold Interest Rate Swap Agreements (IRSAs), are coming together this weekend (Sunday, May 20) to launch a campaign to raise awareness of how British banks have been exploiting their small business customers.
Organised by campaign group Bully-Banks they aim to bring all banks the meeting will set out a plan of action to challenge the banks over their behavior and lobby Parliament and the Financial Services Authority to investigate wide scale mis-selling.
An estimated 300,000 small businesses are calculated to have been encouraged by their banks to enter into IRSAs resulting in deals with crippling monthly penalty charges or excessive break charges which businesses cannot afford to buy out.
Bully-Banks was created to co-ordinate complaints by the owners of small-to-medium-sized business against the conduct of banks including Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group.
Paul Adcock, who is coordinating Bully-Banks, said: “We will be adopting a two pronged strategy of highlighting the injustice suffered by small businesses as well as the wider impact on the UK economic recovery. Bully-Banks is independent of all political parties and has no commercial affiliations.
“The banks are accused of failing to warn their clients of potential risks and exit costs of very complex financial products, mostly sold at the bank’s instigation and often as a condition of continued borrowing.”
“Bully-Banks is asking every owner of a small or medium-sized business who believes they have been mis-sold an IRSA to register with Bully-Banks. Together we can ensure that this issue is debated in the media and by Government to ensure that the banks address this issue as they already have with the mis-selling of payment protection insurance scandal.”
On Sunday, May 20 Bully-Banks and its members will seek to establish Task Teams to carry out the necessary activities as the campaign moves into the next phase. There will also be an opportunity to meet some of the legal and financial professionals who have played a role in identifying the nature of the banks’ mis-selling activities.
The meeting will be held at the Bicester Hotel, Chesterton, Oxfordshire, OX26 1TE at 10.00 am – the cost of the conference facilities are being met by a member of Bully-Banks – and the event is free to attend. To register your interest contact Bully-Banks by email: info@bully-banks.co.uk or register at the Bully-Banks website bully-banks.co.uk.

Full disclosure – we are working for Bully-Banks on a pro bono basis

Hubris and the demise of regional journalism

Ian Green — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:51:25 +0000

I used to work with Chris Oakley, former editor of the Liverpool Echo later owner of the Birmingham Post and Mail and then the Yorkshire Post, and he was and is a fine newspaper man. Later, he became chairman of Venturedome.com where I was editorial director. Venturedome no longer exists – but local newspapers are still around. Not for much longer according to Chris.
As a person obsessed with print journalism I was going to do a critique of a speech delivered by Chris last night to the Society of Editors regional conference in Manchester. However, there is not much to critique.
Entitled Five Minutes to Midnight: The death and possible re-birth of the regional newspaper industry, Chris gave his own devastating critique of the current state of the regional press, which he argued now needed to be rebuilt from the bottom up. Here is the speech in full:

We live in strange times.
That theatre of selective amnesia, the Leveson inquiry, plays to a largely indifferent public at a cost of tens of millions to reveal what? That politicians saddled up and sucked up to media tycoons who, in turn, sought favours as all leading businessmen with access to ministers do, that journalists buy their contacts a pint or four and that celebrities want publicity – but only on their own terms. Well, surprise, surprise.
When the curtain finally falls, what will have changed? Politicians will still be slippery, businessmen will still seek to influence them, whining celebrities will still be trying to get their non-stories into newspapers…and we may have some new curbs on press freedom to work our way around.
Hacking into people’s telephones and emails is already illegal and those who do it should be prosecuted unless they can show an indisputable public interest. We don’t need to spend lorry loads of public money at a time of austerity to tell us the obvious.
On the other hand, the regional and local newspaper industry, whose titles are read by more people than all the nationals and which have a bigger influence on the lives of individuals and communities, is on the point of collapse. Twenty per cent of the UK’s local newspapers have closed in the last seven years, more than 240 titles, leaving sizeable communities from Port Talbot to Cannock from Leominster to Long Eaton without a title.
What is the government doing about that? It stood aside when Ofcom prevented a takeover of weeklies in Kent that would have saved titles from closure. In contrast, the Welsh Assembly has already launched an investigation into the local Press and the Scottish Parliament is considering a request to do the same.
Meanwhile, our wise, impartial and incorruptible Culture Secretary is devoting time and money to stimulating the launch of local television, a tried and failed experiment long ago, in an age with less competition for viewers’ time from satellite channels and the internet. Just 50 years late then.
If this is the best that arrogant, posh rich boys can do, then no wonder the Caravan Club has more members than all our political parties combined.
This week Greece has been back in the news, the disintegration of a country where the economic growth of the boom years wasn’t invested for the future but recklessly spent and used to accumulate debt.
Now Greece is no longer an independent country; it’s a province of Brussels or Berlin. Real power lies with bureaucrats and bankers whose priority is not the future of Greece and its people but to protect the money the lenders have at risk.
Thousands of workers are sacked, assets are sold off, there are no jobs for trained young people, no investment for the future. The country is moving inexorably closer to collapse.
The parallels with the big newspaper groups are disturbingly uncanny.
Take Johnston Press.
In the boom years, the Stock Market valued Johnston Press at more than £1 billion and investors and analysts applauded as the company ran up nearly half a billion in debt.
Now Greece, which has debts of 1.5 times its annual GDP, looks positively stable in comparison to JP which has debts nine times its £40 million market value.
Johnston Press first threw itself on the mercy of its lenders in 2009. Mercy and lenders do not usually co-exist in a sentence – and they didn’t in this case. The financial journalist Peter Kirwan estimated that, including fees, JP had to agree to pay an interest rate of more than 15% to secure a three-year extension of its loans.
Those millions paid to the banks equate to the salaries of about 1,000 journalists, according to Peter Kirwan’s estimate, and JP has been cutting staff ever since.
Last month, JP was forced to go back to its bankers again. This time, the interest rate is 10% and the first year fees alone are nearly £12 million. A cull of editors and their deputies was duly announced, offices were closed, staff centralised and more cuts are promised. Across the group, staff numbers have been shrinking faster than the Polar ice cap.
Yet JP last year had a profit margin beyond the imagining of most businesses – a margin of 17%…before shelling out nearly £40 million in interest.
The company’s chief executive, Ashley Highfield, plans to reduce the debt burden by doubling that margin over the next eight years.
That’s an objective as achievable as the regular predictions by another leading businessman.
It is not Mr Highfield’s fault, but the days when 35% profit margins were in reach are long gone.
If JP is a zombie company, kept alive so that the banks can suck the last drop of cash from it, then, on the face of it, Trinity is in a more comfortable place with debts of only about £265 million, just over three times its market value. That value, by the way, is down more than 96% compared to five years ago.
Trinity, too, is walking a knife edge. It has to repay more than £160m to American creditors over the next three years and has decided to do this by making a 70% reduction in its contribution to a staff pension fund, which already has a growing deficit. The ghost of Robert Maxwell must have been applauding in the boardroom when that decision was taken.
The Pensions Regulator is investigating whether he should stop Trinity paying back US creditors at the potential expense of UK pensioners. To be on the safe side, the company has arranged to borrow a further £110 million.
How will the creditors’ repayment be financed? Well, it won’t be through growing profits – they were down 40% in 2011 in spite of the addition of profits from the acquisition of the Manchester Evening News and its associated titles. So profit growth is out – Trinity is following 2011’s £25 million of cuts with a further £15 million in 2012.
Not a lot of room for investment in regional titles, then.
Sly Bailey may have fallen on her sword – or tripped over her pay packet – but her successor will have no choice but to follow the same policy: more cost reductions.
Newsquest contributes 17% of the profits of the biggest US newspaper publisher, Gannett, but hardly rates a mention in the company’s annual report.
It has not, though, escaped the parent company’s substantial and continual contraction which will increase this year on the evidence of the first quarter performance when newspaper profits fell by almost half.
Northcliffe is in a stronger position than the other three major groups but has shed almost a quarter of its 3,000 workforce since 2010 and announced a further 13% cut in regional editorial costs this year.
For decades, the regionals kept the Daily Mail afloat but some years ago the company decided to exit regional publishing…and then turned down an offer of more than £1 billion for its titles. It’s an offer that will never be repeated…and the company has been chipping away at the regionals’ foundations ever since.
So why are companies saddled with this unsustainable debt burden at a time when revenues and profits are flowing away from newspapers?
The last decade of the 20th century and the early years of the present one were a golden age for newspaper owners. Advertising spend was growing rapidly, TV and radio advertising slots were limited, the internet was in its infancy and newspapers were the obvious outlet for the rising expenditure.
Newspapers with profit margins of 25% or more were cash rich and their valuations soared. There was no shortage of banks prepared to lend to acquirers on the most improbable of forecasts. City analysts fed the frenzy, endorsing the promises of chief executives for continually growing profits and margins.
To attempt to make good on those promises, companies were compelled to compete to acquire titles because such growth could never be achieved organically…and as the groups became bigger, the acquisitions needed to be bigger too if they were to have any discernible impact on the bottom line…and so the debt mountains grew.
Between 2005 and 2007 Johnston Press spent almost £1 billion on acquisitions including £250 million for 11 paid weeklies and 10 freesheets in rural Ireland. Two years later, they tried to sell the titles. The best offer was less than £40 million.
That golden age, which generated profits that could have been used to secure the future of local newspapers, will never return.
As margins reached their peak, markets had already changed. The internet was making inroads into key classified categories because managements, with their focus on acquisitions and meeting impossible City expectations, were not prepared to divert cash to investment.
If publishers had supported Fish4, the industry’s far-sighted initiative to upload motors, property and recruitment advertising to the Internet, regional newspapers could now have the largest and best used property, motors and situations vacant sites…and RightMove would not be worth more than even the biggest regional newspaper group.
Instead, managements at first largely ignored the Internet; then they launched online sites but severely restricted them to avoid cannibalising their print titles’ advertising. Even now, many groups shy away from using the power of brands built up over a century or more and invent new names for their websites. Most give away their only trade-able commodity, local news.
Contrast that with publishers in Europe. In Norway, Schibsted decided in 1999 that classified was made for online and online for classified. They set up an independent online division to drive classified with no responsibility for print advertising. That business now produces 36% of the group’s revenues with a higher margin than its newspapers and has established Schibsted as the country’s online market leader.
In Finland, newspaper publisher Sanoma believed from the outset that its editorial had a value. It charged even seven day a week print subscribers extra for access to its online editorial. More than a third of its titles’ readers now pay that annual subscription.
You didn’t need to be a Northern European to see the threat and the opportunity. In 1999, we set up in Leeds an online only company, Regional Interactive Media, free to compete with our print titles to be the definitive source for local information, services and shopping.
We believed our ownership of the local information franchise, our instant brand recognition, our relationship with readers, buyers and sellers made us ideally placed to capitalise on internet opportunities. We could also use our newspapers to provide constant and free promotion for the sites.
In the first year of operation we uploaded one million vehicle advertisements, 350,000 job advertisements and 250,000 properties for sale and achieved 12 million page impressions. Our revenues grew from nothing to £500,000. Two years later, revenues stood at £2,500,000 and the division was on the point of breaking even.
That strategy was unpopular with most investors who believed, correctly but shortsightedly, that money invested in the Internet could instead have boosted profit. In 2002 Johnston Press bought our titles. It closed Regional Interactive Media and that investment did indeed fall to the bottom line, a short term boost at the expense of a long-term future.
Opportunities were missed that it is now too late for UK publishers seize.
So what does all this mean for the future of titles that in many cases have served their communities for more than a century?
Unfortunately, companies which produce more than half the UK’s remaining 1,101 local newspapers are run to service their debts and to maintain the illusion that they will match the exceptional profits and margins they achieved in boom times. Mutally exclusive and mutually assured destruction.
So how long, can this continue? On my clock, at the stroke of midnight, it’s oblivion.
I share the view of Ashley Highfield that time has run out for the big city dailies. The policies pursued by the big groups in recent years have run the clock down and the internet has hit regional dailies particularly hard.
Most dailies have historically been profitable only three days of the week – the days on which the motors, jobs and property ads appeared, the days incidentally on which they also had their largest sales. Now those categories have largely migrated online.
The bigger dailies are almost exclusively owned by publicly-quoted companies whose own future is uncertain.
As a result, costs continue to be cut in ways which have rendered the regional dailies less readable and less relevant. You know better than me how editorial workloads have been increased while staff has been reduced; how page designs are templated in a one-size fits all approach.
JP is creating five templates for all its 270 newspapers. It’s a policy which makes nonsense of shaping a paper to project best that day or week’s news, of designing a page around the perfect headline or the compelling picture.
Remote printing has led to ‘evening’ titles having deadlines the previous afternoon – and that matters because readers still expect to find the day’s most important local stories covered in their own daily.
A former editor of the Newcastle Chronicle Paul Robertson has written about the backlash from readers when they found they couldn’t read about the shooting of PC Rathband by Raoul Moat in that day’s paper.
Distribution has been handed to wholesalers, rather than local teams, cutting costs but offering less flexibility for editionising and home delivery and less availability in fringe areas.
In many cities, sales and household penetration have fallen below a level which can produce an acceptable response for advertisers. In Birmingham, the evening paper now sells around 40,000 a day in a city of a million; in Leeds the Evening Post sells 34,000 to a city of half a million; and it’s a similar story from Bristol to Bradford.
The response of debt-burdened companies is to rack up cover prices to replace lost circulation revenue while trimming paginations to meet rising newsprint bills. The predictable result is that sales are falling even faster – 8% in Bradford, 9% in Bristol, 10% in Birmingham, 15% in Leeds at the last count.
On top of the relentless reduction of costs, those of you who are editors of big city dailies face another problem not of your companies’ making. Local or regional newspapers need to be able to reflect the identity of the community they serve but in most major cities that identity has fractured into different and often conflicting ones, represented by race, religion, culture and economic divisions.
No daily newspaper, particularly one with a limited ability to editionise, can now, for example, meet the needs of most people in multi-cultural Birmingham or economically divided Leeds.
Not all our dailies are owned by the big groups, of course. The family-owned dailies are mostly in smaller cities with a more coherent community identity, but they are not immune to decline. In Cumbria, the News and Star saw newspaper sales fall by 10%.
But these titles are more likely to survive, although perhaps as a weeklies or bi-weeklies. Northcliffe began the conversion of evenings to weeklies and reports some success in places such as Bath, Torquay, Exeter and Scunthorpe. Johnston Press announced the conversion of five of its smaller evenings to weeklies last month.
In my view, this strategy is unlikely to offer more than a temporary reprieve for big city titles like Trinity’s Birmingham Post and Liverpool Daily Post.
Weeklies with their lower cost base and less dependence on national, property, motors and jobs advertising stand a better chance. Those chances are improved the further their circulation area is from major cities because shared identity remains stronger in more rural communities.
Survival chances are best for family-owned weeklies. Those of you editing weeklies owned by publicly-quoted companies will know only too well that you face similar cost-reduction challenges to those of your sister dailies.
I believe it is no coincidence that the latest ABC figures show that while 84 of the 693 paid and free weeklies increased their sales or distribution, the worst performing, losing almost 20% of their sales, were – all bar one – owned by one of the major groups, Trinity.
Mr Highfield’s claim that weekly newspapers are not sensitive to cover price rises, with some of up to 25p planned by JP, would be laughable if it wasn’t tragic – especially as this is coupled with a plan to have half of all editorial content, in print and online, written by ‘citizen journalists’.
But all is not black. Recent major research by Deloittes reported that 40% of people read a local newspaper at least once a week. Unfortunately, we have trained younger readers to expect those newspapers to be free, just as most newspapers have trained their online readers to expect news to be free. The over 55s are the most likely to buy a local newspaper and 62% still do every week.
The research also discovered that newspaper advertising has more impact than online advertising with 62% saying they paid more attention to newspaper advertisements. In fact, Internet display advertising lost ground in 2011. Asked the same question in 2010, only 49% of respondents said they paid more attention to print than online. Interestingly enough, discount coupons cut out of newspapers were also more popular than online social couponing.
So, there is a market which reads and trusts newspapers, which can be profitably served although probably only weekly.
And why wouldn’t there be? Newspaper Society research shows that 80% of the population spend half their life and 90% of their money within five to ten miles of where they grew up. Most people still have local roots.
But those people, those potential readers, expect to see faces they know in the pages of their local paper, to read names they recognise, to be alerted to decisions and events that might impact their day-to-day life or budget, to read stories that involve or affect them, about their family, their friends, their neighbours, their team, their club, their street, their town or village
That requires feet on the ground, journalists visible, accessible and part of the communities they serve.
The owner of what is now the UK’s fifth largest group with more than 220 titles demonstrates every week how truly local newspaper empires can still grow and prosper.
Sir Ray Tindle has built his group over the last half century. For many years he was regarded with faint amusement by larger publishers as he bought weekly titles others considered to be insignificant. Unlike Sir Ray, those publishers are not smiling now.
I once asked him what the group profit margin was. He said he neither knew nor cared. What he did know was the titles made bigger profits each year, that the company had no debt and that all acquisitions were financed out of profits. The last time I spoke to him, every one of his titles was turning a profit and, incidentally, if you want to read that local news online you pay it – and people do.
Ray is not alone. The family owner of the Gossweiler Media in Switzerland launched a newspaper for his 45,000 community, bi-weekly in print and constantly updated online. Advertisers and readers pay for print, online and mobile access as one package. With margins of 30% – something the UK’s big groups will never see again – he is now rolling out the model in Austria and Germany.
At a recent conference, he held up a picture of Barrack Obama and said: This man has never appeared in our newspaper. Then he held up a picture of the local mayor and said: This man is always in our newspaper.
How Ray would applaud because, week in and week out, he demonstrates that the demand for local news and information is as great as it has ever been.
The opportunity has not gone unnoticed. Ironically, there have been more UK newspaper launches in the last two years than at any time during the last decade and 70 in the last five years.
Entrepreneurs have recognised the void opened up as the major groups retreated into their hubs and have responded by launching highly-localised publications, some weekly, some monthly, some paid for, some free, some in newspaper format, some in pocket-sized magazine format.
It is hard work to get them off the ground and individual profits are small but each title can be the building block in an expanding group.
From Saddleworth to Dewsbury, from Corby to Tenby, across the country, these new publications are packed with the sort of advertising my first newspaper, the Sevenoaks Chronicle, once carried. Most have a long way to go before they can bear journalistic comparison with traditional weeklies of the past but, as paginations grow, the breadth of their content expands.
These start-ups will never be a private equity investment vehicle, never a City favourite but they remain a good lifestyle investment – which is why families launched local newspapers more than a century ago.
So do local newspapers have a future? Not as part of the industry we now know but one rebuilt from the ground up.
The banks may yet have a part to play. Last month Lloyds wrote off the £25 million debts of the Dunfermline Free Press group to allow a management buy-out to go ahead. The bank holds 90% of the shares in the new company and how it wields the power of that shareholding to get its money back will determine whether this may be a way to salvage a future for the smaller indebted groups and titles.
Neil Fowler, a former editor and associate of Nuffield College, Oxford, has suggested, the government might help the large groups to negotiate an orderly default on their debts with the titles sold to local businessmen or communities.
It would certainly be a better, healthier use of public money than funding months more of failed recollections at Leveson but while the companies can pay the bank’s exorbitant interest rates the price of default would be high.
In any case, many of the major groups’ titles are too damaged to attract buyers.
Would I buy a big city regional daily tomorrow?
Not even for £1 debt free – unless I was an asset stripper, looking to cream off the last few years’ profit before a title’s collapse or a billionaire prepared to invest unrecoverable millions for reasons other than profit – for status, to have a platform for my views, for serve my community. In fact, billionaires are buying newspapers for just those reasons – among them Alexander Lebedev in London and Warren Buffett in Omaha, even though – in Buffett’s words – newspaper finances are dire.
If I were a young journalist today, I would start my own weekly newspaper in one of those areas which the big groups nominally call theirs but from which they have to all intents and purposes retreated – and it’s important for a free, democratic and open society that young journalists do just that.
Our councils and our courts need to be covered, authority needs to be challenged, press offices need to be bypassed. This cannot be left to citizen journalists.
The paid-for local press grew up to be a mirror in which a community could see itself and more, much more besides. It was there to alert and to protect individuals, to build and to bind communities, to defend and to campaign for those in need of support, tobe the voice of those who would otherwise be unheard.
If local newspapers continue to disappear where will communities turn when planners slice up their neighbourhoods, Tesco bulldozes their tennis courts and the local school or library is closed?
Economic historians may take the view that regional newspapers were never suited to becoming public companies. Titles provide a bespoke service to a defined geographical market; their opportunities for expansion are limited; their main revenue streams cyclical.
They may conclude that regional newspapers were and are better in the hands of local entrepreneurs or families who look to enjoy the good lifestyle newspapers can provide alongside the status and service to the community that goes hand in hand with ownership.
Regional newspapers could never sustain the City’s demands for constant growth in profits and margins and we see now the consequences of attempting to do so.
In a couple of decades, managements overpaid for acquisitions, over-promised to City investors, failed to recognise the threat and opportunity of the Internet and have come close to destroying an industry.
The losers are not managements whose salaries continue to rise as their companies’ value declines, not even the many journalists whose jobs have vanished, the real losers are communities up and down the country which are now worse informed than a century ago, a depressing outcome in what is supposed to be the age of information overload.
And so we end back in Greece – where they have a word for the cause of it all – hubris.

Seven tips to overcome Kanter’s Law

Andy Green — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:40:27 +0000

All of us must have experienced Kanter’s Law: Everything can look like a failure in the middle.
The great innovation writer Rossabeth Moss Kanter highlights how everyone loves inspiring beginnings and happy endings.
It is in the middle however, where the realization that the vision and ideas is actually harder to do than anyone had initially thought. It is here where the hard work kicks in, the tough challenges of implementation emerge, and temptations of the next enticing rainbow appear. Funds and support runs out before victory is in sight
Yet, stop your effort too soon, pull the plug and by definition you create a failure. Post cognitive dissonance kicks-in and all the previous doubts and niggles coalesce into a convincing, ‘Yes, that project was indeed a failure’ confirmation.
I suppose the opposite to Kanter’s Law is what could be called ‘Nike Law’: Just Do it.
Yet I think this would be a too simplistic response. The reality is that life and innovation is a bit more complicated than that.
Innovation texts are littered with case studies and inspirational quotes of individuals, teams and organizations that somehow stuck at it, persevered to eventually succeed.
I don’t however, see that many case studies of the numerous examples where obstinate determination, led to good money and effort being wasted. Where an agony or a negative has needlessly been prolonged.
Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman reports how optimism kicks in when planning for any new project. Rather than accurately benchmark your situation by other similar experiences we get beguiled by the enticing vision and create over-stated, false hope for the do-ability of our new baby.
The innovation reality it seems is that to succeed we need some bi-polarity, both individually and in our teams and groups.
Those who master change have perseverance and stamina. Yet, they are flexible. By expecting obstacles on the road to success they only keep going for what matters.
Sure, intuition and passion are essential ingredients for success. But as the great Spanish philosopher George Santayana observed, a fanatic is someone who redoubles their effort when they have forgotten their aim
F. Scott Fitzgerald defined the sign of a first-rate intelligence as “to hold two opposing views in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Innovation author Scott Anthony similarly calls for what he labels ‘innovation bipolarity’ – an ability to switch between two modes of optimism and pessimism.
In my creativity and innovation training I co-opt the needs to think pessimistic with the need to thing ‘Big’; by creating a bigger mental landscape there will inevitably be oasis of optimism to harness and harvest.
Using this contrast technique will create sufficient polarity to ensure you have identified possible weaknesses and negatives to your ideas before others do.
Some tips I would share, partly inspired by Rosabeth Kanter, to ensure you overcome your ‘middle stage wobbles’ include:

1. Listen to your environment – what has changed in your context
2. Revisit your original assumptions which shaped your thinking: what assumptions did you make about your assumptions?
3. Check your existing support for your project – is it still with you?
4. Identify potential fresh support or impetus to generate new energies, new networks and synergies
5. Spot any early or quick wins with your project. What do they mean to you or your supporters? What can they mean?
6. Revisit your core brand story, your narrative about your project and update it. What ways it is the same story being extended, or is there a new story emerging?
7. Look honestly in the mirror: Don’t confuse passion for fanaticism

I had an initial idea for this article. I did actually it put it to one side when other immediate, urgent tasks emerged. But I revisited it, completed the text as a blog post. (Should I have continued as a White Paper, or even a book?)
I hope you are thinking I’m glad I overcome the middle stage sense of failure to complete this post.

Coca-Cola vs Pepsi

Ian Green — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:51:04 +0000

Your browser does not support iframes.

This infographic created by CnnTees. Read the original blog here.

Ian Green — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:50:42 +0000

Courtesy of NowSourcing, Inc

Where we live. Enjoy

Ian Green — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:00:23 +0000

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ad

Andy Green — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:53:22 +0000

It is one of copywriting’s legends. The advertisement used by Sir Ernest Shackleton to recruit volunteers for his expedition.
Shame it never existed – but provides another great example of ‘truthiness’.
I delivered a great creative writing session for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations yesterday, with a great bunch of hard-working talented people.
As usual, there is always something to learn and improve, so I set to work tweaking the course workbook which features the example of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ad:

LINPAC’s Jo Stephenson shortlisted in First Women Awards

Ian Green — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:53:33 +0000

Congratulations to LINPAC Packaging’s Joanna Stephenson, Vice President Marketing & Innovation, who has been short listed in the First Women Awards.
Created by Real Business in association with Lloyds Banking Group and supported by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the First Women Awards aim to recognise pioneering UK women whose achievements have set the benchmark in the business world for others to follow.
Jo has been short listed for the Engineering and Manufacturing Award.
LINPAC Packaging Chief Executive David Meldram said: “Jo thoroughly deserves to make it on to the short list for this year’s First Women Awards. Joanna has been a real pioneer in championing women in manufacturing and has made an enormous contribution to the print and packaging sector over the years.”
Previous winners include trailblazing, often unsung, women from UK manufacturing, science and technology as well as iconic leaders such as Nicole Farhi. Winners at 2011′s event included Taylor Nelson founder Dr Liz Nelson OBE and Wahaca founder Thomasina Miers.
Helen Alexander, President of the CBI, said: “As we recover from a deep recession, Britain will need women with fresh ideas and limitless ambition. Across business, professional and cultural life, women will invigorate Britain and build our future success. No-one should be excluded from that.
“The First Women Awards were established by the CBI and Real Business magazine as a focal point for today’s and tomorrows female leaders. We are delighted once again to enjoy the support of our headline sponsor, Lloyds Banking Group.”
The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony, on Thursday June 28, Grand Connaught Rooms, London. The awards will be hosted by BBC sports presenter, Clare Balding.
First Women Awards supporters include: BAE Systems, Benenden Healthcare Society, BT, Centrica, Harvey Nash, ICAEW, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Land Rover UK and COINS. The Awards are also supported by the Financial Mail.

How to go viral

Ian Green — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:03:40 +0000

Courtesy of Harkable.

30 Years Today: The ZX Spectrum gave us games to play

Ian Green — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:16:55 +0000

Our guest blogger today is Nick Ryder, Technical Sales Manager at CCS Leeds – a client of GREEN Communications – offers a birthday celebration for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Its hard to believe as I sit here typing that is was 30 years ago, to this very day that that Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k was released to the general public. I suppose that in retrospect, it could be seen as the iPad of its day as most people had one, of if they didn’t, wanted one.
The previous year had seen the release of the Spectrums popular forerunner, the ZX81 which had sold a quarter of a million units by the end of 1981. But competition from rival companies such as Commodore were pushing what could be achieved with home computing, and the release of the VIC20 meant that computers with full colour capability were indeed the future, whereas the ZX81 was simply monochrome.
As such, Sinclair set about working on the follow up machine. What would eventually become the Spectrum, actually went through a number of design and name changes before the final model was that we all know and love was decided upon. Two models were released initial – the 16KB, at £125 or the much more powerful 48K version which cost £175.
Needless to say, it was a hit in schools and homes around the world, even if the keyboard was rubbish. And, for the next 2 years, the Sinclair Spectrum would dominate the home computing market, bringing along with it the delights of games such as Manic Miner, Elite and Hungry Horace. Retro gamers still love the old games and there are many Spectrum emulators around, as well as websites where you can actually play them online here.
So happy birthday to the ZX Spectrum!
Personally I prefer the Commodore 64, but that’s a different article.