You might have guessed from our front co ver that weve loosely themed this issue around Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes Night). For our non-British readers, this is a tradition in Britain and indeed some former colonies which dates back to the 5th November 1605 and marks a failed plot to destroy the Houses of Parliament. To this day the tradition is continued with bonfires and fireworks (and, inevitably , the odd casualty ).
The link between what we do at GyroHSR and the planned blowing-up of Parliament is …

Our business has changed. The role of marketing is no longer to interrupt con versations , but to contagiously ignite them. To shift brands from broadcasters to participants . We believe that the single biggest thing that we need to remember is that modern marketing is about making peoples lives better.
What does that changed dynamic mean for traditional approaches to strategy and creative. What changes, what remains constant?
The Planners View: Focus on Behaviour and Context
As advertising has changed, so have the roles of strategists and planners. We must go …

Dean Woolley, creative director of healthcare agency Woolley Pau, part of the GyroHSR network.
Trying to do the right thing inevitably leads to solutions which have already been tried. That s what happens when we use a frame of reference based on the past . Instead , we should ask what s the wrong thing to do? The answers might lead to interesting new solutions .
Lets say our brand is a contraceptive, whats the most ridiculous thing we can think up?
What about marketing it to nuns?
Well, thats obviously an outrageous idea; …

The global marketing services industry is worth in excess of a trillion dollars; the top five players alone directly employ over 300,000 people and have collective revenues in excess of $50 billion.
The UK market has over 7,000 agencies, all vying to work with the same top 1,000 brands. The business model they operate is simple; get the big brands, sell them big ideas and generate big bucks. However, with such fierce competition generated by the abundance

Idea generation has never been an exact science. Think about it. How do you come up with a great idea? The answer, in reality is sometimes with great difficulty and sometimes, for an unknown reason, with surprising ease. Like I said, it’s never been a science and that’s the way it should be.

In the last decade we have seen a growing trend for procurement’s involvement in the selection of marketing agencies. Hot on the heels of this latest recession, the role of procurement has dramatically increased in importance, and not just within public sector organisations. Here he shares his thoughts on the increasing importance of procurement and its relationship with marketing departments and agencies.

In the inaugural version of the Channel Insights series, Scott Gillum, SVP of Channel Marketing discusses how industry leaders are recognizing the opportunity to create a sustainable competitive advantage by evolving to the new collaborative partner-marketing model.
In nearly every industry, business partners play an important role in a companys distribution and go-to-market strategy; and no industry relies on partnership channels more than hi-tech. Third party sales channels from independent agents to independent software vendors (ISV) are essential for reaching key market segments like small and medium businesses (SMB) …

Richard Mabbott was acting as facilitator for the meeting and laid out cases for both brand and demand. But first he explained the catalyst for the whole event: throughout 2009, he stated he had attended numerous planning meetings with clients where creative work was presented and generally well received. However, he had noticed that in a large percentage of cases, the client was asking for the brand line to be reduced or omitted altogether…

Simon drew on his B-to-C experience to underline how both brand and demand have their part to play in a successful marketing campaign.

Simon disarmed his audience by admitting that he knew virtually nothing about I.T., very little about the public sector and not a lot about B-to-B! However he informed them that he had worked on several very successful B-to-C marketing campaigns which may prove relevant to them. One in particular highlighted that when you combine Brand and Demand it really can work…

Rebecca gave the brand v demand audience plenty to think about with a detailed speech on the importance of carbon management.

Rebecca said that whilst its understandable that a lot of companies green credentials have slipped down the agenda during the recession, to ignore them now that the shoots of recovery are starting to sprout would be pure folly…