communication Archive

Journalists: An army of secret inbound marketeers

Published: July 3, 2009

Navigation a problem? Inbound marketing can help. Photo: Zen/FlickrFascinating. Over the last few days, I’ve chatted to a UK regional development agency, a charity and an international media training organisation about the changing face of communication. In all three cases, the conversation ended on the same theme: inbound marketing.

It’s the practice of being found and valued by your target market, rather than just throwing your product, service or message at it like boiled spaghetti and hoping it sticks (that’s the outbound model we’re all used to).

For me, inbound marketing is as much an attitude as a toolkit. I mean, who’s not nervous about navigating through the swirling solar system of social media, information moving at lightspeed and technology that changes constantly? Look on inbound marketing as just a different sort of map for a different sort of journey.

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So the printed word is dead? Not while Jo’s around

Published: June 5, 2009

One of Jo Roberts' Corby Press project postersImagine you’re a progressive English council nearing completion of a multi-million, state-of-the-art swimming pool complex. You’re looking for someone to lead a really innovative communication project that brings the community together in a celebration of achievement.

Now imagine you’re the person who just got the job. You’d be thinking future-facing technology; the might of social media. Right?

Wrong.

Try posters made with thumping great blocks of wooden type, a printing press from the dawn of mankind and ink that takes a decade to get out of your fingernails.

What? It’s crazy. You couldn’t make it up. But then you don’t have to when you receive an email from someone signing themselves “itinerant creative person”, with a single line reading: ‘I am delighted to announce the launch of my latest project, The Corby Press.’

Jo Roberts, aforementioned itinerant creative person, isn’t crazy. She’s amazing.

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What’s the most fun YOU can fit into 140 characters?

Published: February 27, 2009
ham_sandwich

Click to enlarge

Yonks ago, when I was Head of Features for the Birmingham Post and Evening Mail, one of my jobs was to provide a daily ‘gash page’ (a page used to fill space in the first edition, then ditched as the day’s news came in).

I used to go into the library (truly a wondrous place to behold in those pre-digital days) sort through mountains of black-and-white wire pictures that came in from the Press Association and AP, pick half a dozen that made me smile, and write a pithy caption for each. Job done.

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