“Whatever happened to all the startups?” somebody asked me the other day. It wasn’t an entirely flippant question, and it got me thinking – there hasn’t been too much action in the startup scene this year. I’ve no idea why this is. In a highly consolidated industry, as marketing communications undoubtedly is these days, there […]
As someone who works for a business that puts firms wanting to realise value in touch with firms looking to acquire, and which then helps to facilitate the deal, one of the questions I’m most often asked when I tell people what I do, is: “What makes an ideal purchase?” Fundamental to this is understanding […]
Merger and acquisition advisers Green Square has launched a new ad campaign, created by London advertising agency Hometown. Positioned to stand-out in the “pretty serious” world of professional services communications, Hometown developed a Tarot theme for the campaign – why would you leave your life’s work to fate when it comes to choosing the right […]
As M&A rumours go, it was a pretty bizarre one. I’m talking, of course, about the past week’s rumours that the Daily Mail was going to buy Yahoo (well, sort of, but we’ll come to that in minute). We’ve written about the ailing (cruel, but it has to be said) 1990s tech giant many times […]
Where does the time go? I ask because I was staggered to learn that Twitter is 10 years old. First of all, those 10 years have just flown by. And although a decade isn’t long in geological terms, in the world of marcomms and technology it’s an age. And that passing decade proves just how […]
We’ve written many times in the past about the challenges the big consulting and accountancy groups – KPMG, Deloitte, PwC, Grant Thornton, McKinsey et al – pose to the established advertising networks. Indeed, in recent times, the big boys have been emulating the likes of WPP and Publicis by snapping up startups and promising small […]
Cheil Worldwide, the South Korean marketing services group which is part of the mighty Samsung empire, posted some interesting news last week – that it was consolidating its entire global retail resource under a single banner. Called Cheil Retail, the new unit will be led by Simon Hathaway as the global chief retail office. Hathaway […]
Whether you read, or were a fan of, the publication in question or not, the closure of a national newspaper is always an event, and a cause for reflection. First of all, it’s a relatively rare occurrence; and secondly, anything that reduces the size of the pool, or shrinks its diversity, is something that anyone […]
Apple has been the world’s most valuable company (at least measured by its market cap, if not sales) for so long now that it’s easy to forget that it was not always so. Back in the late 1990s, before the return of co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple was months – some say weeks – away from […]
We tend to think of advertising and marketing as very modern businesses – especially when we think of channels such as digital, mobile and eCRM. But the truth is, advertising of one sort or another goes back centuries, back to the dawn of capitalism; some would argue way, way before that – the ancient Egyptians […]