Healthy marketing goes bananas

As a regular commuter and walker through London I am used to having flyers and more recently newspapers thrust in my face. Even more annoying are the chuggers (charity muggers) who seemed to have resisted attempts to control their behaviour.

So I was somewhat surprised to have a banana proffered in my direction as I was entering St Paul’s Thameslink railway station on Wednesday morning. Admittedly there was an accompanying leaflet promoting a special offer at L A Fitness, but what caught my eye was the sticky label on the banana extolling me to enjoy the healthy snack on them.

Associating a free healthy snack with a similarly healthy product or service makes good sense but is all too rare an approach to ‘bribing’ customers.

Friday fun with Leonard Cohen

Having read a recent Guardian newspaper Great Lyricists supplement on Leonard Cohen, I was reminded not only of the genius of his songs/poetry, but also his sense of humour. I know he is widely considered to be one of the most depressing singers of recent times, and his music is often unkindly referred to as ideal to commit suicide to.

However there is a lighter side to Cohen as illustrated by my one of my favourite lines at the very beginning of First We Take Manhattan, his hit single from the 1988 album I’m Your Man; “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, For trying to change the system from within”. And in “Tower of Song,” Cohen sings ironically that he was “born with the gift/ Of a golden voice”

It would be a mistake to pretend that it is all sweetness and light. A listen to Dress Rehearsal Rag on Songs Of Love And Hate from 1971 is not for the faint hearted.

But Cohen is also something of a romantic, as proved by my favourite line of all from Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye on the 1967 album Songs Of Leonard Cohen, “Your hair on the pillow like a sleepy golden storm”.

An informational Aladdin’s Cave for the aspiring entrepreneur or small business owner

It is always nice when one of our customers blogs about their positive experience at the Business & IP Centre, at the British Library.

In the case of Andrew Warren-Payne (a recent from St Catherine’s College, Oxford, who is currently exploring potential ideas that help individuals and businesses make best use of Web 2.0 technologies in London) he has written about two visits to the Centre.

In his first visit on 14 June he discovered that we are; “an informational Aladdin’s Cave for the aspiring entrepreneur or small business owner. On the shelves and on their computer databases (from which you can download!) are reports from professional market research companies like Mintel, Datamonitor and Frost & Sullivan. This information is worth thousands of pounds. And yet, I have access to it, 15 minutes walk away from my flat, free of charge! And they run a lot of other services such as one-to-one clinics, free online courses, and have a YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe to it so they can see providing information like this is much appreciated!”

He came back on 4 July for a workshop was on business Terms and Conditions and why you should get them right and was held by Helen Parkins.

“Helen’s presentation was excellent and really explained why getting your Ts & Cs right is crucial when it comes to business. … Helen has also co-written a book titled A Zest for Business, and having bought it and had a quick read over it is definitely excellent value for money. Compact in size to slip in your briefcase or laptop bag, but absolutely filled with valuable advice far better than other books I’ve read so far (there’s no double spaced size 14 font as is often the case!), and the sections are neatly broken down into subheadings and relevant bullet point check lists.”

Information Professionals in the Wall Street Jounal

One of the surprises during the annual SLA conference in Seattle was to see a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal promoting the value of information professionals four days in a row.

This unprecedented marketing event was an unexpected opportunity resulting from the recent take overs of both the Wall Street Journal and the Dowjones company (which includes the Factiva brand) by Rupert Murdoch.

It would be great to see something similar in the UK.

Here is the full text of the advert.

The right people, information and decisions

Behind every good business decision is an information professional.

The competitive advantages you bring to the table are superior management strategies and decision-making capabilities. Both originate from information that’s been gathered, organized and shared throughout your enterprise by people called information professionals.

The relevant, high-quality business information you need to take action doesn’t turn up all by itself. Whether internally or externally produced, it’s the lifeblood of people who work for you: librarians, knowledge managers, chief information officers, Web developers, information brokers and researchers.

The Special Libraries Association, with support from Dow Jones Factiva, is behind your most profitable decisions. To learn how an SLA information professional can benefit your organization, visit www.sla.org today.

http://www.sla.org/PDFs/WSJ-SLAad.pdf

Congratulations to Stacey Bowers and Cara Schatz of the SLA staff for their work with the Wall Street Journal to develop this memorable advert.

Firefly Tonics at Westminster Reference Library

Last month I went to a great event at Westminster Reference Library to hear the story of Firefly Tonics from co-founder of the business Harry Briggs

Harry and Marcus Waley-Cohen were friends at school and “We’d always thought one day we’d start a business - whenever we had A-level coursework to do, we found ourselves bouncing (mostly silly) business ideas around instead.”

After university they were both working for large consulting firms when they were given the opportunity to market at Japanese water that claimed to cure all ills.

“We didn’t think much of the water, but it did get us thinking - “what if we could make a drink that was effective, yet completely healthy and natural?” Surely nature could do a better job than those chemically-infused sugary energy drinks…”

They found two top UK ‘serious’ herbalists (by searching Amazon for authors) and persuaded them to help develop healthy herbal drinks.

From original idea to launch took just over a year due to delays with the bottle supplier and the partners biggest arguments were over the design of the product rather than the product itself. Five years later they have sold 9 million bottles.

Harry listed some lessons learnt, most of which will be relevant to others starting out on their first business venture.

1. Ask your friends – Harry and Marcus had a long list of possible names for the company, but when they circulated the list to their friends, Firefly came back as the clear winner.
2. Talk and listen to your customers – Firefly make an effort to personalise their dialog with customers and use bespoke emails.
3. Dare to be different – it enables you to stand out in a crowded market-place.
4. All publicity is good publicity (well, almost all).
5. Stand up for a cause – Firefly chose to support independent cafes (who were also more likely to stock their products), creating a virtuous circle.
6. Be authentic and candid – don’t hide your ‘sins’
7. Involve customers in the company – all the photos on the front of their bottles are sent in by the public.
8. Your product is your best marketing – Giving your product away costs a lot less than producing brochures and advertising.
9. Your first customers are the most important ones
10. Sometimes it is better to say no – Firefly turned said ‘no’ to both Asda and Boots
11. You can be global earlier than you might think – their business plan had an international component in year three, but due to intense demand they are now a few locations in nearly 40 countries.

“The company values:
Values… When you try and put them into words you start sounding like a Life Insurance company. But they’re important. So here goes…
1. To create delicious, healthy, stylish and innovative drinks that help people get the most out of life, naturally
2. To build a company that values creativity, honesty, courage and a sense of humour
3. To develop a brand that’s adventurous and authentic, standing up for what we believe in
4. To work in a challenging, fun and inclusive environment where nobody employed by us ever wakes up and thinks, “I don’t want to go to work today”
5. To leave the ostriches to their own devices, get our heads out of the sand and go and stand on top of a mountain with our friends… playing frisbee. (Don’t ask…)”

Twittering away at SLA in Seattle

Thanks to the Yankee In Canada (otherwise known as Daniel Lee) for producing an SLA twitter cloud for the recent conference. The cool image below was produced using Wordle, and is based on analysis of the 1,194 tweets produced during the conference.

I even managed to contribute a few to the total myself, which was fun while it lasted.

More cool librarians - Part 1

My search for the coolest librarian continued during the annual SLA conference in Seattle.

My previous winner of this (grossly under-recognised) award Louise Guy from Cirque du Soleil was not at the conference this year, although I did bump into Chad Eng, drummer in the death metal band From the Wreckage, looking suitably cool with his shoulder length blond hair and goatee beard.

This year I didn’t come away with a clear winner, but instead a trio of cool librarians.

Mary Ellen Bates

The first, and most surprising discovery for me, was Mary Ellen Bates. She is a big name in the information profession with more than 25 years of experience in business research. She has written hundreds of articles and white papers, conducted hundreds of speaking engagements, and is an acknowledged expert on various aspects of online and Internet research. Instead of her usual topic relating to what’s new in internet research and tools, her much more ambitious title was, The Next Information Revolution, and our Role as Revolutionaries. She caught my attention with her second slide which flashed up for just an instant with this photo of Patty Hearst, best known for her attachment to an SLA organisation with truly revolutionary intentions.

Her presentation (which I will cover in a later blog) was primarily about our new clients and customers known as millennials or digital natives. And how we must re-educate ourselves to provide services they want in the way they want. These are customers who will be telling us what they want rather than vice versa at present. Her blunt but effective scenarios contained scenes of librarians explaining the limitations of their databases or catalogues only to be met with, ‘I see your lips moving, but I’m not listening’. Or even worse, a response consisting of one of the two favourite three letter responses of this new generation, OMG (Oh My God) - meaning I’m not impressed, and WTF (What The ‘Heck’) - meaning I really don’t care at all about what you are saying to me.

As you can see by her photo Mary Ellen does not immediately strike one as of the revolutionary mould. In fact you could say she looks something close to the stereotype of the female librarian (although sans hair in a bun and wearing a pearl necklace). But with her casual (joking) references to giving up on her crack pipe, and other amusing but unexpected comments I didn’t have time to note, she effectively destroys that negative image of information professionals.

Needless to say, as a cutting edge librarian she has a blog (since 2006) called Librarian of Fortune (Mary Ellen Bates contributes white noise to the blogosphere) at http://www.librarianoffortune.com/

I can’t wait to hear her next presentation.

The Future of the information profession part 2: Report from SLA2008

Not surprisingly this topic came up many times and in many different ways during the recent annual SLA conference in Seattle.

The new generation of information professionals

As I mentioned previously I see the new information professionals as absolutely key to our future, especially given the demographic of the profession which will result in 58 percent of the members of SLA reaching 65 by 2019.

If the three young people (Christina de Castell, Stacey Greenwell, Daniel Lee) on the panel session titled Perspectives of New Information Professionals are representative of their generation then our future is in very capable hands.

SLA Alignment Project

SLA is funding a project with Fleishman-Hillard, the international consulting firm which is leading a team made up of Outsell and Social Technologies. The Alignment Project will be consulting widely both inside and outside the information profession to help SLA anticipate the future and create a strong and relevant brand.

Breaking down stereotypes of librarians

Librarians often suffer from stereotypes in the media, but in my experience many information professionals do somewhat lack in confidence. So it was fascinating to hear Stephen Abram the current President of SLA refer to his early years, when he could never imagine becoming a leader both in his career and of a global association. Having known Stephen for quite a few years now, it came as a big surprise to find out how far he has had to come to reach this point.

Another commonly occurring trait in librarians (which is almost never covered by the media) is their inner strength. I think of it as the opposite of the description of Israelis as Sabras. (Sabra (Hebrew: צבר‎) is a term used to describe a native-born Israeli Jew. The word is derived from the Hebrew name for the prickly pear cactus, i.e. “tzabar”. The allusion is to a tenacious, thorny desert plant with a thick hide that conceals a sweet, softer interior, i.e., rough and masculine on the outside, but delicate and sensitive on the inside. Wikipedia)

Instead, the librarian has a soft outer shell, but inside is a core of steel. An excellent example of this is Ann Sparanese, a librarian at Englewood Library in New Jersey. She is credited (and gets a foreword mention to prove it) with saving Michael Moore’s first book Stupid White Men. To quote Moore, “Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. You got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them!” Salon website.

Adding value to our services

According to research done by Barbara Quint, Google answers as many questions in 30 minutes as all librarians in the world answer at reference desks in 15 years. So the only way to keep ahead of this type of competition is to constantly add value to our service. We need to understand our customers needs better and work more closely with them. That way we can become more of a consultancy service than just providing quick and simple reference answers. This is a topic I have written about in Moving from readers to customers to clients in the Business & IP Centre at the British Library, Business Information Review, Vol. 25, No. 2, 125-126 2008

The Future of the information profession part 1: Report from SLA2008

I have just from the annual SLA conference which this year was in Seattle. It was strange returning to the city of my very first SLA event ten years ago. Then I was very green information professional and spent most of the four days trying to get my head around the complexities SLA, the conference and cultural differences between the UK and the USA.

This time I was there to fulfil my commitments as co-convener of the Fellows annual meeting, the First Timers Event and to Chair the Public Policy Advisory Council. Since being made a fellow of the SLA in Baltimore in 2006 I was expecting to be required to continue to contribute to the association.

I was more than happy to be involved with the First Timers Event which is held at the beginning of the five days of conference. I passionately believe in encouraging and supporting new entrants into the information profession. So helping to explain how to get the best out of the conference and to enable networking, as well as the opportunity to find mentors is a job I was happy to do.

The loud buzz in the room from the 300 or so who turned up to the meeting indicated they were more than ready to network with their fellow information professionals.

Chairing the Public Policy Advisory Council gave me great opportunity to be involved with SLA’s effective efforts during 2007 and 2008 to campaign against library closures in the US Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as a host of other activities. In the case of the EPA libraries, SLA in the form of Doug Newcomb (Chief Policy Officer) and Janice Lachance (SLA CEO) had been in the vanguard of the move to prevent the closures without due consideration and discussion.

Breakfast with Sue Hill to discuss the future of the information profession

I was privileged to be invited to the first Sue Hill Recruitment breakfast discussion last month. These are intended to be networking events for experienced researchers, information professionals and librarians. Having known Sue Hill (the founder and director of the 30 staff company) for more years than I care to mention, going back to the early days of my information career, it was flattering to receive an invitation.

Consequently I made an exception to my strict rule of never attending breakfast meetings (a result of 5.30am starts necessitated by my rural location). However, I’m glad I made the effort because I met several new interesting colleagues. This came as something of a surprise as after nearly 20 years of attending meetings and conferences I thought I hat met nearly all my peers.

After the initial introductions, during which many of the attendees also revealed Sue’s positive influence over their early information careers, we got down to the serious topic of the future of the information profession. Given the current economic climate, in which services such as libraries and information departments are often the first in line for cuts, plus the more general recent trend to outsource service departments, this was not a theoretical question.

The consensus around the table was that information professionals need to become much more flexible than before, and give more emphasis to continuing professional development (CPD). We need to develop a higher level of technical understanding, improve our general business skills and ensure we understand the business of the organisations we work for to ensure we align our services to these.

It was agreed that failure to look outside of the confines of our information departments, and to become more engaged within our organisations (particularly with senior management). And even more importantly in my view. to move our services up the value chain, would lead to the demise of the profession. Standing still (even if our services are already good) is no longer enough.

Henry Ford didn’t succeed by asking his customers what they wanted

The June issue of Inventique, the newsletter of the Wessex Round Table of Inventors has an interesting article by Sir James Dyson, the renowned inventor of the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner, amongst many others.

He quotes Henry Ford the pioneer of popular motoring, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Although familiar with his line, “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black”, I hadn’t come across this one before.

What I like about it (although some might say that it was written with the benefit of hindsight) is the way it illustrates the limited thinking of most business people. In particular the approach that seeks customer requested minor improvements, instead of radical leaps. It is only those with a vision of the future who are able to make significant changes to the way we lead our lives.

What is ironic about the Henry Ford quote above is that it was the Ford motor company of the UK who produced one of the blandest models in recent memory, in the shape of the MK1 Mondeo. The cautious styling of this car was a direct result of the negative press the revolutionary Sierra received when first launched in 1993. Consequently the Mondeo is often cited as the most clinicked car of all time. So many potential customers were consulted that the resulting model became the definition of middle of the road boring. The phrase ‘Mondeo Man’ was used to describe the epitome of middle England values.

I am glad to report that Ford learnt from this mistake and have since produced several out of the ordinary models such as the Ka, Focus and even the replacement Mondeo.

How to get your business into the press

An often neglected form of marketing for business is the press and PR.

In order to help with this tricky topic for newcomers the Business & IP Centre has joined forces with GMT events to provide a series of Get Noticed events.

The right mention in the right publication can have a massive impact on orders for companies of all sizes. It can attract new business partners and can even help a growing business secure funding.

The first event was held on May 22nd, attracting a full house of delegates who heard some inspirational insights into the news media and the world of PR. Delegates heard from Fleet Street journalist and chairman of Europe’s largest media training company, Keith Elliott, from Tracey Hobbs, editor of the BBC2’s Working Lunch, and Richard Tyler, enterprise editor at The Daily Telegraph.

Then the PR speakers, including Francis Ingham, (Public Relations Consultants Association),
Crispin Manners, (Kaizo), Susanna Simpson, (Limelight PR) and Michael Hayman, (The Communication Group) talked about how PR agencies operate, about word-of-mouth marketing, and about why you are your company’s biggest asset.

The next event is on July 10th an includes Phil Halliday from the Financial Times on what makes a news story for one of the world’s most trusted business newspapers.

David Lester the founder of Crimson Business will share his expertise on raising a company’s profile via business magazines.

Sally O’Sullivan, former editor-in-chief at IPC Magazines will look at how consumer and customer magazines operate and how you and your business can feature.

Paula Gardner runs Do Your Own PR, a business that teaches companies of all sizes how to use PR to create interest, keep up with and surpass the competition and generally move up to the next level.

Francis Ingham, director general of the Public Relations Consultants Association, will explain how agencies operate, how to choose the most appropriate one for you - and tell you what PR firms can and cannot do for your business.

Adrienne Routledge, founder of Sapphire PR, a specialist business-to-business public relations agency, will look at how to get the most out of a PR agency.

Kaizo CEO Crispin Manners will cover word-of-mouth marketing.

Booking details from http://www.gmtevents.co.uk/booknow.htm.

Aga goes Web 2.0

Having grown up cooking with and now the owner of an Aga cooker, I was fascinated to discover that the company is now engaging with social networking by establishing This is my Aga. This web-site very cleverly capitalises on the immense loyalty Aga owners often have to their cookers. Associated with an often life-long ownership are customer stories, varying from farmers who have used the warming oven to save freezing sheep, to tips on how to make the best bread or cakes.

This is my Aga site uses a Google Maps mashup to encourage you to plot your Aga onto a map of the UK. You can then find the nearest Aga to you with (or without) a story. Or search the database to find where all the Aga’s with the same colour (dark blue in my case) are located. Hundreds of people have already registered, but as with any Web 2.0 approach there are risks involved in giving customers a free hand to comment.

Let down and Disappointment – Sandy
My parents had a aga in 1931 when I was born, and had others for the rest of their lives. My wife and I have had them for the last thirty years and she regularly bakes ten loaves at a time for village functions. The photograph shows the result of the fire after our engineer fitting a new but faulty control unit supplied by aga to our twenty year old aga in December 2007. The Aga is not yet working again 17/05/08. Aga replaced the whole front, doors and all on the 21st of May and it is now better insulated than before, but looks odd with the old top and new bottom We are still very disappointed with the Customer Service Department they are not what the used to be, and are still in dispute with them,

Designing Demand for small business

Last month I attended a fascinating and inspiring session organised by Grant Thornton and Design London.

The Designing Demand programme was developed by the Design Council and is delivered nationally by regional delivery partners. It helps established small and medium enterprises and fast growing new start-up businesses to harness the power of design and transform their business performance.

The three-hour workshop provided advice on how to recognise situations where design can benefit business. They had some very impressive examples of how design can improve the bottom line for a company with a small up front expense.

One of the most memorable was waste management business Envirotech whose unglamorous business model mainly consisted of collecting and disposing of sewage with tankers.

By re-designing their brand identity from to their core areas of business have leapt by 75 per cent to just under £2million. Demand for the new maintenance business and tanker work has increased, bringing total turnover for 2005 to £2.5m.

Designing Demand will be hosting a number of one-day Design Workshop for SMEs, and if you think you would benefit you can book online at http://lda.designingdemand.org.uk

The Business & IP Centre takes on twitter

First we blogged, then we facebooked, now we are twittering here at the Business & IP Centre.

Although Web 2.0 expert and commenter Leo Laporte has been extolling the virtues of twitter on his (unrelated) Twit.tv shows since it first started a couple of years ago, I remained to be convinced. But now we are engaging with this form of real-time web community to see what will happen.

In order to understand how twitter works have a look at the Twitter in Plain English video below. This is from Common Craft the same people who created the Wikis in Plain English video I blogged about in March.

The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising

Located in the unlikely setting of Notting Hill, London the the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising is a little gem. It is based on the collection of consumer historian, Robert Opie, who saw the need to record the history of products around us.

“Starting at the age of sixteen with a packet of Munchies, the Collection now extends to all aspects of daily life – toys, comics, magazines, newspapers, technology, travel, royal souvenirs, fashion and design. Robert says, ‘Whilst families tend to save mementos from special occasions, it struck me that little was being done to keep the everyday material. When the thousands of pieces of this social history are assembled into some giant jigsaw, the picture becomes clearer as to the remarkable journey we have all come through’. “

The collection contains over 12,000 toys and games, posters and magazines, fads and fashions, postcards and packaging. There is a strong nostalgic aspect of the museum as you discover sweets and games from your youth. The history of consumer culture is revealed decade by decade from Victorian times to the present day.

Two things struck me during the visit. One, was the increase in size of packages over time. Presumably a combination of wealthier consumers and less frequent shopping. The other was the simplification of branding over time. They have a great series of displays showing the development of household names such as Swan Vesta matches and Branston Pickle over time. With each ‘brand refresh’ the colours and logo’s are made clearer and simpler.

The only disappointment for me was not being able to find an example of a Jacobs Club biscuit the dominant brand of the 1980’s with one of the most memorable advertising slogans, ‘If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club’.

There was a good example of ‘passing off’, known as the Jif Lemon case, where Reckitt & Colman Ltd took Borden Inc to the House of Lords and won.

From an article by Kenneth Choy discussing the tort of passing off:

“In the summer of 1985, Borden began selling its ReaLemon product in its lemon-shaped container in the UK. Reckitt & Colman became concerned and filed a lawsuit to stop the American company. Reckitt & Colman was successful in the lower courts and Borden took the case to the House of Lords.

Explaining the standard, which became known as the classic trinity, Lord Oliver asked:

1. Have the respondents [Reckitt & Colman] proved that the get-up under which their lemon juice has been sold since 1956 has become associated in the minds of substantial numbers of the purchasing public specifically and exclusively with [their] (”Jif”) lemon juice?
2. If the answer to that question is in the affirmative, does the get-up under which the appellants [Borden] proposed to market their lemon juice in [the ReaLemon containers] amount to a representation by [Borden] that the juice which they sell is “Jif” lemon juice?
3. If the answer to that question is in the affirmative, is it, on a balance of probabilities, likely that, if the appellants [Borden] are not restrained as they have been, a substantial number of members of the public will be misled into purchasing the defendants’ lemon juice in the belief that it is the respondents’ Jif juice? (pp.500-501)

Lord Oliver observed that supermarkets tend to sell only one brand and possibly their own house brand of preserved lemon juice. He noted Reckitt & Colman’s survey evidence showing that “a housewife presented with a display of these products in close juxtaposition would be likely to pick up . . . the [ReaLemon] product in the belief that what she was buying was the respondents’ Jif lemon juice” (p. 500) since Jif was the only “lemon-sized squeezy pack of lemon juice on the market” (p. 501).

Concluding that the three elements are satisfied, the Lords affirmed the permanent injunction barring Borden from marketing lemon juice in lemon-shaped containers in the UK.

Had the Jif lemon been a registered trademark, the case would have been much simpler to prove. Infringement is established if it can show that Borden’s ReaLemon container is identical or similar to the Jif lemon and that allowing the ReaLemon container in the market is likely to cause public confusion. Section 18, Trade Mark Ordinance (Cap. 559).

One may ask, if the Jif lemon had been sold since 1956, why wasn’t it registered as a trademark?

The answer is that, had they applied to register the Jif lemon as a trademark, the application would have been rejected by the registrar. This is because a mark that is a symbol of the goods or services it promotes does not qualify for registration. So, the Jif lemon is a symbol of lemon and lemon juice so it cannot be registered. If it is registered, it would prevent others from using a symbol of a lemon to sell lemon or lemon juice. Thus, Reckitt & Colman could only resort to a passing off claim in their fight against competition from ReaLemon. “

Top Business Research Tips

The wonderful business information expert Karen Blakeman of RBA Information Services publishes a list of top business research tips on her blog at the end of each of her Business Information workhops.

This is the list generated by the researchers attending her workshop in April. As you may have spotted the 10 has grown to 15 in this instance.

1. FITA Import Export Business and International Trade Leeds. http://www.fita.org/. The “Really Useful Links” in the menu on the left hand side of the screen takes you to a range of international sources on business information. One participant of this workshop found the “Doing business”, and in particular in the Middle East, especially useful.

2. Nationmaster http://www.nationmaster.com/. An interface to a plethora of statistics on web sites world wide. Some of the statistics are 2-3 years old but there are links to the original site so that you can search for more up to date information. Several participants suggested that this site is a good ‘index’ of where data is likely to be found.

3. Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/. One of several blog search engines, but this was singled out for its Trends graphs. These show how often your search terms are mentioned in posts over a selected period of time. In a business context the occurrences will usually match reports in the mainstream media. When they don’t, click on the peaks in the graph to see what is going on behind the scenes. Superb for picking up on rumours and gossip.

4. Yahoo Finance. Go to any Yahoo and click on the Finance link. For the UK version go to http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/. Yahoo Finance provides basic information on stock exchange quoted companies on the major stock exchanges around the world. Information includes current share price information (delayed by 15-30 minutes) provided by the stock exchanges; company profiles; charts in which you can compare the company share price with another company, the sector and an index such as the FTSE 100; current news on the company and focussing on the regulatory news; and daily historical share prices as figures that can be downloaded to spreadsheets.

5. Freepint Bar http://www.freepint.com/. Head for the discussion area, labelled as the Bar, where you can post your query and tap into the knowledge of regular ‘tipplers’

6. Silobreaker. http://www.silobreaker.com/. A new site pulling news from the usual newspapers and journals, but also blogs, video and audio. In addition It offers geographical hotspots, trends and a network visualisation tool, which was singled out by one participant.

7. Contact a relevant research, trade or professional body for help in locating experts. sources of information and reports. They may not have anything on their web site but there may something ‘on file’ that they are willing to supply free of charge or for which they are prepared to negotiate a fee.

8. Intelways. http://www.intelways.com/. An interface to many search tools grouped by type e.g. news, video, image. Type your search terms in once and click on the different search tools one by one. A reminder of the different types of information that you should be looking at and of the wide range of search engines that are out there.

9. Click on the Advanced Search option for any of the tools that you encounter, be it Google et al or a web site’s own search option. They offer great ways of focussing your search by date, file format, site, author etc.

10. RBA Business Sources. http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/. Selected sources of business information organised by type e.g. statistics, share prices, company registers. Yes, it is my own site [blush] but they did insist!

11. Phil Bradley’s web site and blog. http://www.philb.com/ and http://philbradley.typepad.com/. Excellent sources of information on Web 2.0 ’stuff’ and search tools. In particular, his blog has no-nonsense reviews of new search tools that claim they will change the world of search.

12. Intute. http://www.intute.ac.uk/. Forget about the ac.uk label. This is an excellent starting point for anyone working in business and wanting to identify quality resources on a wide range of subjects and industries.

13. Hometrack. http://www.hometrack.co.uk/. This site provides key statistics and data on the UK housing market and financing of that market. Especially relevant in the current economic climate.

14. Alacrasearch. http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch. A Google custom search engine that focuses on business sites selected by Alacra. [A personal note: this is in my top 5 favourite search tools].

15. CIA World Factbook - country profiles. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factboo/. Key statistics on every country. For those of you of a more adventurous disposition when it comes to travel, it even includes the number of airports with unpaved runways.

Free business news search engine from Northern Light

I remember Northern Light as one of the key early players in web search. It actually started in 1996, the same year that Google began as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, at Stanford University

However, for the last few years their services have been reserved for enterprise customers only. The good news it that they recently launched a free business news search engine called Northern Light Search.

It offers you the ability to register for free and set-up daily or weekly alerts on a range of saved searches you create.

However I believe its market research content makes for real killer content, as this is so difficult to find via standard search engines like Google.

Their Market Intelligence Wikis provide an overview of industries and business trends, with a detailed picture of market segments, issues, companies, and government regulatory actions.

“Our editors have been scouring the Web for authoritative analysis and commentary and for useful resources to create these concise, easy-to-navigate market intelligence wikis for the several industries listed below. If your industry is not already covered contact us or contribute to this public wiki!”

Topics Covered:
Accounting & Taxation
Aerospace & Defense
Agriculture
Automotive & Transportation
Banking & Financial Services
Chemicals & Plastics
Energy & Utilities
Environmental
Health Care
Insurance
Internet
Oil & Gas
Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
Private Equity & Venture Capital
Retail
Software, Computers, & Services
Telecommunications & Equipment

Many thanks for this tip to Warren Cheetham,  CitiLibraries|The New Townsville City

How To Protect Your Intellectual Property

When helping our customers wanting to protect their intellectual property as well as referring them to the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO), we also include Own-it, which offers free intellectual property advice for creative businesses.

Here is a summary of their offering:

“Own-it offers free (yes - free!) online advice to help you solve your IP issues. This could lead to a free one-to-one advice session with specialist lawyers!

To use the service you need to be an Own-it member so why not register now or log-in using the form on the right-hand side of this page.
How Does It Work?

We offer two levels of service:

1. Check to see if an answer to your query can be found on the information already on Own-it. We offer FAQs, factsheets, podcasts, articles and events. This will save you time because if the information you request is already provided on the website, we’ll simply direct you to that information.
2. If your issue needs legal advice or intervention, then fill in our online advice form. We will then either answer your query online or offer you one free meeting (max. 45 minutes) with a lawyer from Own-it’s associated intellectual property firms.

Am I Eligible?

1. You cannot use the Own-it IP clinics for any existing legal claims or for second opinions on any legal intervention already taking place.
2. Please note that the Own-it IP clinics are for IP related legal advice only. The lawyers will not be able to deal with non-IP related queries or provide related information.
3. Please note that the Own-it IP clinics are for business whose annual turnover is below £100,000″

London demographics from the GLA

One question that comes up frequently in the Business & IP Centre is, ‘where can I find demographic information for London’.

As part of my recent visit to the GLA (General London Authority) City Hall I discovered their Data Management and Analysis Group (DMAG) publish useful demographic information.

Even better these are all free and available as pdf’s from their website.

Subjects covered include:

* Diversity
* Education
* Elections
* Focus on London
* Health and disability
* Labour market
* Population
* Poverty

Here is a list of some of their more recent publications:

Census Information Note
Pay Check 2007
GLA 2007 Round Ward Ethnic Group Population Projections
Council Tax Analysis
A Profile of Londoners by Country of Birth
Claimant Count Model 2008: Technical Note
GLA 2007 Round Demographic Projections
Greater London Authority Constituency Profiles
Family Resources Survey 2005/06: Results for London
London Borough Migrations 2001-06
Social Exclusion Data Team Workplan