We all like to trim the fat at the beginning of a New Year. We all try to consume less, get fitter and cut back on unnecessary luxuries. What about in your organisation? Think optimisation rather than reduction.

There are many challenges and looking at the year ahead there are some big decisions to make (carefully).

Return on Investment

Instead of just cutting back on marketing activities to reign in your budget before the fiscal year end, it pays to think strategically about how you are spending your campaign allocation.

Are you focusing on promotional activities or on brand building ones? Whether at the end or the beginning of a campaign, analysing return on investment is a smart strategy to ensure that your efforts are reaping the most rewards and a good way to build your learning for next time.

If short-term results are important to you tactical initiatives are a good way to reach your goals providing they consider the bigger picture. Select targeting with an offer and call to action with efficient measurement can do wonders to deliver quick ROI.

Longer-term programmes will require deeper investment in time and resources to ensure your research and planning provide the robust platform for a strong brief. This time and process is critical to ensure that sales and marketing outcomes are aligned with your forecast return.

Re-evaluating Your Competitive Advantage

Why not spend the first few months of 2011 re-evaluating your competitive advantage? You can do this by looking at your market, your customers, trends, your product, offer and key messaging making sure that you haven’t taken the easy train… making sure that you are maintaining your position in the market and keeping the revenue flowing in.

One thing is for certain, at least one of your competitors will, as a minimum, be looking to creep slowly into your point of differentiation having redefined their own competitive advantage against you. It’s never too late to make a slight change moving forward, to invest a day in a workshop to step back from your business or to try something new.

Get on the weighing scales

A helpful cleansing exercise is to take a look back and review what you said you needed to achieve and what you actually did achieve. This can be done statistically, financially, visually and even by actually doing some simple research to sense check. Are you slipping back into old habits? It’s easy to eat takeaway when it’s convenient, and there’s nothing wrong with it in moderation, as long as a quick and easy solution isn’t taking over your well-intentioned strategy or plan. Use this exercise to plan out where you want to go, and to ensure you keep doing what’s good and change what’s not so good.

Best wishes for gaining a competitive advantage in 2011.

This week Lord Sugar challenged the burgeoning potential apprentices to purchase a collection of items for low a cost as possible. Many of the items unknown, the group were split up into the original men versus women teams and both had very different tactics and had especially varying results.

The women’s team was led by Liz, and they started the challenge on the phone. The ladies tried as best they could to locate all of the products on their list and arrange purchase. They headed out shopping with a plan. The ladies maintained a corporate image during the day and tried to remain professional while being aggressive with the sellers. On one hand, the planning strategy was successful – the ladies managed to purchase all of the items. One fault however was that the women were too focused on finding all the items, not necessarily on finding one with the lowest cost.

Liz actually said “this task is all about locating the items, because we don’t want to incur the penalties, we don’t have time to shop around. It’s about finding the supplier and really negotiating that price down”. The ladies certainly found suppliers, but they were not very successful in negotiating the prices down, and did not find places with lower prices to start with.

The men’s team took a different approach. With little to no planning, they did however have a strategy. Team leader Jamie motivated his team and tasked them with offering a price of 70% lower than what the sellers were asking for. Jamie also asked his team, in each situation, to create a story that justified why they need to purchase the item at the reduced price.

Strangely enough, in the end the women purchased all of the items, and the men purchased 7 of the items. Due to the fact that the women were late returning in the evening, they incurred a £50 penalty while the men incurred a £50 pound penalty for each of the 3 items that they did not purchase, plus the retail price of those same items. In quite a boardroom shocker, the men won the challenge. This astonishing feat was due to the fact that unfortunately, in a few instances the women paid more than the regular asking price for one of the items on their list. The truffles in particular, knowing that the street price for the quantity that they were looking for was £100 but also being told that they were like gold dust, Laura made an opening offer of £200 to a restaurant in Knightsbridge. This decision ultimately cost Laura in the boardroom and she was sent home.

Interestingly, the women were much less aggressive in their negotiating style then the men.  The men were very persistent in their negotiating, almost to the point of being rude. The women on the other hand, on multiple occasions indicated that they didn’t want to be rude to the shopkeepers, and that they wanted to remain professional.

The financial penalties in this task were quite steep, and because the women’s team bought all items and the men’s team only bought 7, you would think that the women would have been the task winners. Whether by luck or strategy, the men’s team managed to beat the ladies by paying significantly lower prices then them for the items which they did purchase.

Whether you agree with the tactics undertaken by the men, they did have a sound strategy and were first and foremost focused on a low price, while the women were more focused on locating each item. A few poor choices for the women was too much of a match for the luck/skill that the men had in locating bargain prices.

The lesson for today? Strategy, strategy, strategy!

Yes, the Queen is on Facebook. It was inevitable and we should have seen it coming ever since she addressed the world on Youtube. If only I had been smart enough to snatch up www.facebook.com/thebritishmonarchy I could have made a small sum, or even owned an unofficial monarchy page.

Engagement you ask? Not the Prince William type (and we actually did write this just before Prince William announced his engagement to Kate Middleton today), the other kind of engagement. The British Monarchy engaging their audiences who spend their time in Facebook, and whom are getting a very warm welcome.

It’s been about two weeks and at a last count there have been hundreds of thousands of followers that have “liked” them. Depending on how Prince William and Kate use this new medium to communicate with Royal fans, the potential for followers is exponential.

Although expected, I was caught by surprise by a small, tiny comment on the homepage in the haiku-like “about me” box. “Please note that any offensive comments will be deleted”.

A question asked by many companies and organisations when setting up a Facebook page, is whether or not to delete negative comments. Now interestingly enough, the posting to wall functionality has been disabled, however what the general public can do, is comment on a royal post.

Perhaps in one of the most engaging mediums of all time, the general public has a desire to comment on these pictures, most likely posted by someone in a position of relatively high responsibility at an advertising agency or a digital media agency.

As you can see from the posting, these fans are engaging in a genuine and utmost authentic way. “What a thrill” to see my favorite actresses receiving MBE’s as noted by Stuart Parkinson for the world to see.

“I wonder what the joke was” asks Sean Schilke. Is the ability to comment on pictures and activities of the Royal family strengthening people’s brand association with the Monarchy?

At least the new Royal wind farm developments can fund the room full of people who will spend every waking hour reviewing each and every last comment, deleting the offensive comments. It will be very interesting to see the how many people will grow to “like” the royal family, and whether or not it will contribute to national and international “liking” of the Monarchy.

While taking a mental break from the Apprentice over the weekend, I read that Hugh Hefner is re-opening London’s Playboy Club. In case the Playboy-merchandised store on Oxford Street wasn’t enough to fulfill your Playboy needs, the revival of the London establishment will be located in Mayfair and is scheduled to open in 2011.

My primary experience with the Playboy brand stems from the popular reality show “Girls Next Door”. The show first became popular in 2005 and launched the celebrity careers of Holly, Bridget and Kendra, Hef’s girlfriend’s. The reality show offered a glimpse into both the celebrity filled lives of the bunnies, Hefner himself, and also a glimpse into their curfews, schedules and professional development. Bridget for example, hosted a radio show while Holly was trained in editorial and post-production work. Now that the girls have grown up, Kendra is married with a child and now has her own reality show and Hef has moved on to new girlfriends including the Shannon twins plus blond bombshell Crystal Harris.

Although Hef and the Playboy brand doesn’t offer the same appeal it once did, it still has amassed incredible awareness, and is undoubtedly a topic of household discussion at certain dinner tables.

The opening of the London restaurant, casino, and lounge extravaganza comes at a time when the company must need to diversify. Increasing levels of free online porn, and the appeal of a busty lady no longer racks in the cash it once did. The success of the club will be heavily dependent on the celebrity intake, and we certainly know some ex-bunnies who will guaranteed red carpet places.

There were certainly be a plethora of tourists to fill the seats, but we will have to wait and see how many stars show up on opening night. The opening of the venue certainly comes at a time when people are taking fewer vacations and there will be ample unemployed curvy ladies from all parts of the world vying to dress up as a bunny.

I wonder if the event organisers will let Hugh glide across the red carpet on a mobility scooter?

When I was younger I attended every leadership seminar and workshop you can imagine. I’m not sure how they came up, whether my parents had enrolled me or not, but I went to them all. One of the more common lessons or exercises involved a piece of paper that seemed to look like a blank school timetable. The schedule was actually for the entire week, and was blank aside from listing the times of day on the left hand column and the days of the week across the top. I remember doing this same exercise regularly- at least a few times a year.

The goal of the exercise was to mark in scheduled activities during the week like work and sleep, and then to visually impress upon you how much time you have in the run of a week in which you cannot account for. Although designed as a means to fit in extra curricular activities along with school work, it is certainly a useful exercise for anyone challenged by productivity and have difficulty scheduling their work day.

As an experiment for a day or a week, try breaking your day down into 10 or even 15-minute chunks. A lawyer friend was explaining to me that for billing purposes, his day was filled with organising every last 10 minutes as much as possible, maximizing his yearly billing hours. I remember him telling me that although he was physically in the office for often 10-12 hours a day, actually billing an eight hour day was rare. What do you do with your time at work? Toilet breaks, chats with friends or assistants and even coffee breaks add up. Now please note that I am not suggesting that everyone must do eight hours of work per day, I am merely suggesting that when challenged for time think about how you could better schedule your day.

Welcome the new Google Inbox. We all know that e-mail takes up a significant amount of time in our daily lives, and that the new Google Inbox will help us manage our e-mail time.

The addition of mail prioritisation in Gmail is very exciting and is receiving a great deal of press. It’s trending on Twitter and all of Gmail’s heavy users are thinking about how to best organise the hundreds of e-mails they receive every day. With risk of sounding cynical (and I am a true Gmail user and will be using the new system of prioritisation) please consider some of the points below. The new prioritisation system is obviously innovative and will change the way we use e-mail.

Less likely to forget e-mail
We all get daily e-mail messages that are important but not urgent. I myself have been guilty of “replying and archiving” a message that I intended to keep in my inbox as a reminder, when I meant to just “reply”. The new prioritisation and scheduling of e-mails means that it is less likely that you will loose or misplace an e-mail, depending on how much control you give the filters, ensuring that e-mails from your boss never get mixed up with the “remind in 2 weeks” tabs.

E-mail procrastination
The new e-mail prioritisation system makes way for an entirely new form of e-mail procrastination. Some argue that 24 hours is a fair length of time to respond to a non-urgent e-mail, but others argue that the length should be 1-2 hours during business hours. With e-mails out of sight (ie. Temporarily out of your inbox,) out of mind, how long will we leave them? Let’s say Monday lunchtime I designate half of my e-mails to return again Tuesday morning. They weren’t urgent, so I’ll address them with my morning coffee. Will that be an effective use of my time? Tuesday morning (as every morning) you will still open your inbox to find the usual day’s e-mails, in addition to all the ones that you saw on Monday and asked to return on Tuesday.

Apparently Google’s amazing algorithms will be able to automatically predict what is urgent and what is less urgent, and file them accordingly. Like an automatic assistant, this service will need to develop the trust of users to truly be effective.

Is the Google e-mail prioritisation simply giving us permission to procrastinate longer when replying to our e-mails? Will we simply get overwhelmed in a cycle where we respond urgent e-mails now, and less urgent e-mails in a few days?
Other than revising how we manage e-mails, I don’t anticipate having to spend less time responding to e-mails, and I don’t expect you’ll be able to either.

One of the writers that we work with has some great regular tips at The Oxford Word Barber. His observations are sublime, his content is funny as well as educational and he makes complete sense… sometimes!

Whilst sitting at the traffic lights on the busy Talgarth Road junction near Earls Court, my attention was drawn to a For Sale sign on one of the very attractive buildings fronting the carriageway. It reads ‘RememberTheWindow.com‘. 48 hours later I was sat at my desk and guess what popped into my head for no conscious reason?

Through a stroke of pure memorable relevance and then personal intrigue, I was drawn in to the Blog site of Christian Braun and his family who, having had no success through Estate Agents, are trying to sell their home privately online.

I’m not in the market to part with £1.395M for a slice of England’s not so green and pleasant juxtaposed A4 despite the buildings beauty, but you have to applaud this chaps strategy and passion for promoting this house. It’s certainly drawing a crowd. Good luck Christian.

Check out RememberTheWindow.com and also see the coverage he got in The Sunday Times.

If you haven’t read the succinct news report offered by The Guardian’s Media Monkey this week, following their alluring offer of an interview with the illusive Banksy, I suggest you read on….Even when interviewed, this great English graffiti artist maintains quasi-anonymity….

Banksy; painting a False Picture – The Guardian Guide offered readers an interview on Saturday with famously reclusive street artist Banksy, who shared his thoughts on Rolf Harris, Top Gear’s Stig and his ambition to paint a “giant comedy cock” on the walls of the Guide if he ever broke into its offices. If only. As the Guardian’s readers’ editor said today: “An interview purporting to be with Banksy in last Saturday’s Guide (One last thing … , 18 July, page 98, the Guide) was, it transpires, conducted with someone impersonating the graffiti artist. We apologise to Banksy for this error and for any offence and inconvenience caused.”

On this day that has been gripped by the passing of two stars, namely Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, we are surrounded by a media explosion, mass public reaction – not to mention of course the loss that two families have to cope with.

But what we have to do is put all of this in perspective. Get a grip and learn from this – as so eloquently put in an e-newsletter today from the leading catering and hospitality publication, and I quote:-

“I’m starting with the man in the mirror; I’m asking him to change his ways; And no message could have been any clearer; If you wanna make the world a better place; Take a look at yourself and then make a change. As the world digests the passing of Michael Jackson, the restaurant industry is also being asked to look inwardly and make a change on the controversial issue of service charge…….” News Editor, 26 June 2009.

Phew..er, a joke, surely? Afraid not.

So, after the devastating Italian earthquake, did they make comparisons to the downfall in popularity of Italian restaurants and the need to up their game?

What utter guff.