Amplats got it right Anglo American Platinum (Amplats for short) is the world’s largest producer of platinum. At the time of this case study, they had more than 48,000 employees (that’s 48 THOUSAND) on their mines in South Africa. In 2010, the head of Corporate Communications commissioned a demographic analysis of the workforce to see […]
CEOs are people too
Understand the worldview of your market Seth Godin writes: (Yes, the man is eminently sensible about Marketing and seems to be able to steer his thoughts away from the usual hype and silliness.) “[We have to ] Understand who it’s for. [Referring to advertising for Broadway plays] almost all the casting, play selection and advertising […]
What exactly do you pay us for?
The CEO of a small but successful commercial property management company, Real FMG, wanted to understand why some clients kept using their services, while others didn’t. He wanted to know what his business meant to his clients. This involved asking all the difficult questions, such as “what makes us different from the rest?” and “how do […]
Catching up with 30 years’ worth of designs
Origin stories The Grateful Dead had their breakthrough at Ken Kesey’s acid test parties. Superman was raised by George and Martha Kent. Hewlett Packard started in a garage. We hear origin stories all the time. They’re magnetic enough that we write books and make movies about them. Here’s the thing: The only thing they have […]
Pinpointing the problem and solving it
The proven way to add value is to do extremely difficult work, the kind of work that no-one else has thought of no-one else wants to do. Consider for a moment that what Apple has done to become a market leader, has been difficult. Consider that no-one wants to work with corpses, but undertakers will always […]
The beautiful world of perfume (1)
Jul. 13, 2014 – The world is full of perfumers, large perfume manufacturers, perfume houses as old as the history of some countries. When young perfumer and organic chemist, Max Millies, asked me to help design his perfume brand, I was intrigued. In a world overrun with mediocre and imitation perfumes, Max’s eaux de perfumes are true […]
Tell a compelling story with the right references
The answer to Who? Management consultancies are typically not created out of the blue. Consultants often provide businesses with specialized information and knowledge, more economically than client firms can do themselves, which means that the consultants need experience, and lots of it. As a result, very often a consultancy is only as good as its consultants. […]
Communication for orderly change at the City of Burnaby
The answer to who and, secondly, how? From Jan. 6, 2015, to Feb. 11, 2015, Marthe Bijman provided project communication services to the Engineering Department of the City of Burnaby. The Engineering Department was starting a project involving the establishment of a new, dedicated Projects Division within the department, with associated organizational changes. While there was […]
Producing winning propositions in a market downturn
Bid/proposal writer and lead for Mining Engineering firm Marthe Bijman of Red Pennant Communications has been providing business development services to the Canadian Mining Practice (CMP) of Tetra Tech, Inc. since July 2014. Jake Alexander, General Manager, Tetra Tech CMP, commented that “Marthe combined her strengths with those of the team to recover the business – […]
The art and science of perfume – Refreshing Maxiamo Perfumes in 2017
New Maxiamo Perfumes website/blog The Maxiamo Perfumes® website had existed for four years, and was completely static. This 2017 update or reinvention was necessitated by the fact that the operations side of the client’s business, Earthgro Fine Fragrances, had expanded significantly. Three more perfumes had gone into production (bear in mind that to bring one perfume into production can […]
How to get a large and complicated proposal right
The proposal was successfully shortlisted and Tetra Tech had the opportunity to present to the client’s Capital Project Engineering selection panel.
