Happy Birthday PowerPoint

Happy Birthday PowerPoint! According to The Wall Street Journal, the very first version, PowerPoint 1.0, arrived twenty years ago and many would say that it’s been guilty of boring many of us to tears in that time. To be fair, it’s not PowerPoint that’s bored us, it’s been the presenters. The downside of PowerPoint is that the standard templates aimed at helping people actually make most presentations the ‘same as’ (or ‘as bad as’) everyone else’s. The result? safe, boring, even dull.

PowerPoint can, and should help people ‘differentiate’ themselves from others. It can be a great way of ‘demonstrating’ your difference, even ‘dramatically demonstrating’ it, if you get it right. This can simply

Floods In Sheffield – Office Closed

We’ve had to close the office today because of the devastating floods in Sheffield.

Fortunately we’re all safe (I’m in Portugal far far away!).

Unfortunately, our

Leadership Looks Easy

We’ve all done it, I’m sure. Sat there in a plane on the tarmac, waiting to go, and clearly nothing is happening. What makes it even worse, is the lack of, or no, announcements telling us what’s going on (or isn’t). I’ve just experienced the opposite.

Saturday morning on the Easyjet flight to Faro, Portugal, and we’re taxiing on the runway ready for take off when suddenly we turn back. The Captain immediately explains 42

Seen To Be Green?

More and more businesses are apparently turning ‘green’. Too many, I fear, aren’t doing it really, but are pretending they are. I saw a billboard today for a fabric conditioner that, because it’s ‘concentrated’, apparently

Reserving A Space For The Deserving

A

Get It, Taste It, Name It

Doritos X-13D is a prototype potato crisp just launched in the US. Customers are asked to

Think Carlsberg, Think ‘Awful’

At the brand new Wembley Stadium last night to see Muse in concert. High expectations of the stadium, experience was ‘ok’ – were my expectations too high? At

Lapping Up The Publicity!

Is this the world’s biggest advertisement?

The 100,000 square foot advertisement is on the flight path into Gatwick airport, and is only visible from the air. It’s certainly caused quite a stir!

Sometimes, ‘breaking the pattern’ means promoting your business in a ‘dramatically different’ way rather than having a radically different product or service.

Myprivatedance.com certainly seems to have done that alright!

Hats off to them, I say (and probably everything else off too I suspect, but that’s a different matter!).

The 50 Best Business Blogs

The Times has produced a list of the 50 Best Business Blogs. It’s good to see Seth Godin in there along with a few other favourites. They’ve categorised them by industry sector which is useful for helping you identify stuff

An ‘ACE’ Meeting In The Black Country

A great morning in the West midlands today with the Academy For Chief Executives. Here are the slides from my session. You might also be interested in this article which talks about Fred Reicheld’s Net Promoter Score

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