Reed Elsevier’s first quarter 2013 statement is encouraging reading. Not only for RE’s shareholders but for the whole sector of publishers and information providers. Revenue growth was in line with 2012 which was 4%. Even better, underlying profit growth in 2012 was 6%. Shareholder sweetener The shareholders are getting a sweetener: £181 million has been Read More
Month: April 2013
No scandal at Wimbledon tennis?
The importance of brand reputation was re-enforced for me yesterday in a trip to the Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon. Our informed and entertaining host Ben Swann had us list major sporting events. Test Cricket, The Olympics, The World Cup and other events went on the board. And what is the difference between them and Read More
What makes a great magazine cover?
Excellent cover this week from Country Life. It has all the elements: the image of the cottage; the innuendo in “Somewhere for the weekend”; the announcement that Prince Charles will be a guest editor; chocolate; and love. Plus all that property porn in 61 pages. It should fly off the shelves. Enter our picture-caption competiton Read More
Five ways to stop churnalism
Let’s try again to get rid of “churnalism”: the rewriting of press releases masquerading as news. Here’s my five ways to do it: 1 Look for patterns in the news flow. A company launches a product: who has launched a product like this recently? So instead of the intro being “So-and-so launched a new gizmo Read More