The ‘Glasgow: Scotland With Style’ campaign has been with us for a few years now, but has it worked? I’m sure there is a middle manager at the council in a pokey office who assures us it has.

Personally, I think the message is just fine, but I just can’t figure who we are directing it at. If it is continental Europe, we are seriously delusional while Americans and Canadians looking for style would probably go to London, Paris or just get a Jet Blue flight to New York.

Are we (once again) trying to out do Edinburgh, or are we really trying to convince ourselves?

I’m not saying that Glasgowians don't have style. There are alot of stylish people around the City Centre, West-End, Merchant City and almost every outer suburb. I just think there is more sense in marketing Glasgow a parallel to international visitor’s expectations.

We can learn alot from Queensland, the Northeastern most state in Australia. They have just run one of their most successful campaigns ever: “The Best Job in The World”. The Queensland state government set the internet alight by advertising a £72000 caretaker job;  6 month contract including a luxury 3 bedroom condo a tropical island. The catch? The successful applicant needed to write a weekly blog... That’s all. I guess not getting eaten by a tiger shark, poised by a brown snake or stung by a box jellyfish may have been buried in the contract too though.

The Queensland government could have gone a different way though. There were grumblings a few years ago that the surf, sun and sea marketing campaigns were making the place appear quite shallow. It is fact that Queensland is a world leader in renewable energy research, but that isn’t in line with international visitor’s expectations, so that’s kept to business investment campaigns.

This is the same with the Glasgow marketing efforts. Sure, we are all sick of tartan and bagpipes, but look at the success of Visit Scotland’s ‘Homecoming ‘campaign.

The visitors want bagpipes and tartan, not a Fendi handbag.  

As Mary Queen of Scot’s said: “Let them eat shortbread!”

As Richard Goizueta (the former  Chairman of Coca Cola) famously stated:

“There are only 3 steadfast rules for branding, differentiate, differentiate, differentiate”

This doesn’t mean being weird though. As my father not so famously stated:

“Just because nobody understands you, it doesn’t make you an artist”

Roughly translated from Australian to English, he was making the point that you shouldn’t be creative for creative’s sake. Confused? So was I (although I was a 5 year old who had attempted to draw the family home with crayons). 

We have just put the finishing touches on our first iPhone application. It's now queued for review by the folks at Apple, so hopefully soon it will be available to all of you iPhone users.

It is a free application that brings together news affecting Scottish SME's from around Scotland and the UK. There is also an innovation feed that should give you some ideas on technology, management and promotion to help your business stay ahead of the pack.

We decided to build our own application first so we can iron out any issues. We plan to have an iPhone App service available by March 1st, and it looks like it will cost around £600.

More news when it comes to hand....

Christmas always seems to come at the wrong time for me, and this year is no exception. The fact that it comes on the same date every year doesn't matter, it always seems to arrive when i'm least expecting it.

Long days, long nights trying to push through projects that, for one reason or another, have already been delayed (apologies to Mrs Patrick, Mr Hurst 1 and Mr Hurst 2). The plan is to get things finished by Christmas Day, after which I will have around 7 days of peace and quiet. After January 1, there will be lots to do, but the preceding few days will be devoted entirely to housekeeping for the business. Reviewing the past year in terms of our Key Performance Indicators, securing the new premises, getting new faces onboard, revitalising our service offering, outlining an 18 month marketing plan.