As we have been under the shadow of the Shard as it has been built over recent years, it is great to see it come together and see what it looks like from the top. This picture is taken by Will Pearson and his website gives you an amazing panoramic view...

As we have been under the shadow of the Shard as it has been built over recent years, it is great to see it come together and see what it looks like from the top. This picture is taken by Will Pearson and his website gives you an amazing panoramic view of what the view is like from the top. Displaying London at its finest, the site allows you to zoom in and have a look at all of the buildings that surround us.

The Shard will be the tallest building in Western Europe and has transformed the London skyline with a 310m (that's 1,016ft) vertical city of offices, world-renowned restaurants, the 5-star Shangri-La hotel, exclusive residential apartments and the capital's highest viewing gallery offering 360° views. It is fair to say that the Shard is a reminder of the power of imagination to inspire change and Pearon's photography really does illustrate the hidden beauty of London.

Take a look for yourself and see if you can find us or your own company office by clicking here.

Texaco or Tiffany? Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and if you are in a new relationship or hoping to soon be in one, odds are that you have already been planning how to wine, dine and shower with gifts that special someone. If you are married or i...

Texaco or Tiffany? Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and if you are in a new relationship or hoping to soon be in one, odds are that you have already been planning how to wine, dine and shower with gifts that special someone. If you are married or in a long-term relationship however, chances are you are more likely to be grabbing petrol station flowers on the way home from work on the day.

Our sister company The Channel Partnership have based their latest blog on this very concept as the same principle often applies in business. Click this link to read the article.

Mabox are currently helping long standing client, William Reed Business Media celebrate the 150th birthday of its flagship brand The Grocer with a new Big Brand Campaign. After all these years, (as our Aussie designer exclaimed, “that’s nearly as old a...

Mabox are currently helping long standing client, William Reed Business Media celebrate the 150th birthday of its flagship brand The Grocer with a new Big Brand Campaign. After all these years, (as our Aussie designer exclaimed, “that’s nearly as old as my country!”), The Grocer maintains its position as an innovative, market-leading brand, with a strong and loyal readership spanning the entire grocery industry. (Its innovation and relevance has been demonstrated through its dynamic subscriptions campaign with Mabox last year, winning two consecutive nominations for the PPA and B2B Marketing awards).

The aim of the Big Brand Campaign is to not only celebrate the significant ‘150’ milestone, but to challenge a common perception that The Grocer is ‘just a magazine’, in fact the brand- both in print and online – delivers news and opinion, jobs, awards, conferences and a growing digital platform. The Big Brand Campaign’s primary objective was to successfully position ‘The Grocer Family’ as the go to for all things FMCG showcasing the master brand and its core values, as well as promoting each member of the family, to enable cross-sell activity and drive revenue from the various products and services.

Mabox delivered a new positioning line for the master brand and a series of adverts for the master brand and each of the individual family members (jobs, awards, conferences and events). We have established a brand framework to ensure a common DNA and consistent visual identity across all parts of the brand, and to future proof so that the brand can continue to grow as new products and services are developed.  The chosen creative concept was a unanimous decision by the publishing, editorial and marketing team. It represents a completely new approach for the brand. Mabox delivered a suite of icons to represent the breadth of areas of FMCG that The Grocer touches – when used collectively the affect is impressive.

In addition to the ad campaign which launched in the 7th January anniversary issue of the magazine as well online, direct marketing activity (including both direct mail and email) is set to roll out over the coming months. The 150th anniversary presented a unique marketing opportunity to leverage The Grocer’s heritage and strength of brand; celebrating the past 150 years but more importantly looking forward to the next.

For help building your brand, give us a call on 0207 089 5380. Our Publishing and Media arm also specialises in delivering campaigns for clients within the sector – see our expertise page for more information.

“Nothing sucks like an Electrolux!” Bit harsh you might think, whatever your preferred brand of vacuum cleaner, but this wasn’t a comment from an irate punter on a social forum, it was actually the strap-line chosen by the Scandinavian appliance maker ...

“Nothing sucks like an Electrolux!” Bit harsh you might think, whatever your preferred brand of vacuum cleaner, but this wasn’t a comment from an irate punter on a social forum, it was actually the strap-line chosen by the Scandinavian appliance maker to launch its cleaner into the US market.

It seems that even a number of multinational companies have made marketing errors resulting in rather strange messaging to their target audience. Electrolux aren’t the only well-known brand to be left with ouef on their boat-races through lack of appreciation of the nuances of language or culture. Pepsi famously used a literal translation of their “Come alive with Pepsi” slogan in China and ended up telling bemused Chinese consumers that “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave”. And perhaps surprisingly, American airline, Braniff Airways’s exhortation to Spanish-speaking travelers to ‘Fly Naked’, rather than the intended ‘Fly in Leather’ (which still sounds pretty suspect to me) didn’t have the hoped for impact on sales.

Messages don’t just get lost in translation when marketing internationally. The same problem can occur even when all communications are in the same language. Our sister company, The Channel Partnership have written a blog that addresses this issue in more detail, along with a number of other examples of marketing gone wrong. Click this link to read the full article.

Over the Christmas break, in between travelling round the country visiting family, I got the chance to re-read a great book - the Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel.Death by PowerPoint is all too common in today’s business environment. Jon Steel's goal in writ...

Over the Christmas break, in between travelling round the country visiting family, I got the chance to re-read a great book - the Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel.
Death by PowerPoint is all too common in today’s business environment. Jon Steel's goal in writing this book is to save the world from dreadful presentations. It demonstrates negative examples, ranging from prostitute cards in London phone booths,  to what Winston Churchill's famous 'fight them on the beaches' speech would have been like as a PowerPoint presentation.

This book is primarily written for top creative agencies, but the thinking and approach can be  applied right down to the everyday business presentations that most of us are familiar with.

This book is over 5 years old now, but is as relevant today as it was when it first came out.
I highly recommend it and if I ever get the chance to pitch to you, I hope the key message of the book comes across; it is all about telling a story, not words on a PowerPoint.

Anyone involved in the business of B2B technology marketing knows that the rules of the game have changed. Buyers have easy access to more information than ever before, and as a result the reasons they engage with potential suppliers, and what they hop...

Anyone involved in the business of B2B technology marketing knows that the rules of the game have changed. Buyers have easy access to more information than ever before, and as a result the reasons they engage with potential suppliers, and what they hope to get out of those engagements, is changing. This has significant implications for the way that technology companies build and execute their go-to-market programmes. Read our blog on our sister company's site The Channel Partnership, about the importance of forming an opinion. 

For some of you the new year return to work will have created a feeling of dread. Times are tough right? Buyer confidence is low, the order book is suffering from a surfeit of white space and your pipeline seems to have more leaks than a BP drilling pl...

For some of you the new year return to work will have created a feeling of dread. Times are tough right? Buyer confidence is low, the order book is suffering from a surfeit of white space and your pipeline seems to have more leaks than a BP drilling platform. The CEO’s on your back and you can see the doubts in the eyes of your teams. “Do you REALLY know what you’re doing?” they seem to be asking.

It’s a stressful time to be a senior sales or marketing exec in the technology industry. And is it your fault? Like hell it is. In these market conditions what chance have you got?

Surely there’s got to be more to life than this. Maybe now’s the time to pursue a different course – you could give it all up and write that book you’ve always felt was inside you, or become a zumba teacher, or head off to India to get in touch with your spiritual side. Or if none of those work out, you could become an ‘independent consultant’ and focus on improving your golf.

One small problem – you couldn’t bring yourself to just quit. How would you explain it to your spouse, your friends or the 467 LinkedIn contacts you met somewhere once? So you’ll probably carry on, just about keeping afloat but getting progressively more miserable.

But there could be a way out. After extensive research we have identified twelve top Go-to-Market techniques, guaranteed to send your business the way of the dodo, video stores, and press integrity. Follow these techniques and we can pretty much guarantee that you’ll get to live the life you really deserve. And the great thing, the really cunning bit, is that there are loads of organisations out there already doing this stuff, so no-one is even going to realise that you’re implementing a brilliantly conceived exit strategy. It’s foolproof!

So click here to read our sister company, The Channel Partnership's guide to foolproof exit strategies:

Our sister company The Channel Partnership have now launched their new website. We hope you like the new look and the content. On visiting the site you will have noticed that we have a new strapline on the home page - ‘The Power of Alignment’. So what’...

Our sister company The Channel Partnership have now launched their new website. We hope you like the new look and the content. On visiting the site you will have noticed that we have a new strapline on the home page - ‘The Power of Alignment’. So what’s that all about we can almost hear you asking. ‘Alignment’ doesn’t sound particularly powerful. It’s not one of those thrusting, fancy, dynamic words that often crop up in straplines like ‘energise’ or ‘visionary’ or ‘transformational’.

Well we settled on the power of alignment as a key message because The Channel Partnership specialise in taking complex, technology-based products, that require a sophisticated B2B sales and marketing approach, to market. And we know from many years of collective experience in this area, that one of the key reasons go-to-market plans fail is lack of alignment.

This lack of alignment takes many forms - the execution team aren’t aligned behind the strategy, the value proposition isn’t aligned with the market need, the direct sales team aren’t aligned with the indirect channel, the sales training isn’t aligned with the marketing programmes, the creative approach isn’t aligned with the core value proposition, the PR messaging isn’t aligned with the thought leadership programme... We could go on (and sometimes do) but you get the point. Lack of alignment saps the power from any go-to-market programme.

So one of the things we focus on in the way we work is alignment. It’s why The Channel Partnership was formed – bringing together strategic consulting, creative marketing, channel enablement and programme management into one perfectly formed package.  So that we can deliver fully joined-up, integrated go-to-market programmes for our clients. The power of alignment - it might not be fancy, but it works!

Healthy Pompey is part of the Change4life movement delivering healthy lifestyle messages to the people of Portsmouth through the healthypompey.com website. Since Mabox first launched the web portal back in 2010, the site has developed a following of 5,...

Healthy Pompey is part of the Change4life movement delivering healthy lifestyle messages to the people of Portsmouth through the healthypompey.com website.

Since Mabox first launched the web portal back in 2010, the site has developed a following of 5,000 regular users, who use it to find out about local news, events and healthy activities, as well as a source of information to help them lead healthier lifestyles.

As part of the continuous development of the site, we have just expanded the healthy topic sections to include information and advice about a much wider range of critical health issues that we hope will benefit the local community,  including health screening and mental health.

Part of the expansion process was a new look for the New Year including an impressive new search directory which you can view here

This year, Mabox celebrated the festive season in true South American style! Starting with the traditional Christmas dinner and Secret Santa - presents ranged from restaurant guides to wedding photo albums to scarves… all having their uses, some more t...

This year, Mabox celebrated the festive season in true South American style! Starting with the traditional Christmas dinner and Secret Santa - presents ranged from restaurant guides to wedding photo albums to scarves… all having their uses, some more than others we suspect...

Afterwards, we moved onto Guanabara (yet again) to enjoy their infamous Samba carnival performers, some rather flexible Capoeira dancers and perhaps one too many cocktails. Despite the night bus home and some heavy heads in the morning, a merry Mabox time was had by all!