Blog posts of '2017' 'October'

I was out shopping on Friday just gone to purchase some things for my brother in law's 50th birthday party that we were hosting at the weekend and several things struck me. No 1 was that the northern end of the Purley Way must be avoided at all costs even midday on a Friday during half-term. Secondly, PC World really should change it's name now as there seemed to be precious few PC's in it and a lot more toasters and televisions. Clearly a sign that the internet is the place that the vast majority of anyhting to do with computers is bought now. Lastly was that all of the shops have already stated to gear up for Christmas with decorations being some of teh first items for sale as you walk through the door.

We too have added our Christmas goods slider image to our homepage with a relevant message on it even if I do say so myself.

The clocks have gone back this weekend and so with the days turning to night much earlier all our attention must turn to Christmas because it is a matter of just a few weeks away now. Presenting your customers with little gifts to show them how much they are appreciated is never a wrong thing to do. Admittedly it is extremely difficult to quantify the positive impact on sales against the negative impact on cash-flow of giving gifts at Christmas but in a time where the very notion of customer loyalty is very much on the decline a handy reminder of your generosity staring at them from their desks cannot possibly hurt.

The other thing that is now a very good idea is to send them a good old fashioned Christmas card through the post, Ten years ago your card would probably have just got lost amongst all of the other cards they received but now a physical card stands out from the crowd and if you are clever and get the cards to land on their desks within the first few days of December your companies name will be on show right up to and into the first day back in the new year. 

Attrracting new customers is most businesses primary focus and where they aim all of their marketing but keeping existing customers is just as if not more important. If the total cost of a card is around £2.00 including the postage but it keeps a client for another year that sounds like £2.00 well spent to me. It's time to stop thinking about about what you're going to do and start doing it.

When I initially upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 all was perfectly hunky dory thank you. My Mac could see and talk to my PC and vica versa. Both machines have gigabit ethernet cards and my router has gigabit ports as well so network traffic was fast and furious. Then I made what was seemingly a sensible decision to install the "Creator" update for Windows 10 as I belive that from a security point of view it is important to install all updates and patches when they become available. Little did I know that from that moment on my Mac would no longer be able to see or connect to my PC. Further experiments on my part showed that using the wired ethernet connection my PC could see my Mac and connect to it but not the other way round. Needless to say many, far too many hours were spent turning firewalls off and back on again, chnaging the actual leads to the router etc and of course googling every conceivable phrase to describe the problem. More frustrating still was that if I used the wireless connection on the PC then suddenly the PC would appear when I browsed the network on the Mac and so for the last few months I have had to settle for that.

Last Friday though I had a few hours that I could once again devote to the problem and previous google searches had thrown up the snippet that the Creator update had wrecked the Master Browser function in Windows and a brief play with this did seem to have real promise. It's quite maddening that on Friday I did 3 things that either individually or collectively have solved the problem totally and I am now back with my full gigabit connectivity.

Firstly I discovered a post from someone that seemed to be an ex Microsoft programmer that made it clear I needed to disable something called SMBv1. SMB for those that want to know stands for Server Message Block and is a protocol that is commonly used in networking and is certainly the one used by my Mac to talk to my PC. Apparently by disabling SMBv1 it forces the computer to use the more secure SMBv2 and the even more efficient SMBv3. To do this you need to open a command prompt window with administrator prvileges and type the following 2 commands pressing enter after each one and then restarting the computer:

sc.exe config lanmanworkstation depend=bowser/mrxsmb20/nsi

sc.exe config mrxsmb10 start=disabled

Obviously what I should have done was see if this alone had solved my problem but me being me I started the process of installing the Windows 10 Creator Fall update and couldnt interupt it to check, silly boy. After the update fell over once and had to be restarted it did however install on the second attempt. The main reason for me wanting to install this update so soon after it had been released was I had noticed so many people complaining that Windows had broken the Master Browser in the previous update that I was hoping that they had fixed it in this one. A triumph of hope over experience I know. Once this had installed and I had restarted a couple of times I was keen to try my ethernet connection and it was at this moment a new problem reared its head. The ethernet connection would connect straight away but every couple of minutes it would keep the network connection but drop the internet and then the internet would come back but only for a couple of minutes before repeating the cycle. 

This was a new problem, the first thing to do was to make sure the latest driver was installed which Windows assured me that the adapter already had the best driver available. I did however go onto the manufacturer of the card's website and downloaded the same driver and installed that one instead. Still the same problem, damn it. So as a last resort I found a driver that was dated 2009 and was suitable for a 64bit version of Windows XP, I forced the installation of that driver instead of the latest one and hey presto all of my network problems have been solved, yaaayyyy.

I am writing this blog whilst drinking a glass of champagne, cos I bloody well deserve it!!

It seems that the must have item in every home at the moment is a "Fidget Spinner", something of a craze that until I tried one seemed completely pointless to me. The relevant phrase though is "until I tried one", something very weirdly satisfying and calming about having this strange object spinning around on your finger! 

What became clear though is that you need a good quality "spinner" to really get teh best out of it. Have a look at this one on our website:

Either search for "Pure Copper Fidget Spinner" or for "SC00232459" and just think what a great promotional gift for your customers these would make for at Christmas this year. Certainly for me these are more effective than the good old fashioned stress ball and a much more quality gift feel to it. We have a large range of these must have gifts this year so if a copper ships wheel is not your thing how about one of these:

These are made from a copper alloy and can be either lasered or engraved with a logo, search for SC00231835 for all the details. Just remember that whatever else you do this Christmas make sure you keep your customers spinning!!

A few years ago marketing guru's in America claimed that you should change your logo every few years and I thought at the time it seemed a bit extreme but my toils over the weekend might just have convinced me otherwise. 

Having succumbed to much pressure from the wife I very reluctantly put my old decorating clothes on and opened a tin of paint for the first time in many years. I loathe deocrating personally as I spent most of my teens doing it rather than getting out enjoying myself. I have to say though that the result does appear to be a spectacular improvement as this picture illustrates:

Unfortunately I might well be a victim of my own success, aaaarrrrgghhh!!

However maybe it's time you consider doing a similar thing to your own brand and see if you can achieve a similarly spectacular improvement in your company's image.

If any of the following are true then it really is time to act:

• Your brand has changed its name.
• Your company has modified its service or product offerings.
• You haven't changed your logo in over a decade.
• Your current logo was not professionally designed and could be improved.

Any of those ring true? If so come and talk to us and revitalise your company image.

Where has this year gone to? In exactly 12 weeks time it will be Christmas again and I've only just gotten rid of the excess packaging from the last one, and I mean the wrapping paper not the excess packaging I put on personally. It's quite incredible but every year I do my charity bike ride around mid Septemvber and every year when I go it's still the end of summer but when I get back just typically 5 days later it is quite definitely autumn. It seems that the trees pick just those 5 days to shed all their leaves, amazing. I know everybody says it and I know the theorys that attempt to explain it but every year goes by quicker than the last one.

At the moment we have our Halloween / November the 5th slider active.

It won't be long now until I need to change this for a much more Christmassy one. The industry has changed so much in recent years with the number of companies sending physical Christmas cards declining every year in favour of eCards. The numbers though are still very impressive, the UK sends more cards per person than any other nation, an average of 33 each. Greeting cards are stocked in more retail outlets than any other product with one in six retailers offering them for sale.

The very first commercial Christmas card was invented in 1846 by Sir Henry Cole who was the chief organiser of the Great Exhibition, pioneer of the penny post and founder of the V&A Museum. One of his first Christmas cards that he sent to his grandmother recently sold at auction for £22,500, wow. His first card however was a bit controversial because it pictured several people holding glasses of wine thus associating the Holy Christmas and alchohol which many deemed offensive.

The greeting card industry is still worth £1.75 billion per year with Christmas cards accounting for over 60% of all cards sold so perhaps it's a bit early to be consigning them to the annuls of history just yet. Maybe the corporate Christmas card will make a comeback soon, I can only hope so.