Posts Tagged ‘Cork’

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When mistakes are good

February 4, 2014

Kolo Toure mistake

I watched in horror as the most experienced defender on the pitch gifted the ball to the West Brom striker (formerly from Everton, of course) on the edge of the Liverpool FC box.

Sure enough he buried the ball in the corner past Simon Mignolet to level the match – damn!

Typical ….after thumping Everton a few days previous in a really “tough” match 4-nil, we (when it’s your team you have to say “we”)  threw away a lead in a game we were in total control of.

In truth the game was too easy – it’s as if the players slipped into second gear waiting on the in-form Liverpool strikers Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge to score a few more goals against this very ordinary West Brom team.

The poor defender Kolo Toure hung his head in shame as he knew he made a huge mistake, which contributed to throwing away two valuable points.

The manager Brendan Rodgers was asked after the game about this huge mistake.

Instead of blaming the player he applauded the courage and bravery of the Liverpool defenders to play football instead of booting the ball aimlessly down the pitch. His philosophy is to encourage them to use the ball, pass it and play it forward intelligently.

He made the point that when you take this brave approach you do run the risk of making mistakes and that this one was the first all season, which actually cost the team.

While the mistake hurts deeply when it comes along he reckons it is a price worth paying for playing great football – in truth there is no comparison between the football Liverpool are playing now and some of the awful stuff from a few years ago.

I just left a meeting where everyone is petrified of doing anything because they will know they will get hammered if they make a mistake – the result …no one is doing anything!

To get the best results from your team do you have to allow some mistakes?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Management, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity, Staff training, Teamwork | 2 Comments »

Taking it too personally

February 1, 2014

Ireland dejected after New Zealand loss

“You just take things too personally”

This was said in some way to imply a criticism, that taking things too personally was a negative thing and that in some way it might even be a little unprofessional.

Maybe this is an issue and I wonder what the opposite might look like?

  • Not caring if you are on the subs bench
  • Not bothering when you don’t win a proposal that you worked your socks off on
  • Not being bothered when the manager takes you off in a match
  • Not caring if your clients project is a success or failure
  • Not caring when a team mate is taking abuse by an opposing player
  • Happily leaving a client take a route you feel won’t work
  • Not celebrating when you score a goal
  • Not caring whether your work colleagues get on or not
  • Knowing a team mate will go to whatever team pays the biggest money
  • Taking no notice when colleagues leave on the button when there are others under pressure
  • Not caring when a teammate is treated unfairly by the manager
  • Turning up and just doing what you are paid to do
  • Not being gutted when you deserved to win a match
  • Having no pride in the business
  • Feeling no responsibility for the club
  • Not being passionate about what you do

This list could go on and on …

Who do you want on your team?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Motivation, Personal development, Teamwork | 1 Comment »

The blog about blogging

January 24, 2014

Blogging for business

I was in the Guinness Storehouse last week at a client event and two people I had never met before came up to me and started chatting to me because of blogs of mine that they read. One of these conversations was on the way into the loo!

One of these posts was about the Jobbridge scheme and the other was about companies undoing the good by overselling.

Yesterday afternoon I came across an incredible blog post via Twitter , which gave me huge insight into the life of a friend of mine.

It struck home to me once again the reach and impact that blogs have and how powerful this activity has been for me and for our business, Fuzion.

I’m dedicated to writing at least one blog post every week, which I publish and circulate across my different social media platforms. Typically I will write it over the weekend on the laptop or first thing in the morning like this one ..

You could be reading this post from an email or direct from my blog site or you may have stumbled across it as a follower of mine or Fuzion on twitter, a friend of mine on Facebook, a fan of the Fuzion business page on Facebook or maybe on LinkedIn, either as a status update or posted as a discussion post on a LinkedIn group.

In any scenario I write my blog post, which gives me the ability to reach a big audience across a variety of platforms.

Hopefully anyone who reads them will find the posts interesting (I vary them between technical marketing orientated posts, some business observations and some very random personal and other posts) and as a result will form some sort of an opinion about me and Fuzion. Hopefully these opinions are good and if the need arises for our range of services we will be in the frame as a possible provider!

Yes, that is a reason that I write them but I also write them because I enjoy writing, connecting and receiving feedback. I get a buzz from them … Sad but true !

My blogs are hosted on the WordPress platform, which is easy to use, is well optimised and it provides me with great stats and insights about how readers came to my site and which posts have been read the most (or least!).

In terms of ideas I use a little notepad on my iPhone where I jot them down when they come to me and when I have time I have a peep at my list …. sometimes I see these notes and I just can’t figure out what I had in mind when I jotted them down!

So …. The big question – why blog at all?

Here are my reasons why you might consider it –

Social Media Noise – it is hard to grab attention online at this stage as it is a very congested place. By generating your own (hopefully quality) content you can stand out.

Expertise – what better way to demonstrate your expertise about your business than writing about it?

Passion – if you are passionate about what you do, your blog is a terrific way to demonstrate this. Passion is hard to hide!

Optimisation – at a very practical level if you write online about your subject matter enough and use the right keywords and follow some simple SEO protocol you will be found much easier by people searching

Writing Skills – blog writing sharpens your writing skills and it also helps to formulate your ideas and thoughts properly around your topics

Idea generation – once you commit to a blog a week/day/month you will be surprised how ideas come to you and how much sharper your mind gets after a while

Testing topics – you can gauge media potential for a topic through a blog post

Rant! – sometimes you might need to take on a topic or issue online and writing a blog and distributing it through your social media platforms can be extremely powerful.

Business – if you do it right with a clear focus and some patience your efforts will result in new business

Personality – your blog is a great way for people to get to know you, understand you, see what motivates and inspires you and possibly wish to do business with you. The platform gives you an opportunity to be less formal on a website for example.

Social Media Raw Material – After a while you will build up a bank of blog posts, which can provide valuable material to feed your hungry social media platforms. Many of your blog posts, depending on the topic are capable of being recycled – great tips and advice will not date.

This prize is there waiting for you (most of your competitors surprisingly won’t grab it) so it is up to you to seize the opportunity and be the one in your sector who is winning by blogging.

It might feel strange at first but like everything practice makes perfect and in no time at all you will be flying ..

Go on …you are just one click away!

Check out Tips about Blogging and Making some Noise

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Complaints make Great Gifts!

January 20, 2014

Complaints make Great Gifts

“Can I meet you in the morning” was the request.

Oh no.. from the tone I felt a complaint coming – I wondered what was wrong.

This was a really good account and we were just at the early stages of working with this client. The project was quite complex, which involved quite a few members of our team.

There were quite a number of elements to the project including graphic design, web design, social media, event management, internal communications and PR. We pride ourselves on being able to handle all of these in-house, which is a real strength of ours.

Our team had been briefed well and each of us were working diligently on our own part of the project and liaising directly with the client.

Our relationship had started off in a really positive manner so I was really concerned and confused that something could be wrong.

We met and sure enough our client expressed a concern about how things were going with the project.

The client’s problem was really simple – While we were all quite clear about what we were doing he was overwhelmed by the correspondence and interaction from so many people on so many different aspects of the project. Collectively we were able to handle the huge variety of tasks but this was just way too confusing for him.

To alleviate this problem we arranged that all of our correspondence would come through just one person and we organised it in such a way that we were only dealing with one aspect at a time – while this did not seem like the most efficient way of dealing with things for us it was the best way as it worked for him.

This approach has been working out great and the project has been progressing really well since.

While we all hate complaints they are in fact precious gifts.

A customer instead of staying silent and suffering with a scenario that isn’t working for them has taken a huge step and communicated that something is wrong.

Take the complaint, listen attentively to it, understand it, embrace it and deal with it – complaints are precious gifts that can only make you better.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Customer Care | 6 Comments »

Support Beam Advice

January 13, 2014

Support Beam Advice

“I know you don’t like that big beam and you want to remove it but you can’t – It’s a support beam. Take it away and the building falls down“

That’s black and white advice you just wouldn’t ignore and you would have to accept.

When advice like that comes with such a critical consequence you just have to follow it, and in a way it makes it really simple to take on board.

Often we give specific advice to clients, which we believe is critical to the success of their projects or business.

It’s really problematic when the person you are advising just won’t take the advice on board. Because no building is falling down as a consequence sometimes they ignore it because they feel they know better, they have a strong resistance for some reason, someone somewhere told them to do something else, they want to save money or they just have some other reason for digging in and not taking what you say on board. Often a course of action might simply take them out of their comfort zone.

In our case it could be advice around one or more of these elements:

  • A business name change
  • Branding refresh
  • Merchandising and POS
  • A new website
  • Optimisation of the website so you will be found on Google searches
  • Engaging on social media regularly
  • Dealing pro-actively with a  crisis PR situation
  • PR for successful initiatives or good news
  • Commissioning professional photos
  • Creating an event to generate interest
  • Profiling the individuals as well as the business
  • Supporting  campaigns with advertising
  • Allocating sufficient budget to campaigns

I found myself chatting to a new client recently and we were reviewing their proposal.

The client was very reluctant about one really important element in the plan, which I felt was critical to the success of the campaign. For me if we didn’t do this element the plan would definitely not work.

After a long conversation and some unsuccessful persuasion I had to change my approach.

“Imagine I am your engineer and this is your house we are talking about. This element that you don’t want to go with is a support beam. If we take it away your house will fall down. Do you get my point?“

The penny drops …

If your client won’t take your “support beam” advice then maybe you should just walk away – you don’t want to watch a house falling down!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Advertising, Business Planning, Crisis PR, Customer Care, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »

The Hug Test

January 5, 2014

Hugs at work

It’s New Year’s Day and that end of the long break/going back to work cloud descends on me as it always does.

I love the Christmas break, possibly even more than the summer break and when it comes to an end it does bother me even though I love what I do – those days of doing nothing, hanging around the house and relaxing are so enjoyable but at some point you have to get back to reality.

When I started to think more about the first day back I started to look forward to seeing our crew again. While the break was great it would be good to see them all again and catch up.

During the course of a year we spend a lot of time together and it’s natural that you get to know everyone quite well and you do form special relationships, even if it is predominantly in a work context.

The more I thought about seeing the crew again I thought about greeting them after not having seen them for the best part of two weeks.

For me the natural greeting for each of them would be a hug – a genuine warm hug, which reflects how I feel about all of them.

I would hate to be heading back to work and to be meeting anyone in our team who I didn’t like, who I didn’t feel any connection with, who I preferred not to spend time with. That would be awful and in the course of my career I have been in that place more than once.

My cloud cleared and I was now actually looking forward to getting back to work.

Will your first day back at work pass the Hug test?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

 

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Posted in Christmas, Holidays, Motivation, Teamwork | Leave a Comment »

Gran Ellen came to visit on Christmas Day

December 27, 2013

Family Christmas

Christmas Day this year was really special as our gang hadn’t been together for a long time and it was possible this year because my brother Colin came back from the U.S. to Cork with his wife Lisa and their two kids Alex and Ciara.

We had dinner in my mum and dad’s, my sis Laura was there with her husband Coley and their boys and I was there with Dee and my special two, Brendan and Ellen.

Mum surprised us all with a CD recording of our Gran Ellen who passed away on the 30th July, 2010 at the fine age of 99!

The recording was made at a New Year’s eve party in 1994 at my aunt’s house. Someone obviously got a present of a tape recorder and they decided to make a recording that night. What probably seemed like quite a naff idea at the time was the perfect Christmas gift as it brought Gran Ellen to the dinner table with us.

My cousin’s daughter, Fiona (just 7 at the time) was the skilled interviewer and as a result we heard Gran Ellen (Ellen Burke) talking about her brothers and sisters (there were nine children in the family) and also about her own children. She spoke about how her two eldest daughters went to the States (Renie and my mum, Ann) and how my mum returned after six years. She went on to say that three years later she had a lovely baby boy – me!!

My Gran loved a drop of whiskey and on that New Year’s Eve night she must have had a few as she was in flying form as we heard her sing a few old songs, which we all listened to desperately struggling to hold back the tears!

I sat in the middle of my fabulous family, young and old and I stared at the CD player listening to Gran’s voice as clear as day – she was there with us on this very special Christmas day.

We miss you Gran Ellen x

Greg Canty

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Posted in Christmas, Family, Holidays | 3 Comments »

Giving away the customer

December 19, 2013

Call Centre frustrationWhen I ring the customer service number do I really know who I am talking to?

I listen carefully, does the person at the end of the phone seem to know what they are talking about, are they talking like a robot, are my calls being recorded for internal purposes, can the person I’m talking to really do anything for me?

At this stage we actually expect the worst, we expect to go through a series of button pressing, we expect to be in a queue and we expect very little success from the “service” call.

Am I talking to someone in a call centre who is fielding calls for numerous companies or am I actually talking to someone who works for the company I called and who does care that the call is completed with a satisfied customer at the end of the phone.

When the business started was customer service a priority, is good customer service a good thing, is customer service something that can differentiate you from your competitors …is customer service that simple element that can help you increase business and generate great word of mouth?

Before you sign that contract and outsource your customer service, no matter how financially attractive the deal appears is this something you can afford to really hand over to someone else?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Customer Care | 3 Comments »

Uncle Neilly and the importance of telling stories

December 15, 2013

David Gray - Cork Opera House

Recently we were lucky enough to see the fabulous David Gray performing at the Cork Opera House – while I have always loved his music it was the first time seeing him in concert and he didn’t disappoint.

He has an incredible voice, fabulous songs and he delivered a very special performance with the help of a gifted band. He showcased some tracks from his new album, which were really strong.

Lisa O'Neill - singerBefore David Gray we had a support act, singer song writer Lisa O’Neill from Cavan who entertained the crowd with her unique style. I hadn’t heard of her before, which seemed to be the case with pretty much most of the audience who had taken their seats early.

It must be difficult entertaining the crowd when your songs aren’t familiar to them and when in truth they are not there to see you at all.

Lisa did something very clever to endear herself to the crowd – she told us stories.

She told us about the honour of being on tour with David Gray and how stunned she was when he asked her to tour the United States with him. While she wanted to grab this opportunity she was apprehensive as an uncle she was very close to, Neilly was suffering badly with cancer.

When her uncle heard this he insisted that she went and gave her €500 to make sure she “always bought a round when it was her turn“.

When she was on tour she kept Uncle Neilly up to date with her experiences and the one thing that fascinated her were fireflies. She had never seen these before and at night on the tour bus she saw many of them who politely decorated the windscreen on a regular basis.

“This song is for Neilly who isn’t with us anymore”. Lisa had our attention and had won us over.

After a really great night and a memorable performance by an artist I really like the thing I remember most is the story about Uncle Neilly.

Whenever you are pitching or selling your wares try to tell a story to bring it to life and most importantly one that makes them remember you.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Entertainment, Marketing, Music, Sales | 6 Comments »

What do you do?

December 12, 2013
Robert de Niro

Hi – What do you do Robert?

I was reading a book by Michael Port called Book Yourself Solid and in it he gives some really interesting advice about answering the question:

“What do you do?”

This is probably asked of you a few times week when you meet new people and it might typically arise at a networking event.

Your typical answer is to use your normal industry label “I’m an architect, an accountant, a solicitor, a financial consultant, a life coach, a banker, an insurance broker, a PR consultant, a social media consultant“.

While this is helpful as it does wrap “you” in a nice simple understandable package, Michael Port argues that this is possibly doing you a big disservice.

Once you mention that “label” you are bunching yourself automatically with every other person who might use the same label to describe themselves. For example if the person has had a poor experience in the past with a “wealth advisor” then the minute you mention that you are a “wealth advisor” they mightn’t like you very much and will politely shuffle away from you!

Imagine Robert De Niro answering the question by saying “I am an actor“!

Michael’s simple suggestion is that instead of using the typical label why not describe “what you do” in a much more descriptive way.

Michael’s suggestion struck a chord with me as I know when I am asked the question “what do you do” I certainly don’t want anyone to put me in the same category as any of the people working in our general area – I am totally different and I bring vast business background and a particular skill-set to the table.

So instead I might say: “Working with a great team I use my commercial experience to make businesses and organisations more successful by first making sure their proposition is presented in the best possible way and then getting as many people as possible to hear about them” …. I could even go simpler with “I work with a really talented team to make businesses and organisations better“.

“Oh.. how do you do that?” and then you tell them!

What do you do?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Marketing, Personal development, Personal Marketing | 17 Comments »

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