Chart Lane

As times get worse in the construction industry – which is now 70,000 jobs lighter according to reports – it becomes even more important to cut those costs to the bone. But even at this time, we need to be thinking about positioning for the recovery. So we need to make sure that while we cut to the bone, we don’t cut deeper, and weaken our basic structure. Continue reading →

Anyone who’s been following the series of articles designed to help marketers in the construction sector will know we’re close to the end. Of the series that is – not the world, although it might seem that way sometimes. Continue reading →

Welcome to the continuation of our series of handy tools with which to defend your marketing budget at the increasingly difficult budget meetings. This time, we’re turning our attention to the vast amount of cash that is wasted sending bits of paper here and there.
No. 8 Going postal
Businesses send a lot of post. Really a lot. The biggest senders are banks – mainly statements – 50m items a month. If they’d switched to e-mail before now, maybe they wouldn’t have been in such trouble. Continue reading →

Mark Twain once described a game of golf as “a good walk spoiled”. Now, it’s not my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people do enjoy whacking a few balls around a bit of countryside, and being a believer in freedom, I would die for their right to do so. Well, maybe not quite, but you get the point.

However, when it comes to the Corporate Golf Day, my mind clouds as the red mist descends. Continue reading →

So there I was at my architect pal’s office, talking about the terrible state of the economy over a double-shot latte and some lovely little biscuits, when he said he’d just laid off his marketing resource.

“I read your piece”, he said, “you said to preserve your capability to actually do the work, so when it came to choosing between whether to cut a junior architect or the marketing manager, well, it was easy”.

I spluttered a little, but resisted the temptation to pour the latte over his stupid head and simply said “so, is that junior architect very busy then?” I could see, over his shoulder, that the team were playing with a new, elegant design of paper aeroplane, so I didn’t really need to wait for the answer.

Turning off the new-work tap, you see, is just as bad as removing your capability to do the work when you win it. “But what else could I have done?” he complained. Well.

No 6. IT Projects Continue reading →

This article was published on Construction News’ website in February 2009.

Cutbacks continue. Pay freezes, even pay cuts, mass layoffs and general bad news are still the order of the day. And to cap it all, we’re not getting any interest on our savings. At last week’s CIMCIG conference, delegates were depressed by a morning of forecasting that lurched from pessimistic to suicidal.

But after the depression came the inspiration, a series of practical presentations on what you can do to build share, and future profit. In the end, the Conference Delegates went away armed with some new ideas and a steely determination to market their way out of the recession.

They will of course face opposition from their employers, who will question the spending of money on marketing. So still they will need to be armed with ammunition to protect and preserve their marketing resource. So it is with that in mind that we continue our series of ‘Oi, cut something else’.

No 5. Turn Stuff Off Continue reading →