By Nicky Unsworth, CEO, The BJL Group Our senior leadership team at BJL has reflected endlessly on 2020 – and I'm sure we'll carry on analysing and debating what worked / what didn’t work for a long time to come. As we look ahead to the challenges and opportunities of 2021, it’s important to consider the learnings that we can take away from last year, and how these apply to a world where so much is still uncertain. The latest lockdown has felt like Groundhog Day, bringing with it more disruption and pain for everyone. For businesses it can feel [...]

By Jon Minchin, Director at Form With the pandemic still with us, continuing economic uncertainty, and climate change at a critical point, the world is undoubtedly changing. It can feel like around every corner there’s a fresh test, every day well-laid plans are disrupted, and the way society operates ever-shifts. As a leader, this environment of uncertainty can be daunting. But there is hope on the horizon, and with change comes new opportunities. Our leadership journey is never complete and new perspectives and approaches can help us navigate uncertainty. So what skills can we work on to help us get [...]

by Christian James, MPA Chair and MD of The IF Agency "For millions of working parents, this time of year is normally a bit of a relief as the kids return to school and life falls back into a more stable routine. But this isn’t any year and relief is hardly what parents (or anyone else) are feeling right now. Hundreds of our members are still on furlough and many offices remain mothballed as business leaders battle to draw up new working practices that will keep their teams safe and motivated for the coming months. Like most out there, my [...]

by John Whalley, strategic director at Use.Space and head of branding at Seventy7 So much of the talk over recent weeks and months has been about where we sit in the future, literally. #WFH has signed off so many articles, posts and comments about working from home, and the virtues of the Zoom call vs the socially distanced physical meeting debate continues. It seems the definition of ‘The New Normal’ has become almost entirely dependent upon physical logistics and levels of tech savvy. But surely this is simply a question of people taking responsibility for reorganising themselves, and allocating what time [...]

by Laura Callaghan, Influencer Marketing Manager at Bee Influence, an influencer marketing agency born in Manchester. The phrase “the bigger, the better” can be applied to many life scenarios, but influencer marketing is certainly not one of them. That said, the cliche “quality, not quantity” saying is most certainly relevant when talking about content creators. The popularity of brands working with micro influencers has increased significantly, and they’ve drastically changed the landscape for influencer marketing - what was once more of a numbers game is now far more complex. So what exactly are micro influencers? As an agency representing clients, [...]

by Steve Brunt, planning director at The Behaviours Agency One upside of lockdown is we all felt more connected to our local areas, including our local businesses. So what can we do to help them emerge strongly from this crisis? Lockdown forced us to stay at home, and took away many of our default providers. For many of us that means we got a greater appreciation of what’s available just around the corner.  We’ve rediscovered our neighbourliness. We’ve run and walked the streets, and used our parks. And of course, we’ve shopped in our local independent retailers. Of course many [...]