If you are selling bathroom design, where do you convince buyers that you are worthy of their attention?

In the showroom? Your catalogue? Online? Oh no.

Dozens of home remodeling stores polish their showcase every single day while forgetting that customers spend a long time in their salons browsing around: they will eventually end up visiting the local bathroom.

Suprisingly, they have not realised that it's not just a human need being catered there: it is prospects using items that are being sold right outside the toilet door....

Are you waiting for the BIG idea to start your own business? Don't.

Successful businesses are not based on creating a brand new industry from scratch. What makes them stand out is having a simple, single idea that they execute with such perfection and quality, applying such operating procedures that had never existed before.

Think of FedEx, the parcel delivery service. Postal services had been around for a long time, so there was not much to innovate there. Yet FedEx realised there was a need for overnight shipping even to remote desti...

If you are at a brunch party, which foods do you pick? The ones you like?

Partly yes, but much rather those that are easy to access: those with the wrapping off, item unpacked or sliced up nicely in a row. If you need to spend even a bit of effort accessing it, you'd rather pick something already prepared for you: even a minimal threshold will keep you away (except for that 1% of guests who are too hungry or too enthusiastic about a finger food to leave it behind).

A website registration to access a free demo, a hard-to-open door in the en...

Two small news for today:

1. The EU has come out with its new logo for 9 May 2010, which is Europe day (commemorating the end of World War II and the Schuman Declaration). Creative artists showing unity, peace and diversity on an interactive poster to the internet generation? Visually challenging, funny, highly unique image to raise awareness, get citizen support and tell a story? Well, check it out here and despair. We are in 2010, not 1972 in Eastern Europe.

2. After years of institutional wraggling, the EU has finally "elected" (rea...

EPSO certainly wishes to attract a large pool of candidates for its contract agent (CAST) exams, but the way information is presented seems quite inefficient. Here are some pain points I suggest improving:

'Call for Expression of Interest’ : would an average candidate know whether this is a simple indication of interest or an actual application for a selection exam? Would be worth clarifying what each term means already on the main page in one bullet point so that prospective applicants can have a quick overview

CAST or cast: the expre...

Real marketing is not about the product or service or message you are trying to sell. It is about enlarging the frame and talking about the core idea that your product is part of. What does this mean?

A draft Durex project has done a remarkable job by not talking about their products (condoms) but about the reason why contraception is an issue. Nike does not talk about the shoes, it talks about having fun, doing sports outdoors, being part of the team. If you are the European PhotoVoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), do you talk about the...

The European Parliament launched a banner campaign on various EU online media platforms (EUobserver, EurActiv etc.) where a blue flash banner box with catchy titles such as "massive job-losses", "less economic growth", "sharp budget cuts" lead to the key question: "How does the crisis affect Europe?". The proposed solution? Watch www.europarltv.eu

Sure, let's see what you get if you decide to click through despite this unspellable domain name. Actually, not much. It leads you to the European Parliament TV's "your voice" page where ...