THE BLOG

24
Sep

Out Latest LOFTCAST, Business Straight Talk With Colin Robertson CBE

We are absolutely delighted to share the latest episode in our #LOFTCAST series with Colin Robertson CBE

Bright, colourful, energetic, unashamedly Scottish and one of the country’s top business people, Colin Robertson CBE has spent the last 13 years transforming Larbert-based bus and coach company Alexander Dennis into one of the worlds top manufacturers. In this wide-ranging interview, Colin takes us through his 13-year period as CEO of the company – the battles he had at the beginning taking an organisation that was previously in administration to one that was capable of world-beating performance – particularly in terms of operational excellence, manufacturing, customer service and after-market support. He gives us a number of fascinating insights which touch on all the fundamentals of business – vision, values, leadership, managing others and also managing yourself.

He shares some stunningly simple yet effective ideas on international expansion, market positioning and how manufacturers can best prepare for the future. Finally, he takes us through the impacts of Covid-19 before answering a number of questions from business people all over the world.

This interview was the latest in the LOFTCAST series, a video and audio podcast which celebrates high-impact people and the change they are leading in society today. A must watch for any budding entrepreneur, business owner, leader, manager, manufacturer or anybody with a particular interest in bus or coaches.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it.

Benedetto

19
Sep

New #LOFTCAST with Colin Robertson CBE, Coming Soon…

Friday morning was a very special day as we spent a wonderful morning interviewing Colin Robertson CBE of Alexander Dennis in our latest LOFTCAST video podcast.

Colin has done an absolutely incredible job as CEO of Alexander Dennis over the last 13 years helping to turn the company into one of the world’s most successful bus and coach manufacturers. He’s helped increase Annual Turnover almost 400% to £631million, opened the company up to new markets, transformed product development as well as aftermarket support. He’s won numerous awards and been acknowledged by her majesty the Queen herself.

Quite simply, Colin is one of Scotland’s top business leaders.

On Friday morning, we covered business growth, leadership, manufacturing, bus & coaches and of course – dealing with COVID-19.

At the end of our conversation, we managed to get in its of questions from all you budding entrepreneurs, business leaders and even bus & coach enthusiasts.

We think this one is going to be very special and we can’t wait to share it with you…

Watch this space!!

Benedetto

13
Sep

Aillie & Jade, The Future In Good Hands..

It’s always great to work with new designers – they always offer super-interesting perspectives, new ideas and essentially make us think twice about what we’re doing and if we could do it much, much better. This week we had the pleasure to work with, not one but, two exceptionally talented young ladies – Aillie and Jade.

Aillie has just graduated from Glasgow Clyde College and Jade is in her final year at The City Of Glasgow College. Both did an absolutely phenomenal job this week bringing some great new energy to our currently digital studio, wowing us with some incredibly exciting ideas and helping us get on top of a rather heavy workload with just a little bit more flair.

Of course we’d love to share with you what they did, but all creative work is schtum for now as we show our clients first, but here are a couple of arty images from their folios…

We’ll definitely share their great work with you in the next couple of weeks.

The Future is in Good Hands…

Benedetto

13
Sep

Maximising Creative Budgets, 6 Quick Tips..

‘Making Every Penny Count’

Throughout the years, it’s almost became a life’s work to make sure that our clients (and ourselves for that matter) maximise every single bit of the creative budget we’ve got to strengthen our brand and marketing activities for our companies. Exceeding expectations in terms of quality, service and value is always the goal.

Here are a couple of quick pointers on things we’ve done in the past to achieve this..

1. Write A List and Be Unashamedly Commercial
Sometimes we’re bombarded with choice – website updates, an infographic with useful customer data, social campaigns, refine what you have or start again? Writing a quick list is invaluable, prioritise the activities with those that will best impact your top-line and do those activities first. The more commercially valuable a project is the more bought-in you’ll be, the more you’ll enjoy the process and also quick wins work for everybody and lead to more projects…

2. (Be Organised) and Find Multiple Uses For Everything
If you’re having quality case-studies written by a professional copy-writer, have them spend a tiny bit more time re-formatting the content for your social channels. If your photographer is on-site doing individual pics of the team for the website – again see if you can have those pics re-formatted for social media, for brochures, or even for future press-releases, etc… Also, when you’ve got a professional on-site look to get as many activities as possible in one visit – your provider’s set-up and travel times will eat into your creative budget so best to take a full-day packed with great activities to get more high-quality content than 2 x half-days, etc… Just make sure you provide a good lunch and lots of good coffee. However, and this is a big proviso, this is all dependant on you being organised from the outset, so every time you’re engaging a creative professional or agency. Think what else their time could be used to give additional value. In all honesty, good providers should be making you aware of these value-adds beforehand.

3. Become Invaluable To Your Provider
The company that can give more work to one agency, one photographer, one designer, etc will undoubtedly become more valuable to that provider which should allow you to command better rates or terms.

4. Direct is Fine
Seriously. Most creatives love working with decisive, no-nonsense types of clients that know exactly what they want and who may even be quite blunt with their feedback. Almost, the yin to their yangs. It saves so much time for everybody involved. I’m not saying be deliberately mean but clear about what you’re looking for and more importantly with what you’re not comfortable with.

5. Fast Deadlines
Fast deadlines are wonderful for maximising efficiency – everybody is forced to be focussed, concentrated and on their game from the get-go. Also, most good creative providers are usually quite happy to know that there is a deadline to protect against spec creep and therefore their profit margins. However, proceed with caution, be reasonable with your requests and consider using this tactic sparingly. There is a line and it’s best not to cross it – you’ll know from the provider’s reaction when you’re close. ‘Just-In-Time-Manufacturing’ is one of the most fascinating and successful concepts from the car industry – this is similar in theory.

6. Ask For Reference Images Or Even Sketches
If you’re not entirely certain of what you want, then simply ask the agency/creative provider to take a very small amount of time to provide some reference examples from their folio, some other examples from other providers or even a quick series of sketches, etc… This will help you to more quickly understand what you want, respect your relationship and to de-risk the project for both yourself and the provider.

Just six quick tips from a pretty massive back catalogue, plenty more to follow…

Any questions, drop us a line…

Benedetto