By Leighton Morgans, Business Development Director, Eclipse Marketing

Is technology capable of replacing humans for some marketing functions? Can it deliver a service that is as good? Is it time for us to revise our preconceptions about semantic technology in the workplace?The answer to all three questions is a resounding ‘yes!’.

Knowledge management tools based on semantic technology are able to access and interpret information from multiple data sources. Unlike traditional tools that simply search through key words for answers, semantic products are able to interpret and respond to questions posed in everyday language.

by Chris Thorneycroft-Smith, Associate Director, Eclipse Marketing

You don’t need me to tell you how fast the world of marketing is changing.

Classic mass marketing techniques that we’ve all known and relied on for decades, like exhibitions and advertising, are passé. In their place technology has given us some highly developed new tools. Databases and computerised systems and processes enable us to take a more targeted approach, gathering much more specific information about markets and customers.

With consumers becoming more sceptical of traditional marketing, we have to come up with even smarter ways of communicating with them. 

So, the old ways of marketing are dead. Long live the new ways. The market is changing and companies must change the way they approach customers and prospects.

by Mark Bond, Sales Director, Vodafone

Vodafone has staged some memorable corporate events over the years but it will be difficult to top the one that took place at Goodwood in November.

We invited some 20 senior executives from client companies to be driven round the circuit by none other than Formula One superstar, Lewis Hamilton. The event was part of our title sponsorship deal with the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team.

by Michael Murphy, CEO Friends Reunited
Throughout my time in business, I’ve learnt that small changes can have a big effect. Recently on Friends Reunited we had a perfect example of that. One of my younger more learned colleagues described it as the Butterfly Effect, and, no, he wasn’t a designer talking about pretty shapes or colours. For those like me who don’t spend a lot of time in the mind, body, spirit section of Waterstones, the Butterfly Effect is the idea that if a butterfly beats its wings on one side of the planet, by the time the ripples reach the other hemisphere it’s turned into an earthquake.