Elevate - for business leaders

Tech’s £20 million question: what to invest in now?

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 | Posted by: Grant Thornton
Categories: Media sector, Technology sector | Tags: Grant Thornton, technology, survey, report, video, insight, interview, analysis, trends, tech, voxpops, ICT, Phil Smith, Martin Balaam, TMC, Tony Henderson

What does the future hold? We asked three technology business experts: if given £20 million to invest in keeping ahead of the tech market, where would they place their bets?

Continue Reading

Google+, Twitter, Facebook Connect…is your business cashing in on social media marketing in 2012?

Thursday, January 12, 2012 | Posted by: Alex Connock
Categories: Media sector, Technology sector | Tags: business, Alex Connock, strategy, Twitter, social media, Facebook, Google, marketing, content, SEO, business drivers, social business, real-time, content marketing, search, GooglePlus

Like it or not, your company now has a permanent +1 in every customer interaction – via social media. How can you deal with that? Alex Connock reviews the 2012 social media, search and content marketing landscape and offers some advice for business leaders on how to navigate it…

Continue Reading

Qantas in crisis: a business lesson in social media liabilities

Tuesday, November 01, 2011 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business advice, Media sector, Technology sector, Thought Leadership | Tags: media, report, digital, Twitter, social media, Facebook, risk management, guide, risks, guidance, PR, crisis, reputation, Alan Joyce, Qantas, monitoring, Internet Intelligence

Qantas has been the talk of negative social media once again this weekend after CEO Alan Joyce took the unprecedented step of grounding all Qantas jets. Can firms prepare for a social media backlash? Yes – but they need to introduce some risk management strategies that address the modern world first.

Continue Reading

Let’s make some world-class media: Media trends forecast 2011-20

Tuesday, September 20, 2011 | Posted by: Alex Connock
Categories: Media sector | Tags: business, Alex Connock, media, growth, digital, UK, video, online, trends, TV, forecast, television, RTS, apps, global economy, WPP Stream, formats

What will make British media businesses world class in the next decade? It’s a big question but there is consensus on the answer. Pretend TV founder, Alex Connock, reports back from the Royal Television Society convention and WPP Stream and finds out what the world’s biggest media and internet players are thinking about – from dual screen and interactive TV to social video and BRIC markets…

Continue Reading

What can showbiz teach real biz?

Wednesday, June 08, 2011 | Posted by: Alex Connock
Categories: Business advice, Media sector | Tags: business, Alex Connock, media, CEO, tips, advice, management, PowerPoint, entertainment, showbusiness, rules, lessons

Showbusiness faces the same issues as real business, but with products you’ve heard of and characters you couldn’t make up. Alex Connock, CEO of TV and education producer Ten Alps, says that makes it a good place to learn universal business lessons, and picks out some rules to rule by.

Continue Reading

What’s hot (and what’s not) in UK media in 2011?

Friday, March 18, 2011 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Financing , Media sector | Tags: Grant Thornton, report, data, video, interview, analysis, Richard Eyre, Mark Smith, Sam Groves, David Harries, media, survey, voxpops, Mark Cullen

Want to know where to invest and where to avoid in the UK media sector? We interviewed five media figures to get their thoughts.

Continue Reading

Corporate social responsibility, Big Society and the bottom line

Wednesday, March 09, 2011 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Media sector | Tags: business, Alex Connock, success, David Cameron, CSR, enterprise, corporate social responsibility, ethics, dbda, social responsibility, Big Society, moral

How’s your corporate social life? Responsible? Non-existent? Alex Connock, chief executive of Ten Alps, looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) and argues that it is becoming intrinsic to business success.

Continue Reading

All aboard the App Store

Friday, January 14, 2011 | Posted by: Alex Connock
Categories: Media sector, Technology sector | Tags: Alex Connock, media, finance, technology, digital, Ten Alps, business models, trends, funding, TV, ITV, Apple, rights, software, apps, App Store

The world is mutating into one enormous and non-hierarchical content supermarket, says the CEO of Ten Alps, Alex Connock. And that is having a transformational effect on TV business models and funding channels.

Continue Reading

Where is the smart money going in media?

Thursday, December 02, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Financing , Media sector, Thought Leadership | Tags: business, media, investment, report, growth, digital, UK, M&A, trends, recovery, private equity, money

There are signs of life in the UK media sector as investors look to new growth areas and M&A activity picks up. Grant Thornton’s 35-page research report reviews the investment environment with a particular eye on digital. Read on to download a free copy of the report or to find out more…

Continue Reading

Story of the deal: RDG sale to United Business Media

Thursday, November 04, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Financing , Media sector | Tags: business, tax, risk, debt, corporate finance, value, Story of the Deal, disposal, selling a business, negotiation, Ali Sharifi, case study, RDG, United Business Media, warranties, grooming

Selling a business is usually a one-time-only deal, so owners are often unaware of what to expect, the potential pitfalls or how to get the most out of the sale. In our new series telling ‘The Story of the Deal’, we go behind the scenes of our work to explain what’s involved. Our first case study is RDG’s £9.3 million sale to United Business Media in August 2010…

Continue Reading

Chris Brogan’s advice for companies on how to use social media in business

Tuesday, September 07, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Business advice, Media sector | Tags: business, media, Twitter, social media, Facebook, marketing, LinkedIn, blogs, Enterprise 2.0, forums, community, Chris Brogan

There are powerful business facets to Twitter and Facebook, but it requires some close attention to leverage them. ‘Social media rock star’ Chris Brogan suggests the first four steps any business should take. (Click the image to see a day in the social media life of Chris Brogan).

Continue Reading

TV at a turning point in Edinburgh

Thursday, September 02, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Media sector | Tags: business, Alex Connock, media, BBC, Edinburgh, broadband, TV, Google, ITV, Channel 4, television, James Murdoch, YouTube, Mark Thompson, Sky, Paul Abbott, festival, local TV

Continue Reading