“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once and a while, you could miss it.”

Memorable words from Mr. Ferris Bueller who we always admired for his communication skills but now also his prescience. Life is much faster today than in 1986 and those who stop and look around once and a while find opportunities missed by the madding crowd.

At Ellis Jones, we’re refining a model we call ‘nimble marketing’. It balances a philosophy of being aware with the specialist skills, tools and systems to respond quickly when opportunity knocks.

After all, it’s nice to flick through the daily enews and Twitter feeds but, if you don’t have the capacity to respond, you’d be better off making a cocktail and cruising in the Ferrari GT California.

Let’s stop and look around. Know this story?

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Gamification sounds like a made-up word that you’d be hard pressed to convince an opponent was worthy of a triple word score in a game of Scrabble. However, it is a word that is gaining increasing traction within the corporate lexicon as progressive businesses seek new ways to engage their audiences.

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Right now, marketing and communication executives across Australia are scoping the year ahead. Government leaders are finely crafting their approaches to Treasury. Yes, it’s strategic planning and budgeting season!

We’ve been facilitating quite a few planning sessions with clients who are putting together budgets for the new financial year. In this article we share some of the process and some considerations specific to FY2013 .

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The family has long been the one asset that people tend to hang on to. While the house tends to seem large and empty once the children move out, the holidays make up for it. Grandchildren running in the backyard at Christmas and stuffing their faces with chocolate at Easter, while the adults relive the memories of their own experiences growing up in the house, can make the decision of selling up a very hard and confronting one. But a big house equals high rates and continued maintenance. At a time when life is meant to get easier, it can sometimes be more stressful and more hassle.

Add, on top of this, the GFC and you have a generation of 65+ year old Australians who have less in their Super accounts to sustain them for longer than the generations before them. Read all…

Are we listening to older Australians? That was the question asked at the ACSA 2011 National Conference, where Rhod Ellis-Jones and Kate Crawshaw pointed the conference delegates in the new direction. In the marketing and social media direction post aged care reform, that is.

In an engaging two-part workshop Rhod and Kate discussed how changes proposed by the Productivity Commission will impact on aged care providers from a communications perspective. Read all…

We’ve said it many times, Australia’s population is ageing rapidly. By 2050, 22.5% of Australia’s population will be aged over 65 – that’s over a fifth of Australia’s population! So what are businesses doing to engage this older generation?

Supermarkets in USA have started taking notice of older shoppers and have begun implementing changes to make it easier for older people to do their shopping. Walgreens and CVS have magnifying glasses hanging off the aisles and windows are left uncovered to let natural light into the stores. Walgreens is also lowering shelving and re-organising products so that older people don’t have to stretch or bend to reach the product they’re after.

In Europe, shopping trolleys with built-in seats have been introduced to allow older customers to sit down to have a rest if they need to.

But it’s not only the supermarkets that are paying extra attention to their older customers. San Francisco based First Republic Bank has replaced its heavy doors with automatic doors and their plush sofas have been substituted with higher chairs with cushions after employees noticed older customers struggling to get back up from the couches.

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That’s a pretty confronting way to start an article isn’t it? ‘We know older people’. I mean who do we think we are?! What’s old anyway in this world of everlasting youth in a tube?

But, truth is, we do know (and call our friends) a lot of people advanced in years. More importantly, we know their behaviours, habits, common languages, needs, likes and key concerns. We know where Australians over 65 years of age source their information, what networks they join and how they shop.

The claim is not hollow. We didn’t acquire this knowledge from a U.S. best seller (although we’ve read the texts and the research too). We’ve learned on the job, conducting national sector research for government, undertaking market reserach for health and aged care providers, and developing integrated marketing strategy, social media campaigns and web portals  for the peak bodies representing the interests of older Australians.

This year, the first lot of baby boomers are turning 65 years old and are therefore eligible to retire. And Ellis Jones has, through our intellectual interest and organic growth, become a leader in engaging them, and those for whom they care. Read all…

People have talked about integrated comms for decades. It’s become a tried throwaway line behind which strategies more holey than holy reside.

Enter social media and an Australian public that leads the world in its uptake. Once you placed an Ad, sent out a brochure and maybe rang the press, now you need to do all of that as well as have an impressive web presence and conversations with multiple audiences online. The scope of activity has got much larger  and more complex but automation has kept step so it doesn’t mean a swelling marketing team. You need to be much smarter, employ the best tools available and have effective measurement systems in place. Read all…