From hall 5 to hall 20 and back again

Yes, it's www.Springfair.com, where the world unites under one roof to celebrate another year of ranging and stock updating. The paradox is that we crave both variety and stability, which means that buyers have to look for something that is both recognisable and new.

Best part of Spring Fair: seeing mass innovation both good and bad

Worst part of Spring Fair: definitely the awful (and creepy) life-size, robot singing Santa Claus's - i have to tiptoe past them... brrrrrrr

If you're there on Monday and Tuesday then we probably have an appointment already!

fun with lawyers

Why do lawyers spend months sitting on a contract and then send it back with enough red ink for it to virtually unrecognisable. Do they honestly think this is conducive to reaching an agreement?

product of the year

Definitely one of the most succesful licensing programmes around is Product of the Year. This global organisation is instantly recognisable for its ability to generate cash out of brandowners' desires to win awards. At a ceremony that resembles the Oscars (think Air Freshener instead of Brad Pitt), P&G, Unilever, SC Johnson, Nestle and L'Oreal divide up the rights to use the red quadrangle on their products for another 12 months - paying a hefty £75k for the privilege.

This is textbook marketing judo as these branding collosi are thrown by a flyweight with leverage.

how much is your bottleneck?

A bottleneck in the wrong place can be lethal. If an artery clogs the heart can stop working and you die. So too in organisations - how much work is not even attempted because of the slow progress of existing projects. Inefficiency will kill opportunity every time mainly because, as humans, we lose interest if we're ignored.

With licensing, as with any project that requires continuous buy-in, it's all about striking while the iron is hot (or in most cases, luke warm). If the flow of deals is constrained by legal and administrative chin stroking, then there are deals that will either go stagnant or not be attempted purely because the box-tickers pens move slowly.

Many companies use administrative stagnation as a failsafe, protecting the company from bad ideas by creating obstacles so that only really persistent ideas survive. This creates a protectionist state where the idea-killers rule and the frustrated persistent entrepreneur moves on to the next project.

Effective management is about supporting the taking of calculated risks, not maintaining the status quo.

NPD and Viagra!

Never throw away R&D, even if it flops. “Remember, Viagra was a cardiac drug that failed,” notes Julie Hennessy, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “But for some reason, people didn’t want to return their samples.”

let's get one thing straight

Well, 2008 certainly opens up a whole new set of rhyming opportunities.... great, straight, fate, mate... but mostly the year opens with a refreshing sense of foreboding rather than the usual optimism. With an American credit crunch, threatening to wipe millions of dollars off anything that moves, there's a sense that the current economic climate is distinctly stormy. What a great name though, the credit crunch... a fabulously doom-laden moniker.

In tough times, brands tend to polarise around either mass or luxury, which is going to make things difficult for products clinging to the magnetic middle and offering 'massclusivity.' More, no doubt much more, on this in the weeks to come