Monthly Archives: November 2008

Advertising has its place…

By naomisimson | Published: November 29, 2008
If you've heard me speak - you know I am quite open about why I believe our business continues to grow rapidly... even though advertising has not been part of the marketing mix. We just completed some brand research with Nielsen and found that there is a 32% unprompted brand recall for RedBalloon... which is [...]
Posted in Gift Experiences | 2 Comments

Three steps to passionate people.

By naomisimson | Published: November 28, 2008
I was at the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year National Awards last night....and now I have a new business idea... bottled energy. If could harness the excitement in the room. The positive energy...makes you believe that you can do anything. The stories of these finalists.... none of them have had an easy ride. But [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned | Leave a comment

Give them something worth saying.

By naomisimson | Published: November 25, 2008
Seth Godin may have written a book about 'purple cows' - and the need for businesses to stand out, but the concept has been around for a very long time. Who was it who said there is no such thing as bad publicity - not sure if that is true. I often speak of the [...]
Posted in Quotes to inspire | Leave a comment

Psychological Recession

By naomisimson | Published: November 24, 2008
I don't know about you but I'm pretty confused... some days all the news reports are great 'Australia is robust and will weather the storm' other days it is all gloom and doom. The reality is that no one really knows - how deep, how far and for how long. The only thing we know [...]
Posted in Interesting Numbers | Leave a comment

Better than Cash…

By naomisimson | Published: November 21, 2008
We've seen the results at RedBalloon - according to our recent Hewitt Employee Engagement score card - the 97% we received is far above the Australian average of 54%. Like any growing business - we don't have cash to splash... it is not cash that has caused this phenomena. We practice what we preach here, [...]
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When your back is against the wall… it’s time to innovate.

By naomisimson | Published: November 17, 2008
As I accepted the NSW Telstra Business Womens award for innovation presented by Nokia- I took to the podium to share where I thought innovation comes from. I shared that GoDo.com.au - the technology that we built to aggregate activity suppliers, which then we deliver via major tourism websites such as Virgin Blue, Webjet, and [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned | 6 Comments

Speechless.

By naomisimson | Published: November 14, 2008
It is not often that I am short for words. I love to talk and I rarely (if ever) get nervous or flustered when speaking to large groups. Today lunch time was a whole new experience. I was a finalist in the NSW Telstra Business Womens Awards in two categories, Business Owner and also Innovation. [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned | 4 Comments

The Christmas Crunch

By naomisimson | Published: November 13, 2008
I was rushing to a meeting yesterday in the Sydney CBD - and I was waiting at the pedestrian lights to cross the road. Three people in suits and in their mid thirties were having an animated conversation - they had just left the building on our right. Person One said “We should be paid [...]
Posted in Input Please | 2 Comments

The ‘let’s go for it’ gene.

By naomisimson | Published: November 12, 2008
The whole concept of Entrepreneurship is interesting. Why does one person risk it all to do something differently - whilst another dreams but never acts, and yet another person could think of nothing worse than running their own show. I have just come back from an Entrepreneur Organization (EO) conference in Singapore. The buzz in [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned | 1 Comment

Five Steps to employee engagement in tougher times

By naomisimson | Published: November 11, 2008
I was asked to respond to this question following the Australian HR awards a few weeks ago. I thought I would share my ideas further. "We have a limited budget around rewards and incentives, and want to maximise this as much as we can in order to improve employee engagement. How much do we really [...]
Posted in Articles | 1 Comment