On Friday it was time to farewell an original RedBallooner – Sarah was with us in the very early days – and has seen the business grow from 9 people to its present 50. She has caught the entrepreneurial bug and started her own show a named ‘Lady Bug’ as a fully fledged interior designer. As I listened to Sarah’s farewell words, I felt so very very fortunate, knowing that every person at RedBalloon is what makes our culture. We…
I’m sure it is not just my imagination – but I seem to have LinkedIn messages coming to me daily. I joined years ago and sort of let it sit there. Now I find that I am catching up with colleagues from a very distant past – and joining interesting discussion on topics such as employer branding to corporate gifting. I have connected my twitter account and this blog so that it automatically feeds what I’m talking about into LinkedIn…
I have to admit this made me laugh. I was recently nominated for the Instyle Women of Style Awards, up against Elle MacPherson and Kristina Karlsson from kikki.K in the Business Category. I attended the awards night and was both surprised and delighted to be named as the winner of the Business category. Little did I know that there has since been a joke lingering in the RedBalloon office about this, and when i returned to RedBalloon HQ this week…
I was speaking this week at the ADC Future Summit in Melbourne and there was quite some discussion on the fact that Australia is fast going backwards when it comes to women in leadership roles. My simple very non-theoretical answer when challenged on ‘why’ was simply ‘why not’. The reality is that one by one women make a choice about the role they want to play and the contribution they wish to make. More and more women choose to do…
I was in the city last week with some of my colleagues and as we sat in the RedBalloon mini (Ruby) at the lights we watched a mother try to cross the road against the lights… a truck whipped around the corner… and it was inches from calamity. After the truck passed she did it again… this time successfully crossing the road. What lesson did she just teach her 4 year old! (More than 200 pedestrians are hit by vehicles…
We often giggle at RedBalloon that all of us (including me) are generation ‘why’ – rather than ‘y’. When I started this business (what seems like a lifetime ago) – I too wanted to work in an environment that I loved to come to every day. I wanted to dedicate my talents to something that I believed in. Something that would make the world a better place. Discovering and understanding the RedBalloon purpose has driven me and inspired the team,…
We know at RedBalloon that recruitment is very much a dating game. It is a two way street – it is just as much about potential RedBallooners getting to know us as us getting to know them. RedBalloon might have been named in the top 10 Best places to work by BRW but we know that our work place will only suit some people. We are recruiting many roles – and we publish them on the Amazing Careers page on…
My colleague Sarah joined RedBalloon on April Fools Day in 2004 – she is fast approaching her five year anniversary. With any special occasion it gives us a moment to reflect. I’m sure Sarah could share much better than I about the changes she has experienced at RedBalloon…and the ones she has championed. She was the RedBallooner who coined the name ‘Pleasure Relations’ for instance. One thing that has not changed at RedBalloon is our values and how we celebrate…
Andrew May poses the question ‘What does the perfect week look like?’. Is it an 8 day week, if you had an extra day what would you do with it? Apparently 63% of Australian workers are sleep deprived… (not me since I got my new sleep cycle app for my iphone). It is much harder to be productive, let alone enjoy what we do if we are perpetually tired. Running from one thing to the next, never having time to…
Imagine running a business based on fun - that's what I decided to try when I left a very serious corporate career in marketing to set up RedBalloon...
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Disgusted… I want authentic marketing
First of all I would like to say to the advertising agencies working on with the political parties for this election… tough gig – the fees must be nice – but, ugh, I bet the briefs you are receiving are cluttered – and the approval process a nightmare. I was watching ‘Top Gear ‘with my son (12) last night – and at every single ad break we were bombarded with political messages. My son would yell at the TV –…