The Roman Empire was one of the largest, strongest and revered the world has ever known. It dominated Europe and the Middle East for centuries and its presence can still be felt today in many areas of life. Its decline was gradual, territory lost over a number years, ineffective emperors, military losses and internal squabbles all contributed, but a number of historians point to the Battle of Adrianople in 378AD as the pivotal moment. It was there that the Goths defeated the Romans for the first time, the Goths would later sack Rome and bring the Roman Empire as we know it to an end. The Romans were powerful, organised and wealthy, but they were also complacent and corrupt. They viewed the Goths with contempt, they were subjects and would do as they were told.
History tells us that was a mistake. Continue reading
Author: John McCallum
Choppy Waters; and a Happy New Year
Corryvreckan whirlpool off the west coast of Scotland has the potential to kill you. At the same time people have swam through it and it is navigable to boats, albeit not easily. Corryvreckan is created by several natural features that freakishly come together at that specific point but which on their own wouldn’t create much to worry about. It’s the third largest whirlpool in the world and under normal circumstances it’s not a place you’d want to find yourself. It is, on balance, better viewed from a distance than the middle. Continue reading
The March of Time
In one of the last acts of my thirties I read Time magazine for I think the first time today. Not all of it but enough to make me think I’ll look at it again. Continue reading
Shielding Your Agency From Debt
We recently started working with a new client, a law firm specialising in bad debt. Part of their service is how to avoid getting into the position of requiring their services in the first place. Much of these lessons are simply common sense but like a lot of what we do it often takes someone else to point that out before you take them onboard. We thought it worthwhile to share some of their ideas with our TAAN colleagues.
1.Don’t put ‘all your eggs in one basket’
If you’re careful not to do this then debt from one customer should not mean the collapse of your business. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard of an agency who simply became too reliant on one or two clients. It’s hard of course, sometimes a client grows and you grow with it, often a large client demands the best people you have, tying them up and so preventing them from working on other clients or new business. This is where directors of an agency need to step back and make the correct decisions to ensure that your agency is not at risk from that one big account. Continue reading
Brand Guardians Beware! guerilla’s might make chimps of you…
When you think of guerrilla activity in Africa in response to powerful, answerable-to-no-one dictatorships the imagery this creates is not pleasant I imagine. However in a twist on the usual the country in question is South Africa, the dictatorship is FIFA, ruling body of world football, and the guerrilla activity is the advertising for a local airline called Kulula which is most definitely, without question, not, I said NOT an official partner of the FIFA World Cup 2010. Continue reading