Opportunities and Social Networking

location iconSales and Marketing > Sales

In my quite a few blogs I’ve argued what I thought at the time were two separate points:

(a) that there are opportunities out there for those with the skill and resources to take them

and

(b) that just as we all now recognise the critical role of the web in building our business, we will all have to come to terms  (much against my own instincts) with recognising that social networking is also becoming an increasingly important part of our web strategy

And I’ve realised today that those two blog themes come together neatly with Cadburys!  It is probably best explained by a few newspaper quotes:

Daily Telegraph 18 Aug 2007 … Cadbury is to bring back the Wispa chocolate bar after a campaign on websites like Facebook and MySpace to demand its return.

Daily Telegraph 10 Sep 2007 … Cadbury says 23m bars will go on sale in October, but no more will be produced after that unless internet demand translates into sales. “This is as much a test of the internet as of our chocolate. If the Internet really does turn out to be a valid cross section of public opinion we’ll bring it back permanently.

Daily Telegraph 04 Aug 2008 … Cadbury is bringing back the Wispa chocolate bar. The chocolate company said 20 million bars were sold in seven weeks during a trial limited run last year.

Independent 26 Feb 2009 … Cadbury reports profits up 57%. Wispa delivered sales of £25m since September 2008, a record for a launch.

Need I say more!

Bob Bradley

Bob is a specialist in running high value added service businesses, having run five such businesses as General Manager, Managing Director or Chief Executive. His last employed role was as Chief Executive of a £16M, 200 person family owned business having previously been Chief Executive of an AIM listed company for which he raised £5M funding and which he grew from £4M to £12M in three years through two acquisitions and organic growth, and a corporate PLC subsidiary where he was Managing Director responsible for delivering £10M profit on £45M turnover through 450 staff.

Bob is now following a portfolio career providing entrepreneurial business leaders with mentoring and coaching around business leadership, business growth, merger integration and exit planning.

Core to his portfolio is MD2MD. Having experienced for himself the value of having a strong sounding board of fellow Managing Directors he founded MD2MD in 2004 to provide groups of business leaders with a confidential environment within which they can support and challenge each other to raise their game as leaders and by doing so improve the success of their organisation.

More about Bob

MD2MD membership

  • You meet your peer group privately for structured confidential conversations about real business challenges. You meet online for 90 minutes every 3 weeks.
  • You attend one of a selection of open workshops led by top professional speakers sharing best practice on a wide range of leadership topics.
  • You join our annual conference LeaderFest and our annual ‘Retreat to advance’.
Apply for trial membership