The reputation of a ‘yes man’ is not a good one. From this moniker you would deduce that the man in question is feeble, lacking in opinions, bereft of conviction and a creep of the highest order. Not so for Danny Wallace.

His book ‘Yes Man’ (and the recent spin off film starring Jim Carrey) shows you that a simple change in perspective can result in a whole world of opportunity opening up. The book and film are based on the concept of seeing the impact of saying ‘yes’ to everything. Clearly there is room for some unfortunate experiences (cue a hideous scene in the film with an elderly lady).

However, overall, the word ‘yes’ overhauls the lead character’s fortunes simply by encouraging him to widen his scope and embrace everything that is offered to him. As an agency specialising in the art of persuasion, and even being called ‘Yes’, we’ve had to develop the persuasive skills to get people to yes (and sometimes getting them to ‘no’ quickly can save on unnecessary investment).

 Like Yes Man’s central character, we inhabit a world full of jaded consumers who are often reluctant to be sold to, and often resort to saying ‘no’ before examining the facts. It’s down to us therefore to use all the tools at our disposal to cut through and clear a path for ‘yes’. So, am I happy to be a ‘yes woman’? I can confidently say yes.

Amanda McDonald

Spotify is a recent addition to music streaming services that's now available to everyone. It's easy to use, has a huge catalogue of tracks and best of all it's free! You don't own the music, it's simply streamed to your PC. It's funded through ads which you hear intermittently between tracks. Best of all you can easily share links to playlists and tracks with other users.

Interesting post from Ryan Scott with eight reasons why Google continues to do well, with their revenue up in the last quarter of 2008:-


Internet usage has grown globally by 16% year on year (Internet World Stats) – more users means increased usage of Google and greater opportunity for revenue.

Google lifts their longstanding embargo for bidding on gambling and alcohol based terms – bidding wars for this lucrative traffic could reportedly net Google an extra £300 million a year!

Emergence of universal search makes natural listings harder to achieve – Paid search provides reliable shortcut to traffic for advertisers.

Google Suggest - Google, by pre-empting searches with ‘most popular’ cues, has said to be slowly killing off the longtail. This potentially means more people coming through on fewer search queries. In turn this bottle necks traffic by almost forcing people into higher demand keywords. A knock on effect of this being an increase in revenues on ‘costlier’ keywords.

Growing reputation of SEM as a ROI focused sales tool - 80% of advertisers cite their search spend will increase in the next two years (European Interactive Advertising Association 2008)

Declining markets drives up advertiser demand for traffic- more competitive and aggressive bidding means higher CPCs.

Advertising Opportunities – Google’s innovative means of planning and delivering adverts to end users continues to grow (almost daily) The invent of Google 3PAS, Ad Planner and the pure global reach makes it an attractive medium when budgets are squeezed.

The festive season! – People spend more during Q4 with online shoppers spending £4.67bn online last month, up 14%% on 2007.

This is a great Dilbert comic strip taking the mickey out of a short-sighted view of managing peer-to-peer reviews. It smacks of the recent Belkin scandal where they were involved (indirectly) in paying for 5-star reviews of their products. [Thanks to Andy Beal for highlighting this]