Whether you seek financial backing or board consent, The Financial Times Essential Guide to Writing a Business Plan will give you the critical knowledge you need to get the go-ahead. By focusing clearly on your objective, it will help you to gather the necessary evidence and address all your backers concerns. This brand-new edition draws out the specific challenges faced by start-ups, particularly on pinning down your perceived market niche and determining your competitive advantage. There are new chapters on pitching the plan and performing against the plan, using key performance indicators and milestones. Finally, new appendices outline alternative sources of funding and display an example business plan from start to finish.Written by a seasoned practitioner with years of experience in both writing and evaluating business plans for funding, it will help you formulate a coherent, consistent and convincing plan with your backers needs in mind. Follow its guidance and your plan will have every chance of winning the backing you need for your business to succeed.

Get a solid grasp of the methods, processes, and issues surrounding marketing communications and develop your career with an industry-leading text that blends theory with contemporary marketing practice. Marketing Communications, 9th edition by Fill and Turnbull is the leading text that introduces you to the key topics of the subject. Ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Marketing and related fields, this textbook guides you through the processes and actions of engaging audiences with brands, products, and services, from theory to practice. From introducing the subject and setting learning expectations to analysing and interpreting consumer behaviour, this latest edition follows a clear, streamlined structure that focuses on the strategic and tactical aspects of how brands engage audiences. With an approachable style and language that is easy to understand, the text delivers a rich blend of academic and practitioner materials that will help you understand the complexities of marketing communications. The book includes examples of contemporary, innovative marketing practices drawn from some of the world's leading brands and agencies, allowing you to explore the theories and ideas and acquire critical insight into the marketing communications landscape. The plethora of useful features and examples will encourage you to discuss and consider multiple interpretations around the major topics, providing you with the tools you need to develop your career in the field. Marketing Communications is recognised as the authoritative text for professional courses such as The Chartered Institute of Marketing and is supported by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Companies are often their own worst enemies. We work in disconnected functional and geographic silos, making it impossible to achieve end-to-end effectiveness. We struggle to make optimal decisions due to our overwhelming lack of quality information. In Optimize Now (or else ), David Fisher identifies the source of many of these problems and attacks them at their core. He explores the critical importance of processes and information that represent both the root of our problems and our greatest opportunity for dramatic improvement. He introduces new leadership in the Chief Process and Information Officer and the Process and Information Department, and specifies how to position these roles for enterprise-wide success. He further introduces the Enterprise Optimization Framework, an innovative, metric-driven decision-making framework, to ensure decisions are no longer based on gut feel but rather on quantitative expected outcomes. Finally, he explores the do's and don'ts of outsourcing and information technology with specific guidance on how these resources can be utilized to advance end-to-end optimization. It's time to put an end to our own misery. downward spiral to Enterprise Extinction. Survival is at stake. We must Optimize Now (or else ).

This book will enable students, researchers and practitioners with some background in applied linguistics and/or (business) communication to engage with most of the issues raised by the multidisciplinary field of business discourse. To applied linguists new to business communication, and to researchers with a business background and with an interest in language and communication, this book offers accessible, varied and well-documented material inspired by practice-shaping research in business contexts. The latest developments in research methodology are discussed through problem-solving case-studies; issues emerging from the field such as the role of new technology and of globalisation, are showcased to stimulate research projects that reflect the multicultural and multimedial reality of the corporate world. Readers are encouraged to adopt a reflexive, and where possible, multi-disciplinary and collaborative mode of action that is one of the strengths of business discourse research in practice. The book also illustrates the benefits of sustained dialogue and field-led applications across allied disciplines.

Experience clearly indicates that it is not so much their respective strategies that differentiate organisations from each other, but rather their ability to implement their strategies and to align the workplace thinking and behaviour of individual employees to the strategic intent and direction of the organisation. In this context, the nature and substance of communicating between leaders and followers on all levels of the organisation play a crucial role. The bottom line is this: successful organisations are characterised by excellent strategic leadership communication. The key role in this process is played by The Communicating Leader. This title explores and substantiates the role of the communicating leader, and provides practical guidelines to all organisational leaders on how to unlock the secret to strategic alignment.

Is it the greatest fear of all? Numerous surveys attest to the now well-known fact--the vast majority of people are more afraid of public speaking than any other experience, even death. With its unique approach, Scared Speechless turns your fear around by providing a step-by-step guide to successful speech making. To help prepare you for your next speech, some of the topics Rebecca McDaniel explores are nervousness and fears; persuasive, informative, impromptu, and extemporaneous speaking; topic choice; and learning the library. She also covers speech preparation; supporting your thesis; introductions and conclusions; delivery techniques; visual aids; choosing a topic; and organizing, supporting, and delivering your speech. Each chapter explains the process, illustrates with examples, and provides exercises to try out your new-found skills. Whether you are a student or a professional, the logical chapter sequence and the clear guidelines provided will ease you through the process. Scared Speechless is the perfect text for beginning speech classes and the essential guide for any professional who needs to improve his or her public speaking skills. With her extensive experience as a teacher of public speaking, McDaniel leaves no area uncovered and helps you go far beyond your fear of public speaking to become an accomplished presenter.

Since September 11, 2001, long-standing debates over the nature and proper extent of executive power have assumed a fresh urgency. In this book eleven leading scholars of American politics and political theory address the idea of executive power.

How to increase your visibility and maximize your success through powerful, proven communication techniques How can you make the media work for you? How can you master interviews so that your points are the ones an audience remembers? How can you give presentations that do not just convey information but also promote you as a leader? How can you develop listening habits that will substantially enhance the entire communication process? What are the challenges and opportunities of public personhood inside and outside the workplace? Power Communications: Positioning Yourself for High Visibility teaches people-from corporate CEOs to civic leaders to designated spokespersons-how to enhance their positioning and maximize their success. Chapter by chapter, the reader learns how to master public visibility in the workplace, the professional arena, and the community. The reader gleans ways to create proper perceptions in the minds of the public and the media. The book also details how high-profile people can lead others by mastering the total power communications process-effective presentation of message, constructive listening, and executive or community action. In addition to learning how to create and maintain positive public personhood, the reader also learns specific methods and channels for dispersing important messages. This book focuses on proactive techniques that address the full spectrum of needs and issues that go into establishing and sustaining a public identity. Power Communications is an irreplaceable resource for corporate executives, top and middle management, elected officials, heads of organizations, governmental representatives, official spokespersons, and public relations and marketing professionals. To many people, communicating itself creates a daunting challenge. Power Communications helps its readers turn challenges into exciting opportunities.

Today every business is an e-business, and whether you are selling golf outings over the Internet or manufacturing the carts, there is no escaping the fact that every aspect of organizational design is profoundly affected by the new rules of the electronic economy. What many people and organizations overlook, however, is the degree to which these new rules are requiring a fundamentally different style of leadership. In E-Leader , Robert Hargrove identifies the new mindset and skills that leaders must develop in order to thrive in a world where wealth is built on relationships and experiences, not products or even technology. The old model of leader as "steward," protecting the company's brands and assets, is being replaced by a model of leader as "entrepreneur," searching constantly for new sources of wealth creation establishing creative ventures with suppliers, distributors, and even competitors and discovering new ways to attract, retain, and nurture talent- all at the speed of light. E-Leader captures the energy of the mavericks who are redefining leadership on the electronic frontier and shows managers in all types of organizations how to manage for the future, not for the past or even the present.

Ability and skill are important, but they are not everything. Equally important is how you communicate yourself--your competencies and achievements--to others. Teacher and consultant Richard Picardi takes a long, thoughtful look at the things we all need to understand in order to allow our ideas to be heard and understood in today's noisy, hotly competitive organizations. He covers not just the skills of putting your ideas, recommendations, and analyses in writing, but also the other way in which effective communication is accomplished: nonverbally. He shows you the internal and external roadblocks to effective communication and how to break through them.

In Part I, Picardi analyzes the nature of verbal and nonverbal communication. He shows how to recognize and remove internal and external barriers to effective communication and create messages that get the results you want. He then focuses on the specific goals of business communication, showing how the concept of change interacts with all forms of communication--in fact, how change is implicit in them. Picardi lays out the elements of organization that are essential in creating reader-based messages, then explains how to compose the clear, forceful sentences and paragraphs to express them. Later, in Part III, he presents his system of text boxes, showing how to write typical business memos and letters, using direct and indirect patterns of writing to demonstrate different types of messages you want to communicate, and ends with a systematic method to revise and improve upon first drafts. He goes on to apply the principles of reader-based communication, effective organization, and clear expression to proposal and report writing. He shows how proposals differ from reports and how to write both effectively. For training and development specialists, the book provides the material you need to teach these skills to others.

Marketing is firmly entrenched in many societies and seems to be in accord with economic and social developments. It is relevant to literally millions of businesses and 7.1 billion potential customers. It has become a global phenomenon. It affects all businesses, medias, and service agencies and impacts on every man, woman and child on the planet. It is everywhere ubiquitous and omnipresent, and of relevance in emerging world developing nations and of course in the advanced economies of the 21st century.Marketing has become the dominant connecting mode of expression between business and non-business organisations of all types and sizes, and customers and consumers are continually informed that marketing is in their interest, seeks to fulfil their needs, and changes are invariably presented in a way that are supposedly beneficial to target audiences. However, there are various misgivings about Marketing. For example, many organisations (business or otherwise) do not adopt a customer or consumer orientation. This is seen in many ways - difficulties in consumers being able to contact organisations except by labyrinthine methods, a disinterest and disclination by businesses to treat consumers with respect, products that do not deliver proclaimed benefits and perhaps are incapable of so doing, services that do not match expectations, and products that while they satisfy needs also damage consumers and the environment.

For courses in advertising. A study of integrated marketing communications taught through real-life application Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications, 9th Edition speaks to an evolved definition of integrated marketing and teaches students how to effectively communicate in the business world. It champions the importance of weaving together all marketing activities into one clear message and voice, and helps students understand how communications are produced and transmitted. The text explores advertising and promotions, and the roles of social media, mobile messaging, and other marketing tactics to effectively reach consumers. With added tools to help learners apply concepts to real- life situations, students will understand the vital links marketers use to connect and interact with customers.

Until now, change leadership has lacked a theoretical basis for use by leaders as a starting point when implementing change processes. This tactical text addresses this. Think of the tightrope walker; they must constantly change the position of their arms and legs to remain 'stable' on the tightrope. Stability depends on change, and change depends on the existence of a stable core. If everything is in a state of flux, the result will be chaos. If everything is stable, the result will be rigid. Rigid systems will collapse if there is the slightest change. Meanwhile, chaotic systems use all their energy to maintain stability. This book is split into two parts. In the first part, we consider our theoretical basis. In the second part, we describe the leadership tools we have developed for use in change processes. We have designed a leader's toolbox for planned change processes. This toolbox consists of 18 leadership tools. These can be used by any leader to ensure the effective communication and implementation of planned change processes. Perfect for undergraduate and postgraduate students who wish to expand their knowledge of change leadership focusing on both the theory and the tools needed to implement changes.

Internal and external advocacy is a complex communication process, with many interwoven purposes, methods, and expected (or unexpected) outcomes. Judith Hoover and her contributors show what the advocacy processes are, using a fascinating set of case histories, and then analyze and evaluate them by means of rhetorical, cultural, critical, and argumentation theories. In doing so they blend organizational communication and classical rhetorical theory, and thus extend the concept of corporate advocacy into new areas of study. An important resource for teachers and students of communication theory and practice, and an unusual insight for corporate communication specialists.

In fourteen case studies analyzed through three significant communication theory perspectives, Hoover and her contributors examine the concept of advocacy by looking at corporate rhetoric, corporate cultures, and the hidden sources of power inherent in both. We listen to the messages of corporate spokespersons such as Lee Iacocca. We observe the internal cultures of business and industry. We investigate the meanings of such terms as Wall Street and consumerism. We broaden our view to include not only union advocacy, but also the role of language in the organizational distribution of power. By synthesizing these cases through yet a fourth perspective, the book not only extends the concept to recognize internal advocacy processes but also reveals the complexity of advocacy strategies that must be designed to accomplish multiple purposes and that must respond to multilayered and interconnected contexts.

The rise of digital media and the public's demand for transparency has elevated the importance of communication for every business. To have a voice or seat at the table and maximize their full value, a strategic communicator must be able to speak the language and understand business goals, issues, and trends. The challenge is that many communicators don't hold an MBA and didn't study business in college. Business Essentials for Strategic Communicators provides communication professionals and students with the essential 'Business 101' knowledge they need to navigate the business world with the best of them. Readers will learn the essentials of financial statements and terminology, the stock market, public companies, and more--all with an eye on how this knowledge helps them do their jobs better as communication professionals.

Man has always had a weakness for aesthetics, which secretly catch, enchant and seize the attention. Size and colour, form and rhythm affect the desire to say yes or no.
In modern society art is pure and ruthless. But a price has been paid for this freedom: art has become irrelevant.
The opposite of pure art is applied art, which not only must be aesthetically satisfying, but must also fulfil economic, political or religious considerations.

Aesthetic communication explores how organizations use aesthetics. Beginning with an exciting chapter on aesthetic art and applied art it follows with an in-depth analysis of the different fields of organizational aesthetics;
- Image, or the creation of an attractive veil;
- rhetoric, or the use of words to affect people;
- narrative, or the construction of seducing contexts;
- design, or how to impregnate ordinary things with attraction and identity;
- advertisement, or how to insert products in a heavenly world; and
- architecture or how to use buildings to tell about greatness and power.

Winner of the Association for Business Communication's Distinguished Publication on Business Communication Award 2016 This edited volume offers a collection of original chapters focusing on the Ins and Outs of professional discourse research. Drawing on insights from LSP, ethnography and discourse analysis, it covers a wide range of issues, ranging from gaining access and collecting data to feeding results back in the form of recommendations to practitioners.