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The way ahead.....

Greetings and a warm welcome on board! This is going to be a bumpy ride... I'm Julian Bray, I intend to change the way you work and revitalise your outlook on corporate life to meet the challenges that a full blown recession will present...and it won't cost a penny! 

No catch, I'm JUST being selfish! The lessons I've learned through both recession and good times, if passed on make my professional life easier; if I am dealing with people with comparable skills,  an enthusiastic professional outlook and streetwise cunning! Hopefully a few jobs will also be saved in the process.

How patronising you may think, but first consider this:

When fiscal conditions are tough, 'prudence' like the UK Prime Minister takes a back seat , goes on a three month holiday as they all have...(No, I'm not a fan! Gordon Brown was once was a Producer for Scottish Television!!) and clearly we have seen nothing yet, financial directors however see your department or division as the easy to get at  "piggy bank" a possible money saving alternative to a full blown, possibly undersubscibed Rights Issue. We'll be seeing a few more of those in the future...

A convenient port of call during a RECESSION. Economists may say that we have not "technically " reached that point yet. In reality we are well into it.  

Citibank - not short of a few milllion dollars, have already put down markers that thousands will be removed from the headcount...So take the hint, have a look at your own organisation.  All too easy, cut and slash spending on events, PR, conferences, travel, marketing spend in general, in order to prop up the finances elsewhere.

I lived through the notorious three-day week, LITERALLY running my UK corporate office from a petrol generator when UK Premier Ted Health told us business people not to use but save electricity two days a week and to turn off half the lighting in our offices.  

But we did it, we cut back on the overhead by questioning everything, developing new strategies and in the process cutting waste and saving jobs. In fact not a single job was sacrificed and WE CLAWED BACK substantial financial resources to see us through the dark times.  These are lessons we can use now and will be featured in our new series of regional seminars.

I started by cancelling all the standing orders and repeat variable payments. I asked every executive to bid for reinstatement of the outgoing payments.

We had a print audit, out went numerous publications, forms, chits, slips and a whole host of printed material that we had all forgotten about. 

I also closed down the stationary cupboard and told everyone to charge pens, pencils and biros on their expenses, effectively making it an individual departmental cost centre.... amazing how quickly the spend went down. 

Fujitsu Services do the same, all they provide their consultants is with a hot desk, a link into their own network, remote network colour printers, photocopier and urge you to use your own mobile phone rather than a landline...

My first recession campaign, was in the days of chunky portable phones, I called in all the contracts and found we were still paying for phones long since gone with their respective owners.

I even closed down the petty cash operation. Gave everyone a float of £300 (US$600) and told them to reclaim any expenses on the company credit card. No cash in future, they already had a cash float....

I put a hold on all purchased desgn agency services and eventually added two house designers to your payroll. I did however charge them out at designer agency rates so created a new profit centre.. 

The effect was quite amazing as I made no bones about saying this was to preserve jobs so everyone should join in and add to the campaign. They did.

We even cut back on meetings for the sake of meetings, for the ones we could not scrap, conference calls filled the void.

I had the local printer pad up all our scap paper - old letterheads into scratch/ doodle pads. The campaign went on. 

I've been known to tackle my commercial landlords and have the office block central boilers turned down and periodically the time clocks checked. How crazy is it when in April (and we had a freak heatwave) the office heating was on full blast, and staff were opening all the windows to stay cool?!

So you see where all this is going, we are all facing a massive rise in basic utilities, production and transport costs. The cost models we have relied upon, now need to be thrown out. This is only the beginning of a very long and hard crawl....      

RECESSION BUSTERS ON THE ROAD

By request, we are in the process of running a series of seminars in major cities all over the UK, for information on these we ask that you register your interest. The seminars will be breakfast or morning events and will not last more than 3 hours.  Invitations are limited  at each venue so individual circumstances can be addressed and a  break out consultancy session following the main seminar presentation will also be available.  

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Busting out of the energy sapping self perpetuating Recession building mindset...

Much of the content of his portal has been directly generated in response and as a result of situations encountered, running City, Financial and Marketing companies, acting for private equity clients also responses to questions and answers given by me, Julian Bray during professional assignments as a corporate mentor, conference moderator, symposia chair, seminar author and presenter, creator of corporate presentations and as an after-dinner speaker.  

I'll also from time to time, flag up interesting contacts and services all designed to make your professional life that much easier.

Come back often, as the content will constantly change as we reflect your input and chart changing market and legal conditions.....

The Nuts & Bolts of Creating Conferences . . .

The creation of any remote gathering, including conferences and corporate events is a major logistical exercise and is not for those of a nervous disposition. Sooner or later the task is either outsourced or a disproportionate amount of in-house resources are frantically applied, simply get to the starting post. As you will find, the start of the process really does mean that the work has only just begun.

The favourite industry phrase is “Which half of the budget has been wasted?”  To which the reply is: “Not the half under my direct control!”   Put another way - that even a battle-hardened ‘parachuted in’ financial director will understand - the budget has to produce a return that not only covers the above-the-line costs, but like the iceberg, the far greater below-the-line costs. You don't immediately see what is under the water and like the Titanic this can cause untold problems!   

  National Venue Show 2007 NEC Birmingham now rebranded in 2008 as Event UK.

 

Many events are not fully leveraged. Where is the tangible or intangible return on investment? Objectives are not clearly set out or the basic purpose of the activity is not fully understood or communicated. If it is an exhibition with the aim of driving potential customers onto the stand; will the reception, enquiry handling and post event follow up be appropriate?  

We’ve known stand enquiry forms (when they are filled in) to be dumped in a box on the stand and only actioned days or weeks after the event. The smart money is on the organisation that aims to get the printed response in the post, or e-mailed, the same day and the programme of follow up telephone calls and visits logged onto systems within 24 hours.

It might be that the participation is simply to renew industry contacts, additional networking and to re-present or re-position the product or offer the organisation currently has. It could be the result of a buy-out or takeover/ acquisition activity.

Seminar Programme National Venue Show

All these are legitimate reasons for holding or attending events and conferences. So bearing all this in mind, enter the website and if we cannot answer your questions then, drop us a line or telephone and we’ll do our best to provide the answer.

This is a fast moving industry and as such the information we present today could well have changed by tomorrow. So come back on a regular basis as we try to anticipate the changes, introduce new features. Make this your homepage and circulate the details to your colleagues.   

 

From time to time, I’m lucky enough to present lectures on the new generation of luxury cruise ships plying the Med and the Atlantic and as for those relaxing on the cruise, some of the core scripts used during these on-board PowerPoint supported presentations are, for a limited period during and after the cruise duration, to be found on the pages entitled ‘on-board destination lectures’, located near the end of the index.

 

This way my current ‘at sea’ audience can pick up on the detail of the lecture or Port of Call, they are about to experience or have just experienced, probably by accessing this website using the cruise ships own sophisticated internet café to download the pages.  Treat this as an added bonus to the variety of topics offered on here.  

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 Moderator, Speaker, Keynote & Conference Host:  

Julian Bray   

Background Briefing

Julian Bray an internationally recognized broadcaster, author, journalist, actor and motivational business speaker and presenter initially with the BBC then spearheading the emerging commercial radio and television networks in the UK and Europe.

He’s been at the centre of, influencing world and current affairs for over 30 years. Julian Bray is a highly rated established keynote speaker on the international convention circuit, regularly featuring at the top end of delegate satisfaction surveys and has featured in the premier reference source to the British establishment: Debretts Distinguished People of Today 2008 and for the last sixteen annual editions.

As CEO for a major public affairs organisation, for many years, he acted as consultant to leading international corporations and advised several Governments. Julian Bray was for several years the international adviser to Dr Romano Prodi, the former Italian Premier and  European Commission President.

He famously handled the PR for the Saatchi Pregnant Man ads and had a very public spat with the Ugandan Dictator Idi Amin. Working and socializing with leading political figures, film and stage directors, Julian Bray produced and directed a series of television programs and in so doing revived a boyhood passion for stage magic and illusions; Duly elected into full membership of the secretive but world famous Magic Circle and also recognized as a performing member of British Actors Equity.

With such a broad canvas to work with, Julian’s signature business and motivational lifestyle lectures are full of humorous but informative personal anecdotes, all brilliantly illustrated with PowerPoint (where available).

His relaxed, professional but welcoming style of presentation and convention keynote and hosting positively invites audience participation and Julian is happy to provide sources of further information in several different formats for those who wish to engage in the topic further.

 

Current Activities Marketing Director & Corporate Counsel: Media/PR/Investor Relations and HR/Marketing Communications Interim Consultant : All HR disciplines, Change Management, CRM, Internal Communications, Marketing Communications, Business Re-engineering, PR, Media Relations, ICT Project Management, Reconstructions and roll-outs. Incident management. Business & New Product Development.

2005-8 Royal Caribbean International Guest Lecturer -‘series activated between assignments.

BBC Radio Contributor – Expert in Aviation, travel and business matters.

Management Consultant, Corporate Strategist Consultant: Accenture Providing best practice input in media and public relations capacities as part of major international projects, re-structures and complex change management programmes. Business and process re-engineering. FMCG Pathfinder Project Group

 

Travel & Related Industry Experience

DTI/ European Community Eureka and Enterprise Events Programme Europ Assistance BBC Radio ‘Aviation Expert’ Alitalia Re-brand and -IRI- Italian State Holding Company (Alitalia majority stakeholder) Alitalia Group Major Incident Plan Reporting into Chairmans office Dr Ramano Prodi – also former Italian Premier and President of the European Community; Galileo Global Computer Reservation Project (IRI-Alitalia main partners) Air Inter Internal regional airline Airtours World Travel Market Project Manager British Aerospace (BAE) CAMRA The Queens Head BrewPub Group British Airways British Airways Retail Agents Marketing Service (RAMS) British Island Airways redesign and rebranding for the MD83 series Interflug GDR Airline inflight publications and Lot Polish Airlines Island Sun Holidays Rolls Royce Aviation Skyways scheduled carrier Thales technical support and milspec contractor Fujitsu Services

      

Tel: 01733 345581 (UK)