Julian Bray comments: 

Greetings and a warm welcome on board! I'm not telling you we told you so but this website has along with Jeff Randall been REPEATEDLY questioning City aspirations for some time now. As they say all the chickens have come home to roost, but the Bonuses are still intact! Funny that!

This is going to be a long bumpy ride...but looking on the brighter side, I'm Julian Bray, eternally positive and  with your assistance, I intend to change the way we all work, revitalise our outlook on corporate life and provide a series of strategies to meet daily changing commercial conditions 

 

Over the White Cliffs of Dover.. Presentation 

The situations I've encountered, through both recession and good times, are all here... I've also gained experience through  company and product restructures, devising and running outplacement programmes and a whole range or commercial and public sector roll outs.

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 physicallty turn off or take out half the lighting in our offices, shops and factories.  

 

But we did it, it was noting less than bloody, we cut back on the overhead by questioning everything, developing new strategies and in the process cutting waste and importantly saving jobs, marriages and family life. The latter being the most obvious fall out when redundancy hits.

The appropriately named Charlie Bean [-Counter?], the deputy governor of the Bank of England, said (Friday October 24th 2008) "Britain is facing a once in a lifetime crisis and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind" but we are still faced in some sectors with a resolute head in the sand, backside in the air attitude. "It won't happen to me" the dimwits cry.

I picked up some flack from a few sad pedants, irate rotund middle managers, who rather than debate the abyss staring them in the face, decided to waste employers time and energy with a rant and nitpick over the correct meaning in market research terms of the use of Datum [Point] and Data. Won't go into it all here but Wiki has one of the answers! But if Bob Worcester and Brian Gosschalk says its datum then datum it is!

I'll pop back onto that board and see if the pedants are still employable at the end of January 2009 when most of the consolidation will have been completed and the second round of redundancy lay-offs are underway (the first round in that particular service industry has already started in October 2008) 

From the quality of the rants, they probably have few if any transferable skills, not a situation you will encounter  if you follow this website through the next few months..  ADD this bookmark to your favourites: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6mmfyb

But back to our tale and to a much earlier recession, we still had a coal industry then and Prime Minister Ted Heath (Heath had terrible 'nervous' halitosis- had to interview him for BBC Radio once in the back of the BBC News London taxi Radio Car, with the windows closed. The very last petrol version of the classic Lonon black cab!)

But i digress in fact not a single job was sacrificed and WE CLAWED BACK substantial financial resources to see us through the dark times.  Much of it is common sense but the information is worth repeating. 

 

 

I started in a very small way by cancelling 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 ballpoints on their expenses, effectively making it an individual departmental cost centre.... amazing how quickly the spend went down. Much easier to take a NEW PEN rather than use up an old chewed one. You also quickly found out who was using the 'Bookies' at lunchtime as the stubby freebe pens made an appearance.

Fujitsu Services currently do the same, all they provide their consultants is 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 former employees!

I reduced our telephone landlines from twenty to just three. In those days a massive saving, in line rental charges.

I even closed down the petty cash operation. Gave everyone a cash float  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 design agency services and eventually added two house designers to our payroll. I did however charge them out at designer agency rates so created a new in-house profit centre..just as the did at the NEXT catalogue. 

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 once they realised that reduced overhead would be directly elated to the overall payroll and headcount.  I even managed to negotiate homeworker status for several senior executives, it suited their lifestyle and indeed productivity went up and office overhead down...

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?! This energy lapse being reflected in much higher service charges levied by the absentee landlord. Most offices now have motion contro0l sensors for lighting neat but totally wasted as the computer systems are left on standby all night!

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 rapidly cut.

This is only the beginning of a very long and hard journey...

GRIMALDI CENTER, MONACO

RECESSION BUSTERS ON THE ROAD

By request, I  am hosting a series of in-house and venue seminars and in some major cities (linking in with my cruise lecture schedule mainly Ports of Call) all over Europe, for information on these we ask that you register your interest.

The seminars, breakfast or morning events and will not last more than 3 hours.  Invitations are limited  at each location 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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Breaking out...Strategies for Conference & Convention planners

Much of the content of this 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.  

  National Venue Show NEC Birmingham rebranded 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.  

 Bookmark http://preview.tinyurl.com/6mmfyb

 Speaker & Moderator

Conference Host

Julian Bray

 

Contact Tel: 01733 345581 

 

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 2009 and for the last seventeen 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 Company Doctor, 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. 

 

 

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