by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

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What keeps every retail chief executive up at night is the marketing question: what works, and what doesn’t. Getting your comms straight makes the difference between whether you live or die in business. At Robert Loch’s Internet People event I heard Cheap Flights boss Hugo Burge say: “Why spend money on advertising, when you can spend money on the product?”

When customers are impressed with a product, they talk about it.

Referrals from blogs and forums to Glasses Direct are increasing at a rate of 6.5 per cent a month. So, whether it’s buying better frames from China, ordering 50,000 bloodshot eyeball gobstoppers because we want to send one out with every pair of glasses, or replacing corporate lingo with chatty colloquialisms – we refer to product codes as our glasses’ DNA – our focus is on getting people talking.

To the entrepreneurs’ watering hole, the Adam Street club, for Kelvin MacKenzie’s talk on the future of the media. After explaining that a libel action, brought against him by Elton John for a story he ran on the front page of The Sun, was caused by “a rent boy approaching us with a story that, frankly, we wanted to believe”, he spoke about the death of traditional media. ITV’s reach in ten years, he warned, would be at “ten per cent if they’re lucky”. He made the point that TVs will shortly turn into PCs. What this means is that television as we know it – a linear flow of largely uncontrollable programming – will disappear and be replaced by the likes of UK start-up Tioti.com, which allows users to choose the content they want to watch. The upshot for marketers is that if you want to advertise to 25 per cent of the population through one terrestrial channel, then do it now, because the days of advertising on this scale to a captive audience are numbered.

At these conferences and events I often speak to entrepreneurs afterwards who usually ask me one of two questions: I need an idea so how do I get one? Or I’ve got an idea so how do I move it forward? Which is why Oli Barrett, the serial entrepreneur behind the government’s Make Your Mark With A Tenner scheme, John Hornbaker, one of the country’s leading dotcom developers, and I have just launched IdeaVolcano, a blog offering ideas for entrepreneurs to develop. We want to connect those with ideas to those searching for ideas to build into businesses. Visit our blog at Ideavolcano.com to get a fi x of ideas and/or share your own.

Entrepreneurs are in luck right now, and not just because of our blog. There’s a dedicated and supportive group of VCs and journalists, regular events and opportunities to meet people who can help your business. Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher’s much read blog Vecosys.com is actively covering start-ups on a daily basis; Saul Klein of Index Ventures is organising weekly open meetings for investors and entrepreneurs in coffee shops (www.localglobe.blogspot. com) every Thursday – fans include Avid Larizadeh from Accel Venture Partners and Judith Clegg, founder of the Second Chance Tuesday events. Entrepreneurs like Al Gosling of Extreme are incubating ideas and helping fi rst-time entrepreneurs find their feet. Even Courvoisier is launching its own social network of successful business people in May this year called the Future 500. Of the three years I’ve been doing this job, it feels like now is the best time to be an entrepreneur.

Jamie Murray Wells is the founder and chief executive of the multi award winning discount spectacles retailer Glassesdirect.co.uk

Tags: judith clegg, blogging, al gosling, saul klein, networking, marketing, glasses direct, conferences, kelvin mckenzie, index ventures, entrepreneurs, diary of an entrepreneur, john hornbaker, serial entrepreneur, james murray wells, second chance tuesday, avid larizadeh, accel venture partners, oli barrett, make your mark with a tenner, future 500, vecosys.com,