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 NEWS-TRENDS-ANALYSIS
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RECENT NEWS FEATURES The following represents a cross section of Quintus News Stories that have graced the pages of the press in recent months and which have been featured in InsideTrack:
Rising Power of the Grey Market 
Michael Maguire, Managing Partner with Quintus Management warns businesses in Ireland to wake up to the buying power of Ireland's 'grey' market - the over 50s. Marketing campaigns addressed exclusively at the youth market run the risk of alienating brands from the growing population of wealthy elder and senior citizens. Speaking at a business gathering in Dublin today, Maguire said that the growth of wealth in Ireland and in Great Britain has been a feature of our economic stability over the last two decades. Consumer demand for goods and services is the highest it has ever been and this has fuelled the success of leading Irish and international companies with a commitment to our regional market. 'However there is a fly in the ointment,' Maguire says, 'many leading brands appear to have committed themselves significantly or exclusively to the under 30s market with its historic unallocated spending power. But this is a very crowded market segment with intense competition and often reducing margins. While some companies, most notably in the cosmetics sector have sought to address the needs of older consumers, most, including the consumer telecoms and electronic sectors and much of the fashion sector, display a stunning ignorance of market potential among older consumers.' To illustrate this point Maguire quoted a comment made by the Marketing Director of a leading telecoms provider that "older people are too difficult to satisfy and they cannot relate to new technology". Maguire believes that such companies are missing a trick here. Older people are just as adept at embracing change but are certainly more discerning when it comes to service and are intensely loyal. The over 50s are also the wealthiest segment of our community and represent the biggest single growth sector in the economy. 'Businesses need to change their approach to broaden product and service appeal,' Maguire urges, 'in the words of one prominent cosmetics brand, "because we are worth it".' Please contact Quintus Management at quintus@quintusmanagement.co.uk or at +44 (0)28 9146 9901.
© Quintus Management (2009)
Pointing Fingers Will Not Aid Recovery 
Thumbing through various newspapers and magazines while waiting in an airport business lounge last week I was struck by the scale, focus and treatment of journalistic output on our current economic woes and what I read fills me with anxiety. The fact that it is a rolling story of global significance that merits hectares of column centimetres is not what concerns me. It is our collective failure to focus attention on how we restore our wealth and commercial prowess is what’s wrong. The media has tracked the evolving banking crisis and the public outrage on disproportionate payments to senior executives with some relish just as it has the perpetually defensive response of our political leaders to a worsening situation. The blame game is in full sway. Governments in London and Dublin point fingers at the bankers, the financial institutions and multinationals demand massive taxpayer intervention of host countries to offset commercial losses with everyone blaming ‘global economics.’ Meanwhile the SME sector which is the driver of the economy has to shoulder much of the burden of maintaining employment. This is like Nero fiddling on his lyre while Rome burns! Enough already! There will be a time and place to bring the architects of our current economic failures to account and for us to put in place new early warning measures to protect against future difficulties. What businesses need right now are clear strategies for recovery and growth that place the principles of market driven revenue generation at the heart of company planning. Recognising that some sectors will find the climate more pressing than others, for Northern Ireland companies the fall in value of Sterling should provide us with an export cost advantage over other currencies that we have not enjoyed for many years and in the right circumstances can offset the impact of recession in Europe or North America. The same is true of our tourism industry as it is with our retail sector. Northern Ireland currently provides considerable value to those in the Euro zone. The world does not stop buying things simply because credit is tight. There are many business opportunities out there if we have a mind to grasp them and frankly I think that we owe it to our shareholders, our customers and to our community that we do so. However it is important that businesses review their skills mix, particularly in marketing because of all the business disciplines employed by companies, marketing is the only one that is wholly concerned with revenue generation. So here is my plea. Let us concentrate our intellectual resources and marketing skills on generating revenue for our businesses. If we can achieve that over the next year many of the wider problems can be put in perspective. Governments won’t do that for us. We can do that for ourselves. If you want to comment on this or other InsideTrack features, please contact Quintus Management at quintus@quintusmanagement.co.uk or at +44 (0)28 9146 9901. © Quintus Management (2009)
Quintus Chief Calls For New Economic & Cultural Vision 
Michael Maguire, Managing Partner of Quintus Management has urged the governments in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to abandon the current practice of promoting short term 'sound bite' social engineering policies and the never ending tide of 'sticking plaster' initiatives and instead pursue an integrated socio economic development vision that serves the needs of the citizen for the next generation and beyond. Speaking at a business gathering in Belfast today, Michael Maguire said that we have seen more government initiatives in the last ten years than we have seen in a lifetime and many would question the wisdom that has underpinned the constant race for more legislation. The stunning volume of law changes, rules and regulations that the wealth creation sector has had embrace in the last decade is a case in point. Others include the muddled policies on employment, educational reform, environmental management, foreign policy and domestic security that have prompted a bevy of poorly executed and dispirit initiatives that display little joined up thinking. He said, 'While it is vitally important that democratic institutions should always put the rights of its citizens first, our elected governments sometimes confuse the issues of 'control' and 'development'. Much of recent business and social legislation has centred on 'micro managing' social change while largely ignoring the overriding imperative to generate sustainable wealth, not just for the life of a government but for a generation.' Maguire argues that the governments in Ireland should show some real courage and provide proper leadership in encouraging the development of a 'generational programme'; a vision and support strategy for sustainable growth for the next 30 years and use civic powers wisely to bring this about. The development of Japan in the post war years followed a clear plan that successive governments bought in to. In the United States, California's dominance of the electronics industry did not occur by accident - it took visionary planning and co-ordination between government, academia and the private sector. Whatever one's position on latter day growth in the Chinese manufacturing economy, it has not been the product of domestic controlling legislation; it has been based on a clear vision and plan with broad based buy-in from every aspect of the Chinese economy and society. 'Future generations,' he said, 'will not thank us for leaving a legacy of huge out of town hypermarkets to give us more choice while ploughing up green land. They will not laud us for the adroit adoption of rigorous health and safety legislation if it drives down investment needed to compete globally. They certainly will not applaud us that we failed to position our economies to deliver future wealth and well being.' 'It is for these reasons and more that I urge governments in Ireland to find the courage to put aside party political interests and bring the great thinkers of our time together to develop a clear 30 year vision for our economic output and our society and set about developing the building blocks to achieve that vision. Yes, such blue skies thinking may be expensive but it will be a lot less than the cost of unaddressed failure.' Please contact Quintus Management at quintus@quintusmanagement.co.uk or at +44 (0)28 9146 9901.
© Quintus Management (2009) |
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