With live entertainment and theatre marketing budgets squeezed, CEO of performance marketing agency SINE Digital, James Dale, explains how his business has quantified the financial burden of ‘boring’ in live entertainment, and looks at why brands are failing to invest in the quality creative needed to beat the ad algorithms

A bold rebrand can breathe new life into a business, helping it stay relevant in a fast-changing market. But when done poorly, it can do quite the opposite, drawing criticism, confusing customers, and in some cases, damaging brand loyalty built over decades.

Summer is coming, and for many startup owners that can mean we are preparing for the summer slump. It’s a known thing: clients are on holiday, people on annual leave, and your service isn’t their top priority.

Yorkshire’s first bean-to-bar chocolate company, Bullion, is a masterclass in the power of a business story. Founded by Max Scotford in 2016 as a side hustle inspired by a Saturday morning TV segment, Bullion officially launched in 2017. Within a year, the Sheffield-based brand had moved from Max’s kitchen to a full-scale factory, expanding to multiple sites with a café, bakery, and thriving team by mid-2025.

Marketing is one of the most critical drivers of success for your startup. It builds your brand, attracts customers, and keeps your growth engine running. When it comes to execution, you’ll face an important choice – should you create an in-house marketing team or outsource the work?

In a crowded marketplace where everyone seems to be saying the same thing, the biggest challenge startup founders face is standing out. Award-winning business strategist Lisa Johnson, who has amassed a following of over 50,000 people online, shares how to truly shine in your visibility as a startup founder.

According to Salesforce’s “State of Marketing” report, “implementing or leveraging AI” is the number one priority for marketers. Still, the survey showed that although 96% of the specialists implemented generative AI in marketing operations, only 32% had fully applied it. The question is not whether firms should but rather how they implement gen AI tools in their marketing strategies.

When I started my career at Google two decades ago, we were obsessed with one thing: helping people find what they were looking for faster. Google's latest AI announcements signal something far more profound. Tech leaders are not just changing how people search, they’re fundamentally transforming how they discover and buy.

We’ve all seen that: great product, strong team, yet no people who are buying. In the UK, the average e-commerce conversion rate floats around 2.5% to 3% (as of late 2023 to early 2025). That means just two or three out of every 100 visitors actually make a purchase.

CEOs are taking over our social feeds, with one in three (30%) building up such a following that they now see themselves as influencers. That’s according to new research from BT, which finds execs now see their social media presence as critical to their business strategy.   

Every Q4, Christmas gift guides fill magazines, newspapers, and online publications. And every year, thousands of startups are caught off guard, trying too late to get their products featured.

When startups map out their growth strategy, influencer marketing is often the first port of call. It’s seen as the shiny, must-do tactic that promises rapid brand awareness, new customer discovery, and double-digit growth.

More of us than ever before are thinking about starting a business in the next 12 months, according to research from small business support platform and membership community Enterprise Nation.  

In recent years, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has become increasingly essential to UK workplaces. Data from the latest Freshworks AI Workplace report reveals stark contrasts in how UK professionals across different sectors are embracing – or resisting – the integration of AI into their daily work.

Why is the human side of branding something startups can't afford to ignore? When we talk about branding, most minds jump straight to logos, taglines, and colour palettes. But for startups, whether B2B/B2C or, as I like to call it, H2H (human to human), the most powerful branding doesn't live in visual identity or marketing campaigns. It lives in what we can’t see: emotions, trust, and human connection.

Elevating a business from startup to scaleup is something research widely suggests will only be achieved by around one in 200. That means, of the 900,000 companies which launched in 2023, only 4,500 will reach that next level of success.

In the world of business, your brand is more than just a logo, a colour palette, or a catchy slogan. It’s the sum of how people perceive your business, the value they associate with it, and the emotional connection they feel toward it. This collective perception is what we call brand equity and it’s one of your most valuable business assets.

Branding isn’t just a marketing gimmick. It impacts all aspects of your business from retaining employees to your pricing, and to the sustainable growth of the business.

After over two decades in the industry, we know that eCommerce brands have the power to manage their own PR strategies successfully, without the need for an agency.

As a Communications and PR expert with over two decades of experience across the public, private, and third sectors, I’ve learned that great communication isn’t just a business asset – it’s a wellbeing essential.