As a child in Glasgow, Easter was not the chocolate covered, consumer frenzy it seems to be today.
The religious aspects of the event aside, the high point for me was being given an ordinary, hard boiled hen’s egg which I had to paint in a design of my choice. Ah, simple pleasures and the comfort of following tradition.
Walk into any supermarket now and you are faced with a wall of chocolate, every conceivable brand seems to have produced its own Easter egg - and so cheaply.
Expectations, or should I say eggspectations (apologies for the pun), are so much higher these days. Any loss of or failure to achieve those expectations has a much bigger impact, as many parents know. Consequently they need a lot more management. The current credit crisis which has made cheap mortgage and loans a thing of the past for consumers is a case in point.
We all have expectations, whether they are about our career, our employer or our personal relationships and Biba is no exception. Take for example electronic communications. In the digital world it’s too easy to expect that the recipients of our electronic communications read them with the same care and attention that we used to create them.
The success of Biba’s new, hard-copy, quarterly regulatory newsletter for members - Compliance Rules has reminded us that the assumption about paper having died a death in the digital age is false. If anything, the newsletter which we posted out to members recently has proven one of our most popular publications of late prompting a surge of telephone calls and visits to our website. People still have a connection with paper; they still want to be communicated with through this more traditional medium. We’re happy to do that if it gets the message across.
While we’re on this theme of tradition, there’s the adage: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Well for Biba members there certainly is. Our annual exhibition and conference in Glasgow from 30th April to 1st May 2008 is free to members and includes a number of complimentary lunches. Why not take some time out of the office to attend the conference? Once there, you will find that not only are Biba’s expectations very high indeed for the future success of its members, but that we have a gathered a group of first class speakers to help you achieve that very goal.
Eric Galbraith is chief executive of Biba
