Photo by Juja Han on Unsplash 2020 was a year that will be discussed for decades to come. And in the world of podcasting, this will be no exception. In June 2005, Apple introduced podcasts onto iTunes, with some 3,000 programmes available at launch. Fast-forward to February 2020, and that number had grown to 900,000 active podcasts. The big news, however, is that as of January 2021, Apple Podcasts has 1.8 million podcasts available – doubling nearly 15 years of podcast creation in less than a year.  The headline event of 2020 for many people was being put into national lockdown. But how d ..read more

Despite all the obvious hurdles that have come our way this year, it’s safe to say that this pandemic has revealed the hidden talents of many cooks and bakers – or at least improved their results – across the globe. From the banana-bread hype, which achieved a record-breaking 525% increase in Google searches, to the evolution of everyday cooking trends, our creative sides have shone through. As we’re an integrated marketing agency that specialises in food content, it makes sense that the next, and final (sigh), Lockdown Wellness instalment is all about – you guessed it – food!  Make the ..read more

Over 100 iconic prints of world renowned music artists taken by globally celebrated photographers including Rankin, Tony McGee and Jill Furmanovsky are going on sale today.  Available for £95 each, the sale represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of music history, with many of the prints usually unavailable to buy. 100% of proceeds go to Stagehand – the only UK charity specifically dedicated to providing hardship funding for live music crews who have fallen on tough times. Available from today for a limited four week period, expect a mix of established photography name ..read more

Your environment makes a big difference to your happiness. We’ve sourced 10 ways to make yours more positive, straight from the experts While we can’t single-handedly solve the COVID-19 crisis or sort out British politics, we can control our personal environment. Be it your WFH space or just your relaxing home environment, the benefits of an optimised space on your wellbeing are proven and well-documented. Here are 10 simple ways to boost yours. 1 BE GENEROUS ‘First up, make sure that you avoid the worst environment – a lean space,’ says Dr Craig Knight, occupational psycholog ..read more

We’re putting people first and pausing all River Group, Maven & Fish marketing and sales messages until further notice, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Why? Because professionals are people first and foremost and we’ve made the assumption that you don’t want to be sold marketing and content services when you’re worried about the health and wellbeing of yourself, family, friends, colleagues and everyone in general. As understandably we all are at present. Instead, in light of these uncertain times, we want to bring positivity and uplifting content to our clients, suppliers and foll ..read more

Membership organisations have been around since the time of the ancient Greeks when people were allowed to associate independently for a variety of reasons as long as they kept within the law. During medieval times these’ clubs’ were more akin to informal gatherings of friends for drinking (how nothing changes) but evolved during the 17th century into a more formal invitation-only clubs held at ‘coffee-houses’ for the literati of the day and inevitably more dubious political purposes. So, as the population grew and prospered, and economies and industry developed so too did the number and ..read more

Outlier – a person or thing differing from all other members of a particular group or set. When it comes to solving complex problems, personal or otherwise, we often ask others for advice. We surmise that it’s important to get another perspective. Why is this? Well, it’s because not everyone thinks like we do or has the same experiences of a particular situation. This is as important in business as it is in life (I know the two are often interlinked but bear with me). There’s an old adage that says if you keep doing things the same way, you get the same result. The same goes for people ..read more

Never let it be said that the marketing industry doesn’t love a good trend. We spend a lot of our time waiting for the next one, hoping and praying that we can join its long trail of pilgrims.  All drunk on the Kool-Aid, all eager to say we saw the light and thankful it brings fresh meaning to our lives. Sometimes these trends disappear under the crushing pressure of reality – media-neutral planning was a dream once upon a time.  Sometimes these trends become an accepted norm, even though under close analysis they are almost as meaningless as, er…. collecting ‘likes’ on social media. Ev ..read more

The 2010s saw a maelstrom of change by anyone’s standards. As we enter a new decade, it’s worth reminding ourselves that back in the day tablets were for taking with food, watches just told you the time, and drones were people you avoided at a dinner party. For those of us in business, the rapid advancements in technology and the subsequent impact on consumer behaviour have been no less challenging. The 2010s may well be viewed as the time when digital finally took over. At the beginning of the decade, 27% of the world’s population were online. That figure is now closer to 60%, with penetra ..read more

The robots haven’t taken over yet, but every day their ability to understand human behaviour, thought patterns and language is improving. The latter is especially relevant to content marketing and online content creators, as search engines use AI to determine the relevance of a search term or keyword to the contents of a web page. Google, in particular, has invested heavily in the machine learning of their search-engine robots, specifically in the areas of natural language processing (NLP), salience and neural matching. Go here to read part one of this piece (it’s OK, we’ll wait) to get a ..read more