International Business and Technology Blog

A great choice of venue, the Miami sunshine played its part in the successful 11^th round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations from October 19 - 23, 2015. It has been three long months since the US and EU TTIP negotiating teams last met. Now they gathered, suitably attired for the warm weather they would confront and the well-rehearsed and prepared negotiating program, including the obligatory Stakeholder Presentations (all about being inclusive) on October 21^st and the Chief Negotiators Briefing (all about being open and transparent) at the closing on October 23^rd.

The term Nordics describes a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic, comprising 5 countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Much envied with regards to their wealth, open societies, technologies and, of course, well-being. Non-Nordics wonder how do they do it? How does a vast region with just 25 million people, speaking 4 languages, generate a GDP of $850Bn, making them amongst the richest countries in the world and ranking 6th in theEuropean Union (EU) after Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain and they all seem to be so happy?

Don’t give your website visitors the creeps (well, unless you’re selling props for horror movies or promoting a haunted house tour). Give them the experience they deserve! In this Halloween blog special, we’ll give you three design elements that you should avoid having on your website, because they’re terrifyingly outdated, deadly boring, or just… bloody awful. So what are these website ghosts?

Content Management Systems (CMS) are not our fellow human beings, they are just online tools for building and editing websites. So why do so many of us feel so passionate about them? If you discover a new CMS feature that will simplify your work, you love your CMS. But if it doesn’t work as you instructed and the editor displays a mess instead, you hate your CMS. The relationship gets sometimes complicated. But whatever that is, today’s question that we will answer is: What should you require from your CMS when building multilingual websites?

Way back in May 2015, the European Commission (EC) presented its Digital Single Market (DSM) directive. Four months later and the program has advanced rapidly, with all concerned stakeholders now actively involved: not surprising given the economic and political import of the DSM! The European Parliament has held debates and issued statements; the European Council similarly, the EC has held numerous public consultations and published findings; European and non-European business interests (from digital infrastructure to service providers) are researching, employing lobbyists and taking position, while lawyers and accountants are readying themselves for streams of income. US interests are not on the side-lines, in fact market makers and leaders such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (GAFA) are the most visible piece of this DSM influencing relationship, which the US Mission to the EU considers one of its top three priorities.

Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union is a huge challenge, above all at this particularly delicate time as the detailed program faces strong political as well as economic headwinds. But inaction can’t be blamed on lack of Presidents in Europe - we have lots of them: European Commission (EC) President, Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Euro Summit, Donald Tusk, President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. Earlier this year, the 5Ps got together for some quality time, culminating with the release of the "Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union" report. Coming after numerous reports over many years with similar objectives, this latest missive is grandly dubbed the "Five Presidents Report".

Just over two years ago in July 2013, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations began; relatively recent in the grand scheme of the past 500 years of transatlantic trade relations. Practiced in the art of international trade negotiations, US and EU trade teams run permanent parallel trade negotiations, currently with more than 20 other countries and trading blocs (including China, India, ASEAN…), and consider TTIP progress as “very good”. Back in July 2015, trade teams met in Brussels for the 10th TTIP Round of Negotiations, described as low key. EU chief negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero, summed up the week’s work: “At their last meeting in June, the leaders of the G7, including Presidents Juncker, Tusk and Obama, gave the EU and US clear indications to intensify our discussions on TTIP and identify the way forward on all areas” and that this has now been achieved. However, today TTIP is about politics, and finding that way forward. A political review has been convened for later this September 2015 between EU Commissioner Cecelia Malmström and US Trade Representative Mike Froman, and is understood to be critical as to where TTIP goes next in terms of timing and action. The other takeaway from round #10 as Bercero aptly put it: “we want to make the life of SMEs easier”.

In 2014, Germany boasted over 51 million online consumers, only superseded by China, Japan and the USA. In terms of e-commerce, Germany comes 2^nd in Europe after the UK, with over €41 Bn annual online sales, as reported by the German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association.

E-commerce sector represented 9% of Germany’s total retail industry in 2014. The German E-Commerce and Distance Selling Trade Association forecasted a 12% growth in 2015, reaching a revenue of nearly €47 Bn. Other sources predict even higher growth rates, between 20-30%. According to the Association of the German Internet Industry, more than half (53%) of German GDP generated in 2017 will be e-commerce related (compared to 37% in 2012).

Did you miss it?

Walking around any place in the UK it is hard not to see someone looking at their smartphone, therefore it is not surprising that the UK’s Ofcom(1) report out in August 2015 heralding in the official status that the UK is a “Smartphone society” went largely unnoticed. So if you missed it (buried in the depths of a 435 page report) here it is…  “For the first time, the smartphone has overtaken the laptop as the device internet users say is the most important for connecting to the internet; in 2015 33% chose their smartphone…” and there is even a funky graph to go with it.

We are continuously looking to see how effective our online marketing is, and one of the great benefits of digital marketing is that there are some excellent tools to tell you just that. We are running a series of webinars which are very popular, with over 50 people registered for the last one. Now, my challenge is to set about doubling that number. We share some of our own online marketing activities to help you improve your marketing return on investment.