Marketing Wizdom was established (as Bright Solutions) in 1985. It was incorporated in 1998 and later its name was changed to Marketing Wizdom.
The knowledge behind Marketing Wizdom has been accumulating from the time Robert Clay set up his first business at age 19, with no capital, just as a major recession was getting underway. He had to learn to create results out of thin air or starve. Fortunately, he came up with a product that was years ahead of its competitors, and taught himself how to market it.
Three years later that business had penetrated 40% of its potential market, compared to 17% nationally for all other brands combined. As word got out, offers started pouring in from all over the world. He turned them all down, but supplied know-how to major companies like 3M, Burmah Castrol and Valvoline Oil Campany, and started franchising the concept.
Applying his self-taught marketing skills to the business, it reached No.3 in the UK in the next 3 years, and other franchisees were soon established worldwide. Significant press coverage at that time included major articles in the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian, Observer, many regional newspapers and industry publications.
At 23 he also invented the glass sunroof for cars, creating from scratch a market in the UK for more than 250,000 units a year within 3 years, when it became the third largest sunroof manufacturer in Europe.
Both businesses were eventually sold to a division of Astra Pharmaceutical and he helped to take that business to No.1 in the world in its field within the next four years, before finally exiting.
How Marketing Wizdom came about
Around that time, several entrepreneurs asked Robert to help them with their marketing. He taught them how to implement a number of simple, obvious, commonsense marketing strategies … and they worked. And that’s how Marketing Wizdom came about.
In 1996, with the launch of the European arm of an Australian marketing consultancy, Robert started working with Chris Billington Hughes and in 1997 Andrea Pickerin joined the business. Chris continued working with the original consultancy for several more years, but eventually left and teamed up again with Robert and Andrea. All three are now directors of Marketing Wizdom.
1999 saw the start of a decade-long experiment which transformed the thinking of hundreds of entrepreneurs, catapulting many from obscurity to market leadership.
Hundreds of seminars were delivered, and they met or exceeded the expectations of 997 out of every 1,000 participants. We also developed and ran 3-day workshops where participants would routinely come away buzzing, with more knowledge about growing their business after 3-days than most people would learn from an MBA, or in a couple of lifetimes in business. For example:
Your workshop has far exceeded my expectations … I’ve had around 10 businesses in my life, the biggest got to 46% market share, so I thought I was a pretty good businessman but I don’t think I have ever listened so intently for three days and not been tired. It’s been phenomenally informative. In my MBA I probably learned 1% of what you’ve taught us in the last three days. It’s going to help our business tremendously and I want to thank you.
—Robert Drew, CEO Europe Middle East and Africa, Vistage International, World’s No.1 Organisation for Chief Executives
To embed that knowledge ongoing “hands on” help and support were provided.
A good number of clients went on to become key players, major award winners or market leaders in their sector. Some built businesses from start-up to market leadership in 3-4 years; others achieved as much as £100M in annual revenues; or became the fastest growing companies in their field.
Many also achieved prestigious awards like Business of the Year; the Queens Award to Industry; the Ernst and Young National Entrepreneur of the Year (One year both the national winner and the runner up were clients); or were mentioned in the Sunday Times Rich List.
A few exited or sold stakes in their business for up to £210M.
Building an unprecedented knowledgebase
Along the way Robert and Chris added substantially to their knowledge and experience. Since 1996 Robert has been building an unprecedented knowledgebase. As someone who likes to leave no stone unturned in the quest to know all that can be known about a subject, Robert started accumulating, analysing, dissecting and organising vast quantities of the world’s most powerful marketing knowledge.
Bit by bit this knowledge has been painstakingly arranged into a vast interconnected map detailing every facet of hundreds of the world’s most effective marketing strategies and best practices. That master map now contains around a billion words, or some 4 million+ pages, and counting.
Some of that knowledge is showcased in the posts on this site as well as through the emails, articles and 15 books we’ve already published and will be publishing in the years ahead. The full depth of that knowledge, including most of those books, is available exclusively to participants in the Eureka program …
Here’s how Marketing Wizdom can help you
Over the years, thousands of entrepreneurs and business leaders, inspired by Robert and Chris’s seminars and workshops, wanted them to help them in person to transform their marketing. Unfortunately, with only 24 hours in a day, they just couldn’t stretch themselves that thin, meaning that they could only ever work directly with a handful of clients.
After grappling with the issue for several years, Robert finally figured out how to work effectively, in person, with larger numbers of clients.
The result is the extraordinary Eureka program, derived from this vast volume of research. The test program, launched in September 2009, has helped many participants to achieve extraordinary success. The delivery model used for the program puts it within easy reach of any serious entrepreneur.
As a participant, Robert, Chris and Andrea work with you in person over several years to help you achieve maximum success or market leadership in your field. You’ll gain a huge advantage over your competitors, whatever your industry.
To discover how some of our strategies could revolutionise your business, and to receive further information as it is released, sign up alongside for our FREE Newsletter, then enjoy, learn, apply and prosper.
Or read some of the posts on this site and discover some simple low-risk/high-return marketing strategies that will significantly improve your results.
To find out more about how Marketing Wizdom can help you in your business, simply call us direct on 01908 933535, or email us at office@marketingwizdom.com
What you see above is a tiny fraction of the massive collection of audio materials Robert built up, absorbed and put into practice over many years. The collection includes many extremely rare original works from hundreds of the “masters of marketing” of the past 130 years. In some cases fewer than 100 copies were ever produced. This collection also contains thousands of books (not shown).
All of this knowledge is systematically analysed, dissected and added to the master “business transformation map,” the 4 million pages+ document that sits at the heart of the Marketing Wizdom knowledgebase. This unique know how is then translated into world-class processes that you can apply to your business to attract more of the “right” clients who will spend more money with you more often than ever before. You will gain enormously valuable insights into some of that knowledge by regularly reading my blog entries on this site … and attending the 3-day Quantum Leap workshop and participating in the Eureka mentoring program.
Over one billion words … and counting
This shows the number of documents (in brackets) and words incorporated into each of the main sections of our unique knowledgebase by September 2009. This adds up to more than 825,000 documents that contain more than 500 million words. And that only represents half of this knowledgebase, which has been built into a massive and continuously evolving “map” of the world’s most effective business transformation practices — equivalent to some 4 million pages of know-how. Each section is divided into numerous sub-topics, which in turn are divided into further sub-topics and so on through the many levels of information that make up this unique “map” of the world’s best business transformation practices.
The average 250-page book contains around 70,000 words, which means that this knowledgebase contains the equivalent of over more than 14,000 full size books. Whether working from the office, or home, or on the road anywhere in the world, Robert can instantly refer to, analyse and draw upon the very best knowledge, experience and case studies in the world when writing books and articles; creating seminars, workshops and programs; developing procedures for producing world-class marketing results; or providing you with one-to-one advice. Nobody else in the world, to our knowledge, has anything remotely comparable to this.
