News

One Africa, One Market

By Francois Baird In the words of a recent guest column in The New Age, “Suddenly, everyone is in love with Africa.” We are inching closer and closer to realising the dream of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (T-FTA), which will cover around 26 African countries and serve a market of approximately 700 million people. […]

Words from the Wise: Get to know the Baird’s CMC Associates

At Baird’s CMC we feel proud to work with such a diverse and talented group of communications and business strategy professionals from around the globe. Below are wonderful bits of wisdom from our associates, all of them veterans in the business. “While there is great need in the world, there is also a great response […]

Ask CMC – Going green

Q. Dear Baird’s CMC, As a small business owner, I’m aiming to make my company more environmentally responsible. Do you know of any simple steps we could take to go green? – Environmental Ethics A. Dear Environmental Ethics, That’s a great decision! Our resident environmental expert, Aditya Bahadur has some relatively quick and easy […]

The Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the Urgent/Important Matrix) is one of our favourite time-management tools. Simple and extremely efficient, it has helped thousands of people schedule their time better on a day-to-day basis! This tool is based on former US President Dwight Eisenhower’s idea of drawing a distinction between two elements: importance and urgency. […]

Soft finance getting tougher

By Simon Hardie and Denise Gee Microcredit, a booming sector since the ‘90s, is the latest to feel the pinch in the wake of the global financial crisis, according to a report by Baird’s CMC Financial Services. This report, written by Baird’s CMC Associate Denise Gee and and Senior Consultant Simon Hardie appeared in the […]

Corporate Reputation and Risks: Elements of a Successful Strategy

In our recent posts on this topic, we discussed some of the essentials of reputation management and risks, the repercussions of not having an effective reputation risk management strategy in place, and the role of the CEO. What are the characteristics of a successful reputational risk management approach? The mistake many companies make is focusing […]

Corporate Reputation and Risks: Role of the CEO

In our recent posts, we discussed some of the essentials of reputation management and risks as well as the repercussions of not having an effective reputation risk management strategy in place. Now let’s examine some of the elements of such a strategy. What, for instance, is the role of the head of an organisation when […]

Corporate Reputation and Risks: The Repercussions of Mismanagement

In a recent post, we outlined some of the basics about reputational risk and the very real threat it poses to organisations in today’s world. (You can read the post here.) In the words of a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit a few years ago, “…although a shortage of cash can bring a company […]

Corporate Reputation and Risks: An Introduction

By Paul Dillon Many organisations fail to address reputational issues and prepare for future shocks until it is too late. Perhaps this is because the science of reputation management is a relatively recent one; there are still relatively few established tools and techniques to deal with reputational risk. However, the importance of managing a corporate […]

Know the rules

By James Snodgrass The other day, I was reading a poem by Seamus Heaney about a line of aid workers passing along sacks of grain when I was reminded about an incident from my own childhood. I was born in South Africa, and spent my later years in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo-Brazza and Zaire, now the […]