CBI | BT | Derby County | cool marketing job

If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.

We are deep in planning for our 100th episode launch next month, which is going to distill all the key lessons of the 100 hours of content we have produced. Therefore it is a bit of a shorter note this week.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a piece about what is the point in the CBI?

To quote a key section:

But the timing could be a perfect storm. 

When every corporate budget in the country is under intense scrutiny and with many annual renewals coming up, a considerable number of corporations may see a rather useful six figure sum that they can claw back and it poses the question, what value does the CBI bring?

There is speculation that EY, Rolls Royce and Adnams Brewery are all reviewing membership, any business leader that is giving an interview in the next few weeks is likely to be asked their view, that is a dangerous place for the group. This is because there will be a continual drumbeat of ‘we are reviewing our membership’, it may also reveal some companies that are not members at all. 

Further danger is that when one goes, the flood gates open, there was an intense worry back in 2016 when Sky and JCB revoked its membership (The Times) and JCB (Sky News). (As an aside, there is an irony that it was Andrew Griffith who was the CFO of Sky who became Boris Johnson's lead business adviser, and is now a Treasury Minister in Rishi Sunak’s Government).

It was Amanda Blanc, the CEO of Aviva that was the first individual company to go on Friday morning.

Ashley Armstrong from The Sun has totalled up the sixty six companies which then proceeded to follow by terminating or pausing membership (tweet here)

The question that many have you asked is where and what now for the CBI?

The truth is I haven’t quite crystalised my thoughts on it and I think so much ink has been dedicated to the CBI over the last few weeks, that more hot take reactions are not required at this stage.

Some of the most interesting pieces that I have read include:

• My old boss from IoD days, Simon Walker in The Times writing about the idea of merging some existing groups

• Mark Kleinman in City AM talking about the hubris of the CBI

• Mark Kleinman again on Sky News also had the interesting exclusive of Nick Faith of WPI Strategy looking to set up almost a holding group for the next year called BizUK.

I am going to take maybe a week, maybe two to properly reflect and speak to some thoughtful individuals and then write a considered piece.

I am though interested in individuals who you think represent the future of British business that may not have had the coverage they deserve, please reply to this email with names.

😎 Cool job alert

The Elizabeth’s Smile charity set up by Nick and Nancy Hungerford, (Nick was the founder behind the fintech, Nutmeg that was acquired by JP Morgan).

They are looking for a mid level marketer to help for three months with the public launch of the charity this summer, Nick posted it on LinkedIn earlier this week here.

The charity has amazing board members Ben Brabyn, Edward Griffiths and even JJ alum Sophie Adelman.

📞 Marc Allera, CEO of BT Consumer

We had a fantastic chat with Marc Allera this week on Jimmy’s Jobs. He has 25 million subscribers to look after. We discussed the future of sports production and how he is keen for it to go a bit deeper, possibly with the mic’ing up of referees in due course and how the metaverse might actually work in practise.

This was an partnership episode, if you would like to look at how you might partner with Jimmy’s Jobs, please look here.

🐏 Derby County news

I know the real reason that so many of you subscribe is to stay up to date with how the mighty Rams are doing …. well we have just sneaked into the playoffs with two games to go.

Unfortunately, Substack no longer seems to be allowing tweets to be embedded, or maybe it’s Twitter not allowing.

Either way, you’ll miss out on a beaming David McGoldrick who has just become the Derby player to score for five games in a row since Chico Baino in 1997.

We have an incredibly exciting football guest coming up soon.

📚 Other most read pieces

As I mentioned, the piece I wrote on the future of the CBI was our third most read piece ever, well here are the other two:

Announcing the Governor 💰💰 / (the lack of) British business media

Difference between a good and great speech? + One tip to sleep at night

✍️ This notebook is not possible without …

It is the most common question I get asked on when I tell people that I am a podcaster is, ‘how do you make money?’.

Well it is possible thanks to our various partners.

If you want to reach some of the UK’s most influential people, whether they be FTSE CEOs, the UK’s fastest growing entrepreneurs, editors of national newspapers and or Cabinet Ministers… including now several former Chancellors.

We are exploring future mini series on:

• the impact of AI jobs,

• future of the office,

• the creator economy,

• Education technology (EdTech)

• jobs in fintech

• jobs in sport and

• jobs in the media

You can check out some of the different innovative models we have at https://www.jobsofthefuture.co/partnerships

or if you have an idea of something you would like us to explore hit a reply to this email.

And check out the website, the hub for everything Jimmy’s Jobs

jobsofthefuture.co

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