iPads – they are everywhere aren’t they? On trains, in meetings, at conferences and Apple is out of stock. It seems as if it won’t be long before everyone has one. In the professional, media bubble that we live in, the iPad appears ubiquitous.

'He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious' – Sun Tzu – The Art of War Today many retailers, and their suppliers, are wasting millions on poorly targeted price offers; giving value away unnecessarily and squandering resources when it has never been more important to make sure each bullet counts.

Necessary investment. Unexpected cost. Tim Britton looks at YouGov's DongleTrack and asks what happens when brands over-promise on service.

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" – Albert Einstein Simplicity is rarely an accident of design. Behind every elegant product or process a battle has been fought; in which simplicity has triumphed over complexity.

The financial services industry clearly has an image problem. Large swathes of the population have lost trust in the sector generally, and the banks in particular. This happened because the recession was triggered by the credit crunch, which, rightly or wrongly, the banks are widely believed to have caused. Further, it is commonly held that the banks (and by association financial services more generally) have let us down, we bailed them out and we are paying the price.

Could top brands have a significant role to play in public policy? If Apple can get thousands of people to queue all night for the latest igadget, could it persuade smokers to quit? Could McDonald’s encourage people to have their five a day? Could top brands have a significant role to play in public policy?

"Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem", Woody Allen (reputedly) Given the fragile state of our economic recovery, I am pretty sure that consumer confidence will remain a hot topic for retailers and researchers alike throughout 2011.

Is committing to a multi-million pound, high profile sports sponsorship deal in the middle of a recession an act of bravado, or one of well-placed confidence? BMW was the last official sponsor to sign up for the London 2012 Olympics, 1,000 days before the event in November 2009.