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Welcome to our website!

Who we are and what we do

Footprint is an award-winning marketing and customer care consultancy with a relaxed style and high standards.  We develop close client relationships, based on providing a supportive service, practical advice and hard work.  Enjoying work and a strong sense of fun contribute to a light-hearted environment where work is taken seriously and creative ideas can flow.

Impression management is our passion and we’d like it to become yours. To get there, we’ve got to convince you the issue is important enough to become a priority.  Here goes.

Making a good impression creates and maintains customer preference for your organisation.  This maximises your chance of converting new customers and ensures the loyalty of current users.  It’s a profitable thing to be concerned about.

In forming an impression, people judge an organisation’s staff, its products or services, the simplicity of its systems and the image it presents. In short, people assess their whole experience, not just the product they buy.

A less than flattering impression can be the result of genuinely poor performance from the supplier or an out of date perception of the supplier’s ability.

Footprint can help in both instances.  If the service you provide is better than you get credit for, we can help you change the perception.  If the service you provide is a little rusty, we can help you to improve that too. It’s all about impression management.

We are able to change people’s perceptions with marketing communications programmes and improve an organisation’s customer service performance with customer care programmes.

The blind men and the elephant

The following story is the inspiration behind the central thought behind most of our work. That is, to create a good impression, you have to manage all aspects of it, the service you provide and people’s perception of it.

Friends, long ago in this very city there lived a prince who became weary of listening to the so-called wise men. You see, each of these men of learning had different ideas about the gods and the sacred books, and they used to argue with tongues like razors.

One day the prince gathered together in the market place all the blind men in the city. Near them he placed an elephant. Then he told each man to go to the great beast and feel it with his hands. The first blind man advanced to the elephant and felt its head. The second took hold of its ear, the third its tusk, the fourth its trunk, the fifth its foot, the sixth its back, the seventh its tail and the last the tuft of the tail.

“Now then,” said the prince, “tell us what an elephant looks like.”

The first, who had felt its head, said: “It’s like a pot.” The next, the one who had touched the ear, said: “No, an elephant looks like a fan.” “Nonsense!” laughed the man who had fingered the tusk: “It’s round, hard and smooth like the handle of a plough.” “Don’t be daft,” said the one who had felt the trunk. “The elephant is like a snake.”

To cut a long story short, each man described the animal differently. So the foot became a pillar, the back a barn, the tail a rope and the tuft a feather-duster. Each of the blind men was sure that he was right and that all the others were wrong. At once a furious argument arose. Tempers rose. So did voices. Wild words were flung back and forth. One man punched another. There was a cry of pain. In a few moments the market place was a tangle of fighting bodies.

The city’s learned men looked on at all this, amazed and amused. The prince turned to them and said: “I don’t know why you’re laughing, gentlemen. Your own squabbles are just like these poor fellows. You have your own narrow view of every question and you can’t see anyone else’s. You must learn to examine ideas all over, as the blind men should have examined the elephant. You’ll never understand anything unless you look at it from many different angles.”

(Adapted from the Pali Canon)