Marketing Judo

'Building your business using brains not budget'

Marketing Judo is designed for people and companies who want to build a brand or business but don't have big budgets. That's the position that we, John Barnes and Richard Richardson, found ourselves in when we gave up our big company jobs. Using the leverage of borrowed money, we moved our families to Yorkshire and bought the original Harry Ramsden's fish and chip restaurant.

12 years later we sold the company having opened 70 restaurants in 7 countries, floated on the stock market and grown brand awareness from 17% to 73% on a shoestring marketing budget.

At Harry's we fell into a way of thinking which we now call Marketing Judo. In judo you use the weight of your opponent to your advantage. In judo by moving quickly you can take your opponent by surprise and unbalance them. In judo skill matters more than sheer size! Marketing Judo takes these same principles and applies them to business. Marketing Judo is not an academic concept. It's a practical hands-on framework based on our own experiences that we're now applying successfully both to our own and other companies such as La Tasca Spanish restaurants which increased in value 5 times in 5 years via a stock market flotation and subsequent sale.

Together we have written the best selling book 'Marketing Judo – Building your business using brains not budget' and are frequent speakers at corporate and industry events and conferences.