Lessons to be learned in Place Branding

The Daily Mirror had a great front cover article yesterday with david Cameron relaxing on a Cornish beach on his holiday. More interesting to me was the headline on the paper he was reading however.

It was from the Plymouth Herald where they are having a go about an £1/2 million rebrand of the new council logo.

You can read the full article by clicking here

It's not that different to the coverage we got when we did the brand for Nottingham.

Have a look at the case study by clicking here

There are loads of lessons they could have learned in launching this as it seems far too many of this type of branding project is done with too high a profile and with very odd agendas!

We did a review recently with the Nottingham Evening Post and they got a bit more positive after a few years allowing the design to bed itself in!

Again, you can read this by clicking here

Branding needs rebranding

Have a read of this article in the Sunday Times about Saffron looking at rebranding Gordon Brown and New Labour.

Click this link to read it

Ignoring the politics of it, Wally Olins makes a few points that we have been batting on about for for a few years now.

1. The more you advertise a bad product, the faster it will fail.

2. Changing a logo on its own will change nothing - other than the logo.

3. Branding itself needs rebranding - it has a bad name because there are too many people looking to just do (1) and (2) above without any thought to all the other stuff which is, perhaps even more important.

We read Wally's first book years ago and it is brilliant.

Wally Olins On Brand

I guess his second will be just as good too. I've just bought this myself, so will report back soon as to whether he adds anything new to the mix.

Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook

We believe that David Milliband will be the next leader anyway!

One bad brand experience will taint yours forever

We’ve been having problems with T-Mobile and their Blackberry services for months. Every time it sent and email to one of our handsets, it bounced back to tell the sender it hadn’t arrived.

Helpful stuff – particularly as it did arrive and we had people ringing and complaining and all sorts.

We rang T-Mobile on loads of occasions and no-one seemed to want to own the problem and get it sorted.

Finally, I rang to give them one last chance or we were going to shift contractors and then we spoke to Jean.

She took control, involved her techy helper Jason in the problem and was simply brilliant. She promised to call me back five minutes later and then did. She said she thought she had an idea what was causing the issue and would be back to me shortly. Sure enough, she rang back to confirm that it was now mended. It turned out to be something very simple at their end, but no-one else had looked in the right place.

She even said she would call back the next day to ensure the problem had been resolved. Guess what, she did at exactly the time she agreed.

So I thought I would write to their press office telling them they had a star in their team and they should praise her and shout about her from the rooftops.

They sent me back an email almost immediately letting me now they were dealing with it and would be back in touch within 12 hours.
And guess what?

They haven’t been. And its now 42 hours later.

Poor old Jean. She is trying to turn around an underperforming brand single handedly and no-one else seems to be backing her up.

Remember, just ONE bad brand experience will taint your customers view of you – potentially forever.

Will it blend?

We went to see a speaker from Google the other night and he was talking about a US based business that has totally transformed itself by publishing videos on You Tube. And they sell food blenders, not a trendy youth product.
In the first weekend after they put a video on You Tube, they sold more product than they had done in the previous month.

We're all desperately trying to think of a new ways to create such a brilliant cheap solution to driving new customers to what was previously a rather average business.
Have a look by clicking here

This is what it looks like when you blend a load of glow sticks with the lights off:

Oh my word, we've done a podcast!

Well not actually us. But a good friend of ours has and we are being interviewed on it, talking about my view of branding and what you can get right and wrong.

Andy is someone we have worked with for years and is one of our best mates and closest business advisers.

its worth a read of what he says because he is one of those business guru types who is actually practical, rather than all just theoretical rubbish.

He's a good looking fella too. Look:

Have a look at his website for yourself by clicking here:

It's his first of many more to come and he covers the following subjects:

Podcast #1contains: Personal notes ‘work’; Make time for training; The 4P’s RIP; A book worth reading - Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin; An interview with branding ‘guru’, John Lyle; 15 ideas for keeping ‘devoted’ customers.

I rather like being a 'guru'

John

The best book on branding?

I've just finished this brilliant book about branding and ideas. As my real name is Johnny anyway, I only bought it because the title caught my eye. Its not new and in many ways, its not that original, its just very simple back to basics stuff.

Its full of really strong and simple ideas to consider when you are looking at any form of branding or rebranding project.

Did you know for example that Bill Schley states that people only buy ANYTHING for one (or more) of eight reasons?

So what are they?

Well, they want to feel..

happier,

smarter,

healthier,

richer,

more secure,

safer,

more attractive,

or more successful.

Has he missed any?

We've been wracking our brains to think up any other reasons, but think he has it about covered.

Have a click below if you want to buy it for yourself from Amazon. They have lots in stock new and second hand.

Why Johnny Can't Brand: Rediscovering the Lost Art of the Big Idea

I bought a brilliant new T-shirt

I bought this brilliant shirt the other day from a company in the States. It arrived really quickly and I thought it was pretty funny.

If you want your own, click here to visit their site

Welcome to our new site

Okay, so its not perfect yet, but its a lot better than the old one. It will be updated over the next few weeks and months and we'll be putting plenty of our thoughts on here, so please bookmark us and come back as much as you'd like.

Thanks, John