The tarnished Sword of Excellence

Many years ago, one of our biggest clients was Thomas Cork SML, later to become Cork International. They supplied merchandised ranges and latterly books to all of the major retailers.

In their reception area was a huge mission statement stating they were working towards and living excellence in everything they did. It was joined by the remarkable sword of excellence that took pride of place behind the receptionist’s desk.




We always wondered whether anyone in the organisation knew these values, understood these values or ever ‘lived’ them. Having asked most of the team, we became pretty convinced that no-one did.

They quietly went out of business in 2004 due to ‘financial difficulties’.

You can see in this historic article that they were already through a Total Quality Management (TQM) programme.

But what this proves is that its all very well having values and even writing them in huge letters in your reception.

But the key to any brand, to any organisational culture is to embed and live those values in everything you do.

Thomas Cork, never did and they disappeared. The tarnished sword of excellence lives on however and it is a great reminder to all of us to walk the walk as well as talk about it.

Helping our clients business fly – or is it the other way around?

We ask our clients to put a lot of trust in our advice when they go through a rebrand, but its not often that the favour is so completely repaid.

Well it was today – In some style.

The client, Ed Lennox from Feefo is a very keen pilot and as we were meeting at Wellesbourne Airfield in Warwickshire where he is a member of the flying club, he offered to take me for a few spins around the airfield.

Never having been in a four seater plane before, I was obviously scared off my head, but having just read 'Yes Man' by Danny Wallace (A great book and well worth a read), I was forced to say yes, even though I’m a bit scared of heights!

Anyway, the following pictures prove we went up in 30 mile an hour gusts and flew out over Stratford on Avon.

Brilliant Fun and I’m not scared anymore.

If you fancy joining yourself, this is the link to the Flying Club.

Saving the Rainforest one glass of Orange Juice at a time

I was reading the Freakonomics blog via the New York Times today and noticed a brilliant article that seemed to back up our thought about adding value.

On some Tropicana orange juice packs in the US you can go to their website and type in a code and they will set you aside 10 square feet of rainforest.

Wow.

That’s sounds like a lot and a really generous offer by a huge multinational. But my favourite economists have calculated it’s only worth about US11 cents – The key though is that it has a MUCH higher perceived value – and that’s where adding value really comes into its own.

So to stress again, don’t discount, find a way of adding value. What can you give your customers that doesn’t cost you much, is really wanted or valued by your customers and reinforces the values of your brands?

If you can find it and deliver it, your brand will grow, recession or no recession.

If you want to read the full article, then click here

Welcome back Woolworths

I was searching the web this morning and saw a Google Adword for Woolworths.

I did hear that they were back, but click here for proof.

http://www.woolworths.co.uk

By reading over their blog, it seems like they are being sensible and trying to correct the mistakes that took them down in the first place. They talk about defining a range designed for their web shopping format and even seeing if they can make Pick and Mix work on the Web.

If they can take the best of the Woolworths brand values and build on them, they may have a chance of building a new business with the old name.

Its a shame they missed out on all the Easter Egg sales for 2009 as in a business article on radio four yesterday it was said that the reason Tesco and Sainsbury are selling so many cheap Easter Eggs at present, is that they bought them all from Wooolies administrators. I guess that is our gain?

Whilst Woolies was always far from perfect, it will be interesting to see if the new owners can do a 'Skoda' with it and turn it from 70's joke into a sharp responsive retailer that would have allowed them to survive in the first place.

Discounting kills brands – you simply HAVE to add value

As long ago as 1994 when we were working for a world class Racing Drivers School at Donington Park in UK. They came to us with a problem of a winter course that was almost impossible to sell out and they wanted us to produce a flyer for them to help sell it at a discounted price of £1800 for the five day programme rather than the full price of £2500.

We talked them into an idea of offering an additional 15 hours of one on one instruction that had a perceived value of £1200 but an actual cost to the school of less than £200. Guess what? The programme became the most popular and sold out almost immediately.

We already suspected the power behind adding value but this was our first definitive proof.

Well this has now been confirmed by none other than Martin Lindstrom who is one of the most forward thinking of any current brand strategist.

His supposition is that discounting a brand will take SEVEN years to recover from as this is how long the cycle takes for it to be built back up to a brand that is valued.

If you look at the huge brands now literally dumping their products through the likes of TK Maxx in a desperate search for volume, I would have to ask whether they will even survive long enough to get to the end of that seven year cycle.

If you can buy a Calvin Klein jumper in TK Maxx for £25 in their traditional grey colour, why would you want to pay £100 and more, just to have it in a better bag – particularly when some would now be embarrassed to be seen with such a conspicuous sign of excess that a Calvin Klein bag represents.

So for us, the key for the long term success of any brand is to find ways of adding value to your brand.

Tony Parsons - who we have previously described as an unwitting brand guru in many presentations delivered over the years - writing in his book Man and Wife, was trying to establish why his parents had managed to stay married for so long. His Mum’s answer was simple

By learning to fall in love over and over again.

The same can be said for managing any great brand, because the best brands have an emotive element that people love over and above all reason.

An emotional brand gives their customers reasons to fall in love with them over and over again. They act as though they are in a real relationship with them and if they do it well and keep doing it well, they may be lucky enough stay in that relationship with them forever.

The secret seems to be to reward them, surprise them, say thank you, respect them and treat them as intelligent individuals. Just like in a conventional relationship, if you make more of an effort, you are far more likely to succeed.

So. Don’t discount. Delight instead.

This press release is online at Pressbox, which you can see by clicking here

Back to the future

Back in 1995, we wrote a proposal for Machine Mart, who we then went on to work with successfully for many years, helping them almost double the size of their business.

A few things remain unchanged in this document from all those years ago.

1. Machine Mart's logo - Which shows that changing a logo is not always the answer to running a business or even making a mark when you take over one.

2. Purple Circle's business values. Even in 1995, they read as follows:

Firstly we only take on projects that play to our strengths - namely those that involve creative thought and project management;

Secondly when we submit a quotation we will stick to it. We will not keep adding extras for 'author's alterations' at the design stage, unless you completely change the brief;

And finally, design comes last. When we are given a brief we stop and think. We don't rush headlong into trying to sell a visual we think you want to buy. We only supply relevant creativity - relevant to your brief. We are not in the business of designing for aesthetic criteria alone and good design is drawn from clarity of thought.

The amazing thing for me is that even after all this time, those are still three of our core values in trading with any client - old or new.

Getting your organisational values right can be brilliant for any business. They give you a clear direction to influence any business decision.

It also said rather proudly that Purple Circle had been established for over four years. That seems like absolutely ages ago now as its just about to be 18 years.

Getting your business values right and then sticking to them for year after year after year ensures that any customer, old or new also knows what they can expect from you or your brand and ensures you know how to recruit potential staff who understand what your business is really all about.

And for your amusement, this is what the three of us looked like back then!

New Business Live Conference

I'm speaking at a conference tomorrow (29th jan) at Nottingham's Trent FM Arena.

It's called New Business Live and is designed to help new businesses, entrepreneurs and other small businesses to be inspired and improve what they do.

http://www.newbusinesslive.net/

I'll be talking about branding (surprisingly!!) and how to build a brilliant brand from scratch - even if you are on a very tight budget.

There's some good speakers overall. Have a look here

Have a look and if its not too late, why not come along and heckle. I seem to have a bit of a graveyard slot and if anyone sits through a talk about legal aspects of setting a franchise up then hopefully my subject area should be a bit more light hearted.

Hope to see you there. I'll be Twittering for much of the day about what the speakers are like, so have a look here if you're interested.

Cheers

John

Branding in a recession

Few of us can be in any doubt that times are tough for most sectors of business and all of us will have to adjust our business models to survive and maybe even thrive.

Having started our own business in a recession, we know all about how to trade in these times. There are two key choices:

1. You hide and panic and hope it gets better

2. You stride out confidently knowing it is as bad or worse for your peers and take the opportunity to grab their market share.


Too many businesses drift into receivership by quietly fading away with a whimper, but the best of us use it to adapt and possibly expand and help redefine what we do to make it far easier for our customers to connect with our businesses.

Only if you truly connect with your customers will they continue to trade with you.

There are three ways that we believe we act as customers.

1. Customers want real value.
This does not mean a cheap price, but a sensible price for a good quality product. We would say that it is more likely that people will buy fewer higher quality staples than lots of cheap poor quality products.

So with clothing it would be the likes of Primark who would see a negative effect as they are so dependent on high volumes. Those who concentrate on really looking after their customers and listening and acting on what they want, such as John Lewis and Next will almost certainly do very well in the long run.

They can even offer value ranges for those who wish to trade down without totally compromising on quality.

2. Customers are nervous about commitment.
Again, what this means to us is that the answer is NOT huge great lead times for when you have to pay for things. An ad on TV yesterday was claiming that you paid nothing until 2010 and then took interest free credit. That is just ludicrous and I’m sure it will not be what people want when they are nervous about what their future holds.

Make yourself easy to buy from and offer sensible value and your customers will remain loyal.

3. Customers only trust those they know.
If you have bought from someone before and you know they did a great job or provided a great product, it is more likely you will come back to them as a customer.

Therefore, use PR and advertising to show potential customers other satisfied customers and be loyal to them. Don’t go offering massive incentives to new customers and neglect the ones you have. It is far, far more sensible to build a business based on the ones you have already than always chasing after the next new exciting one on the horizon.

In summary, you have to be clearly differentiated in a way that is not just different for the sake of it but that offers a real and desired point of difference. This point of difference may be as simple as being consistently better in service than others (which is in itself harder to achieve than it sounds) – but whatever it is, you need to tell everyone about it in everything you do.

The days of mass branding are over. We do not want to be the same as everyone else, even if we do buy the same brands.

Branding is not rocket science, it is not just good design, it is a collaboration of clearly thought through common sense delivered through exceptional customer service and a product or service that matches and makes people feel good about their decision.

Treating every single customer as though they are important and valued individuals will ensure your business will not just survive, it will thrive and grow in this recession.

You can see this release on Pressbox by clicking here

We are not in control

Anyone who owns a brand seems to think that they are in control. Not anymore.

Your customers decide. If you run a brand and want to know what people think of it, have a look at this site:

http://uk.brandtags.net/browse.php

Has Wally Lost it?

I'm not just trying to be controversial here, but at the end of last month, I wrote about the new Wally Olins book on branding which I bought to see if we could learn anything new from the man who taught us everything about branding.

This is it here.

Wally Olins: The Brand Handbook

Well, having now read it cover to cover, I have to say I am a little disappointed. Reading the small print, it is billed more as a handbook on 'how to do it' than a book exploring the outer edges of branding theory, but it felt more like a beautifully designed ad for Saffron than anything a decent working practitioner could learn much from.

Maybe we just take it for granted these days, how wide branding projects are and what we get to stick our noses in within any business, but I felt as though this was a bit of a sell out by one of my heroes!

One thing he did say that was really worth reinforcing was the section towards the end about research within a branding context. We have batted on about this for years saying that focus groups are a creativity sink where the bland will always triumph over the brave and not a place to discover great ideas. Thankfully, Wally agrees.

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