Margate fights back – Rebrand or no rebrand

Posted on May 27, 2009 by John Lyle

Margate, fresh from its appalling rebranding attempts on The Apprentice is most definitely fighting back.

I wrote this article last week and found myself defending the place quite vigorously.

By way of follow up, I have just spoken to a very helpful ‘spokesperson’ at the Tourist information centre and they report that the town was absolutely packed this weekend with thousands of families looking for the type of break that Kate’s team were promoting.

I think there are a few things to learn from this. The first is that the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s apathy and maybe many of us had got a little apathetic about Margate and British resorts in general. Maybe this programme forced many to look again at their own prejudices and get down there and judge for themselves?

The second and perhaps most important point is that in our own experience of place branding, you need a catastrophic event to start the fight back. There were so many people being negative about the place generally that those of us who have lived there and loved it, stand up and shout back at those who put it down – particularly those who have never even been there.

This has happened in Liverpool, where there is huge civic pride from almost all who have lived there. We saw the same happen in Nottingham when we went through the rebranding process there and maybe the same is starting to happen in Margate.

Margate Old Town is beautiful, the Turner Centre should be spectacular and bring in a whole new audience to visit the shops, cafes and bars of a regenerated town without all the homogenised high street stores we see in every other town and city the world over. If Margate dares to be different, it has a chance to succeed. If it bottles it and homogenises it deserves to fail.

Rebranding any place in isolation will achieve absolutely nothing. Using it as an excuse to show people you have changed and will behave differently going forward has the potential to really work. This applies to ANY brand, be it place, product or service.

 

A busy Bank Holiday in Margate

A busy Bank Holiday in Margate

Thanks for the shot which is from Blood Oaf on Flickr. See his excellent work here.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Martin Lindstrom – Buyology – Book review

Posted on May 27, 2009 by John Lyle

There’s a lot to learn from this book, not least of which is the fact that conventional research as a predictor of potential buyer behaviour is on the verge of useless. What we say we will do, buy or watch is barely related to what we do in reality.

But our brain never lies.

Through a series of experiments, involving complicated brain scans, Martin Lindstrom proves that the only way to truly tell what we are most likely do in any given situation is ask a question and watch how our brain reacts.

A few other blindingly brilliant points that come out of this study for me.

The Nokia tune is really irritating and is having a negative effect on the brand, causing a ‘grinding down’ effect that is causing people to feel less comfortable when they hear the well known sound. But this is not the case with many other sonic brands that can cause a more beneficial effect on brand recognition and trigger positive reactions.

Sex doesn’t sell in advertising. Men see the sex and forget the brand, women tend to look at the woman for who she is and if they like them, there may be a positive effect, but more likely they just see the person and again forget the brand.

Branding that really works causes an almost religious like fervour in some of us. If we start thinking about how we can build our brands as religions then we have a better chance of understanding it form the consumers viewpoints. This doesn’t feel that different to Kevin Robert Lovemarks work but the fact that it is backed up with brain scan research, does add a huge degree of validation.

Overall, this is a great book that is pretty easy to follow, incredibly well researched and covers a lot of ground in an interesting way. It feels to be the biggest step forward in understanding buyer behaviours since the 1957 book by Vance Packard called Hidden Persuaders that I remember well for its utterly simplistic view on what causes impulse buying (as I studied this as part of my degree all those years ago)

Another best seller from Martin Lindstrom. Buy It here.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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