Even more awards

Purple Circle had another good night at the Cream Awards last night with another Gold for Nottingham Community Housing Association Annual report, NCHA United.

Marlboro and their deliberate programme of scarcity marketing

Marlboro are restricting access to their website. You can only access this site if you are USA based and are prepared to add your social security details and full address to prove you are over 21 years of age. It’s scarcity marketing again.

Sony are claiming they’re going to do an ‘Apple’

Sony have become a follower. They used to be radical. Lovemarks do radical things. Sony need to do something radical again, or they are in danger of us falling out of love with them little by little.

The banking crisis explained in real layman’s terms

The banking crisis explained in real layman’s terms

It’s clear to me that Apple are really getting their act together.

Apple are breaking the Microsoft monopoly and they are doing it by producing better products and caring more about their customers. Any brand that does this deserves long term success.

Learning from Apple’s brand – circa 1996

This is a set of guidelines released by Apple in December 1996 as to how you should go about building the perfect website. They still seem to ring rather true today, and if applied would improve many current websites.

Never has the need to be clear and demonstrably different been, well, so clear

In the market for holiday rental properties I noticed how undifferentiated some of those competing have become. Perhaps that’s why all those years ago we called our business Purple Circle. The rules are still the same now, and I’m truly amazed that there are still some site/brand owners, like Owners Direct who haven’t learnt them.

I’m looking for a web developer for Purple Circle’s Nottingham Studio

Purple Circle are looking for a full time web developer for the Nottingham studio to start work in January 2010

Is £1 the new brand battleground?

The old Woolworth’s in Nottingham, Victoria Centre is now the new Poundworld. It’s apparently the biggest they have, so I thought I’d have a look around it. I can honestly say, because the £1.00 sandwich was sooooo bad, that it will make me look with some deep suspicion at every other thing they sell too. Proof again that one bad brand experience can reflect badly on your entire branded offer.

The end of an era – another structural change quietly changes our buying behaviour

It’s a bit of momentous day for me today as I have just been out and bought a Moleskine diary. This probably isn’t that momentous for most people, but it is an indication for me of a structural change in the way I work. I’m looking at our own industry for Purple Circle and wondering where the next structural change is going to come from. I suggest you do the same.