Purple Circle | John Lyle's new brand thinking

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

Posted on November 19, 2009 by John Lyle

One week. Three different examples of Apple getting their act together in terms of their customer services.

Apple are in serious danger of becoming mainstream at the moment. They seem to be on everyone’s shopping list and the research recently showed that more houses that have some wealth are choosing to add macs to their home computing set-ups. I wrote some more about this here.

What normally happens in line with this growth and move to mainstream, is a level of corporate arrogance that starts the beginning of the end for any brand. But Apple seem to be behaving slightly differently, with three examples that have happened to me this week.

1. My laptop broke

This has never happened to me before (yeah yeah yeah, I believe you). So I rang my old friends at Jigsaw who supplied it and they asked me to send it over for a free check to identify the issue. They went through it’s history and advised that it was just under two years old, so out of warranty. As the screen was totally dead, this sounded expensive.

The next morning, they called to say that it was a graphics card that had gone. Ouch. That sounds even more expensive. They went on to say that a few of them had gone wrong recently and Apple weren’t happy with this, so would be replacing them free. Result.

The machine was returned by taxi the next day in full working order again at no cost, even though it was out of warranty. Wow.

2. I couldn’t install Pages

This is part of a longer story but I am testing iWork and Pages (Apple’s version of MS Office/Word) in order that we switch all of the Purple Circle machines over to it, next time we need to upgrade. The cost difference for this with 30 licenses is £510 from Apple to £7950 for a Word upgrade. Who says Apple is the expensive option? Pages isn’t perfect, but it is very easy to use and with a more powerful dictionary, will be a better product that Word anyway. I had previously had the trial version downloaded and then wanted to install the full version which I had purchased, but every time I tried, it kept on saying my trial version had expired. aaaargh!

So i called the FREEPHONE number on the pack and spoke to a lovely person in Cork (just across the water from my family in Crosshaven), who spent 22 minutes talking me through solving the issue, which she did first time, again at NO cost to me. Wow two.

3. A broken Ipod

My Godson James had a problem with his iPod and took it back to John lewis from whence it came. After two weeks of sitting on it, they declared it broken and have just given him a brand new one for nothing. admittedly within warranty, but still a new for old replacement without any undue delay.

We have been huge fans of Apple since they declared they were going to be different with their unbelievable SuperBowl TV ad in 1984. It was at the time, the best ad I had ever seen and still enthralls me now. It was one of the reasons that I entered the creative world as I wanted to be associated with this sort of brilliance.

I liked it so much, I thought I’d share it with you again.

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.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: Apple, Apple iWork, Apple Pages, Microsoft, MS Word, Purple Circle | Leave a Comment »

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

Posted on November 16, 2009 by John Lyle

I’ve spent much of my time this weekend looking for a place to rent for our holidays next summer. It’s one of the most enjoyable bits for me and I just love looking around at who’s letting what and how much they want for it.

But this weekend, I noticed something else altogether and that is how few decent platforms there now are offering a good access to rental properties and how undifferentiated some of those competing have become.

The one we used to use all the time was Holiday Rentals. These have now either been taken over by, or are changing their name to Home Away, which I have to say is a sightly weaker name than they have already.

holiday-rentals.co.uk, which takes to the UK version of the homeaway site

The .com name takes you to a more US based site and the old UK name takes you to the interim UK (ish) site.

http://www.homeaway.com the US based version

The site that seemed to have the most property in the area we were looking was actually another one called Holiday Lettings. I didn’t realise at the time, but this is part of Rightmove and works very well indeed.

Holiday Lettings, which is now part of Rightmove

But the one that really shocked me was Owners Direct (UK).

It may be my imagination, but this is the one that started the direct rental revolution many years ago (even though Holiday Lettings claim it is ten years old!).

Will the real Owners Direct please step forward.....

They are in a situation where the four simple combinations of their domain name are owned by different people with totally different sites.

http://www.owners-direct.co.uk/ is dreadful holding page.

http://www.ownersdirect.com/ is an individual trying (unsuccessfully I assume) to sell their house in Virginia for $599,000

And http://www.owners-direct.com/ is another portal style site that doesn’t really have any stock.

But, for a market to be this confused is terrible for customers. It’s a simple lesson to any brand or business owners as to why you need to be really clearly differentiated in the market you address.

It’s not always important to say exactly what you do in your name (the Ronseal, does exactly what is says on the tin school of thought) but it’s absolutely vital that it is very clear who you are and what you stand for.

The alternative school of thought (the Egg, Orange O2 model) is one that has an equal place but is perhaps now done to death in certain markets as we run out of fruits, colours and fluffy animals with an available domain name.

It’s a basic fact that If you look the same as your competitors, your customers will not know who you are and why they should talk to you.

Perhaps that’s why all those years ago we called our business Purple Circle and not the very forgettable Fisk, Lyle, Slack to join the army of three name acronym design agencies that dominated the early 90’s.

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.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: Holiday Lettings, Holiday Rentals, Owners Direct, Purple Circle | 3 Comments »

I was at the DBA Awards last night and…

Posted on October 23, 2009 by John Lyle

We won a gold award for our work with BeWILDerwood. For a little agency like ours, this is amazing for it to be recognised by the very top people in our industry and beyond. The awards are given for the effectiveness of the work, rather than just how good it looks. It’s always been our target to get one or two, so for our first to be a gold is just fabulous.

But we had to win, because Simon Egan from BeWILDerwood had his awards suit on. It looks suspiciously like the one he wore here.

Simon and Mich in the cab - as you can see, Simon has his award suit on

We met our good friends from Hemisphere who won a Silver award for their work with Manchester Central Convention Complex.

Our good friends from Hemisphere

And then after all the celebrating was over, we went back to the hotel, where I noticed that Simon Egan talks with his hands more when he has had a few drinks. This is a snapshot of one such conversation.

Simon gesticulating - Part One

Simon gesticulating - Part Two

Simon gesticulating - Part Three

As you can see, I have my pint and a whisky and ginger in front of me too. I’m not sure from the way I feel today that I should have had that last one.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: BeWILDerwood, DBA Awards, Hemisphere, Purple Circle | 6 Comments »

Blogging and brand values

Posted on June 16, 2009 by John Lyle

There seems to be a lot of blogging going on a Purple Circle at the moment and it’s all to do with some of our own brand values – being passionate and actually daring to have an opinion.

One of our problems with research has always been that it is often used as a tool to hide behind and not as a platform to launch something bold, innovative and different – That’s why we’ll be talking about Purple Circle Brand Insight that we’ll be launching in a few weeks.

So at Purple Circle, we have always encouraged people to say what they think, because it’s the right thing to do, and not necessarily because it’s always the right thing to say. This makes some clients feel uncomfortable but makes others far more comfortable in the knowledge they are paying for (and getting) honest answers and not a bunch of flannel from yes men/women.

So Michael Slack has started his own blog at www.michslack.co.uk about branding and business, with his first piece being about brand layering, which you can read here.

Michael Slack's Blog at http://michslack.co.uk

Abi Jackson will be writing about more esoteric design stuff in her blog called Pretty Damn Fine with her first piece being about Sanderson designs, you can read that here.

Abi Jackson's Pretty Damn Fine Blog at http://prettydamnfine.co.uk/

So why all the blogging?

Well, simple really. Our clients are asking about how they can get a more clear personality online, about how they can work more cleverly within the social media environments, so what better way to advise than practice what we preach in order to understand it more fully ourselves.

Oh, and that’s not far from another of our brand values either.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: Abi Jackson, blogging, brand values, branding, Michael Slack, Purple Circle | 1 Comment »

Nice post about branded philately

Posted on May 21, 2009 by John Lyle

My clever colleague at Purple Circle, Abi Jackson has written a rather nice little blog post about branding in the world of stamps. Have a look at it here.

It’s one of those areas that you maybe don’t notice there is branding even going on, but the Royal Mail have been quietly doing it for years and there have been many beautiful examples ranging from the current UK theme of Plants (Action for Species) right through to Victoria Cross winners back in 2006. All have real design integrity, because you have to work so hard to design something that beautiful in such a small space and still get the salient information across.

In the US now you can even get Simpsons stamps to celebrate their 20 year run. It was selected as a subject from over 50,000 suggested themes. They are officially sanctioned stamps launched by the USPS and they even ran a vote so that people could select their favourite.

Its hard to deny that we all write fewer letters than we used to, but integrating brands into postage stamps could be a lovely way to get kids interested again. If there were Everton FC stamps, my son would find excuses to write to people. 90210 (didn’t this used to be Beverley Hills 90210 – before it got rebranded?) stamps would get my daughters pen up off her desk and into her hand.

Perhaps we should have Bob the Builder ones, that are subsidized by the brand owner to get kids writing, or maybe even the best postage stamps in the world by Carlsberg, or even McStamps by you know who?

Just a thought, but it does seem a good way to raise revenue for the Royal Mail AND engage with new audiences.

Letters, Just do it.

The best of British stamps

Filed under: branding | Tagged: Bob the Builder, branding, Carlsberg, Everton FC, McDonalds, Nike, Purple Circle, royal mail, stamps, the Simpsons | 2 Comments »

What are the eleven rules and three checkpoints for brilliant branding?

Posted on May 19, 2009 by John Lyle

This is my checklist for starting to look at any branding project, in order to capture where the business and the brand already is.

As I’ve said in my work for Purple Circle Branding and on many occasions, branding is not about logos, it’s about a whole raft of ideas that come together to create an overall branded experience. Think of the logo as the marker to know you have arrived at the correct place and you’ll see its context. For me, the brand experience covers every aspect of an interaction or even a potential interaction – so therefore manage it.

In some particular order with the most important first.

1. What are its values and are they published for all to see. More importantly, is there evidence of them actually being lived throughout the organisation?

2. Is the merchandise/product/service supporting the brand experience and actually making it more positive or undermining it by not being as brilliant as it should be?

3. How does the brand speak and look visually? Is it on brand and consistent in every application that’s out there?

4. Has it defined its customers. Can you see from what you are looking at who it is they are expecting to engage with/sell to – and is it who they are actually targeting?

5. How does the website work. Does it look the part, publish the values and really live them?

6. Are the logos being used of a consistent feel. Not necessarily all in the same place and at the same size (as this is just consistent logo usage) but creating the same sort of effect wherever they appear?

7. Are they practicing CRM or MCR (maximising Customer relationships) by engaging with customers in every positive way possible?

8. Is there evidence of customer feedback. Do they use a product such as Feefo to ensure they are constantly engaging with their end users. In effect, are they engaging in dialogue or just giving them diatribe?

9. Are employees engaged and leading at every level. Are they ‘chattering’ externally in a positive way using social media platforms? When you meet or speak to them are they brand advocates, or sales prevention officers?

10. Does the marketing collateral also talk the talk or does it drift towards the desperate in its sales message or continue to reinforce the brand, create the tribe and sell the dream.

11. Is the SEO on track too? A brilliant brand understands writing for SEO and is employing the best techniques throughout the experience.

This is all well and good. There are now only 11 things you need to manage to make a great brand but from this, you need to define three more final things.

1. What are the problems caused by low scores in any of these areas?

2. What does success in any of these areas look like?

3. Conversely, what does failure in any aspect look like?

These are obviously only rough guidelines and there ill need to be a variation for any specific sector but as a brand owner if you manage all of these well, you won’t be far off a great brand.

Here are a few examples of ones I’ve worked on over the years.

Filed under: branding | Tagged: brand experience, branding, feefo, Purple Circle | 5 Comments »

Its Purple Circle’s 18th Birthday

Posted on May 19, 2009 by John Lyle

In May 1991, three innocent young men started a branding business called Purple Circle at the tender ages of 24 years and with a grand total of 18 months post college work experience. It should have been a recipe for disaster, but somehow, we have kept going and kept growing.

Now we’re 18 years old, so we’ve decided to produce a little website to celebrate and we’d love people to contribute so it becomes a showcase for ‘Shed Art’ across the world.

Here’s the site and some of the early contributions, but more will be added every day in all sorts of different style and genres.

www.shedloadsofideas.com

All you need to do is download the template, be creative and then upload your idea to our server for us to showcase your brilliant work to the world. We’ll obviously make any links from your work to your site fully live and reciprocated.

Thanks and have fun.

John, Mich and Darren

Now older and far, far more baldy

From Left to right: Darren Fisk, Michael Slack and John Lyle - Note the purple helmet in the middle back of shot

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

It’s great when your own work comes home

Posted on April 30, 2009 by John Lyle

We have just had an application from a brilliant potential employee. The most focussed presentation we have received in 18 years of running Purple Circle – a branding and graphic design business. When you get 50 speculative applications per week, to have one this good restores your faith in humanity.

She even used one of our own quotes that she found n the web, summarising what branding is all about to show she had read through all of our materials and then demonstrated it by allowing her own brand to pervade everything!

Our summary of what branding is all about.

“Branding is far more than simply sticking logos on things; rather, it is about an organisation – however big or small – setting and managing a tone for its entire communications and ensuring that the core values of the company pervade every aspect of the business. If you can do this, it doesn’t matter whether you are speaking to your team or to your customers, you can create a brilliant brand.”

Filed under: branding | Tagged: application for employment, branding, Purple Circle | Leave a Comment »

Purple Circle and BeWILDerwood win an ‘Oscar’

Posted on March 10, 2009 by John Lyle

Hot on the heels of Kate Winslet and Slumdog Millionaire’s success in Hollywood, the Brits have done it again. Purple Circle, the Nottingham-based branding and graphic design studio has just returned from Los Angeles with the themed entertainment world’s equivalent of the Oscars – a THEA.

THEA is an annual award ceremony for the Californian-based Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), celebrating the very best of themed entertainment throughout the world. The award is for Purple Circle’s work with BeWILDerwood – the children’s woodland adventure park in Hoveton, Norfolk. A truly worldwide organisation, all of the big players and many famous names in theme parks and live entertainment are members of TEA – Disney and Universal Studios to name but two.

This year’s award ceremony took place on 7th March at the Disneyland Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Purple Circle’s BeWILDerwood entry was the only British theme park receiving an accolade, and was one of only two European attractions recognised. Other winners for 2009 included the teams behind the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics and The Simpsons Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood.

John Lyle, Director of Purple Circle, was very excited about the award; “We have known about the award for a few weeks now, but competition is fierce and the winners have to remain a closely guarded secret until the official announcement. To see our little adventure park rubbing shoulders with the likes of Disney is amazing; we believe in the BeWILDerwood brand heart and soul – of course – but it is still incredible that we have achieved such status in such a short time.”

Purple Circle has worked with BeWILDerwood since the park’s inception, creating not only the branding but also the theming and the tone for the entire attraction. The park has been a runaway success since it first opened its gates in May 2007; in 2008 it attracted over 140,000 visitors, a figure more than double the number projected.

Purple Circle operates as an integral part of the BeWILDerwood team, partnering them in all of their creative efforts, including the design of much of the merchandise that is sold through the park and online. This includes the popular children’s books ‘A Boggle at BeWILDerwood’ and ‘BeWILDerbats’ by Tom Bofled, the founder of BeWILDerwood.

John continued “Branding is far more than simply sticking logos on things; rather, it is about an organisation – however big or small – setting a tone for its entire communications and ensuring that the core values of the company pervade every aspect of the business. If you can do this, it doesn’t matter whether you are speaking to your team or to your customers, you can create a brilliant brand – even with a swamp to work with.

This award shows what compelling branding can do when you consider that BeWILDerwood, created on swamp and woodland on the edge of a small Norfolk village, captures the imagination of a worldwide organisation such as TEA, as well as those of British families. Our entry consisted of an eight-minute video letting the kids do the talking – showing them enjoying BeWILDerwood to the max – and we think this is what swung it for us (every pun intended!)”

You can see release on Pressbox by clicking here

Filed under: BeWILDerwood, branding | Tagged: BeWILDerwood, Oscar, Purple Circle, TEA, THEA | Leave a Comment »

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

1. My laptop broke

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3. A broken Ipod

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

I was at the DBA Awards last night and…

Blogging and brand values

Nice post about branded philately

What are the eleven rules and three checkpoints for brilliant branding?

Its Purple Circle’s 18th Birthday

It’s great when your own work comes home

Purple Circle and BeWILDerwood win an ‘Oscar’

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