Month: October 2009

branding

The Paul Smith Jag eight years later

In 2001, Paul Smith, the stunningly cool fashion designer put his name to a project with Jaguar to raise money for Macmillan cancer relief.

He ‘personalised’ an X-Type Jaguar which was subsequently sold for £40,000 to City banker Zoe Appleyard and her friend Maya Schonburg.

Paul Smith Jag
Paul Smith Jag

A huge cast of stars from Kylie to Sir Elton John were at the auction and they all got a jolly warm glow as well as raising over £200,000 in total for a brilliant cause. You can read the full story here.

And I saw the very car today, complete with lookalike Paul Smith (P5) numberplate.

The PS stripes look great on his Evian Water bottles, but automotive design changes faster than any other I know. What works know may look very dated in five years and awful a few years at the time. The Austin Metro even looked okay at one time and that time was it’s time. It looked even better with a bit of high class Burberry branding added. Hmmmmm.

The Burberry Mini Metro - an object of true class
The Burberry Mini Metro - an object of true class

I’m not sure how well the stripes look on the Jag now. In fact I think they look a bit horrid, so for the sake of ongoing brand values, it may have been a good idea to have a time limit on its branding, for say, five years, before any trace of it was removed and the car de-branded.

That time has now passed and so for me should the Paul Smith branding on this car, which only serves to look a bit garish and dated.

Updated

Simon Dare commented that the car is now owned by Paul Smith again and is driven by their Finance Director. Poor bugger. It’s going to be difficult to hide in that car isn’t it!

Rob Marshall also commented below that the Paul Smith Mini still looked good. I’m not so sure myself, but it takes all sorts. The link he put through is this car here.

The Paul Smith Mini in full stripy loveliness - one of only two made
The Paul Smith Mini in full stripy loveliness - one of only two made

Which is a very limited edition of around 2 cars according the Paul Smith Mini website.

This car had 84 stripes made up of 24 different colours and had to have been hand made.

There then followed a less limited edition Paul Smith car where 300 were made in a special blue colour and they were luxurious for a Mini! Madly british with gold plated UK bonnet badge and hidden lime green detailing, I would say this looks like a real classic if you can get your hands on one in good condition.

Here’s one of the 300, which I think is far more discreet and tasteful!

The rather more tasteful Paul Smith Mini in blue
The rather more tasteful Paul Smith Mini in blue

Anyway, if anyone knows of any other good designer branded cars, let me know. I don’t want to know about the car that Stephen Ireland ‘customised’ for his girlfriend. It’s a monstrosity of a Bentley!

The Bentley that Stephen Ireland 'customised' for his girlfriend - Class, pure class
The Bentley that Stephen Ireland 'customised' for his girlfriend - Class, pure class

Or even El Hadji Diouf and his chromed Mercedes SLR. William Gallas has one too by all accounts.

The really unpleasant Mercedes SLR in a fetching chrome finish
The really unpleasant Mercedes SLR in a fetching chrome finish

They’re not designer cars, they’re just vile.

branding

It would appear that the World’s best coffee is not enough……

It would appear that the World’s best coffee is not enough……

Following on from the piece I wrote on October 8 about what the word ‘best’ means in branding, I now have proof that the customers don’t get the message or believe it either.

BB’s Muffins, the object of my mickey take appear to have gone out of business in the Nottingham store that I featured.

The World's best coffee is no longer at BB's Muffins in Nottingham
The World's best coffee is no longer at BB's Muffins in Nottingham

The overall business still seems to be okay and the Nottingham Victoria Centre branch may just be another small victim of an economic correction (a kinder way of saying that it’s a time for finding out and finishing the bad businesses out there.)

Claiming to be world’s best isn’t enough, these days – if it ever was – and any business or any brand that is not built on real values will struggle and over the next equally tricky few years, will ultimately fail.

Bye Bye BB’s.

Robin Hood

What were the 17 learnings from the USA Trip?

Tim Garratt, of Innes England and one of the team from the USA trip has written up the initial findings, using the learnings from architect Daniel Liebskind as the model on which to present.

How do we summarise the whole trip, what we learned and how we can transfer it to Nottingham?

This short presentation that was delivered to the full Sheriff’s Commission on Friday is the start point.

Comments to enlarge the discussion are very welcome.

branding

Do you think Social media is a fad?

I saw this article on Mich Slack’s blog yesterday and had to add it to my own stuff. It is a truly amazing short video that will scare the living daylights out of you if you think that social media is a fad.

One highlight for me is this:

Radio took 38 years to get to 50 million users

TV took 13 years to get to 50 million users

The Internet took only 4 years to get to 50 million users

and the iPod took even less time at only 3 years to get to the magical figure of 50 million users

Facebook reached  100 million users in 9 months and now growing at over 600,000 users per day. It now has over 300 million users.

Watch it and weep if Social media isn’t already central to your brand planning.

Even further on than this, Google is becoming too slow as it isn’t real time whilst Trendwatching are predicting that ‘Nowism’ is our new future. Read their own amazing download here and then subscribe to get it every single month.

brand values, branding

Technorati must be using Microsoft technology on T-Mobile Sidekick Phones

I’ve just come back to the Technorati website to have a look at what’s hot in the world of blogging, to a bold and fresh new look.

Oooh look, a bold fresh look for Technorati
Oooh look, a bold fresh look for Technorati

Great I think, It must have needed freshening up, or maybe it was just some spare time work for the development team, or maybe it is marketeers tinkering with something that works, or whatever.

But it doesn’t work anymore. That’s a problem for any blogger anywhere who uses their service.

There are streams of complaints from disgruntled users, many of which are technically based but all of which add up to a branding disaster for Technorati.

Oooh look a bold new look for Technorati that their customers seem to simply hate!
Oooh look a bold new look for Technorati that their customers seem to simply hate!

If you’re going to upset an audience, then perhaps the blogging community is the most vocal, the most connected and the most keen to share their thoughts with a connected world.

Following on from my thoughts about Pentax and T-Mobile Sidekick, they need to act fast to get the functionality back or watch their fans/customers leave in droves.

branding

When is a consumer review not a fair review?

Last year I bought a new camera. It’s a Pentax Optio W30 and was hailed as a great camera by some of the review sites.

This review really rates it with the only apparent downside being that it can’t shoot in raw. That’s okay, I don’t know what Raw is anyway. Why would I need that?

And so does this apparently independent review. In fact it is the one that I referred to when I bought it.

So why then is the camera, just a bit rubbish?

No-one seems to tell you that the pictures it takes are fine in blazing sunshine, but really bad when the light even fades a little. They are so grainy as to be unusable – even as tiny pics.

If you compare the shot I got with my camera to the one that my colleague Tim Garratt captured at the Little Boots concert in the Bowery Ballroom, New York, there is simply no comparison. He was using a Ricoh Gr Digital.

Tim Garratt's shot of Little Boots at the Bowery Ballroom New York - Brilliant
Tim Garratt's shot of Little Boots at the Bowery Ballroom New York - Brilliant

Compare and contrast with…

My own rather poor effort at capturing Little Boots in all her shiny glory in poor light
My own rather poor effort at capturing Little Boots in all her shiny glory in poor light

Now I’m no brand slut. I tend to pick a brand and stick to it until I find something better comes along, but I was soooooo disappointed with the performance of the Pentax Optio that I can’t really consider many positives about the brand overall. Because my expectations were so high having read so many positive reviews, my disappointment is compounded to destroying my trust in the entire Pentax brand. The reviews had raised my expectations, the product couldn’t deliver on those promises.

So are they really independent or are they part of a blogger outreach programme. They give cameras and cash to well respected bloggers and ask them to write technically sound and positive reviews to drag in gullibe muppets like me.

Maybe I’m being cynical (again) but I now finding myself doubting any reviews and feedback unless I know it’s independent. If there were loads of independent reviews then I’d be more inclined to trust the supplier again.

Perhaps I should have looked beyond the first two reviews that Google threw up. Perhaps I should look for a mark of independence such as Feefo offers, or perhaps I should just go and buy a Ricoh GR Digital?

In fact, that’s just what I’ve done, so the Pentax is going on Ebay tonight and I’ll refer my potential buyers to the exact same great reviews that are out there for them to see!

brand values, branding

How to undermine your brand in one easy lesson

Branding is about trust isn’t it?

The constant reassurance that for the cusomer, their choice of brand makes them feel good all about their purchase decision all the time. It’s a partnership that each party benefits from. Out of this, trust grows and a for the brand owner, a long term relationship hopefully ensues.

If you lose your customers trust, then you lose them. Maybe not immediately, but you certainly undermine their love for you. Big style.

So that’s why T-Mobile losing ALL of the data for their Sidekick customers is such a disaster for their brand.

The Sidekick phone, great for the youth market, but perhaps a total disaster for T-Mobile
The Sidekick phone, great for the youth market, but perhaps a total disaster for T-Mobile

Sidekicks are a much sought after range of phones, that are more akin to mini computers with their keyboard and high end functionality. They are available in the UK, but only hacked ones that have been bought in on the grey market. To me, they are a strong a compeitior for the youth market than the iPhone as they deliver what youth want, ot what fat business people like myself want. In effect, if I like it, they’ve failed.

In this article by Endgadget, they go into more detail, but its no surprise to a committed Mac user like myself, to discover that the issue is a back end server problem supplied by Microsoft.

At the same time, this article by PC World also shows that us Mac geeks are becoming a bit rarer (and a bit richer)

It seems that 36% of Mac owning families earn over $100k but that figure is only 21% for PC only families. So apple have bagged the top end of the market, which is a good place to be for any brand. They must not take too many risks in a chase for growing market share by stripping the great things out to deliver a cheaper product to the wider mass market – or they really will do damage.

Mind you, if the next upgrade they supply is as disastrous for my own mac as the move to OS10.6 Snow Donkey (or whatever its called), which I have now had to downgrade again – because it wouldn’t run so many programmes and I had the small problem of not being able to print – then I may even think about a switch to PC’s.

Actually I won’t, that was a lie. I’m allowing them a few mistakes because I love them. Will T Mobiles Sidekicks customers be quite so generous?

Andy Hanselman

I did an MBA on Friday – It was easy and excellent fun too

It was brilliant in fact. Fancy being able to complete a really usable MBA in a single afternoon!

It wasn’t a traditional MBA though – you know the ones – that restrict your thinking and drive you into the word of paralysis by analysis – but a real world one that will directly benefit our business from tomorrow.

Meet Up,
Benefit from others’ experience and
Accelerate our learning.

It was organised by my good friend Andy Hanselman and in this first run, saw five of us sharing notes, ideas and good practice that we could take into our own businesses, even though on the surface they may have nothing in common.

I've done an MBA - Andy, Jonny, crisps and lots of clever thinking in an afternoon MBA
I've done an MBA - Andy, Jonny, business crisps and lots of clever thinking in an afternoon MBA

I learned loads about the view of an art teacher and how beards and funn (sic) are important in business from a brilliant and beautifully designed presentation by Jonny Douglas – A man who can even out-talk Andy and myself (which is some feat!).

I learned from an anonymous business guru in the book Millionaire Upgrade by Richard Parkes Cordock that Andrew Seaton, brilliantly summarised for us. He’s an IT man who seems to specialise in making your IT problems go away with his business Resolve IT.

Gill Hanselman scared all of us by showing us pictures of really bright young business people who we all need to be able to admire and not be scared of. Business is about your mindset and not always by the number of years you’ve been doing it.

And Andy introduced us to 21st Century Entrepreneurship with a profiling system that I loved and will complete first thing in the morning with a clearer head. If you want to understand your own business brain, I suggest you do the same.

And I picked their planet sized brains about what else I could do with social media. I now have a checklist of what to do, in order to maximise the experience I have gained in this enormously scary rollercoaster area of our business.

Its not often I stay in Sheffield until well after the close of business. But it was worth getting to the pub late, because learning needs to be this much fun and this directly beneficial.

We’re meeting again in a month or so, to do it all over again. I guess that will be my second MBA in as many months then.

Robin Hood

Good luck to the Nottingham Hoods

Tonight sees the first big game of Nottingham Hoods basketball team. Set up by Lee English, it is Nottingham’s newest sporting club and was established to get kids off the street and ‘balling’ rather than causing trouble.

Lee’s a great bloke and I wish them every success tonight against Worcester Wolves at Nottingham Wildcat’s Arena. You can buy tickets and find out more about Lee’s fabulous project here.

This is the banner that you’ll see hanging at one end of the arena and is here as we were unfurling it in the office. Its quite big, like lots of Lee’s player.

Come on you Hoods.

Good luck to the Hoods tonight
Good luck to the Hoods tonight

Update with a match report from Steve Braker on his Facebook page

Hoods win at home

Nottingham Hoods 70
Worcester Wolves II 60

Nottingham Hoods made there home debut with a crowd of over 300 shouting them on, and didn’t let them down.
Hoods introduced 2 new signings to there national league basketball campaign in Tom Wade & Tobias Benjamin and they played there part asked of them in providing the Hoods with there first home win that the crowd had come out to see.
Hoods took control from the very first tip, led by the ever reliable Captain Guy Renton on his birthday and with outstanding support from Anthony Scott, Bruce Lauder, James Gardener & Kirk Davis gave the team a lead that they would never relinquish and went into halftime up by 34 – 27.
The Wolves came out in the second half looking to turn round the deficit but could not break down the resistant defence from the Hoods and ran out of steam for the Hoods to record the home win.

Top scorers for the Hoods
James Gardener 22 points, Guy Renton 16 points, Kirk Davis & Tobias Benjamin 8 points

The Hoods are next in home action on October 24th at the Wildcats arena with a 7.30pm tip when the visitors are Birmingham Mets.

branding

Why Feedback from your customers is vital

And then I found this, which was another interview with Nick Wheeler of CT shirts speaking at the Leaders in London Conference. He makes great shirts and other accessories but obviously keep his customers very happy indeed. How does he know? he actually asks them what they think!

I’m a bit biased because i Love Feefo, but to get one of your customer envangelising about your brand like this is priceless!