Category: branding

branding, Social media

Social media is really antisocial for B2B

Edith Boundy - 95 years old on Tuesday and better at listening than 95% of all businesses that use social media as marketing tool
Edith Boundy - 95 years old on Tuesday and better at listening than 95% of all businesses that use social media as marketing tool

I’m a big fan of social media, it’s great fun and quite sociable really. But is it right for most brands or is it just a great big distraction?

Having given this lots and lots of thought, I’m becoming more convinced that a social media strategy for many B2B businesses is nothing more than a total waste of time that will ultimately serve to undermine their business.

A big statement, but lets look at the facts.

Email marketing
Sending lots of emails to your clients keeps them abreast of what you do.
If you’re doing well, as a B2B business you may have a 40% open rate. This is a 60% NOT open rate so more of your customers are choosing to not even look at the information you are sending them.

Lets say this takes 4 hours per month

I blog loads and loads that build links and web presence
But how many people read it and how is this adding to the SEO of your own company? It is far better to use all of your hard work blogging to populate your business’ site with lovely searchable words that Google can crawl all over and rank you more highly for than build an external blog presence.

You have to be incredibly committed to build an external blog with a Page Rank that will make the link back to your business site worth the effort. Realistically, one link from Linkedin to your business site will do more good.

To do this well will take 15 hours per month

I’m always Twittering
Unless you make the effort to build an engaged audience, you may as well not bother. How many people are actually listening to what you say. Most (over 80%) of twitter accounts are effectively dormant, so who cares? Are you shouting your thoughts in an empty room.

To do this well will take 6 hours per month

Facebook
It’s nice to see your business down their with the kids and yes it’s a huge fast growing audience base. But for B2B. Hmm, not really.

Will you sell more widgets, buns or B2B services by having a Facebook fan page? I doubt it. At least once it’s up, maintaining it is pretty simple, so lets say we allow 2 hours per month.

For consumer brands it can be completely different, they try to build religious fervour where people seek them out and want to know more and more. Their reputation can grow like wildfire with consumers looking for information in every available channel. So yes, I can see why you just have to have it here.

But if you’re a B2B supplier, wouldn’t the TWENTY SEVEN hours every single month, you’ve just saved be better spent hanging out with your clients and giving them a really good listening too?

branding

The new .co domain

Domain names - a nightmare for the business owner. Which ones do we buy and which ones do we ignore?
Domain names - a nightmare for the business owner. Which ones do we buy and which ones do we ignore?

There’s a new domain on the block and it’s a .co

Not a .com, a .co.uk, or even a .uk.com, but a very simple .co

You can find more out about it here.

But I have already made my decision that as an individual and a business owner I will not be buying the .co domain.

Why?

Surely it will only be grabbed by cyber squatters if we don’t and filled with porn links to scare me into buying it?

I was asked my thoughts on the new domain the other day and it got me thinking.

Because it is so similar to both the .com and the .co.uk my belief is that people will auto complete it anyway. Whether they do this physically, by the computer autocorrecting it and adding the missing letters, or in them just assuming that there are letters missing mentally, doesn’t matter. The fact I think will be that people will assume there is something wrong with a .co domain.

It’s also my thought that domain endings are slightly less important than they used to be anyway as they are just becoming a parking place for a website to be held and therefore less prominent.

In July 2008 Google carried out 7.23 billion searches. In Europe in July 2008, 87% of all online activities started with a search according to TGI Europa.

If it’s true that 87% of all Internet activity starts with a Google (or other) search then that means that a max of 13% directly key in a domain name anyway. So therefore ranking on Google and other search engines will be far more important than the domain on which the site sits.

I believe within a few years we won’t even see the domain ending on branded ads or maybe even within the info bar on the browser. It will become something geeks look at in the source code.

So sorry to the people of Colombia who’s country owns the .co domain. I’m not going to be a customer.

Thanks to http://gujtar.pro/ for the image

branding

Waterstone’s – A ‘pointless’ rebrand

Waterstone’s appear to have rebranded from their old sharp pointy logo shown here:

Waterstone’s old logo - a nice pointy thing with some classic typography
Waterstone’s old logo - a nice pointy thing with some classic typography

And they have replaced it with this somewhat ‘pointless’ effort:

Waterstone's new logo - a rather pointless effort in every respect
Waterstone's new logo - a rather pointless effort in every respect

But I find myself asking why. They have 303 stores and to even replace the fascia and a few bits of POS around the store will cost them an absolute minimum of £10k per store to actually implement the change of logo. This gives them a bare minimum bill of £3.03 Million to update the stores. Cheap by some comparisons, but will it help them sell any extra books?

Not in my opinion.

Again, if we assume they made £2 on every book they sell (which seems highly unlikely), then that means they have to sell over 1.5 million extra books even to stand still. I can’t see a logo that looks like some old lady’s droopy appendages actually driving a single extra customer to buy from them, let alone to buy more and more from them.

Rebrands need to mark the change in a business and show that what it has done previously will be left behind in favour of it’s new way of behaving going forwards. If it is a line in the sand then this marking of the change can be beneficial. But not if the change is to make them look less authoritative and stylish than they did before.

In my opinion (and i’m happy for anyone and everyone to disagree with me), this is the worst sort of rebrand. A bad and pointless one that will continue to give our industry a bad name.

brand values, branding

Why have the Liberal democrats done so well? – A brand perspective

BBC debate - showing Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats at the centre of the stage
BBC debate - showing Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats at the centre of the stage - effectively getting a supermarket listing for his brand

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last few weeks since the first debate and thought it would be good to relate the huge surge of support for the Liberal Democrats to a consumer brand – which they have effectively become when they are ‘advertised’ in such a high profile manner.

I think the answer is simple.

By allowing Nick Clegg to stand on the stage next to the two major brands of Labour and Conservative, they were giving them the equivalent of a supermarket listing for a minor brand.

For a minor brand to get a listing in the likes of Tesco, they are immediately given the assurance that ‘if it has been chosen by Tesco to be sold, then it must be okay’ as the overarching brand is that of Tesco as a distributor and comes with their own big brand reassurance. Similarly, a place on that platform came with the assurance that they must be broadly equal in stature.

Likewise for Nick Clegg to be ‘offered for sale’ alongside the market leaders it comes down to whether the consumers like the packaging and the price and feel like a change from the main brands. He’s a good looking bloke (I haven’t got a man crush or anything) and he speaks well. He also constantly refers to the other two parties as the OLD parties – a really important differentiation for the younger voters/buyers.

I have asserted on many occasions that the future is unbranded, and many of us will always choose the guest beer in a pub rather than being herded into the mainstream brands – This is the same principle. It is a brand backlash against the mainstream brands and may be here to stay.

So the mistake came in agreeing to the debate in the first place. They gave they Lib Dems a listing that their previous size may not have warranted. There was no place for UKIP, the awful BNP or the SNP, despite their late court protestations.

If the Lib Dems do sweep into some form of shared power then I believe it all stems from their amazing move to get themselves onto the debate platform in the first place.

I can’t wait to see the outcome on Thursday night.

brand values, branding

Jimmy Bullard’s Wash and Go Ad

It’s all very funny and that , but in what way is this adding to the brand value of Wash and Go. As an April fool it may have worked, but this came out in mid March. What on earth were they thinking? He’s ugly, not too well known and very few of us would aspire to his look. I think size zero models can be a disaster for many brands and real life could be where it’s at, but this is a badly executed, badly filmed parody that should have stayed as a joke amongst the creatives.

For the record, here is one of the original ads from 1991. (the year we started Purple Circle!). I wonder what happened to Vidal Sassoon?

branding

Polishing the Rhubarb

I was on a Purple Circle photoshoot the other day for McArtney’s Catering and tried out a new App for my iPhone called iCamcorder, which adds video functionality to the iPhone 3G. It seems to work pretty well. I also couldn’t quite resist adding some music from the mad TV programme Rhubarb and Custard, which seems to suit nicely. Victoria Blundy is the Rhubarb Polisher.

Oh, and I should have added a picture of the finished shot. So here it is: Nice work by Keane Beamish.

The Rhubarb - Nicely polished
The Rhubarb – Nicely polished
branding

Cutting off Jak Garratt’s 9″ Mohawk for Dyslexia Action

This is a totally personal blog in support of my good mate Tim Garratt who’s son Jak has just cut off his 9″ Mohawk to raise money for Dyslexia Action, who supported him throughout his life. You can donate here.

Looking at a face of sheer terror as Tim approaches him with a pair of scissors is worth all the money he can raise. Good work Jak and great scissor work Tim.

branding

The effect of the planes flying again after the ash has subsided

I guess we were quite lucky to not have been too badly effected by the planes not flying in the haze of the Eyjafjallajoekull Volcano’s ash cloud. I know a few people who got stuck in other parts of the world, but in the main, most of us coped. As is the human way, we found ways around things and got on with our lives.

For those of doing business overseas, many found alternatives that didn’t involve flying.

Was the global economy really that badly affected or was it just a huge dent to airlines profits?

It really makes me wonder how many of the flights are actually necessary and how many could be done via a good (and increasingly easy) video conference. If a few flights were cut every week, the saving to the environment would be enormous and have a far greater effect than taxing the hell out of poor old car drivers.

It’s easy to overlook the sheer number of flights that take place daily. Worldwide, there are more than 70,000 flights every single day. The Eyjafjallajoekull Volcano apparently stopped around 60% of those flights in Europe.

In CO2 terms the volcano kicked out between 150-300,000 tons of CO2 per day. But in Europe alone, the grounding of the flights saved more than 200,000 tons of CO2.

If you want to see some amazing pictures of the Volcano in action and the power of our earth to fight back, have a look at here.

Or if you want to see the effect of the planes coming back in a time lapsed version of the European skies, watch this superb video below.

branding

I’ve never voted Tory before, but i’ve only just had a lobotomy

The problem with any political poster is that it’s well and truly open to political graffiti

I really don’t want top get too political on here, but I  did think this was an example of this art at it’s finest.

I really don't want top get too political on here, but I did think this was an example of this art at it's finest.
I really don't want top get too political on here, but I did think this was an example of this art at it's finest.
branding

Puma reinvents the shoebox – well sort of

Puma reinvents the shoebox, with another box

Well sort of. Click on the above to link through the video as it wont let me embed it here.

This great little video shows the length that Puma have gone to in order to completely rid themselves of the wasteful box for shipping the range of cool shoes. But having gone through a 21 month consultation process, they have radically reinvented something they are calling a bag, but still looks remarkably err, Box like.

Its saved them lots of litres of water in production, 65% in cardboard use and lots of MegaJoules in energy, but I can’t help feeling that whilst it is a big step forward, it isn’t really big enough to be that significant.

Yes, its smaller and it looks pretty good, but they have tried everything to come to the conclusion that a sort of box is still the best method by which to ship shoes.

What it is a brilliant example of however is reinforcement that good/great design and good environmental practice for any business in any sector pays for itself.

Whether they have moved away from a conventional box or not, they have saved a fortune in production costs – that you can guarantee will not be passed on in lower prices. That for me makes it, with some reservations, a good job well done by the teams involved.