Category: branding

Brand Experience, branding

A stunning article on new brand thinking

This is a stunning article from FusionBrand in Malaysia, commenting on the poor year had by Ogilvy and Mather in China and the reaction of their chairman TB Song.

Read it here

What it says to me is that the future for branding and advertising agencies is a very uncertain one unless they begin to offer measurable ROI on what they do for their clients. This means measurability everywhere.

Rewarding advertising agencies by how much space they buy for you is a dead model. Rewarding them by how much sales revenue they generate will help sharpen their ideas in a massive way, but only if they are allowed to control more of the experience than just the televisual element.

As a design and brand agency it was traditional that we could change logos and create wonderful new design literature, websites, direct mail and all sorts of marketing ‘collateral’ that would win over clients the world over.

But those days are gone. We have to change the core of the businesses now, in order to change the brand.

Brands are born in the customer experience and not in the logo you choose to hang above it. The logo can only ever be a symbol that the customer has arrived in the right place to enjoy their branded experience. Change the logo in isolation and you change nothing. Change the customer experience and mark it with a new logo and you could indeed change the world for that customer.

Unless we have enlightened brand owners who allow designers to enjoy and subsequently manage the ongoing brand experience, one of us will disappear. The old adage ‘if two people in a business always agree, then one of them is unnecessary’ rings truer now than ever before.

Branding as topic that has been fiercely debated and that everyone has an opinion on (right or wrong). Done well, it changes the basis of a business forever. Done badly, it’s a poor old waste of money that brings the industry into disrepute and has been practiced by many since Introducing Monday and Consignia started the trend downwards with the most pointless and superficial logo changes masquerading as rebrands.

So, to all enlightened clients feel free to get in contact and I’ll show you the difference between a new logo, a pointless change and a really brilliant piece of branding that will directly benefit your business and its customers in the long term.

Andy Hanselman, branding

He can’t get no satisfaction

Rather excellent article from Andy Hanselman about why satisfaction is never enough.

www.andyhanselman.com

Have a read get commenting

branding

Innovate or its gonna be roadkill

It seems obvious to most of us that unless we innovate with our brands we die, but why do so many organisations and brand owners slowly drift into mediocrity? Branding is far more than changing logos, it’s about renewing the entire presentation of an organisation to its customers or agreed target audience, who may become customers of the future.

The Little Chef brand in UK is a great example. Their Olympic breakfast used to be exceptional but year by year it became less Olympian and more local track event. Bits started dropping off and others became ‘extras’ pretty soon a simple breakfast became a £10 plus extortion.

By the time they drafted in ‘expert’ Heston Blumenthal of Fat Duck fame, who is quite obviously a brilliant chef, but as far removed from a motorway service as could possibly be imagined, the cheese had most definitely moved. It was so far gone that no amount of PR could bring it out of hiding.

Over almost ten years there was a generational change (or neglect) that meant an entire new audience grew up NOT using Little Chef as their roadside café of choice.

The rather excellent site Motorway services info rates Motorway services over a number of different ratings to do with cleanliness, friendliness and pricing and then rather weirdly. gives them a burger related rating.

Tebay in Northumberland always wins because the owners – as it is amazingly, still privately owned – care enough to keep renewing their offer and ensuring their staff are behaving as they would want, the prices are what they would be happy to pay and the showers are ones they would even use themselves.

Bottled water in most services is actually much more expensive than petrol or diesel (at over £1.50 per litre) and in these value aware times, most people are wising up and either bringing their own ‘value’ products (from home, from Aldi or even from taps) that the likes of Moto will soon start to seriously struggle unless they renew, and renew fast.

I drive thousands of miles on Britain’s motorways and for me the biggest mover of cheese (and pickle and ham etc etc) has been Marks and Spencer. The arrival of their brand in services has brought a new price structure and a level of quality only seen before in the likes of Tebay.

There is nothing new in marketing and ever was thus. The clearest example we were given whilst training in marketing at college was the Swiss watch industry being decimated by Swatch. They just didn’t see the competition coming from electronics. Whilst they haven’t quite died, the volumes of mechanical Swiss watches is far smaller than in the 60’s.

Brands have to innovate, in any industry. The road to LONG TERM branding success is littered with glorious failures and quiet disappearances, but if it can happen at the roadside, where could it happen to you and your brand – more importantly, what are you doing to ensure that you move the cheese before the others realise it has even moved.

Ps if you want read the ‘Who moved my cheese’ book that I refer to in this article, click below.

Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson

branding

Essential reading for the branding expert

I have compiled a list of what I believe are the essential books about branding and its related areas. It may not be an exhaustive list, so please feel free to let me know others I should be reading too.

https://johnnylyle.co.uk/best-branding-books/

and this is the list of sites that I love too

https://johnnylyle.co.uk/blogs-and-sites-that-i-love/

branding

It’s great when your own work comes home

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.”

Andy Hanselman, branding

CRM is not enough MCR is getting closer though

I was speaking to Andy Hanselman today about the much talked about topic of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). He has the view that this is just not enough. What we should all be looking at is Maximising Customer Relationships (or MCR). Branding has become such a wide subject now that it is far, far more than just doing logos, it’s about every single aspect of your customer interaction.

A system that maximises customer relationships seems to be a far more sensible and holistic way of dealing with your customers.

If you look at your existing customers, are you genuinely delivering them all of the available products or services you offer? Or more likely, are they using you for one or two of the things you can do for them and buying others from others?

In an article about agency survival by Alain Thys, he gives us some great pointers about what we should be doing. Perhaps the most important of these is making ourselves accountable for the work we produce and delivering a sensible ROI for our clients. He argues that many of the reward models for agencies are just wrong, because they reward overspending and not results.

At the Marketing Live conference in Leeds a few weeks ago, one of the main topics discussed was again, about agency rewards. I was the only person who held my hand up saying we had been doing this for years. As an agency, Purple Circle has always put its money where its mouth is and for the right projects will either take an investment in the company, or find a reward system that is based on results.

Duncan Bird, a long time friend of ours is at Anomaly in New York and they have built their entire business model on this idea. They not only create brilliant work, they invest in the business and take a shareholding. They are truly rewarded for their work and this is the future for an agency.

branding

Canadian call Centres – It’s the future

It’s the future for me! I was genuinely quite nervous about moving my car insurance for the first time in years and did the usual of going onto the price comparison website www.gocompare.com which I have to say was remarkably easy to use and offered me some prices that seemed much lower than when I had been insuring it previously (like nearly half price!)

The one that came out on top for both my car and my wife’s was Admiral Insurance (http://www.admiral.com) who also seem to offer a multi car deal. This sounded a little complicated, so with some trepidation, I clicked the button to allow me to speak to a real person. I presume at this stage, Go Compare’s business model charges Admiral Insurance for me as a very hot lead. Many companies we have dealt with in the past, still seem to exercise massive sales prevention techniques – even at this stage.

But I spoke to Cathy Arnold in their sister company call centre in Nova Scotia and she was quite superb. Nothing was too much trouble, she was keen to do things right, apologised for some of the (required) bureaucracy and was overall a lovely person to deal with.

If this is the way of the Canadian Call centre operative generally, I can only see it being a very large growth industry for them in the future.

Admiral are trying very hard to build a brand in the UK and they are backing up lots of expensive advertising with brilliant service, excellent prices and smart people to deal with. I can’t believe I am saying it about an insurance company, and I may change my opinion if I ever have to make a claim, but we could all learn something from these people.

Awards, branding

Another Award

I was up at the Midland Hotel in Manchester last night for the Drum marketing Awards, which had a brilliant judging panel headed by Keith Vernege, Creative Director of the COI, Simon Pestridge – Marketing Director, Nike Uk Ltd, Mark Hardy – Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (PlayStation) and Martine Ainsworth-Wells – Marketing Director for Visit London.

Our shortlist was for BeWILDerwood – Marketing a swamp – in the New product/service strategy. As we’ve never entered a marketing award before (we normally do the design ones) it was a bit of a surprise to actually win the section. Its a nice trophy too.

But then to top it all, we went on to win the overall Grand Prix.

Have a look at the work and the other winners here

But here are the trophies with a poor pic taken on my phone.

I’m sure there’ll be some pictures to follow of the Kate Winslet Moments, which I’ll post when I get them.

But it was great to meet some friendly folks from other agencies. All the nice people from Hemisphere, True North, MCMNet, Laura at Aura, Rosie from Oxford Marketing College and Richard and Victoria from the Drum.

Thanks for a great evening and a fuzzy head today.

branding

Hello world i’m now on WordPress

I have switched from Blogger to WordPress as it seems far more intuitive to use. So far so good. let me know what you think of the new look.

Cheers

John

BeWILDerwood, branding

The THEA Pics – Tom and Simon get glamorous

As promised, here are the pictures of Tom and Simon from BeWILDerwood in their finest finery collecting the THEA Award in the Disney hotel in Los Angeles.

Pictured during the speech and then looking very relieved afterwards, Tom was rather excited to get the chance to address the whole group with a very weepy acceptance speech, just like they do at the real Oscars.” I have to thank my Mum, my Dad, my Wife, Son and daughter for making me the man that I am……….

Anyway, a good night was had by all and it is one hell of an honour to speak to EVERYONE in the industry.

Enjoy the pics that are shown in order.

1. The nervous speaker
2. Looking more relaxed
3. Very relieved pair of Simon and Tom
4. Proud wives Lesley (Tom’s wife) and Alex (Simon’s wife)