A brand isnt just for Christmas…

We’re all consumers of brands and whether we’re buying business or consumer goods and services, we still make decisions based on the same triggers, experiences and perceptions, regardless of whether we are buying for home or business.

Christmas is a very revealing time of year for consumer brands, providing an instant barometer for customer loyalty. People tend to base their buying decisions on:
- brand experience
- emotional attachment to a brand
- similarity and familiarity to their lives
- trends
- recommendation
- how they want to be perceived by the people they are buying for
In short, the ‘gift’ test is: do you feel good enough about a product to buy it for someone else?

The same rules apply to business. Although business-to-business brands don’t necessarily have the luxury of Christmas for a sales spike, the lessons of consumer brands can still be learned from. What connections do your customers have with your brand and what makes them loyal?

All too often businesses are too afraid to spend money in order to make money and branding is done ‘on the cheap’; that isn’t to say it can’t be done cost effectively. The focus tends to be on the visual components and not the actual brand or strategy behind it. I hate to point this out, but you can tell. Consumers of your products or services can also tell, so it may be time for a re-think.

To create an income-generating brand, you need to create something that is unique, that delivers true competitive advantage for your business based on a good solid strategy, and clever and effective implementation. Branding isn’t just about memorable logos and design, it’s about the experience you offer at every touch-point of your business.

Think beyond the old-school methodologies of ‘business-to-business’ and ‘business-to-consumer’ communications to working on a more holistic, up-to-date personal level – we call this ‘business-to-people’.To do this you have to forget about ‘what’s gone before’ and challenge ‘process’. Don’t focus on the channel or what everyone else is doing – focus on the needs of your business, staff and customers.

Create and develop a set of messages that mean something, that come from a honed and representative brand proposition and real point of differentiation. Brands are built on personality, stories and truths; you might need help in capturing this for your business, and it is achievable, effective and needn’t break the bank.

Business marketing should no longer be vertical. Branding draws on experiences from all parts of our lives. The success and expansion of social media is proof that it’s ALL about people. The result of effective social media is that it gets people talking and sharing – a very powerful medium that highlights the importance of getting things right in the ‘real world’. One thing you should also be very clear about is that social media hasn’t replaced anything. If you haven’t got the brand right, or your other marcomms channels working effectively, it’s just another medium to get wrong.

Effective branding is about engaging people across all channels, it’s about balancing expectations with experiences, and not least of all with your staff. It’s about developing loyalty and an emotional connection, stories with truth and something for the person to engage with, and it is definitely not just at Christmas.

Bonfire CI meet Wayne Hemingway MBE

Wayne Hemingway MBE

Wayne Hemingway MBE

Last night, 20th October 2011, we had the privilege of meeting and listening to Wayne Hemingway at a Creative Bedfordshire seminar. He talked about innovation and creativity in business, starting small and working your way up, identifying opportunities and taking risks, breaking into new markets, and networking with other businesses.

It was a real thrill to meet someone so influential in our industry; someone who has had so much influence and created a enviable legacy in fashion, design and now a more sustainable community based genre he describes as ‘social design’. For those not in the know, Wayne built Red or Dead into a fashion label that received global acclaim, resulting in him winning the prestigious British Fashion Council’s Streetstyle Designer of the Year Award for three consecutive years.

Wayne also set up Hemingway Design in 1999, which specialises in affordable and social design. The highest profile project is The Staiths South Bank, which has won a series of high profile awards including Housing Design Awards (best large project) and Building Magazine’s “Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project” as well as a Building For Life and the highest rating of any large scale scheme in the CABE National Housing Audit.

We hope he returns to Bedford again – we left feeling totally inspired and I think it’s fair to say in awe of Wayne’s achievements.

Protecting your ideas just got a heck of a lot easier

This month saw the launch of a new service for the industry called Creative Barcode, and what a simple and excellent idea it is. It’s so simple you’ll wonder ‘why hasn’t anyone come up with this before’. We think this is so fantastic we had to write about it – a simple affordable service for creatives, designers, inventors, scientists, engineers, artists, design-led thinkers and originators alike.

So here is the low-down; ideas, patents and trademarks are only worth something if you have the money to protect them. Protecting your ideas and the generation of IP is a very complex and expensive process. It’s a minefield of classifications, wording, semantics, views and opinions – which often comes down to one person’s word against another.

Creative Barcode acknowledges this and provides a much easier and affordable model of protection by way of a contract.

Once your account has been set up concepts, designs, ideas, proposals and tenders watermarked with a unique identifier can be sent through the system to the intended recipient. The recipient then receives a link to a download of the file from the Creative Barcode website where they agree to terms and conditions prior to download. This sets up a binding contract between sender and recipient.

And why is this so great? It means that the recipient cannot act on the content supplied without coming back to discuss it with the originator first as outlined in the terms. The trick here is that a breach of contract is both easier and cheaper to prove than the theft of IP/ideas. Once a breach has been identified, any damages arising from the breach can then be considered.

Creative Barcode provides proof of contract by keeping a record of all those you give access to and who download the files. If files are shared offline it acts as a deterrent by having a clearly branded mark and unique trackable number embedded/printed on the file.

This is a fantastic service and has so many applications, but most importantly it is an affordable answer to a long-standing issue for both creative individuals and companies alike in the protection of the circulation of their ideas.

It doesn’t solve everything but it is a great start. Registration costs £195 creating your account and your first 5 barcodes, and additional barcodes can be bought for around £9 each.

We think that this one of the most significant industry developments in a long time, especially given the growth in open innovation and ideas sharing forums and platforms. If you think this is a great idea and believe in upholding the value of creativity then please also sign-up to the Trust Charter on the Creative Barcode website by clicking here. You won’t be alone, with names like Rodney Fitch already leading the way.

Professional pitching etiquette

The word ‘pitch’ has two common perceptions; it can be a negative term associated with a buyer seeking to ‘try before they buy’ or the positive throng of a business opportunity.

For the majority of agencies however, it will be the groan of ‘here we go again’ and the subsequent jumping through hoops to prove that the decade of success stories and words ‘design’ consultancy above the front door weren’t a joke to be proven otherwise.

In particular, the practice of free pitching is ever under the scrutiny of professional bodies, trade associations and practitioners the world over.

Is it a double miss-matched cultural insecurity between creatives and those buying creativity – one set without the money, all to win and who understand the creative process and the other holding the purse strings, who in many cases don’t.

The one common denominator that both parties should have in common, and therefore concur with, is professional etiquette. So for the benefit of a good, strong, long-term relationship forming, here are a few thoughts on the etiquette of pitching.

Inexperienced buyers want an easy life; they don’t want to waste hours of their time evaluating the suitability of suppliers – but they would waste days, maybe weeks, of a supplier’s time by asking them to answer an ill-conceived brief, for free, on the slim chance they may be chosen – often to find the project is later cancelled.

On the other hand the thoughtful and more experienced buyer knows the level of service they want, knows their market and business needs, selects a small number of potential suppliers based on their track record at solving creative problems and approaches them with good intent.

At this point the buyer has a good professional brief and asks the suppliers for costs. They may ask for creative input at this stage but only because, having already spent a reasonable amount of their own time evaluating the suppliers, they need a little more to help them choose.

They would have also put aside a small amount of the total project budget to cover this time in coming up with initial thoughts to aid their decision.

This is the ideal scenario where professionals of all levels appreciate and respect not only their own time, but the time of others.

As Maxine J Horn, CEO of British Design Innovation, comments: “When productivity of SME creative firms is negatively affected by any procurement practice operated by public and/or private sector, there is a moral duty to re-examine the process and to improve the conditions for all concerned.”

So let’s say the pitch had a real project at the end of it, it wasn’t a buyer wasting a potential supplier’s time to pull an existing supplier in line and the project wasn’t cancelled after the pitch, then what? We rejoice in our win or, with the helpful and constructive feedback from the potential customer, adjust our approach and move onto the next one.

I am a great believer of the theory ‘what doesn’t break you, makes you stronger’, ‘that variety is the spice of life’ and that ‘survival of the fittest’ is not only the story of evolution but the story of business – all being fair and equal.

So we promote the win naming the competition, if known, giving credit where it’s due as an Olympian would. This is what the creative media love and it’s all about profile and the company you keep – for both the successful and unsuccesful parties.

There is a huge debate about the process of pitching and more importantly how to appoint a supplier within the creative industry. Bodies such as the Chartered Society of Designers and British Design Innovation have a wealth of information available for clients looking to procure creative services.

Frank Peters FCSD MIoD, CEO of the Chartered Society of Designers & The Design Association, comments: “Members of CSD and The Design Association, its corporate accreditation programme, are obliged to adhere to a code of conduct which sets out standards for professional behaviour. As a code it states what the public may expect of a professional and, of equal importance, what professionals may expect of each other.”

I strongly believe that the outcomes of a pitch and long-term success of the relationship are very much down to the approach and experience of both the client and supplier in maintaining a professional and competitive edge throughout the pitch process.

Question: Do you ask a number of glazing companies to replace a window free of charge and then only pay the chosen company to finish the job? – of course you don’t! Nevertheless, it’s infinitely cheaper to replace a window than it is to answer a marketing brief to a professional standard.

By Stephen Judge, strategic development director at Bonfire Creative Intelligence.
You can also view this published article at Utalkmarketing by clicking here.