SwelledHead.com

Culture Chameleons: Brands that Borrow the Best of Another Society.

Some brands sound and are packaged like they come from one place, when they actually come from another. This is fairly common, actually, when you look at labels for food or clothing. Italian-sounding clothing brands can come from the Far East or Mexico, or even the U.S. Ditto some pasta and Mexican food brands. With clothing and food, the price point or subtleties of the package usually gives a fake away for what it is. But not always.

This week I was in a local Barnes & Noble Café, and noticed a decorative display of beautifully packaged tea that I was sure was imported from England. It looked like a two-foot wide vertical slice of Fortnum & Mason’s Piccadilly store. The packaging was sumptuous, with lavish detail and typography. And was that a royal crest or warrant on the front of the elegantly designed tin? I was sure it was from the U.K. Only it wasn’t imported from England. The tea comes from Harney & Sons, native to Connecticut.

Is brand pedigree relevant anymore?

It got me to thinking again about the relevance of pedigree to the success of a brand. Can you invent it? Is a transatlantic brand something that a talented package designer can create from whole cloth? The answer is yes. And no.

Yes, you can copy the look and feel of an established brand. And with food you can even simulate its taste. But there is one thing you cannot co-opt, at least not without identity theft, or as they call it in the recording and fashion industry, counterfeiting.

A brand is more than its design, physical implementation or sensual experience. A brand is a relationship based on trust – expectations met or exceeded over time. If Harney’s was a storied purveyor of tea to the Royal Family, it would benefit from the more than one million U.K. adults living in the U.S. who might act as "brand ombudsmen," not only using the item in their homes, but recommending or even giving it to their American friends as a way to introduce them to something wonderfully British.

While Harney’s tea is no doubt a pleasing experience, it’s not an established English brand. I’m not particularly offended, but I wonder if consumers who figure this out after they’ve brought the tea home feel hoodwinked – or maybe they don’t know any better, and are just pleased with a beautiful presentation of delicious tea.

Harney's begs some important questions for consumer packaged goods and food marketers.

Would Harney's be even more successful had it licensed an established UK brand, enhancing it and translating its attributes for our market? Is a true transatlantic brand more valuable than one that's been invented?  Comment on SwelledHead.com or write to let us know what you think.

TransAtlantic Brands Marketing Public Relations

British Invasion into US Late Night TV: Not Quite a Smash Hit – Yet.

Playmania, the interactive televised game show based on the UK’s Quiznation has aired on Game Show Network since April 6, 2006. Unlike Quiznation, The Mint and Quizmania (the big three ITV game shows in the UK), however, Playmania and its ilk haven't become a huge commercial success in the US.

TV shows imported from the UK demonstrate the potential of Transatlantic marketing; and there is quite a long line of successes (more than you might imagine although very few shows migrate from the US to the UK, as this Wikipedia entry points out).  The most successful have benefitted from substantial tailoring to suit the taste of US TV viewers.

Producer Optimistic Entertainment remains, well, optimistic on the participation TV format, and has opened a Los Angeles satellite office headed up by John Gypton to pitch new shows to US TV networks. GSN seems to share the positive view on the show’s and format’s outlook, as it has expanded Playmania to six two-hour episodes a week.

For those not familiar with the format, viewers are invited to call in or text message (for a $.99 fee in the US) to enter a queue to participate in a variety of quiz-format trivia games of varying difficulty. Winners (those correctly guessing one of a handful answers to category question) are rewarded with cash prizes.

In the UK, Quiznation and its cohort are very popular, with viewers queuing up to play and most not getting a chance on-air. In the US, the few shows I’ve watched seem to have had far fewer contestants; the on-air host has to coax the participation of what appears to be only a handful of viewers (although there is some reporting that this dearth of viewers is a come-on to motivate a greater number of callers to vie for what appears to be an open line to win, only to find out that they are in queue and have paid their $.99 for naught).

I like the participation TV concept, especially as implemented by GSN. Its multichannel presence (Web, TV and Phone) place it directly on-trend for how media are being, and will be, consumed in the US. Its downloadable games for mobile phones are a prime example of tapping into the emergence of mobile phones as the next big thing in advertising and revenue generation.

Broadcasting & Cable reported September 25, 2006 on the competing entry from TBS called Midnight Money Madness, and elaborates on the format’s appeal to networks. Callers are charged $.99 for a chance to compete. As the games gain traction, thousands do text or call 900-numbers (also at $.99 per call), creating a significant revenue stream. Deal or No Deal reportedly earned NBC as much as $4 million last season, on approximately 15 million text messages sent to compete for prizes touted on-air. American Idol generated 65 million text messages last season, creating a major revenue source for Fox. The danger for the producers of these shows and the networks is that regulators could come to view them as a form of online gambling and shut the whole thing down.

TBS decided not to renew MMM beyond its initial 8-week test (possibly due to GSN expanding Playmania to six nights a week), but the B&C article cited a figure of one million paid entrants on Midnight Money Madness, which should have earned TBS and its producer-partner roughly $400,000 (figures are not available publicly for Playmania, which has no live West Coast feed; MMM aired live nationwide). So maybe the format travels well, but needs to be on a network with enough viewers to create a critical mass – or maybe GSN (and TBS should it revisit the show/format) need to do more promotion to generate awareness of this fun late night distraction.

An issue for the participation TV format is that just like game shows generally, it is easy to over-saturate a market, which is what has happened to this innovative TV format in the UK, where it was invented. An advantage in the US market is that in addition to revenue from the callers, the networks also air commercials throughout the broadcast (which I don’t recall seeing on the UK’s The Mint).

The integration of call- and text-in to top-rated TV shows is the bigger impact of shows like Quiznation on US TV programming for now. But if Playmania and Midnight Money Madness gain traction, we might see this entertaining format move to major US TV networks and closer to prime time. As an anglophile and believer in the prospect of transatlantic marketing of UK brands, products and services here in the US, it’s another British Invasion that I’m happy to see – now all it needs is some good old fashioned American promotion and distribution to become a huge success.

Thanks for Playmania image goes to Brian Peek -- www.brianpeek.com/blog/

playmania

interactive tv

Old Media Implosion Coming to a City Near You.

If I had any doubts about the inevitable decline of printed newspapers and magazines, they were dispelled last week. First, while following the story of the new Apple iPhone, I was drawn to the site Gizmodo.com, where in addition to the details of the phone, I noticed a sitemeter icon and clicked it (sitemeter is a popular Web site traffic reporting and analysis tool).

Gizmodo received more than 4 million page views the week I visited and was on track to have 20 million page views (and a like number of visitors) for the month of January. No US print publication has 20 million readers that I’m aware of, and certainly Gizmodo’s costs of delivery are a lot lower than if were a print publication. For the last year, Gizmodo has never had less than 10 million page views a month. Just spectacular. You can see its site statistics here.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to attend an iBreakfast special event with Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org, the world's leading online classified advertising site and community. Along with the lore of the early days of Craig’s List, he talked about the current state of the business, its relationship with newspapers, which have the most to lose to Craig’s List free classifieds, and his support for journalism as it responds to the new opportunities online. 

For marketers, perhaps the most intriguing statistic was that in January 2007, craigslist.com expects to receive 6 billion page hits, one for every human on the planet. Newmark was unapologetic about his small company’s (they have 23 employees) impact on old media. Also interesting is that the "Craig’s list effect" has not been as profound outside the US, at least not yet. Newmark mentioned that while London was coming along OK, it wasn’t growing all that fast.

A short reprieve for UK and Europe.  But the clock is ticking...

Newspapers in the UK and Europe are fortunate that since Craig’s List is not an aggressive marketer, they still have the opportunity to put strategies in place to blunt the effect of this company on their businesses. They can and should use their proprietary content and relationship with their readers to get in front of this juggernaut, motivating their readers to use their Web sites to post classifieds and create a community in the same manner as one does on craigslist.com.

Crystal ball time.

My prediction is that the days are numbered for the printed newspaper. Digital distribution of news, on a new class of handheld device called electronic paper, will make digital content as portable as current newspapers or magazines. I figure that by 2011 daily newspapers will be moving from paper to digital-only formats with many newsmagazines not far behind. The next few years will be a painful transition to all-digital delivery, with continued contraction in old media companies that fail to embrace the new mechanism and create business models that make it profitable. And new, all-Internet news organizations, and the old media companies that innovate successfully, will expand to fill the void.

Thanks to Rick Maiman, photojournalist, for the photo of Craig Newmark.  Rick can be reached at 917 405-8416 or nyp797@gmail.com.

Browne to quit BP after “Annus Horribilis”

Ever since Queen Elizabeth II described 1992 as an “annus horribilis” the Latin phrase has become the vernacular appellation for any individual or organisation subject to 12 months of chronic misfortune. This year, the most worthy recipient of the dubious honour was oil giant BP. To many the name now stands for ‘big problems’, usurping the meaning from its green-espousing marketing mantra, ‘Beyond Petroleum’. Today, news that BP’s boss, Lord Browne, is to step down in July – six months earlier than initially announced – is more grist to the mill for a media that has chronicled a year of the company leaping from one self-induced crisis to another. SwelledHead considers how Lord Browne’s successor, Tony Hayward (currently head of exploration and production) can turn the corner with its public profile.

One thing after another

Before moving onto the positive, it’s worth a recap of just why 2006 was so awful for one of Britain’s largest and best known companies. The litany of disaster stems from the devastating explosion at the Texas City oil refinery in March 2005 that killed 15 and injured 180. It was the worst US industrial accident in more than a decade. The site had previous safety problems. In March 2004, it was evacuated after an explosion that cost the company $63,000 in fines. In September the same year, two workers died and another was seriously injured by scalding water that escaped from a high-pressure pipe.

In 2006, accusations of behind-the-scenes mismanagement of critical environmental and safety matters, and underhand business practice, was revealed one event at a time. In March there was the 1m litre (267,000 gallon) oil spill at Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which threatened 8% of US supply and was enough to raise world oil prices. In June the US energy regulator filed a lawsuit accusing BP of attempting to manipulate the American propane market. The next month there was a rather public row between Lord Browne and chairman Peter Sutherland over the Browne’s departure date, while operationally the company closed 12 wells at Prudhoe Bay following the earlier leaks. To add to the criminal investigation faced by BP for Texas City, in August it emerged that the company was also being probed over possible manipulation of crude oil and unleaded petrol/gasoline markets. And further wells were closed in Prudhoe Bay.

In September, the start of production from Thunder Horse, BP’s giant offshore development in the Gulf of Mexico, was put back two years following the discovery of failure in key components of the system. In October, murmurings about a laissez-faire attitude to safety gained credence following the US Chemical Safety Board’s interim report into the Texas City refinery explosion. It accused BP of ignoring “catastrophic safety risks” and of knowing about “significant safety problems” at 34 other facilities around the world. CSB chairwoman, Carolyn Merritt, blamed the explosion on “aging infrastructure, overzealous cost-cutting, inadequate design and risk blindness.”

November saw the release of a consultant's report about the Texas City refinery, written a few months before the disaster, which said he had never seen a site “where the notion 'I could die today' was so real for so very many people” and that there was an “exceptional degree of fear of catastrophic incidents” at the plant. BP’s head of exploration and production, Tony Hayward, confirmed what many suspected when he said “[BP] has lived too long in the world of making do and patching this quarter for the next quarter.” His criticism of the company, which were put on its intranet system by staff, noted that BP’s leadership does not listen enough to what “the bottom” says and that safety needed more work.

Proponents of BP say that the incidents and events, while lamentable, are isolated and should not be linked as evidence of systemic failure within the organisation. A reader of SwelledHead commented that our post in January made the same mistake as other media by citing incorrect evidence due to misunderstandings of the Alaskan pipeline system. Maybe so, though our point was less about the detail of how BP’s troubles occurred and more about how mismanagement was damaging to the firm’s brand. Indeed, the City is unconvinced that BP’s problems are exceptional. Its shares have fallen by 20% since April of last year.

Turning the corner

So, what can Tony Hayward do to remove the tarnish of a full year of troubling headlines?

Clearly BP needs to get its house in order, but the key to restoring faith in the brand (and gaining back lost stock market value) is in how it communicates that effort to its stakeholders and the wider public.

• BP needs to openly address its failings and explain with clarity and a fair degree of candour, what is being done at every level within the organisation.
• It must be willing to meet with and fully engage the media, including some of its sharpest critics, so that journalists feel they are being properly informed and not being fed ‘spin’. This will help to end the ‘bandwagoning’ that keeps bad headlines flowing.
• As well as working with the media, BP should take control of its own reporting. It should set up a dedicated website, ‘BP Better Practice’, that details the company’s plans for its own redemption and charts the positive work as it takes place. This site should include an executive blog, with key management figures reporting regularly on how lessons are being learned and problems rectified.
• The admission by Hayward himself that employees are not being listened is an issue that needs to be tackled head on. The Better Practice website should show how safety and environmental related investment tracks advice given by those on the front line. This will help to restore confidence and morale among the company’s staff worldwide.

Telling the story of how BP is turning back to success should not be an end in itself. It creates the opportunity to resell the green agenda. Much was invested of the re-branding exercise, ‘Beyond Petroleum’, with its bright green logo. The company has put billions into technologies such as wind power, solar power and bioscience research. BP is also pioneering a technology whereby carbon dioxide emitted from power stations can be pumped into underground wells. This eye on the future is seen by both the public and the City as wholly good news and the change to bring the positive to bear when working through to a difficult period change adds potential to the end result.

Perhaps BP will take on some of these initiatives, perhaps not, but SwelledHead hopes that, however the company pulls itself out of the quagmire, by the end of the year it can be justifiably seen as being Beyond Problems.

Gentlemen’s Tonic to Open First Franchise in Texas

London's men-only spa and barber Gentlemen’s Tonic will be opening its first franchised location in the U.S. in Houston, Texas, according to employees at the firm’s Mayfair store.  Locations in Dubai and elsewhere are to follow shortly. If you haven’t had the pleasure of a wet shave at one of London’s top barbers (or at The Art of Shaving in NY, Las Vegas, Dallas, LA or Miami), you’ve missed one of life’s great luxuries. And that’s just what GT is hoping; that high-earning professional men will come to see a shave as integral to the spa/massage experience and position GT uniquely in that fast-growing segment for men.

Already, 31 percent of all U.S. spa visitors are men. With services designed just for us, equality will surely come to this segment of lifestyle, too! Visit Julie Register's Discover Spas to see some good statistics on spa visits in the US.

I had a fantastic shave and facial at the Gentlemen's Tonic Mayfair store last December, and can report that it is a wonderful experience, and the facilities are purpose-built to make every man feel at ease.  Just the right dose of dark paneling, chrome and mirrors; not unlike the best private clubs where a gent might take these services in at home or while on vacation. 

Gentlemen’s Tonic currently doesn’t have its own line of skincare products, but with its franchisees moving in on The Art of Shaving’s turf, can that be far behind?

Understanding the value of nostalgia

Driving across Britain over the holidays meant more than one visit to the fast-food chains that populate our roadside services. The major brands, McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC, will be familiar to all and are the most popular choices. Yet I was pleased to pass them by for Wimpy, a UK burger brand that I’ve not seen in ages and is probably assumed by many to no longer exist. Drawn in by fond memories of the brand, I found it had undergone significant change. The food and environment had been brought thoroughly up-to-date, healthy(ish) options such as bean and Quorn burgers were available, and the overall feel was much the same as at any other rival. A little disappointed by the refresh, I ate my food and went on my way. Yet this week’s news about the demise of another British roadside restaurant, Little Chef, showed why my feelings of nostalgia are really of no consequence.

Unknown in the US, Wimpy originated as a British take on American burger restaurants (in its early years the burgers were served on plates and eaten with a knife and fork). Its 1954 debut pre-dated McDonald’s arrival in the UK by twenty years. Close to dying out at times, a management buyout in 2002 appears to be returning the business to health. Indeed, with my eyes opened to the brand once more I’ve now noticed several in and around London. Its apparent resurgence means that comparison with Little Chef, which has now entered administration, is hard to avoid. Like Wimpy, Little Chef was a British version of an American food phenomenon – in this case the ubiquitous diner. The company also began trading in the 50s, yet has hardly changed since. It’s not really surprising that tastes have moved on in fifty years and the unavoidable difference is that Wimpy has adapted while Little Chef has not.

The fact is that I stop for a sit-down roadside meal once every Preston Guild (i.e. hardly ever), so I’m a poor customer to chase. And on the rare occasions I do stop I’m only likely to visit either Wimpy or Little Chef due to some warm and wistful memories of a bygone age of naff dining. Little Chef has attempted to cash in on this, with a few branches deliberately adopting 50s style and design. The irony is that the entire chain has hardly altered since that era; its nostalgia requires no fakery. The problem is that this holds no appeal for the core target market for this industry - children.

The top consumers in this market are families, and as we all know it’s the kids that dictate where to eat when pulling over for a break from the journey. What Little Chef has forgotten is that children are too young to have nostalgia. Wimpy’s emulation of its competitors - a bit dull to me but undeniably bright and contemporary - is what appeals to kids today. Adapting to its customers has kept Wimpy cooking while the sad Little Chef has been forced to hang up his hat.

Update...

The day after this post was written, it was reported that a venture capital group, RCapital, has bought Little Chef for a knock-down price of £10m ($19m). The chain lives to see another day, but SwelledHead hopes its new owners will see that the brand will need some significant reinvention if it is to become relevant in today's market.