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The increasing importance of customer service in on-line marketing

Monday 1 February 2010 · Leave a Comment

I have just gone through an interesting experience with a manufacturer that has really driven home to me the heightened significance of two elements in the marketing process brought about by the growth of Internet retailing.

My story starts with the on-line purchase of a pair of sports shoes.  I play a lot of sports, a consequence of which is the array of specialist technical shoes in my wardrobe.  I was keen to try a particular brand of shoe that I hadn’t worn before and although I was aware of the possible sizing pitfalls, because I had worn just about every other make over the years, I know what my size is and I understand the principles of construction and manufacture, so I ordered my shoes on-line with confidence.  Besides, this particular brand of shoe is almost exclusively an on-line product, so there wasn’t an option and I couldn’t do what so many people do with other brands and products and walk into a shop to try them on before ordering on-line.

Just to prove Sod’s Law, when they arrived they were too small.  Not just a nat’s too small, but significantly so.  The cost of postage was included in the deal with the retailer, but to return the shoes for exchange was going to cost me £5.00, so I paused for thought.  I rang the retailer and who was blithely unaware of the sizing discrepancy, but said it explained the high number of returns he was getting.  However, he couldn’t tell me what size I should take, so I called the manufacturer.

Speaking to the category manager I learned that they knew of the sizing problem and had addressed this in later production runs, but as a result there are now at least two different sizing systems in circulation for the same product on a variety of retailer’s shelves – chaos!  To make matters worse, they hadn’t advised retailers of the problem.

The standardising of sizes is clearly a big issue for apparel manufacturers who rely to any extent on on-line retailers and as I discovered, where shoes are concerned the subject is a minefield.  It seems the world is not confined to the European, UK and US sizing systems, but tens of others too and depending on where in the world production is based the factories are often translating sizes from one system to another.  Even this isn’t simple because the size increments vary widely between systems so a European 42 for example may be roughly equivalent to a UK 8, but a Euro 43 is somewhere between a UK 8.5 and 9!

This brings me around to the second of my two elements – customer service.  As far as I was concerned the reputaion of this manufacturer was saved by their customer services team.  After trying three different sizes, I found a fit in the shoes I originally wanted, but had it not been for the dilligence of the customer services person I was dealing with, I would have been faced with a bill for mailing at least three pairs of shoes and I would have just reverted to a tried and tested brand.  Plus, as I am always quoting, if they had ever wanted to sell me anything else again, it would cost the offending manufacturer one-hundred-times the cost of an initial sale to entice me back again.

There are so many lessons to be learned from this its difficult to know where to start.  For example, I’d like to compare the cost of the necessary additional customer service to the saving offered by the on-line channel and I’d be interested to follow through on the satisfaction levels of customers who had purchased these shoes already.  Sales of these models might be OK, but what is going to happen in the future and if, as I suspect, volumes will fall in coming seasons as a result of this issue, what will be the cost to the company of  rebuilding its market share, in an increasingly competitive sector?  There are lessons for internal marketing in the exclusion of the retailers in the information chain and brand equity too.

One thing is clear however, this is a vivid example of what can happen when one link in your integrated marketing strategy fails.  In this case, it was the product development or manufacturing operations elements that were at fault, both critical areas of marketing as is customer service, which in this case saved the day for the manufacturer and at least ensured that they live to battle for business next time around.

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Bridging the gap between insights and action

Monday 1 February 2010 · Leave a Comment

A while ago I sat through a credentials presentation by the MD of one of the leading international data management consultancies.  At one point in the process a slide came up and the presenter went into a series of claims saying that they had shown so-and-so organisation how to save twenty million pounds and another client how to save thirty million etc.  Now, I’ve been in these situations before and even if I hadn’t, I would have been sensitive to the weasel, so I asked the obvious question.  “So, you showed them how to save all this money, what did they actually save?”  – Stunned silence.

It quickly became clear that the consultancy didn’t know how much some of the organisations in question had saved, or even if they had saved anything at all, because their proposals often weren’t acted upon.  In other cases the saving was minimal or nothing.  This isn’t unusual of course.  The ideas that the consultancy had offered were probably quite sound, but the problem that all these people have is that their clients are rarely capable of introducing the changes to processes or programmes that the data identifies as necessary and they themselves are not equipped to help beyond the point, at best, of identifying the kind of action required.

Its a few years ago that Jim Taylor in his book Space Race was lamenting the failure of advertising agencies to respond to their clients’ demands  for integrated solutions, but, sadly, things haven’t improved much.  The management consultancies as Jim prophesied, have taken the lead and the ad-agencies have just watched them disappear in a cloud of dust over the marketing horizon.  This is perhaps understandable when you consider that advertising agencies have for decades sat at the head of their clients’ marketing support roster, but things move on and today the traditional advertising role is revealed for what it is – just a very small corner of the bigger picture.  Sure, its a tough pill to swallow when you are used to being king of the hill, but I find it disappointing that even today the majority of advertising people I come across continue to describe what they do as “integrated marketing” which only illustrates how far they are away from understanding the wider landscape or the role they could play in it.  In fact, there are significant new opportunities for advertising agencies in the world of new model marketing that, if they just gave up trying to persuade us that they are still running the show, they could adjust to and solve the problem of their dwindling revenues.  I know, I’ve introduced a few agencies to these new opportunities and helped them add tens of millions of dollars in incremental billings as a result.

What clients need is an end-to-end seamless process for delivering truly integrated strategies and if the marketing services sector doesn’t come up with a model that works clients have no other option, but to take control, assemble narrowly focused marketing services specialists into project teams and make them work to eye-wateringly constrictive briefs.  I’ve helped a few clients of mine put teams like these together.  They are not for everybody, but they work well once you have all the resources.

The biggest impediment to achieving the single-source, end-to-end solution is culture.  At one end of the process sit the data nerds whose lives are written in binary code.  At the other are the creative advertising folks.  They don’t make good neighbours at the best of times, but trying to get them to agree on a single business model is a little like introducing George Dubya to a MENSA convention.  The reason that the management consultancies, as Jim Taylor predicted, are doing so well out of this, is that they sit with their structures and practices perspective, somewhere in the middle.  They aren’t great at data or creative, but manage a sort of average attempt at a solution that’s acceptable, in a businesslike sort of way, to a lot of half-arsed client organisations.

It seems to me that the people to watch right now, even though they probably have further to travel than any of the other players, are the aformentioned data folks.  Sapient and Experian appear to be leading the field, but are taking different routes to the same conclusion.  Experian, or rather those very smart folks at Clarity Blue, who they acquired a couple of years back, seem to be building out from their established base in the direction of the objective, adding new skills and resources that understandably, because of their parentage, appear rather more functional that creative as yet.  Meanwhile Sapient dropped an advance party by helicopter, right at the objective, by acquiring one of my current favourite advertising agency networks, Nitro last year and are now have the task of working backwards to set up a supply line.  They probab;ly stand an equal chance of creating the necessary end-to-end process, but I’ve always seen the “big idea” as a vital component in any marketing strategy so my money is on Sapient’s Nito approach being first to deliver the goods.  Watch this space!

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Deconstructing bollocks

Tuesday 19 January 2010 · Leave a Comment

A lot of years ago (I have to be sensitive here and not say how many, for fear of offending others mentioned in this story) a young goateed hot-shot was introduced to me as the new Deputy MD of McCormick Intermarco-Farner (Now Publicis) where I was working at the time.  Although we had very little direct contact (and I hate to further inflate his ego), John Ward made an impression on me that has lasted to this day.

At that time I was strugging to find my fit in the wonderful world of advertising agencies.  Sure, I was doing OK, but I lived with the constant nagging feeling that I saw things differently to everybody else.  It wasn’t until John turned up with his irreverence for institutional industry practices and viewpoints that I realised that different is good.

In fact, seeing things differently has become my greatest asset and one of the facets of my professional character that I value most is my natural instinct for de-mystifying the crap that a lot of people in this business seem to worship.  Over my years in the business I have developed a hatred of intellectual clutter.  We are in the communications business. Communications drive society and are what is supposed to elevate mankind above pond-life.  The thing about communications is, the more complicated you make them the less they work.  It is this belief that fuels my disdain for “experts” who construct a fug of mystique around their subject, I assume, in the paranoid conviction that if anybody actually gets to understand their stuff they’ll be out of a job.

From time-to-time I have tried different ways of describing, what I see as my mission to relieve the world (of marketing at least) of intellectual crap.  Then, a couple of weeks ago I happened upon the profile on LinkedIn of an author who in the “specialities” section had entered “Deconstructor of bollocks”!  Perfect!

Yes, the paths of John Ward, author and wit and I have very happily converged again.  Is this fate’ s hand?  I’m not sure, but I have since become an avid reader of John’s daily, tell-it-like-it-is missives.  In fact, today has been particularly trying and were it not for John’s hilarious piece on farting and the chuckle I had over his F11 story this morning I may well have pressed F11 myself (well, actually, it would be more my style to press someone else’s F11).  Don’t get the wrong idea about this bloke.  His expose of Gordon Brown’s drug dependence and the revelation that our PM’s poor eyesight isn’t wholly attributable to the fact that he’s a total wanker, sit alongside a terrific insight into what’s really happening to the relief effort in Haiti, to create a rarely balanced and infinitely sensible view of life.  I wish I had come up with “Deconstructing bollocks”, but more power to your elbow John and more visitors to your “The Slog” and “Not Born Yesterday” communities.

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Go Direct-Gov – a promise too far?

Tuesday 12 January 2010 · Leave a Comment

One of the fundamental principles behind Brand Discovery is that brands should never make promises they can’t deliver.  It sounds simple enough doesn’t it?  However there are still alarmingly few organisations who really get it, as has been demonstrated by HM Gov this month with their “Go direct gov” campaign.

Just to state the obvious the reason that this idea of avoiding making promises that you can’t deliver is so important is that it just costs you money – often quite a lot of money – and even if that was acceptable way-back in history somewhere, no organisation can afford to waste a cent these days.  Of course, that’s something that the public sector has always had difficulty coming to terms with, as this campaign powerfully demonstrates.

While it has been estimated that it costs ten times as much to sell to a new customer as it does to sell a second time to an existing one, it’s also true that it costs something like a hundred times as much to entice back a customer that you have disappointed.  I guess this doesn’t bother the public sector that much as they have a monopoly, but it should resound with the Labour party, who, I would have thought need all the credibility they can muster in the run up to election day.  So, while its important to make propositions that are attractive, if you raise expectations too high, you are bound to disappoint.  Brand Discovery tackles this by introducing businesses to a new approach to brand development that focusses as much on delivering the promise as it does making it.

This campaign by the UK’s biggest spender on advertising falls at the first hurdle by being incredible to start with.  Everyone knows that our government couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery, so they are on to a loser straight off by suggesting that they can sort out insurance, car tax, pensions and the like at the click of a mouse and as one who this went to battle with the Gov’s on-line tax assessment process this year, I know that its massively more time-consuming, complicated and stressful than handing everything to an accountant, so there are definitely going to be some disappointed customers around.

Then there’s the execution.  I see there’s no creative credit given for the commercial – wise move by the creatives I think!  It seems that the agency has adopted the when-you-are-trying-to-really-blag-it-use-celebrities-with-popular-appeal” strategy that has proven to fail on just about every occasion its been pulled out of the drawer and dusted off.  However, apart from having Z-list celebrities anyway, why dress Christopher Biggins like a baby, and have Suggs prating around like an idiot?  It can’t have helped his credibility.  Its also a mystery to me why, apart from its association with Suggs and Madness, why anybody would use a song entitled “It Must Be Love” to promote anything to do with the government – Yuk!

Like a lot of public-sector initiatives this looks to me like a sound-enough concept (the business principle I mean, not the advertising) that’s been totally screwed up in its execution (Including the advertising).

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New multimedia and photographic project in Prague www.pragueworkshops.com

Monday 11 January 2010 · Leave a Comment

Because I have been involved in the media all my life it’s not surprising that I have a fascination for photography.  I used to dabble myself, but my real thrill always came from rubbing shoulders with photographers who were truly worthy of the title.

Like just about every other aspect of life though, things have changed dramatically in recent times for shooters and technicians, who with the advent of  digital media and the Internet have had demands placed on them for new skills and working practices.  Even the secondary issues of actually running their own businesses has become more challenging.  So I am delighted to have been able to join forces with David Brauchli the Pulitzer nominated photographer to set up a community for pros and aspiring pro photographers, built around a series of workshops designed to help even the best raise their game.

We have found some great international photographers and technicians who really know what they are doing to run a series of workshops in Prague this summer and this weekend we launched the initiative with a competition that will enable some talented pro or aspiring young hopeful to win a place on the course of their choice.  So, take a look at the site, enter your photos in the competition and let me know what you think about the community we are building.  We have plans to add further resources over the coming weeks and months, but there’s still plenty of scope to introduce your ideas.

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2010, Year of the geek?

Thursday 24 December 2009 · Leave a Comment

Its customary at this time of year for folks to publish predictions, so, not to be left out here are mine.

The fundamental changes that have come about in everybody’s lives in the last year and which continue to some extent, have demanded a new approach to marketing – “New Model Marketing” – and for a few years now I have been just one of many people propagating four mutually-dependant ideas that are at the heart of this new Paradigm.

  1. While short term benefits can be gained by a tactical approach, the evidence proves that sustainable growth and long-term success is dependent upon a strong brand community.
  2. We’ve focussed for too long on making promises to consumers through beautifully-crafted, compelling marketing communications, but all too often organisations have failed to deliver and customers have been disappointed.  Its time to walk the talk and deliver those promises.
  3. Marketing is the process of matching an organisation’s resources to customer needs. That means its involved in everything an organisation does at every level. Marketing is not a separate department and it isn’t communications (although communications are involved)
  4. Efficient businesses are successful businesses.  With the performance bar forever rising and every organisation looking to reduce its costs, the only hope an organisation has to gain ground is to achieve more with its investment.  That means eliminating inconsistency at every level and ensuring that every element of a business works together to achieve synergy.  That’s “integrated marketing”.

Insights and new kinds  of data management and analysis are essential if we are to achieve the necessary levels of efficiency and new ways of communicating with members of our brand community – that’s employees, investors and partners as well as customers – will be essential to the development of these relationships and the growth of any business.  I have always included IT people in my Full Effect project teams, but until recently we have been struggling like everyone else with Heath Robinson adaptations of tools designed for accounting purposes.  Now, at last there are early signs that the IT guys are on-board and applying their skills to the kind of solutions we need.

My predictions for 2010 are:

1 – 2010 will herald the arrival of the first of a new generation of data management tools that will really make a difference.  Its not that the nerds have been slow to do their job, but that marketers failed to get their brief in on time and the direction that the treadmill has taken ever since was dictated by the bean-counters who beat us to the draw.  However, the computer guys have hung around their new marketing mates for long enough now, the penny has dropped, they’re on the job and the potential of the great hardware that we have been developing in recent years will finally be realised with the emergence of a new kind of software that will bring us closer to the reality of delivering unique and compelling messages to individual customers rather than bludgeoning (and frequently pissing-off) broad segments.

I’m not one of those people who believes that there are aspects of marketing that cannot be measured.  I’m looking for a return on every dime my clients invest, which means I don’t get a lot of Xmas cards from the old PR school that seems to me to exist in a kind of mystical, non-accountable fug. This year I’m counting on the arrival of tools that will enable me and other marketers to more clearly understand the influence of every communications tool in our integrated strategies.

2 – This year we’ll see someone new step in and show us what “new media” is really all about. I despair at the failure of traditional media to respond to the opportunities (yes I did say opportunities!) presented by the arrival of on-line.  The paid for v. free debate continues, but we are still at the starting blocks as far as either option is concerned.  Steve Davies’ Skiddmark looks like a promising model, but there’s more out there and the race is on.  Hold on to your hats!

3 – Someone is about to get their act together and deliver a real user-driven experience that combines attractive programming, quality production and quality delivery. I have been very disappointed recently by a few mobile content providers.  Perform Group look as though they might be getting there, but where are the others?.  Let’s see who turns up for the party.

4 – Social networking will come into its own with the first of a new generation of communities driven by intuitive computing that more closely reflects the kind of judgements we all make about the people we mix with – another step closer to the deep and meaningful “Brandships” that have been at the heart of Full Effect Marketing for years.  I  don’t belive that FaceBook is a panacea.  I’m all for social networking (Its what my Brand Discovery programme is all about), but there are millions of businesses for whom the current social networking venues and resources don’t add up to anything, but a distraction from the real game.  Web 2.0 is a blunt instrument, but if you aren’t already involved you’ll not be ready to make the transition to WEb 3.0 which is where the real benefits will emerge.

2010 – new levels of accountability, relevant media, the content we want and real understanding of our customers. – Bring it on!

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Passion in the workplace – the key to success!

Wednesday 18 November 2009 · Leave a Comment

I had a conversation last week with a woman who is a partner in a SME and during our chat she commented on her relationship with her business saying “This is just something I do to earn the money I need to do the things that I’m interested in”.  She didn’t recognise how signficant this comment was, against a backdrop of her company’s disappointing performance, but worse still, she seemed to think that this was a normal kind of relationship to have with your business.  It makes me wonder how many other businesses out there are failing because their management lack passion.

The thing is that while organisations like this may have managed to scrape by for the last twenty years, in the last two the rules have completely changed.  A business, wherever it is and whatever it does, that has ambled on with no real dynamic, for however many years, just isn’t going to survive in the new business environment – its that simple!  My argument has always been that success is a product of passion, which is why I have always emphasised the importance of harnessing internal marketing to build brand communities where all the stakeholders share the passion and are committed to delivering the brand’s promise.  This is the approach that has driven organisations like Southwest Airlines, Harley Davidson and others to great heights and it will make the difference between success and failure for many more.

Coincidentally my attention was drawn to a piece by Martyn Drake on B-Net today where he reports on the responses Bill Gates and Warren Buffett gave to questions from students at a CNBC event at Columbia University.  The questions, in essence amounted to “what is the secret to success in business?”  The two were consistent in their advice “Do what you would do if … the money meant nothing to you… You’ll have more fun and be more successful” and “Find a thing that you’re passionate about, and that you’re good at”.

Personally, I don’t know how you get to start a business that doesn’t hold some interest for you.  Neither do I understand how boards of large organisations appoint managers who aren’t passionate about what they do.  Surely this is a “no-brainer”?  But if you have any doubt about why this is so Martyn sums it up in three advantages that passion for your business brings and I can think of many more.

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Branding – This is it!

Monday 16 November 2009 · Leave a Comment

I have to admit I was more curious than excited about the idea of taking my daughter to see the Michael Jackson movie “This Is It” yesterday but, on a number of levels, I’m so glad I did.

As a musician I was blown away by the quality of the talent that he had gathered around him for this project, as a project manager I was fascinated to see how a project so complex was manged, as someone who has heard Jackson’s music for what seems like most of my life it was fascinating to gain a glimpse of what can only be described as the genius of the man and as a human being maybe I also came  little closer to understanding the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson.  Job done I guess as far as the film makers are concerned.

If one thing stands out in this movie for me, it’s the absolute minute attention this guy gave to every detail, which underlines one of my long-held beliefs, that one man’s attention to detail is another man’s half-arsed attempt.  This is extreme!  I also realised that however hard I might try, I will never appreciate how Jackson’s mind worked.  For example, he appeared to carry around a recording of digital accuracy of everything he had ever done in his mind and more impressive still, he clearly possessed a clarity of hearing and interpretation that in my experience, even with musicians, was unique.  This was highlighted in a conversation he had with his musical director Michael Bearden (himself no small deal) when they were sketching out the intro for one of the numbers in the show.  “How do you want this to sound?” he asked.  “I want it to sound just like the record” replied Jackson matter-of-factly.  “But MJ, we don’t hear it like you do, tell me how we should play it”.  This also hinted at some of the frustrations mere mortals should expect when working with genius, as well as explaining the utter respect the musicians, technicians and managers around him clearly held for the guy.

If this event had made it to the stage it would have been the greatest stage show ever staged in the name of music, there can be no doubt of that.  In raising this movie from the ashes, the producers have performed a “save” of monumental significance and possibly even given us something of value that we wouldn’t have had if things had gone to plan.

There’s no doubt in my mind that freak, weirdo, genius, messiah or just plain nutter, we are unlikely ever to see another musician/performer like Michael Jackson and that’s what a truly great brand is all about.  Love ‘em or hate ‘em, great brands stand out and that’s the point.  Its their differences that forge the impenetrable bonds with sections of society that are valuable beyond the appreciation of many businesses.  Worldwide Jackson’s followers are as devoted as human emotions will allow – in my Full Effect Marketing terminology a real “brandship” – and this movie can only strengthen this bond and extend the Jackson brand community still further.

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Czech celebrations – a boost to their national brand

Sunday 15 November 2009 · Leave a Comment

The Czechs aren’t very good at brand development in any context and the development of their national brand is no exception.  Its probably on a par with the efforts of the UK, which in my opinion are pitiful.

An important trick in the national branding arsenal is to big-up national events that support the character of the brand.  The Czechs kinda manage to raise a pulse or two when it comes to their national ice hockey team (who apparently are a bit good) and conjur up a little enthusiasm for their national football (soccer for you Americans out there) team, when they reach the finals of the World Cup, which isn’t the case this time around (he, he!).  However, they haven’t missed the opportunity to milk the lump-in-the-throat, emotional potential of the velvet revolution.  What Czech wouldn’t swell with pride at the memory of their David to the Russian Goliath (well maybe a few old Commies!) which, being twenty years ago this week provided a timely fillip to their national brand development campaign.

Their take on a celebratory TV spectacular was a characteristically high-brow celebration for Vaclav Havel (The figurehead of the revolution and the first post-Communist President) with live (well, I think there was a pulse in most cases) performances by a load of American esoteric like Suzanne Vega, Joan Baez and Lou Reed who, apart from being old muckers of Havel were, I guess, bang on the spirit of a nation whose escape from tyranny was led by a playwright.  British support came in the shape of a series of arms-length video messages from the likes of Mick Jagger, Peter Gabriel and … surprise, surprise … Bono – always good for a sound-bite in the cause of liberty, but still can’t pronounce his old mate Vaclav’s name correctly!  The event was probably sufficiently high-brow to pass well over the heads of the majority of those Czechs who would otherwise have been waving football scarves and definitely inaccessible to the average ice hockey supporter, but I hope that’s not all the celebrations this nation can muster.  Well, let’s see.  Meanwhile, maybe what we need to get brand development going in Blighty is a revolution?  Don’t be too quick to discount that idea!

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Tesco raise the bar for Czech retailers

Saturday 14 November 2009 · Leave a Comment

12586_Tesco my1main

We Brits may not have invented the department store (that was the French of course) but we can pat ourselves on the back when it comes to developing exciting new variations on the theme.

Somewhere on my list of “neat formats worth a look-see” would be the new “My” store in the centre of Prague that was developed by Tesco with a little help from Fitch.  A couple of years ago the owners of the only Czech department store operator worthy of the description Kotva were planning to breathe new life into the corpse of their central Prague store by turning it into a showcase for Czech retail franchisees – a challenge in itself when you consider the dominance of foreign retailers in the Czech marketplace.  They had a stab at it, but it really didn’t come off too well and I’m sure they are still scratching around for “plan B”.  Tesco, on the other hand, have achieved a spectacular away win with My by delivering the promise Kotva made and some.

Tesco have brought their full retail might into play with a model that extends well beyond the creation of a showcase for local retailers.  In assembling this store using available Czech retailing components they have contributed massively to the understanding of the participating local operators of what retailing is all about.  This is more than a store, its an education from which I am sure the Czech retailers who participated will benefit and hopefully never look back.  Talk about raise the bar!  OK, so they supplemented local resources by bringing in a few mates like the long-awaited (as far as I am concerned anyway) Costa coffee people (until now Czechs thought the height of coffee art was Starbucks – heaven help them!) to get the mood going, but it all adds to the formula.  Every little helps and this is no small contribution to Czech retailing.  Congratulations Tesco!

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