Category Archives: David Cameron

Building Brand Britain

Posted on Tuesday 16 August 2011 | 1 Comment

Over that last week or so, prompted by the UK riots, we Brits have listened to endless analyses and proclamations by local community members, civil servants and politicians centred on fixing our “broken society”.  As always with these situations, there has been plenty of scepticism heaped on the potential any new initiative has for success.  However, there is only one real obstacle to all the remedial plans announced by David Cameron and others and that’s motivation.

I believe that Dave is a good motivator and getting better, he talks sense, even though his opponent Ed Miliband, seems intent on trying to neutralise that with mindless and responsible political point-scoring.  (If I were him I’d shut up before people started to realise that it’s the left-wing, crap that his party has expounded for decades that has given certain sectors of society the idea that they have rights they haven’t earned and therefore created this disaffection).

The marketers among us will recognise the task facing us as brand-building and as anybody reading this blog over the last few years will know building Brand Britain is one of my pet subjects. The problem is that we have singularly failed to respond to the obvious need to develop Brand Britain and we still don’t have the right people in harness to tackle the job.  Forget the political masseurs, data-analysis’s and bean-counters, where are the marketers in the team?  Without them we won’t get past first base because the people who are currently in the driving seat simply don’t get it.

Over the past few years I have approached politicians, government departments, local councils and private enterprises with initiatives designed to help build Brand Britain.  In many cases, because I have always believed that unemployment and local business initiatives are both inextricably linked and critical to the cause, these initiatives have addressed local unemployment, been designed to strengthen communities and help the mid-sized local businesses who are the key to the future of our nation, shift up a gear and take on the world.

The responses I have received from the public sector jobs-worths in particular, though unsurprising have been nonetheless frustrating.  Unimaginative Job Centre Plus employees civil servants and local councillors have simply disregarded projects and initiatives as representing just another unwelcome task.  There’s no point and very little scope for public sector workers like these to adopt an initiative that’s not dictated letter by letter from Whitehall because their world isn’t a meritocracy.  Why should they take on something they aren’t compelled to?  There’s nothing in it for them.  Besides, these people aren’t employed for their creativity and they are entombed in a culture that actively discourages any kind of creative thinking, so expecting them to appreciate any concept is always an ask too far.

Life skills that should have been taught throughout a person’s school life, if not at the cradle, are belatedly outsourced by Job Centre Plus to HR and recruitment companies.  I’ve spoken to a few of these contractors.  They view these projects with the glee of a paedophile assigned to changing room duty at kids swimming gala and submit proposals that represent minimal input and maximum income for them with the balls-out cheek that comes from knowing the people assigning these projects don’t have the first idea what they are doing and are just relieved to have a tick in the “assigned” box.  When I have gone to these organisations to volunteer help and advice, the response has been eerily uniform and something to the effect that “…we‘ve managed to blag the approval of the JCP people for this half-baked programme, so there’s nothing in it for us if we actually do the job properly”.

These are the kinds of issues that will threaten any British brand development programme and unless someone wakes up pretty quickly and recognises that we ARE building a brand and therefore need to follow the appropriate process, we are destined to failure once again.  That means someone (Dave will do) having a clear picture of what Brand Britain looks like and starting with the mother of all internal marketing campaigns that will bring the public sector and government puppet masters into line behind the concept.  The public are motivated, the players are listening and we’re unlikely to find ourselves with a better promise of success for a brand building venture than now this side of World War Three.

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Posted in Big Society, brand, brand Britain, brand character, brand community, brand consultancy, brand development, Brand Discovery, Brand equity, brand loyalty, Brand Model, brand name, Brand promise, branding, brands, brandships, change, communications, Conservative, CRM, culture, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, England, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, Government, Human resources, integrated marketing, internal marketing, Job Centre Plus, marketing, marketing experience, marketing skills, National Branding, phil darby, The Big Society, The Full Effect Company

Communities of interest – A lesson for the Big Society?

Posted on Friday 4 March 2011 | Leave a comment

I just love and have always promoted the idea of communities of interest.  They make the otherwise impossible, possible for business and, for small concerns particularly, are often the difference between success and failure.  Just because it doesn’t slide neatly into one of our business-model pigeon-holes, doesn’t mean it’s not legit.  In fact marketing is nothing if not about doing things and going places that nobody has gone before.  That’s why I particularly like this idea.

When an international film-maker gets together with the owner of a historic monument that’s desperately in need of renovation, a bit of creative improvisation around the age-old bartering theme can give you a solution like this.  Not only is it a great outcome for the building owner it was great marketing too.  There are so many ways that the film producers and promoters could leverage this initiative I can’t wait to see what they do with it – beyond making the series, of course.  Maybe there’s a lesson here for the Architects of David Cameron’s Big Society?

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Posted in architecture, Atlantique Productions, Big Society, business development, central europe, community of interest, czech, David Cameron, efficiency, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, integrated marketing, marketing, Martiniz Palace, phil darby, Prague, The Full Effect Company

Brand Britain or Big Society. Could Cameron use some marketing expertise?

Posted on Sunday 13 February 2011 | Leave a comment

It may be another word for the kind of national service the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have only recently abandoned, but it seems to me that David Cameron’s “Big Society” idea is missing a basic ingredient for success.

Those who have followed my comments on National Branding in the past will understand where I am coming from on this.  I’m all in favour of a self-supporting society and a move away from the nanny state that far too many of us have grown to rely on, but are those who are driving the Big Society initiative seeing it as a step towards Brand Britain or reliant on it?  My feeling is that in order to get there you have first to nurture a feeling of belonging among the populous and, judging from the debates on the Big Society that are currently taking place, this just isn’t there and the media are doing their usual best to divide us still further.

I see there are a number of facets to the Big Society.  There’s the need for us to stand on our own feet as individuals again, there’s the need to cut the cost of the services and resources that have supported the lazy and over reliant among us and there’s the belief that by focussing on community and encouraging people to participate, society and our nation can begin to realise the many opportunities that a community mindset opens up.  However, government is missing far too many opportunities to “big up” British and Brits’ achievements and, as I have said before, this is a key component of any Brand Britain development programme.

If I am reading Dave’s agenda right, I can’t see anybody grabbing and managing this initiative nor can I see what is being done, apart from a lot of talk (which has its place, of course) to get everyone on the same page.  If the “Big Society” is, after all just a money-saving scheme, then David Cameron is surely missing the bigger trick?  Anyway, ultimately it won’t work, because the people who are supposed to be implementing the programme at local level have neither the skills or experience to make the right judgements or the motivation that a real Brand Britain campaign would provide.

Cameron and the Tories may have come closer than previous governments to getting this kind of campaign right, but we need a whole lot more internal marketing and brand-building to be brought to bear if the Big Society is going to be the really worthwhile initiative I hope and believe was the intention.

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Posted in Big Idea, Big Society, brand, brand Britain, brand development, Brand equity, branding, brands, brandships, central europe, community, Conservative, David Cameron, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, internal marketing, National Branding, phil darby, the big idea, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized

Britain’s biggest ever internal marketing campaign

Posted on Monday 24 May 2010 | Leave a comment

Image from BBC News. Click for full story.

As George Osborne announces the new government’s plan for its first £6billion tranche of public sector spending cuts, I am getting a distinctly uneasy feeling that there’s a spectre looming large in the shape of public sector employees, who could bring the county to its knees in an orgy of self-interest.

As one commentator put it this morning on the BBC, this isn’t just a plan to save £6billion+ is a plan to change the expectations we all have of government, in other words a re-branding and as with any other re-branding strategy, it has to start with the people delivering the promise.

I’ve worked with public sector organisations in the UK and elsewhere and I have to say that, certainly in the UK, despite their claims of having upped their game in recent years – and, to be honest, there’s a degree of truth to this – the sad fact is that the claim reveals the naiveté that is at the heart of the sector’s dire performance.  Frankly, most public sector employees, just don’t understand how out of kilter they are with their private sector counterparts.

I have sat at post-mortems for failed initiatives where the inadequacies of the people charged with the task at every level have been obvious.  I’ve heard people shrug-off any responsibility for watching colleagues fail or fall into pits that were perfectly obvious to all, but the person doing the falling, with comments like “that wasn’t my job”. I’ve witnessed total absence of any shared responsibility or common agenda, even seen people scramble over each other to assign blame to anyone who could be made to represent a target.  Worst of all, I have noted time and again the credence that managers give to this behaviour.  I’m not saying that stuff like this doesn’t happen in the private sector, but in the public sector its the prevailing culture.

I’m thinking of one regional public sector organisation in particular that is failing by a measure of two-thirds to meet its targets consistently, month after month.  It has employees at every level who may arguably have the ability to do their job, but simply don’t.  People who fill their day with an hour’s-worth of work and feel hard done by if they are ever questioned about their lack of progress.  Not only is the manager not managing the situation, there’s absolutely no consequences attached to the failure to deliver.  Each month he just turns up at a meeting and tells his bosses how much he’s missed his target by and they just nod and thank him.  I have first hand knowledge of a group of high-profile public sector organisations whose purpose is to provide specialist advice to the business sector whose “advisors” rarely have more than a grasp of the basics of their subject and certainly usually know far less than the people they are advising.  In the absence of expertise this organisation has fallen back on prescribed programmes, processes and practices executed by process-followers who force their “clients” into ill-fitting solutions, waste their time with totally unnecessary bureaucratic hoop-jumping and consider it a job well done.  The only real effort demonstrated by these and other public sector organisations I have encountered is in gathering tenuous data to support their continued existence.  This is what waste really looks like.

Apart from the blatant and intentional waste of time that goes on in these places there is inevitable consequential waste represented in the endless arse-scratching done by people who frequently just don’t have a clue what to do next.  But its the intentional waste, driven by the kind of self-interest we have seen demonstrated by Royal Mail, British Gas and now British Airways employees that will be the nail in Britain’s coffin.

I’m concerned that the public sector, being what it is, will put the usual knee-jerk interpretation on the message from Whitehall – reduced funds = reduced services – but that’s not necessarily the case.  Cut out the waste, the processes that waste time for all of us and do nothing, but keep people on the government payroll and, in percentage terms, the reduction in services will be nothing like the reduction in investment.  The public sector just has to stop putting itself first and start doing what’s sensible and right.

If the British people are to be persuaded to consider “government” in a new light, the Government must firstly define what their promise is and then undertake the massive task of getting the people responsible for delivering it committed to the task.  Only once they are confident that every employee is determined to play their part in delivering that promise to the full, can the promise be made with any credibility or any chance of success.  It’s a big ask, a massive challenge, its internal marketing on a scale that has probably never before been tackled.

Pitfalls lie on every side.  When the Labour party finally manage to get their act into any kind of togetherness their traditional support of trades unions like Unite might mean that they contribute to the obstacles facing any re-branding strategy.  Unions themselves are going to have to be realistic in their demands and employees at every level will need to be put straight on the need to contribute to a shared objective rather than perpetuate the self-interest that has been largely responsible for bringing us to this mess.  This requires transparency by the government regarding their agenda, sharing the brand vision and mission and the provision of the information that people need to understand for themselves why the strategy has been chosen and more importantly, what they must do to play their part in its delivery.

It’s about communication on every level embracing every media route – press relations, the internet and electronic media, direct marketing, corporate videos … you name it.  A fully integrated campaign the like of which we haven’t seen before, certainly in this country.  Maybe it’s an opportunity for the COI to really show us what they can do in terms of strategy and efficient project management, but more than that, its an opportunity for the best in every area of marketing and communications to contribute to a project that is really worthwhile.

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Posted in BBC, brand, brand Britain, brand character, brand consultancy, brand development, Brand Model, Brand promise, branding, brands, brandships, communications, community, David Cameron, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, george orborne, integrated marketing, integration, internal marketing, local goverment, marketing, National Branding, phil darby, promise, public sector, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized

Now there’s a chance we’ll see some real advertising.

Posted on Tuesday 6 April 2010 | Leave a comment
The initial poster from Saatchi & Saatchi for Labour (top) and the Conservative response by M&C Saatchi

I was reading a piece somewhere on the web a week or so ago that asked  why we Brits seem to have an edge the US when it comes to creativity in advertising.  There were a number of suggestions , legislation, cultural mix and training among them, but to my recollection the most popular seemed to be the Brits’ ironic sense of humor, which produces advertising that even if it is explained to them a lot of Americans don’t understand.

When, back in the eighties, I was at the old Saatchi & Saatchi there was a buzz about our Charlotte Street HQ that I have never felt before or since in any agency anywhere in the world.  Sadly for today’s Saatchi & Saatchi the magic left the building, with Maurice, Charles, Bill Muirhead and the rest of the old team and unfortunately for everyone it never seemed to be replicated in their subsequent M&C Saatchi incarnation … until now.

I was disappointed to say the least, both when Saatchi & Saatchi teamed up with Labour and when David Cameron’s team switched agency from the M&C Saatchi to Euro RSCG.  I have nothing in particular against Euro, although their contribution in this case has been pretty dire, but the culture upon which the brothers built the original Saatchi & Saatchi and the people involved, including Tim Bell, made it the perfect environment for political advertising and no agency has more ground-breaking case studies as evidence of this.

I couldn’t possibly list all the on-the-ball, witty, to-the-point campaigns that emerged from Charlotte Street in the Saatchi & Saatchi heyday to capture the hearts and minds of the British consumer, not to mention people in markets around the world.  Saatchi brought fun and daring to the most austere sectors, with famous retail campaigns like ‘How do Do-It-All do it?’ for a DIY chain and they earned a reputation for smart repost, even in the previously utilitarian lawnmower market with “A lot less bover than a hover” for Qualcast in response to Flymo’s ‘Don’t  slow mow, Flymo’.

The Tories aren’t the first clients to have brought the Boys off the subs bench and scored an immediate goal, in this case with an advertising campaign that has made Euro’s attempt look like the wallpaper it was.  I’m sure somebody will get around to calling it ‘negative advertising’ but when your competitor has a Achiles heel you’d be a fool not to turn it to your advantage.  In this case M&C appear to have enough material to keep them going and its not in their DNA to let the opportunity pass by.  However, its their mastery of the counterpunch that delivered the stroke of true magic, turning Labour’s (Saatchi & Saatchi) ‘Ashes to Ashes spoof poster campaign back on them with the deftest touch, proving beyond a doubt that the old masters haven’t lost it. It’s a real pity that without knowing the background to this campaign – the characters and storyline of the TV series that it is based on – and without the English sense of humour that I was talking about a moment ago, the beauty of this piece will be lost on people beyond British shores.

One of a series of M&C Saatchi Tory posters that mark their return to the Conservative cause.

I remember how we felt in Charlotte Street when we pulled a coup like this.  It was electric and I bet its the same now at M&C.  The bad news from Labour’s viewpoint is that coups like this always fueled bigger and better ideas that sent the competition running for their dug-outs.  The British election has become a Saatchi & Saatchi versus M&C Saatchi head-to-head with both sides trying to prove that the old fire resides with them.  If nothing else comes of this event we could see  some great advertising!

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Posted in advertising, Big Idea, brand, brand character, Brand promise, branding, brands, communications, Conservative, David Cameron, Euro RSCG, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, M&C Saatchi, Ogilvy and Mather, phil darby, Saatchi & Saatchi, Saatchi's, Schweppes, the big idea, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized

Alas, the UK National Health Service, I knew it!

Posted on Thursday 29 May 2008 | Leave a comment

A client of mine attended a conference last week of key figures from the UK’s National Health Service. He spent a total of eight hours in an auditorium with two hundred delegates listening to some big name (if not big talent) speakers and being amazed at the comments and questions from the floor. Never before, he tells me, had he witnessed such universal negativity and self-interest at an event like this. The whole sad moan-fest left him wanting to stand up and shout something like “Get a grip you sad, lazy idiots!”.

The demise of the UK’s once proud health service is the stuff of legend and there are many reasons why the jewel in the British crown has become so lacklustre. Fundamentally though, its about lousy management and a factor that, for our purposes right here, I’ll call “negative opportunism”, which was there in buckets-full at this conference.

I have witnessed this phenomenon many times in different places over the years and it has always annoyed me. Its when well-intentioned rules or procedures are laid down and those who are supposed to follow them immediately manipulate them to bring-about a situation where they feel they are excused from doing exactly what the rule is designed to achieve. Still with me? Good!

I am sure that it isn’t always entirely the fault of the people at the pointed end. After all, good rules are those that are most readily accepted and to achieve that much its a good idea to collaborate on their formulation with everyone that they affect. There’s a lack of this sometimes at UK government level – especially with our current government. Its also true that the UK health service has completely lost the plot. An organisation that was set up to ensure that basic healthcare was available to everyone is now unable to fund life-saving treatment for those with critical illnesses because its coffers have been drained by the cost of helping childless middle-class couples have quintuplets and women with large breasts have them reduced because it makes them self-conscious! Aneurin Bevan would turn in his grave!

At the conference in question my client reports that without exception the comments and questions from the floor were negative, destructive and un-cooperative. Everyone, it seemed was more concerned with proving that the system doesn’t work, or that expectations of them were unreasonably high than to get their arses into gear and make something happen. An accusation that might also be levelled at that other bastion of the lazy and self-interested, the UK teaching profession. I am not saying that this is a mind-set adopted by everyone employed in these public services. Of course it isn’t.  They may even be a minority, but sadly for us all, those with most influence are usually those with the biggest mouths and often the smallest intellect and it seems they were out in force last week.

I realise that these things aren’t as simple as they seem, but I et mad when there are fundamental mistakes or omissions.  What happens in the private sector that clearly doesn’t in the public is that businesses start with, or at least periodically identify, a fundamental objective or two and align their business structures and practices to realise them. In its simplest for, that’s what my Brand Discovery Programme does. If only we had a Brand Model for the National Health Service we could start on the internal marketing that every organisation needs to get its people behind the promise – and that I think is the key here. A Brand Model, correctly marketed internally gives good employees something reassuring  to focus on and provides floaters with a sense of purpose.  Once you start with this strategy it also becomes much easier to winkle out employees who, for their own reasons, are never going to comply with the spirit of the plan, which in this case it seems would have meant an empty auditorium!

Having admitted that it may not be so simple I have to say that this isn’t an excuse for not trying. I’m a UK tax-payer and I’m sick of wasting my tax money paying pubic servants to either do nothing to support, or actually work against the initiatives that could make our country a decent place to live. The good work that Margaret Thatcher did in starting to get us to think of running the country in the same fashion as we should run a business has almost entirely been undone in recent years.

I’m fascinated by the idea of applying commercial thinking, tools and practices to the public-sector, but sadly the successful businessmen who could make this kind of thing happen are usually too busy running their own enterprises to help out. There are exceptions, of course, and Tony Blair and to some extent Gordon Brown have done their best to harness this knowledge and experience by bringing in “government advisers” but it clearly hasn’t been enough.

Hopefully we will soon have a change of management and there will be a chance to start putting things right. I only hope that the patient hasn’t died before the treatment arrives!

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Posted in Brand Discovery, Brand Model, Conservative, David Cameron, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, Government, internal marketing, national health service, NHS, phil darby, private sector, public sector, The Full Effect Company, Uncategorized

Boris and the truth about brands

Posted on Thursday 8 May 2008 | Leave a comment

Last week witnessed a shift in the British political scene with the Tories gaining extra seats in local councils at the expense of Labour and the Tory candidate for London Mayor, (Bumbling) Boris Johnson scoring a resounding victory over the incumbent Labour (Communist actually!) (Red) Ken Livingstone. I’m not yet sure about Boris – it could be that London is buggered, but watching (blonde) Boris in action is sure as hell going to be more entertaining than the 2012 Olympics!

This Tory triumph represents two fingers for Labour and is a classic case of a) what happens when a brand (in this case Labour) fails to deliver its promise and b) how important the emotional side of brands is in any buying decision. David Cameron, the Conservative leader hasn’t come up with anything you could nail to your mast in the way of a policy yet, but the general opinion seems to be that he’s “our kind of guy”. Boris likewise won his contest really just by being a good bloke, in stark contrast to the slime-ball that Red Ken has always been. Welcome to the cut and thrust of political marketing!

The whole thing is a really great demonstration of how any kind of marketing works – the corporate and sub-brand relationship (Tory central office policies being represented at local level by brand Boris) and the harsh truth that a great brand is one that, when the Champagne bottles have been taken to the glass bank, delivers its promises. Yes, winning the election, just like making the first sale, only gets you as far as a seat at the crap table. Its what you do when you get there that really counts.

The terminology differs a bit between commercial and political marketing, but it all boils down to the same thing. You join the community by voting instead of buying and if you want to evangelise, you pay your fees and join your party, it all depends how close to the brand you feel. The parties are a sum of their membership and voters and the honeymoon period that they all talk about is the time immediately after election when the party has to put its plan into action. Up until that point the voting decision has been very much an emotional (right side of brain) thing now the rational left side of the electorate’s brain kicks in and takes increasing prominence (although it is never the whole story).

As with any organisation the people we see representing government are not those who will actually deliver the promises – that’s down to the minions – and the only way that the leaders can be certain that the delivery will match their promises is if they have their internal marketing really buttoned down. Every marketer in every sector faces the same issue. I was talking to someone the other day who said that they were going to vote BNP (British National Party – the remodelled National Front). His point was that their policies make sense. I felt obliged to point out that while I might agree, the real point was that while the senior party officials were spouting the (arguably) sensible stuff the grass roots representatives were interpreting this as race hate and ethnic cleansing. That’s what happens when your internal marketing fails and the front line do it their way! You could argue that its the same with Islam. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the Koran, but it leaves much to the interpretation of Imams, who, intentionally or otherwise sometimes use the vagueries of the text to justify their own ends.

I have had a little experience of working with political parties, so I appreciate that its more complex than a commercial brand, but that doesn’t mean that the same rules don’t apply. You have to have a programme and my Brand Discovery is as good as any, even in this context. The stages are clearly defined:

  • Establish exactly what your brand is all about – That’s the process of creating the Brand Model within which is the brand promise that every brand has.
  • Make sure that your stakeholders (party members and representatives) understand it, buy into it and commit to playing their part in its delivery.
  • Go and tell he world about it, confident in the knowledge that wherever they encounter your brand the experience will be consistent.

When you are doing this every contact you have with customers or electorate will further enhance your relationship give you greater opportunity for sales and make life far simpler and your business more efficient. I didn’t say it was easy, in fact its where most organisations (and I mean all but a very few indeed) fail, but that’s all the more reason to be focused and tenacious because when you have been missing the target by the margin that most businesses are you’ll see results very quickly.

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Posted in Boris Johnson, brand, brands, communist, community, Conservative, consistency, David Cameron, Full Effect, Full Efffect Marketing, Government, internal marketing, London Mayor, marketing, phil darby, strategy, The Full Effect Company, Tory, Uncategorized