The attention of anyone who is even vaguely interested in music and many more who wouldn’t know their crotchet from their elbow, has been drawn this week to the news that Fender, who have been making guitars for musicians around the world since 1946, is going public.

If you are thinking of taking a stake, you’ll be buying into a true icon, not just of twentieth century music, but of branding, because whatever else Fender may be, this is what a great brand looks like.  What Fender have done, of course, is create that most illusive, yet essential ingredient of any brand – a community.  And what a community!  When I was a would-be pop star the Fender Stratocaster (or Strat to its friends) was the six-string of choice for greats like Jimmy Hendrix.  The musicians around me were readily defined as either Fender or Gibson guys (although Eric Clapton somehow managed to straddle the two quite successfully for some years).  But it wasn’t and isn’t just about the Fender corporate brand.  What gave the business its sustainability was the way it catered for a widening range of musical genres and cultural sub-groups with a range of products that, whilst sharing the same DNA, each enjoyed its own dedicated following –  Stratocaster, the original Precision (which probably was more of a revolution even than the Telecaster) and Jazz basses, catered for clearly defined musical types, giving, what could easily have become a niche brand, essential breadth.  The business was also smart enough to listen to and watch its customers (Oh, how I wish a few more businesses could say the same!).  Musos were increasingly customising their guitars and Fender responded by creating its custom division where pros and enthusiasts to this day can specify their unique Fender incorporating all Fender assets – the tremolo bridge, solid state, pick-ups etc. crafted for them.

The trick of broadening your appeal (and thereby both increasing your customer base and deepening the relationships you have with them) by applying your core brand values to a range of niche products is one every business needs to practice.  In recent months I have been working with a perfume manufacturer and retailer where the principal equally applies.  In our case the corporate brand is built on ethnicity and high quality, but each of the range of perfumes and other products if played correctly has niche appeal and personality that we are building communities around.

But while you can’t afford to be a one-trick pony these days and innovation is definitely what it’s all about, it’s equally essential to approach your product and offer development  in a structured fashion.  I’ve highlighted before in these pages the need for every business to not only define their brand and have a clear strategy, but to support that with a methodology that ensures every new initiative contributes rather than detracts from the objective.  Businesses go off-track and waste fortunes every day on initiatives that either don’t contribute or even have a detrimental effect on their business, don’t be one of them.  My Brand Discovery program me has a built-in briefing process that comes into play with every new initiative, forcing those in the driving seat to justify the project against pre-defined criteria.  If you haven’t adopted a tool like this you need to get onto the programme.  Get it right and in a few years you could be floating your business for $200million!

Every now and then someone comes up with a really great idea that deserves a second look.

Not only is this commercial from the Guardian a great idea well implemented, its part of an integrated on-line campaign that is equally smart and undoubtedly destined to generate some big numbers.

It used to be that anybody with half an idea could generate a following in social media, but audiences, particularly in developed Western markets, are now so refined that being on-line is no longer novel enough in itself to get results, you have to have that big idea, just as you do with any other medium.

I’ve just launched an integrated grass-roots and social campaign and I know how tough it can be to overcome the expectations of businesses that simply doing something digital achieves instant success.  It takes good planning, hard work, the all-important “big idea” and time to recoup the investment in an initiative like this, but because The Guardian don’t appear to have skimped on any of these my guess is they’ll get their pay-back.

What do you think?

These brands change the communities in which they reside just as the individuals that join any brand community changes that a little by bringing with them new character traits and values.  Restaurants like McDonald’s and KFC have changed countries and lesser retail food brands do the same to a lesser extent.  Today I made my second visit to what is fast becoming one of my favourite restaurant chains Tony Roma’s and as I sat there listening to The Eagles’ Hotel California I considered the impact they are having on the local community.  Quite significant I believe, because this is Saudi Arabia, where music is banned in any public place.

Here Tony Roma’s is a franchise run by a local Sheik already heavily into retail.  Clearly he is rather more progressive than others of his countrymen and though I don’t know him I am sure he must be a controversial figure.  Although Tony’s famous pork ribs were conspicuously absent from the menu the music isn’t the only taboo he is breaking.  Restaurants in Saudi Arabia are segregated.  Single men sit in one part and families and women on their own sit behind impenetrable screens in a separate part of the building.  They usually even have different entrances.  I’m not sure how this is supposed to work.  I guess it’s something to do with women not being able to eat through a veil and men not being allowed to look at a woman who isn’t wearing one, but, like many things in this country it is a mass of contradictions, doesn’t work and ends up being a bit of a farce (although the “Emperor’s New Clothes” applies here as everywhere).  Certainly in Tony Roma’s it doesn’t work because although they had areas designated as “single men” and “family”, everyone was allowed to sit where they liked, almost like real life!

The success of Tony Roma’s in Saudi Arabia is a testament to the changing tide.  The manager in this restaurant told me that he has clear instructions from head office that the music will be turned off at prayer time and should anybody complain at any other time.  So far though, in three years, complaints have been minimal and mostly from religious police who make inspection visits from time to time.  The real measure of popular feeling however has to be bums on seats and by all accounts the liberals have a landslide.  Whether any other businesses have the bottle to join this movement for freedom of choice remains to be seen.  I suspect they will, but while they are getting their act together maybe you could ponder on two issues this raises.  Firstly, as I have said the power of brands like these to influence change and secondly the fact that maybe the Saudis are not as completely inflexible as we Westerners think.

Tributes are already emerging from people who knew him longer and better than I, but at the risk of being as unoriginal as many of us look alongside Graham I just want to add my tuppence-worth.

I am sure there are many people around who met Graham without realising just how impressive his life has been, such was his humility.  A genuine mould-breaker he seemed to love what he did and did what he loved and it showed in the great ideas he has left us.

The agency he founded in Prague is a reflection of his personality and approach to life and work.  He achieved balance in most things that I particularly respect, tough and sympathetic, creative and organised – I loved the way he made work lists like an engineer, but tackled the problems they represented like the most liberated creative and he never lost his absolute glee for a neat solution.

We were the same age, but Graham taught me things that I am grateful for as he did the people who he took on and mentored at his agency.  There are many ad. people in Prague and elsewhere who owe their place in the business and their understanding of the work to this truly good bloke.

Aplogies to Richard Laurence Baron from whose blog I stole this great photo.  My only excuse being that I’m in Saudi Arabia at the moment and don’t have a shot of my own to use.

The new campaign for Sizzling Pubs leaves me speechless its so ridiculous, but nowhere near as mindless as the commercial for Harvester.  What the blazes are these people trying to do?  Together, these two campaigns prove the point I was making a few weeks back that marketing is dumbing down.  These simply have to be examples of inexperienced marketing managers who lack the confidence to tell their agencies, when they present this crap, to stop having a laugh!

I can imagine the scene.  The agency guy making out that a rap, which in Harvester’s  case doesn’t rhyme or scan, is the kind of “groovy” solution that will appeal to a hip new target market and the client failing to notice that they had buried any product benefit there might have been beneath the awful treatment and not having the balls to draw him a route-map to reality.  Is the story here the diversity of the menu or is it just a case of having to come up with a commercial to disguise the fact absence of a proposition?  Whichever, it failed.

The Sizzling Pubs agency guy has clearly allowed self-love to obscure the fact that even if they can work out what the blazes is supposed to be happening the behind-the-scenes antics of the ad. business is about as enthralling to the target audience as a day watching paint dry.  Its neither funny nor interesting, but because I know how hard food retailers like these two are working to come up with a point of difference these days, its particularly galling to see what could be a genuine opportunity flushed down the toilet.  If Sizzling Pubs are successful it will definitely be despite their advertising and that’s a shame because, without breaking sweat I can think of a number of entertaining ways of getting the idea of sizzling food across.

If you’ve been watching this space you’ll have heard me point out many times that the single most important difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one is efficiency.  You’ll also know that the world has moved on from the times when an unsuccessful business could still chug along (I’ve seen plenty of walking dead over the years).  These days you are either ticking like a Swiss watch or you are dead.  That’s the new economy for you. You don’t even get points for being efficient in some areas of your business if you are inefficient in others – you are only as strong as your weakest link.

When it comes to marketing, efficiency is more than just tackling all the issues that influence the success of your business or learning to use a wider range of tools and disciplines.  It’s about eliminating inconsistencies between different messages, campaign elements or between strategic and tactical facets of your Campaign and taking full advantage of the synergy afforded by imaginative combinations of elements of your marketing initiatives.  Synergy and consistency have always been the major benefits of integrated marketing. The only thing that has changed is that these things are no longer merely nice to have, but essential.

On it’s simplest level efficiency is doing the things that deliver the greatest benefit and avoiding those further down the effectiveness table.  Long gone are the days when advertising people could hide behind our inability to measure the effectiveness of much of what they did.  In the digital age we can and must measure the effect of anything.

And therein lies the formula for the agency of the future.  In fact, forget the future, today’s agency has to be able to deliver an integrated solution (and that means integrated marketing, not just the integrated communications that everyone seems to think is the real thing) with data collection and analysis built into every element.

For an agency to pull this off is no small feat.  Firstly it means bringing together a diversity of expertise that very few marketing services firms anywhere in the world can muster.  Then there’s the question of culture clashes.  The people and culture of a data management consultancy is the antithesis of a creative agency as those who have sought to combine the two have discovered.  I worked with Experian a few years ago to help them create a hybrid consulting model that I called Optimarketing, but it never really gained traction because of the issues associated with sitting hundreds of data specialists and analysts who insisted in a silent working environment and who lacked creative instincts in the same space as gregarious, creative advertising people and expecting them to work together.  However, Experian were ahead of the game in recognising that this the way to go, closely followed by Sapient, who adopted the strategy of acquiring creative instinct rather than trying to grow it at home, by buying Chris Clarke’s Nitro group.  While I’ve not seen evidence of a quantifiable model emerging from this marriage, there are others playing with the same idea.  One of the more exciting new partnerships being Harte-Hanks who have taken in the UK agency Mason Zimbler, themselves already accustomed to the digital world that might just provide the cultural bridge to the numbers people.

As a company looking for a marketing services provider you’ll need either extremely broad skills and experience in your marketing team and at least one person with the overview to coordinate numerous specialist suppliers or an agency that can deliver the full package.  As my readers will have detected from my earlier piece on the dumbing down of marketing, I believe the problem is that people with the expertise to fill the modern-day coordinating (or Marketing Director) role are as rare as hen’s teeth, so in the absence of a one-stop shop, I’m hoping folks like me and the Full Effect Company will come into our own.

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.

I’m subscribed to more on-line retailers and loyalty programmes that I can remember these days, but I never cease to be amazed at how badly these companies manage their data.  Its been years (I mean more than twenty) since I started getting my clients to build relationships with their customers by acknowledging dates like birthdays that are important to them, but I can’t remember ever receiving a birthday reward from anybody other than MoonPig and then, of course, it was someone else’s birthday they were reminding me of.

I was reassured therefore by my mother’s delight at having received a £5 shopping voucher for her birthday this week from, of all people, Matalan.  I’ve always wondered why the retailer didn’t appear to do anything much with the data they collect when they register their customers.  Especially as you are strong-armed into subscribing to their loyalty programme at your first visit to one of their stores.  It seems that having hit rock bottom in recent years the retailer has addressed issues well beyond their dowdy stores and stock.  Well done Matalan for showing UK retailers how its done!

Its been a weird week for brand associations.  In the UK the revelations over The News Of The World phone hacking, its peak intriguingly coinciding with the parent, Murdoch-owned News International’s bid for control of BSkyB, has led to Rupe closing down Britain’s oldest and biggest paper.

I wouldn’t suppose for a moment that this has anything to do with right and wrong.  He’s done this purely for reasons of value not values.  Its emerging that there were already plans afoot to launch a Sunday edition of TNOTW’s sister paper The Sun, so the empire isn’t going to lose its readers, just the overhead represented by the journos, administrators and printers who produced TNOTW.  My contacts tell me that a quick audit also unsurprisingly revealed that The News Of The World brand had been irreparably damaged by hack-gate and although I’m surprised if the paper’s average reading age was such that they possessed sufficient social conscience to boycott it, the overnight disappearance of its advertisers has to be a bit of a pisser.

Like the advertisers, politicians of all hues are desperately scrambling, with varying degrees of sure-footedness, to disassociate themselves with Murdoch (Although today’s press conference suggests that Dave’s penny is still teetering), who some claim has been their puppet master for many years.  The end of an era, if not the Murdoch empire some say – I doubt it somehow.

This event however, does serve to underline the influence that the brands other brands are seen with, can have on their success.  I’ve long propounded the notion that product brand perceptions are heavily influenced by the retail brands they are sold through and the other products on the shelves alongside them.  The reverse is also true and similar associations exist between football teams (soccer to my US readers) and their players and even national brands.  It’s not uncommon to hear individuals being decried because of the company they keep and the same dynamic applies to every kind of brand.  Its why, despite their “fashion brands” claim you don’t find Hermes in TK Maxx.

Back in Prague this week Vaclav Havel, leader of the liberation of the former Czechoslovakia from Communist rule and undoubtedly the most respected man in the Czech Republic (admittedly not a difficult distinction to hold in a land of very shady political characters, but undoubtedly justified in his case) chose to endorse AAA Autos, one of the most deeply miss-trusted commercial organisations in the country.

I say chose to, but it seems he sort of slid slowly and inexorably into what I am sure he’ll come to regard as a mire, as a result of one of his charities accepting a hand-out from the company.  Tony Denny the enigmatic half-Aussie founder of what may be Europe’s biggest used car franchise has long-boasted of his political connections – I might say, far more enthusiastically than those connections have advertised their connections with him.  This week, it seems, he’s managed to leverage this connection in a stroke of genius that will undoubtedly bring him greater benefit than it will Havel.  It seems that AAA lent Havel’s wife’s foundation Vision ’97 an Audi (probably a cut-and-shut with a leaky sump) in exchange for her endorsement, but when Denny called the loan in Pani Havel was out of the country, so her husband stepped in as her understudy.  Was this Tony Denny watching the airport for Dagmar Havlova’s departure and quickly nipping round to Vaclav with a deadline he just had to meet?  Who knows, but I’m surprised Havel fell for this and disappointed to see the Havel brand devalued by its association with the Czech Arthur Daly.

Enter Vision ’97′s PR spokeswoman Sabina Tancevova to explain that there is nothing unusual in the nearest thing Czechs have to Nelson Mandela fronting a Dodgy Motors ad.  Who is she trying to kid.  But then, if I were in her shoes I’d be feeling a bit vulnerable given that it’s the role of PR to manage deals like this.  If she’s daft enought to buy into a cars-for-cred deal like this on behalf of the Havels who could blame AAA Autos for rubbing their corporate mits together in glee?

Such is Czech culture that I fear AAA, the most controversial of Czech Automotive brands, will have significantly raised its credibility, particularly among older Czechs, with this one association.  Maybe Rupert Murdoch, already one newspaper and possibly a TV franchise down this week, could get a few tips from Tony Denny?

I run many workshops on this subject with businesses around the world and I’m used to receiving a torrent of ideas from delegates for programmes and initiatives designed to reward loyalty.  Sadly I get fewer ideas for ensuring that the brand promise that brought customers to the point of purchase in the first place is delivered. If my delegates are indicative of the people driving marketing these days, its hardly surprising that the focus of so many businesses appear to be trying to buy rather than earn customer love.  And they do this regardless of the fact that it’s a ludicrously expensive and extremely short-term way to run a business.

These days loyalty is the dominant business driver.  With most customers already claimed/assigned to vendors (apart from in emerging markets there are few emerging customers) the return you’ll get on acquisition investment is always going to be limited and its hard work.  The future lies in selling more stuff to your existing customers and they’ll only buy if they love you.  The problem is there seems to be confusion among marketers over what drives these brandships.

Sure customers will appreciate add-ons and freebies, They’ll add to the customer experience, but they only have value if you have already given your customers what they came for and simply will never be an alternative to simply delivering your brand promise.  My advice to any business that asks me about customer loyalty is to start by measuring customer satisfaction.  There’s only one way to do this and that’s by measuring your performance against your brand promise and the pillars that support it. (see the tab for Brand Discovery above for definitions.

Yes, there is no escaping it.  It’s back to my old favourite, the Brand Model again, because that’s where everything in any successful organisation has to start and it’s why my Brand Discovery programme places so much up-front emphasis on this vital business tool.  If you have set about creating your Brand Model correctly and placed the appropriate emphasis on marketing it internally, if you have developed the right briefing processes and checks to back it up, everyone (and I do mean everyone) in your organisation will be focussed on delivering your Brand Promise and none of your customers will be disappointed.  THEN the rewards that everyone seems so keen to give away can make sense.