What is it about about British management and marketing that fails when foreign owners succeed with the same raw materials?  Is it precisely because they are foreign that they are able to see the essence of modern Britishness that is obscure to indigenous management? Is it a confidence thing?

Other British brands have pulled it off: Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Dunhill, Barbour, Hunter and a personal favourite; Belstaff the classic British motocycle clothing brand that has, in the hands of its Italian owners become a style icon.

Is this most recent failure simply a matter of a bad financial deal being done when the brand was acquired back from foreign investors and the business being overburdened with debt? Or is this yet another example of British brand owners failing to have a compelling vision for where the brand could go in the 21st Century?

Is this the end of the road for Aquascutum. We don’t think so. The rights to the brand in Asia are owned by a Hong Kong trading company. Expect to see another turnaround and re-imagining of classic “Britishness” which will then be sold back to us as the height of style. Think Mini.

Comments welcome.

Having missed out due to illness on appearing at one of the Broccoli Events nights at the recent December Sessions at the world famous The O2 Arena, we invited them to work with us on this project for Gibson. The results can be seen below:

The Lysergic Suite: “Earth & Water”

The Lysergic Suite – “Gold’

Band interview:

The Lysergic Suite are one of the UK’s top emerging bands delivering their own unique blend of electro/ psychedelic rock. They released their highly anticipated debut four track E.P ‘Ghosts On Crusade’ in June and have continued to grow, making people stand up and take notice. Title track ‘Ghosts on Crusade’ features Tom Meighan (KASABIAN) on vocals, a collaboration that the band are extremely proud of. Tom asked to sing on the track after being played demo versions of The Lysergic Suite’s self titled debut album. It’s the first time that Tom has worked outside of Kasabian.

Recorded by the band themselves in a studio shared with Kasabian and with two of the tracks co-produced and mixed by Tim Holmes (DEATH IN VEGAS). The band are in the studio working on their debut album, which also features Jay Mahler (KASABIAN), Tim Holmes (DEATH IN VEGAS)

Always on – anytime /anyplace/anywhere. To benefit from this “convergent commerce” revolution retailers must:

• Unify channel experiences to support the customer’s shopping journey with technologies such as click & collect

• Constantly connect with customers wherever they are and at every stage in their lifecycle via techniques such as loyalty programs

• Use social and mobile to increase sales by creating channel synergies

• Connect shopper experiences end-to-end from discovery to delivery

• Expand and sell internationally – turning shoppers to buyers around the world

• Seamlessly link in-store, web, mobile and social commerce

In order to effectively deliver a multi-channel strategy retailers and brands must not only grasp the opportunities that technology and social media offer but must ensure that their “brand voice” – the look, feel and tone of their content is consistent across all touch points. Avoid fragmented marketing communications at all costs to ensure a seamless customer experience.

However few retailers are yet delivering an end-to-end cohesive customer experience across all of their markets.

Retailers must embrace a bewildering range of disciplines to truly deliver against the model:
Facebook retail
Social media driven recommendations are driving e-commerce
Comparison sites
Affiliate marketing
Loyalty schemes
Promotional vouchers and coupons
Cross selling / upsetting

Smartphones have ushered in the era of mobile retail allowing retailers to combine mobile commerce with geolocation, in-store experiences via code scanning and virtual reality. Today, no purchase of any significance in the area of electrical or white goods is now undertaken without a comprehensive review of on-line suppliers prices, even a spontaneous purchase is checked by phone in store. Tablets (in particular the iPad) have moved this on a step further almost matching the conversion rates achieved by desktop computers (including laptops) and far exceeding basket values by around 50% or more (typical desktop basket value $80.00 vs $123.00 via a tablet).

Research company Gartner predict that by 2015, business will generate 50% of sales via mobile (apps and mobile sites) and social media.

With this massive degree of competition both on-line and in-store, it is vital to engage customers at every opportunity.

Video is plays an enormous role in both the real and virtual shopping environments.

Our content creation specialists: BrandVoice Productions has seen a significant shift from outsourcing content creation to clients taking control by bringing the process in-house, dramatically cutting costs in the process in order to satisfy the web’s voracious appetite for content . A major retailer has recently commissioned our team to design and build a studio suite and to train a small, specialist in-house team to shoot, light and edit both video and stills. Cost savings in the order of 50-60% are expected.

For a presentation on e-commerce solutions and content creation please contact Trevor Bradford /info@brandvoice.co.uk/ 020 8747 1167

Users view the garments being modelled on the catwalk, read articles, share the content with friends via their social media networks and naturally shop the site directly from the tablet.

Of course the app is designed to seduce the user towards a transaction but the entertainment / commerce relationship never feels out of balance.

We think that this is one of the best apps of its kind around at the moment.

Net-a-Porter are surely onto a winner with this user experience purpose designed for the tablet as latest stats show that the number of sales conversions from visitors using a desktop device (including laptops) only marginally beats tablets (2.5% vs 2.3%) but that the basket value is significantly greater when shopped from a tablet $80.00 vs $123.00 respectively.

For all of you fashionistas – here is the link to the app:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/net-a-porter-magazine/id380535940?mt=8

Here are the basics to help get your posts ranked by the search engines:

Title – the title tag on a blog is the most important factor in ranking that post for the desired words: use up-to 7 key words (connecting words are not counted) and do not use any punctuation rather than these characters: | – _ .
The body – must contain those same key words at least once (do NOT do ‘key word stuffing’, once or twice is enough, or whatever is natural)

The tags or ‘key words’ – must contain the same words, leave out the connecting words, and separate each word with a comma only – do not add words that are not relevant to the post; phrases or combinations of words treated as one ‘tag’.
The anchor text should be the title of the post, in the body as a heading 2 or three (H2, H3,H4 tag)- or at least bold – linked back to the original article.  (This insures that the title is relevant to the body)

The Best of The Rest:

Facebook: The big daddy is here to stay for the foreseeable future but expect to see the emergence of niche/specialist sites as well. Don’t forget to set up auto tweeting from your Facebook page to get extra mileage out of your post.

Linkedin: This is a must as it is the largest business networking site. Join groups, share your thoughts and insights. Again, set up the auto blogging to pick up your posts from your own site and and auto tweet from Linkedin.

Google+ and+1:  +1′s affect rankings on Google organic search, so make sure your blog is setup to make this option, and the ability to like posts on Facebook available to your visitors.

Yahoo Voices (voices.yahoo.com) A good place to re-post content. There helps good content to show up on Yahoo News, Live, and AOL.  Re-post from your blog in HTML.

Yelp – Yelp is a very well optimized B2C ratings site, and huge.  It is essential that you proactively manage your reputation here, and get good endorsements and ratings; it will feed your business.

Digg.com – Digg is a social bookmarking site that many people use to read a lot, and follow what other people like to read.  It will not get you a lot of hits or followers anymore unless you are a power player – it is pretty much spammed out.

Pinterest: Has been around for a little while now and is viewed with caution by some. Be careful to ensure that any content that you post is not subject to copyright. You need to get invited to join. When you are in, add a “Pin It” button to your site to help your content get “Pinned” (shared). Create specify themed boards to tell a story in order to best connect with your audience. Don’t forget to include your URL in your posts to get the buckling benefit for your site!

With thanks to Israel Rothman.

This video is part of the world’s most watched Social Media video series; “Social Media Revolution” by Erik Qualman. Based on #1 International Best Selling Book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman. This version includes new social media statistics for 2011. Many thanks to Erik for the update.

Contact us for a free meeting to discuss the latest social media strategies.

info@brandvoice.co.uk

In just six weeks we achieved a total number of 1.768 million social media impressions/shares.

Every post was logged and tracked. The numbers break down as follows:

- Music fans Twitter posts on Broccoli bands – 140 posts – 275,650 reach to followers
- Music fans Facebook posts on Broccoli bands – 77 posts – 137,230 reach to friends
- Music industry Twitter posts on Broccoli bands – 43 posts – 15,713 reach to followers
- Industry posts on Facebook on Broccoli bands – 24 posts – 39,675 reach to friends/fans
- Bands booked by Broccoli posting on Facebook – 261 posts – 360,215 reach to fans
- Bands booked by Broccoli posting on Twitter – 330 posts – 471,721 reach to followers
- Broccoli team Facebook posts – 171 posts – 213,924 reach to network
- Broccoli team Twitter posts – 226 posts – 219,454 reach to followers
- December Sessions Twitter posts on Broccoli bands – 13 posts – 3,676 reach to followers
- December Sessions Facebook posts on Broccoli bands – 19 posts – 37,897 reach to fans

Call us to discuss how we can leverage the power of live music for your brand!

Watch the highlights of the event here.

Experian note that Facebook are not losing users rather that the market is diversifying “rapidly” with Facebooks users remaining static at 1.3 billion. On the other hand, video sharing site YouTube (owned by Google) has grown its share to 25% of total social media visits from 23.6% in 2010. Experian’s data shows that  the number of visits to YouTube grew 45% from 417 million in December 2010 to 606 million in December 2011.

Not surprisingly, Twitter is the third most visited site accounting for a 2.98% share of total visits in December 2010, compared to 2.35% the previous year. A review of the top ten social media sites reveals the diverse nature of the landscape and includes: Yahoo Answers, Tumblr, Gumtree, LinkedIn and Moshi Monsters. Google’s new Google+ has yet to make its mark but we can expect to see serious growth in 2012.

What the above shift to YouTube tells us is that brands and business must embrace video sharing and branded content creation as never before if they are to achieve a success on line. We are convinced that the growth of YouTube’s share is in no small part due to the continued adoption of video enabled smartphones. Shoot and share is the order of the day. Brands must look and learn, video engagement is here to stay.

The impact that video has had on SEO results has also steadily grown over the last few years and began on May 16, 2007 when Google announced that it was moving towards a universal search model where the company would incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources into a single set of results (e.g., videos, images, news, maps, books, and websites).

Google stated at the time “At first, universal search results may be subtle. Over time users will recognize additional types of content integrated into their search results as the company advances toward delivering a truly comprehensive search experience”.

BrandVoice conducts ongoing reviews of active QR code campaigns, and concludes that the majority of brands simply link to existing websites that are not optimised for mobile use and consequently deliver poor end user experiences, reflecting badly on the brand. This seems to demonstrate that the majority of brands still do not fully understand mobile marketing and the need to design the content and mobile sites for the small screen and to create a relevant and satisfying brand experience to reward the consumer for their participation.

Poor performing campaigns usually have a QR code tucked in the corner of the ad, often with no call to action. It comes as no surprise that this achieves very low numbers of scans and disgruntled clients. By simply correcting this mistake and including a call to action and instructions of where to get the appropriate scanner app can increase scan volumes by x 500%. In conclusion, the greatest volumes of scans are achieved by following the simple rules of including a clear call to action and resulting consumer benefit plus regular exposure to ads / packs or POS carrying the code.

A summary report is available for download.

• Mobile is everywhere. Noting that large majority of consumers using smartphones are using them for shopping and getting in touch with businesses. Temsamani said that it’s not simply that people are using smartphones and tablets (though the numbers are skyrocketing at an accelerating pace)—it’s that a huge, and fast-growing base of smartphone users, now expect to engage with businesses on mobile.
• Mobile is impacting shopping. According to Google’s analysis of its own search data, mobile-savvy consumers are increasingly using their mobiles to find deals while they’re out and about shopping. Needless to say, this has significant implications for business owners and marketers.
• The mobile ad ecosystem is starting to build a solid foundation. It’s been sort of a free-for-all when it comes to mobile advertising. As proof, one need look no further than Apple’s iAd, which sought to rethink what digital advertising can be. But to make sure mobile ads can scale, standards are needed in all areas of the ecosystem, from metrics to formats. Temsamani says good progress is being made and that this is a space to watch in 2012.
• Tablets have truly arrived. AdMob saw a whopping 440% increase in tablet traffic between December 2010 and November 2011.
• Businesses are getting hip to mobile. Mobile is no longer an afterthought for many businesses. Many are embracing the ‘smaller screen’, investing in designing experiences specifically for mobile devices.

So what will 2012 bring? Temsamani is very positive predicting that “soon, we’ll see the mainstream shift that changes the way mobile connects people with brick-and-mortar storefronts”.
BrandVoice predicts that in 2012  mobile will be the glue brings most marketing channels together. As aways, joined up thinking will be required and the traditional agency “not invented here” attitude will need to be taken into consideration and circumvented.