EVERY LITTLE...

No this is not about Tesco which is doing much better under Dave Lewis. Before he came along a better strapline might have been “Every dozy dinosaur needs a kick up the arse”. Having said that I have no idea why they’re targeting Aldi with their new Jack’s stores.

They are going down-and-dirty and as an occasional Aldi shopper I know it’s not down-and-dirty but just has lots of low cost, high quality products. Professor Mark Ritson in Marketing Week said Tesco should be trying to be a better Tesco and not trying to be like Aldi. Aldi is brilliant at being Aldi -  like a shark, ruthless and very efficient. This applies to Lidl too. Both examples of great retailing and high productivity.

But this blog’s not about Tesco it’s about the middle class darling Waitrose or as it’s now known Waitrose and Partners. Warning bell. An expensive rebranding exercise and  the worst profits for years. Does any connection spring to mind?

Let me confess two things. I like the partnership model and I like shopping at Waitrose. But for my loyalty to be maintained I need:
- It to stock what I want
- Its fruit and vegetables to be pristine – they charge enough to guarantee this surely?
- Its service to be exceptional

Recently little niggles have started to occur – rotten bananas, under-ripe avocados which ripen to black nastiness, constant stock-outs, no more Warburton’s bread that we like replaced by private label that we don’t like, slow service in the café, no more free coffee in the cafe on the Waitrose card, serve yourself coffee which runs out and is very messy.

It’s all very trivial, a series of little irritations but they combine to make me feel less loyal. And then it compounds…there are fewer staff around; where’s the presence of a jovial manager the sort who welcomes and is omnipresent; the rumour that you should stop using your Waitrose loyalty card because after a month the algorithm notices and the “lost customer” warning will kick in and you’ll start getting big discount vouchers to lure you back, much bigger than any “loyal” customer gets.

Little niggles build into monster gripes lead to customer loss. The “that’s typical” Victor Meldrew moments keep on happening. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do. I was told about a series of disasters at a hotel with an important customer. In desperation the manager offered a free meal with wonderful wine. All was wonderfully well until the sommelier spilt a glass of Lynch-Bages down the wife’s white dress.

We spend a lot of time talking about big pictures in business but big pictures can be ruined by a series of small smudges. Unless the process works brilliantly and consistently, unless that manager is leading from the front one thing can lead to another.

Every little cock-up leads to customers walking away – and who can blame them. Let’s not forget the maxim “the customer’s always right (even when they’re wrong”.)

THINKING ABOUT BIG

I’m not against big businesses.  Not at all. They are full of smart and civilised people. They are important to our economy and our social stability.

I like Google and Apple (who doesn’t?)

I used to love the spirit Nike had in the period of their pre-21st-century glory. I love the confidence with which companies such as John Lewis, Heinz (now 3G) and BMW go about what they do. I enjoy seeing challengers like Deliveroo, Uber, Airbnb and especially Aldi, disrupt their markets and behave small (even when - like Aldi - they’re the 90th biggest company in the world, a lot bigger than Tesco with twice as many stores in 18 countries.)

But there’s something about big companies that’s beginning to worry me.

Mark Ritson in Marketing Week gets it spot-on when he castigates Apple for circumventing paying their tax:
“Apple is by no means alone in its attempts to legally minimise its tax responsibilities. Despite what all the naïve morons that espouse CSR and brand purpose keep telling you, there are very few brands that don’t actively and massively avoid tax liabilities to a disgraceful degree. What makes Apple notable in this uniformly disgusting context is the manner in which Cook has continued to portray himself as a different kind of CEO, who takes his societal responsibilities very seriously.”

What worries me is being big can make you a bully and prematurely deaf. Being big makes you think ‘There’s my way and then there’s my way.’ Most of all, being big makes you an enemy of marketing. The big decisions you make will be about money, cost and margins, about downsizing, consolidating and acquisitions. They should be about people and what they want and need. They should be about marketing but they won’t be. And if you get too big to focus on marketing, well…you’re going to die.

Small businesses are about the future. They are about risk and about change. They are where innovation thrives.  They are about learning. They are about being busy doing important things. They are more in love with their top-line (their sales) than their bottom-line (profit). And they keep on trying to get better not richer.
Small businesses are lucky. They don’t usually have shareholders or if they do they don’t have analysts poring over their numbers. They don’t have a lot of out-of-date plant and investment in property they just don’t need. They don’t have a huge workforce.

But what don’t they have?

They don’t have enough money to have much wriggle room. So they need to be very smart if they’re going to survive.   Lord Rutherford the scientist said:

“We have no money so we shall have to think.” (Those who know me well will have heard that many times before.)

We’ve got to stop bending the knee to big business. The real future lies with companies creating the future and not protecting the past. And if they won’t pay their tax, however big they are, they can get lost.

BORING OR ENTHRALLING?

First thoughts.

Is it just me showing my age but when did elections get as boring as this one? As I recall When Wilson won in 1964 it was an exciting shock.

And his cabinet was full of intellectual superstars - Healey, Jenkins (above) and Crosland. People like Ian McLeod were in opposition. One sensed these were very clever people. One didn’t necessarily agree with them but they were heavyweights. I watched Roy Jenkins and Ian McLeod debating the finance bill in the commons in the early 70s - riveting, rigorous and courteous.

I just don’t think the calibre of people, thinking or debate currently matches that of these Titans.

Politicians now are not, as some would have it, inept. They are however a bit timorous, cautious and lacking in flair. I have been constantly surprised that so many seem to think being nasty (even if they feel it justified) is a good tactic. Voters mostly hate “rude”.

Try this tactic instead:-
“Ed (or David)  is a nice and I believe well-meaning man. Most politicians are but I believe he just has this policy wrong and it would harm the country if he were to win this election”

If our grandchildren behaved like many politicians do they’d be made to sit out. I love the idea of hearing someone say: “Teresa May I’m appalled. See me afterwards”

Second thoughts.

2015 has been different because the two of the most popular voices have been on the side lines but thrust centre stage by the media. Nicola Sturgeon and Russell Brand.

Nicola has grown in stature and 4% of the UK (that’s Scotland) seems to adore her and Russell is rather like an extreme left version of Boris. Both Boris and Russell are fluent, addicted to long sentences and are ever so slightly crackers (slightly?) That he and Nicola are the ones turning on so many is significant.

Don’t you think they really ought to get together and have babies - what fun that would be.

What both do is reflect our times, reach and inspire a few people - in Russell’s case a generation of non-voters, the millions of youth who can’t be bovvered. They are both of them articulate and fearless. They aren’t looking over their shoulders; they’re punching away and looking like they’re enjoying themselves.

In Nicola’s case the prospect of wiping out lazy Labour in Scotland may mean she’ll have every right to be a bit smug. But the Scottish brand is thriving.  Brand? Think Irn bru, Innocent and Pepperami all mixed together. Inspiration has conquered economic caution and it’s exciting. As is Russell’s brand of rebellion.

The old political brands look like Tesco or Sainsbury’s or Asda in a world of Waitrose, Pound Land. Zara and Aldi.

So I was wrong. This election isn’t boring at all; it’s enthralling and we’re lucky to have ringside seats. It’s the other fight of the century.

HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH?

I keep on meeting ex colleagues and so-called marketing experts who rather like defrocked priests seem to want to confess they’ve lost the faith. They look at me with embarrassment and confusion on their faces and say “it’s all bollocks isn’t it, isn’t it?”

A career in advertising and brand management and they’ve lost their belief, all those years in brand prayer and suddenly they’ve become marketing atheists. But of course it’s always been all right to have doubts especially when the language of marketing has been purloined by non-marketeers and especially the media.
Anyone would be confused to hear people talk about the UKIP brand or brand Russia or the Linda Barker brand – she used to talk about herself as LB  not as a person at all, an image, a brand  – for heaven’s sake – an icon.

This week I happened, in the interests of curiosity rather than penury, to visit Poundland and Lidl. Both are doing brilliantly right now and deservedly. They’re great value and they have brilliantly clear positioning. “We are cheap” they say and they are.

 But in either you learn the value and reason for brands, those products with the swagger of superiority like Innocent or Apple or Dom Perignon. There is, of course, no problem with these stores or Aldi which increasingly cater for the Waitrose shoppers in us when we awaken lean, hungry and overdrawn. Our left brain guides us to smoked salmon, napkins, ketchup and chocolate which is just fine and does the job. Eat it and your self-esteem, health and complexion will not suffer.

But there’s more to life than crisps from Estonia at £1.09 rather than £2.50 from a start up in Stoke Poges where the owner has dreams about potatoes and would kill you if you teased him or her.

Earlier in the week I was in Selfridges trying to get my Mont Blanc pencil mended. To my horror I see it’s more than doubled in price from the ridiculous £130 it cost a few years ago. I’m told it cannot be mended here but has to be sent to Germany where it will be assessed and a quotation phoned to me. This whole diagnosis, estimate and complex restoration process (should I care to comply) will take four weeks.

 This is contemptuous luxury brand marketing at its best. But despite myself I can’t resort to a W.H. Smith pencil or a Bic….despite myself I love my Mont Blanc in the way others love their iPhones.
The real truth about marketing and the creation of brands is they cost more because they are better and, more importantly, although they are not that much better, they have a better story to tell about why, how, where and when they are crafted.

Most marketeers have their focus wrong. They need to worry a lot more about the quality of their product than their marketing.

But they also need to remember that in shops like Lidl, brilliant as they are, there are no stories, there’s just stuff.

GETTING THINGS RIGHT, GETTING THINGS WRONG AND HURRAH FOR ENGLISH

My recent piece in praise of real books got a ringing endorsement in the Sunday Times in a piece by Robert Collins entitled "The Book Bounces Back”. From a Viking Invasion sales increase, raping, pillaging and plundering real books in 2011 when e-books registered sales increases of 366% this fell back to 20% last year. Meanwhile sales of e-books fell in the USA and Barnes and Noble’s Nook is having a ropey time. And Facebook users in the UK fell by 600,000 last year. Is common sense prevailing?

It’s also good to get things wrong. The One-Stop Travel Shop previously conveniently based at Brighton Station has relocated to splendid new premises in the centre of the City over ½ mile from the station. I was livid and predicted a disaster.

I was wrong.

It’s full. Tourists love it. It’s been a brilliant way of putting integrated travel advice in the heart of the city.  Mind you the Sales Executive there whom I knew confided “it’s a bit weird…we haven’t got used to it yet”.

And now two from James Arnold Baker whose nephew sent him these. The first a wonderfully simple way to understand the fiscal cliff in America

Simply imagine the US Fiscal situation as a household budget

• Annual family income in 2012: $21,700
• Money the family spent in 2012: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500

But the outstanding balance on credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts so far: $38.50.

This does not look good Mr Obama.

You need to cut your spending and increase your income. A lot. OK?

The second demonstrates why English is such a great language.

It’s about the “Burger Problem” and I’ve been hoarse with laughter as a result of these:-

• Went to the fridge to check my burgers, and they're off! .....
• Tesco PR people are having a mare
• New kids’ food found in supermarket.....My Lidl Pony
• Has this been going on furlong?
• I always though Tesco burgers were good......well, good to soft in places
• Sounds like these Tesco stories are being made-up on the hoof
• Just got a batch of 200 Tesco burgers cheap, it only cost me a pony
• Despite the scandal, Tesco say burger sales remain stable

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