Tag: premium brands

25
Sep

‘1000 songs in your pocket’

1000songs

Creating a brand is a never-ending job, there are many things to be done – getting the messaging right, building your digital presence, ensuring there is consistency through all the channels, getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders, etc, etc.

And with each of those questions.

Do we do a new website? Is it time for an E-Mail campaign? Shall we revise the photography of the team? What shall we do with social media?

Where do we start???

At the loft, we believe that the question is usually more important than the answer.

Once you have a clear idea of the question you are asking, you suddenly have a focus and a much wider range of options to play with. And that question is always, always, always better when it starts with people and the type of relationship you want them to have with your brand.

Great questions are the first part of great solutions. Here are some great examples.

“We want to increase our sales with existing customers in Canada because we have the operational capacity to serve more people out there.”

“We have a brilliant opportunity for clients who are looking to scale and we want them to know about it so they can take advantage of it immediately.”

“We want to build a brand so well-known that customers have heard off us before we’ve even finished telling them our company name.”

“We want our customers to benefit from the full suite of services available with our software.”

“We want to do something to unite our team and show the outside world our company is on a new and exciting path.”

Each of the outcomes above have come from projects we’ve worked on – questions that we’ve developed with our clients.

They’ve come from people and brands we’ve worked with -helping them to build better relationships with their customers, suppliers or staff – helping them to achieve their commercial goals.

Strong and worthy questions based around people can only lead to effective solutions. As a company, we wholeheartedly believe in ‘pleasing results over pleasing methods.’

One other person who believed in this was Steven Jobs, and after having read his book, there are similarities.

What made Apple great in the first place? FaceTime gave people easy face-to-face video calling, the original I-Phone gave people an ‘internet communicator, revolutionary mobile phone and I-Pod all in one device.’

And my personal favourite – ‘A thousand songs in your pocket.’

When Steve Jobs presented the original i-pod in 2001, he had a slide which showed the question he asked his team to answer? How can we make a device that gives our customers a 1000 songs in their jeans pocket. What a great question. One which was relevant, worthy and had people at its core. Unsurprisingly, a brilliant start to what became a completely game-changing product.

Like Apple, solutions also have to be flawlessly executed and there has to be a commitment to answering the question properly but nothing will help you achieve successful outcomes quicker.

Not sure about the answer? Think again about the question.

Or we’ll happily help – contact us >>>

Benedetto

BB

Benedetto is an enthusiastic Creative and Business person.

‘Design with soul’ may be the company tag-line, but to Benedetto, it is also a way of life. He believes that creative and commercial enterprise is about purity of thought, honesty of construction and boldness of execution.

He believes in bringing out the true essence of human endeavour and considers his job of articulating the great work of people and companies an absolute privilege.

His journey has taken him from a career in car design through to his current role as the Founder of the loft, a design and branding studio based in Glasgow.

He is honoured to manage a great team, work with great clients and have a lot of fun mixing with so many great people in business.

04
Nov

Demise of commodity brand Comet

I was sad to see Comet go into administration last week. I can’t say I was a huge fan; I haven’t even been in the store since I was a little boy. Back then, they were one of the stores you could go and play with the Super Nintendo(that’s how long it’s been) while your parents roamed the store in search of electric goods. But the potential death (let’s just say they are on life support at the moment) of another established retail name is a sad one.

After hearing the news, I became curious to find out more. Its always interesting to know why these things happen. And more importantly from a consumer point of view, why would anyone shop at Comet? Particularly as I hadn’t been in such a long time. What I found didn’t surprise me. In a worryingly similar scenario to Woolworths 4 years ago; the shop was covered in discount signs – ‘buy now pay in 3 months,’ ‘interest free credit’ etc. ‘Sale’ signs everywhere. You get the point and their website was exactly the same! This was the first thing that I, the consumer, was confronted with when making contact with the Comet brand. With every element of their communications based solely on price. I could only assume that this is somewhere I go to buy cheap stuff. But one small problem, several of the products that had generous discounts were still available online elsewhere, cheaper still and all but a few mouse-clicks away. If Comet can only fight on price and even there they can’t compete, then we have a major problem. I don’t know the company’s recent history but I would hazard a guess that they’ve been stumbling along the bottom for quite a while.

So where does that leave us? Well it’s the near-death of yet another commodity brand. For those that haven’t read my blog before.

A commodity brand is one that competes only on price.

I have said this many times. The race to the bottom is a brutal one. To compete on price, to be a commodity based brand against the likes of Amazon is fighting a lost cause. It’s one that will only become more difficult in an increasingly globalised and digital economy. We’re only scratching the surface at the moment. The market is already awash with cheap stuff, the margins for traditional retailers are tiny. For the likes of Comet and similar retail brands to survive; they have to develop a compelling reason for the consumer to pay that little bit extra. They have to ask themselves…

Why should I shop at Comet?

It has to be a reason that doesn’t involve price. Value is more important than price. It could be quality of service, it could be quality of in-store experience, it could be the retail of niche products that aren’t available online. Maybe they do have to go totally digital and just have a small handful of showroom-style stores. But until the front of their stores tell me something more than ‘we are cheap.’ Then they will continue to have no brand and no business. I wish them well!

Benedetto

About the Author


 
Benedetto Bordone
Creative Director of the loft.

Benedetto runs the creative design consultancy, the loft. Based in the centre of Glasgow, the loft creates emotionally engaging brand identities.

Benedetto began his design career aged 9, sketching cars in the loft bedroom of his parents house. Even then he realised some eternal truths. Alfa Romeos are infinitely cooler than Ferraris and always have been. Time has only hardened this opinion. Since then, he has been on a journey taking him from his hometown in Kilmarnock to Coventry, studying car design aged 17, three separate spells in Italy followed where he interned, worked & freelanced for distinguished design companies – BeeStudio, Alfa Romeo, Honda Advanced design & Stile Bertone.

Setting up his own business was a natural step for somebody as independently minded as Benedetto. The loft was set up in 2008 and offers a comprehensive branding and communication service to its clients. The company combines a deeply analytical approach into the clients culture and commercial targets before engaging in creative design work to build emotive brands.