It's all about relevance

CRICKET appeared on the Ten O’clock News last night – well to be accurate, our offices  appeared  because we live in the same New Oxford Street building as the Jessop's flagship store featured in all the news feeds! However, no sooner had we started reflecting on the brand implications of Jessop's unsurprising fall into administration after 77 years trading, than the Danish luxury sound and vision brand Bang & Olufsen announced their ‘strategic’ closure of 125 European retail stores.

Is there a link and are there any lessons for the larger brand community?

Well the primary link appears to CRICKET to be all about relevance – or lack of.

In June of last year Jessop’s probably felt like some latter-day plague victim, watching the closure of the Jacob’s Photo flagship store opposite and knowing that it was only a matter of time before the High Street Irrelevance virus hit them too. 

It was largely death by Internet but there are some other factors as well. Fewer people are buying ‘never with you when you want it’ cameras now they have a perfectly good camera in a smartphone that uploads seamlessly onto their social media site. Those who are buying cameras, and who do want advice, trust the web forums more than any minimum wage spotty sales assistant and it’s a click through to purchase (not to mention probably a cheaper price). Knowledgeable enthusiasts want to go to the specialist independent where the person behind the counter is a keen amateur, knows their stuff and is able to build a relationship. Jessops were caught in the killing ground – and didn’t have time to reinvent themselves. Interestingly, our flagship store underwent a re-invention only 9 months ago… but apart from being smarter, the actual offer didn’t look any different from what was already there. It certainly wasn’t either an amazing photographic experience centre, or a re-invention around personal advice or service.

B&O have pulled the plug (at a cost of £11m) on the European franchised B&O store network it built up over the past few years due to “a significant underperformance” of the stores. They are also spending a further £10m buying themselves out of their existing dealer arrangements in BRIC markets where they are focusing their growth. Our experience of B&O stores across Europe is that they are little more than glorified showrooms… a limited sense of anything that could be called a brand experience centre. When they have control of their brand in BRIC markets it will be interesting to see how they handle it. 

The B&O brand today is much more than the bad old days of a Philips TV in a brushed steel B&O cabinet… but to realise their brand potential they have to make the brand relevant to the BRIC luxury brand market. And that’s going to require more than a glossy showroom and a chap in a nice suit. JS

Will Avis Really Try Harder?

So another sector innovator has been snapped up by one of the traditional market players: ZipCar, the car sharing business, has been acquired by the global No.3 car rental operator, Avis.

It’s a common enough story…The young, attractive, idealistic free spirit falls for the charms of the old, slightly over-weight but fabulously wealthy plutocrat…Or as mock talk-show host Mrs Merton memorably asked: ‘So Debbie McGee, what first attracted you to short, balding millionaire Paul Daniels?’.

Many acquisitions by big, traditional corporates of values-led brands have gone before - Innocent surrendering a majority holding to Coca-Cola, Body Shop selling out to L’Oreal, Green & Black’s acquired by Cadbury but now in thrall to the less cuddly Kraft, Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream owned by Unilever, albeit as a semi-autonomous entity.

What’s of real interest for brand watchers is not the motives of the seller (cash and equity realisation for the founders or expansion via funding, distribution and access to new markets) but the motives of the acquirers and how they set about leveraging their investment.

The risk is Avis imposing its cumbersome paper based bureaucracy of car rental on the fast moving, customer friendly, technologically sophisticated and paper free ZipCar experience.

The obvious business win has to be integration – resulting in more product/service offerings for customers.

But the really big win – and the learning from the Unilever / Ben & Jerry acquisition – is perhaps what ZipCar can bring to Avis. This centres around a genuinely customer centric offer delivered by an enthusiastic team who always seem to want to make a difference to customers. If Avis can understand how to transfer this commitment to their much bigger business then it really will be the biggest prize of all. JS