Notepad or iPad?

We were big users of Moleskine notebooks at CRICKET. They were easy to fit into a pocket or computer bag and helped organise thinking by having all essential notes in one place. Paying £15 for an oiled cloth notebook seemed a bit steep but given that each one lasted well over a year that was only £1 a month – bargain! But then the iPad became part of the way we worked and it wasn’t long before people were using apps like Bamboo Paper and Noteshelf to take notes, project ideas on the fly onto VDUs and e-mail draft charts back to the office for turning into readable PowerPoint. It seemed that Moleskine might go the way of the Filofax.

So it was with a mix of surprise and shock that we saw that Moleskine is planning a high-priced IPO that could value the brand at up to €560 million ($722 million). According to commentator Zac Steward, Moleskine’s bankers are using a unique positioning and the high margins on paper products to justify a valuation between 22 and 29.1 times the company’s earnings last year. That’s higher than many established luxury brands like Prada, Burberry and luxury goods conglomerate Richemont. 

Maybe they aren’t living totally in La La Land. The most exquisite £200 Prada shirt often ships out of a factory somewhere in the East for c£10 a piece and that results in Prada having an operating margin around 26%. Moleskine’s operating margin was apparently over 40% last year which must mean that the average £12 notebook has an ex-factory of around 50 cents.

Steward questions whether Moleskine is primarily a stationery company selling paper products or, as their bankers suggest, the very opposite as this chart from the IPO prospectus shows…

 

 

They argue that Moleskine lives in a mind space that is beyond pure luxury. It’s not a dreary old lifestyle brand… it lives in that hallowed ground of a ‘luxury cultural lifestyle’ brand. It’s the notebook that Mariella Frostrup in a sexy dress at a party with Alain de Botton would have in her Prada handbag. It’s the notebook that Benedict Cumberbatch/Sherlock Holmes pulls out of his Oswald Boateng overcoat when even his ‘brain the size of a planet’ needs to jot something down. It has the provenance of Van Gogh and Picasso, Hemingway and Chatwin.

 

It’s a nice idea. Perhaps turning up to a client or business meeting with a Moleskine rather than a iPad or a souped up school exercise book says that extra something about your analog life. But is it really either / or? Cool and hi tech, cool and low tech - there's space for both. JS

It was 50 years ago today…

We are always wary of the ‘iconic’ word. Rarely is it used in the way as defined by the Oxford Dictionary or even in the spirit of its intended meaning.

 

For us it means a symbol or image that commands immediate recognition worldwide as the original. Authentic. Unmistakable – past and present.

 

Too often it is applied to a person, image or brand that is anything but iconic…. call us and we’ll share our gallery of ‘iconic brand’ mis-users.

 

However, 50 years ago today The Beatles released their first LP. The cover shot was snapped by the surrealist photographer Angus McBean in 5 minutes on the staircase of the then EMI HQ in Manchester Square.

 

It is one of the iconic images of the pop age.

 

The slightly less mop haired band mimicked their own image in a later Greatest Hits album cover and the Sex Pistols mimicked it again a couple of decades later.

 

But 50 years ago The Beatles did something that was to be their first iconic moment and created an image that has echoed down the years. JS

Words of the wise…

A colleague recently pointed me in the direction of the website for Berkshire Hathaway. He said ‘Who would have thought the 8th largest public company in the world, owned by the 3rd richest person would have a website that looked like this?’                                                   
Before you click – assuming you’re not a regular visitor – imagine what this corporate site might look like. Now click.

Surprised? We don’t think the site looks like it does by accident. The Sage of Omaha on our reckoning doesn’t leave much to chance. The site is as calculated a communication as the most lovingly crafted advertising campaign. Its tone of voice and structure says ‘we spend our shareholders’ money where it matters – recruiting the best managers, finding lost value and building equity. Why would we need to impress our shareholders with fancy graphics, roll over optimisation and glitzy photos?’

But if you want to see some serious crafting and writing talent just take a look at any of Warren Buffett's annual letters to shareholders. The one for 2012 is pretty much on par. Personal. Focussed. Folksy if you wish to read it that way – but that’s his individual style and part of the brand identity. Most of all, it’s a piece of powerful, persuasive writing that lets you believe that your investment dollars are in safe hands.

 

He starts with an apology and a paragraph of honesty and humility which neatly restates the mission statement and adds in a reminder of what they are good at:

 

Our relative performance, however, is almost certain to be better when the market is down or flat. In years when the market is particularly strong, expect us to fall short… we do better when the wind is in our face.

 

A brilliant demonstration of when less is more. JS

Understanding the Chinese consumers' desire to Trade Up and Stand Apart

We’ve been interrogating China a lot over the past few weeks…. looking at both how the West views it as an opportunity as well how the domestic Chinese market is evolving.

 

Looking in - there has been a lot of analysis and talk around China’s economic growth ‘rebound’ – alongside what looks like an over exaggeration of companies returning home from Asia, or re-landing manufacture back home or into cheaper Western manufacturing centres.

It’s probably a good thing that people seem to have walked away from viewing China as either the saviour of Asia or of the world, and while there is a lot of scepticism about the growth prospects for China, we don’t see any of the respected sources predicting a hard landing. For investors, the big talk is about growth and expansion potential in China’s Tier 3 and 4 cities. While not as obviously dynamic or ‘brand advanced’ as the Tier 1 and 2 cities, they still represent truly huge markets for both domestic and international brands. The skill is going to be choosing the right timing – ahead of the wave or riding it - and a willingness to deliver products truly appropriate to these culturally different regions.

From within - the Chinese consumer continues to rapidly evolve. Certainly the appetite for authentic luxury brands by the truly affluent shows no sign of abating – but with over one million multi $ millionaires in PRC, why would it? But the watchword is, as ever, authenticity. Brand owners like LVMH are putting their biggest bucks, best people and best ideas into China – and that’s the key to their continued success.

 

The emerging middle class – the Sugar Generation – are using their rapidly growing disposable income and with that becoming extremely brand and quality savvy. While they no doubt like to show off brand logos in ways that Western eyes may see as immature, they are far from naïve. Brands are not bought into at any price or without consumers first appreciating the story or culture of the brand. Much of their knowledge is informed by a blogosphere awash with brand commentary and insight – not a new phenomenon, but one the Chinese have grasped with a fervent enthusiasm; some fashion bloggers have 10m+ regular followers.

The opportunity and challenge for premium Western brands considering entry or looking to develop their offer is their ability to understand the Chinese consumers’ desire to ‘Trade Up and Stand Apart’. JS

A Perspective on China's Growth Rate

We were meeting one of our US based clients earlier this week and during a discussion on whether the Chinese economy had fallen behind the pace we used the following reference to scale the current speed of China’s growth…

"China creates a Greece in 12.5 weeks. Since 2010 China has created an India".

The source of the quote was Jim O'Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who invented the BRIC acronym.

Given the state of the Greek economy it generated a few quick gags at the expense of the drachma but is still an astounding statistic. JS

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

Forcing Ourselves To Slow Down

We all talk a good game about slowing down sometimes… taking the time to better examine what’s around us. For those of us in communications it’s often something we want our audience to do – to take the time to consider what we have to offer or to better consider what we are trying to communicate.    
            
Heiner Goebbels ‘Stifter’s Dinge’, now running at the P3 industrial space in London achieves what many crave – and perhaps gives some clues for communicators.

 

It’s an opportunity to meet the futures of music, theatre, performance and art installation, courtesy of Artangel (http://www.artangel.org.uk/). It’s a spellbinding blend of word, music and vision featuring five electronically programmed pianos and an extraordinary variety of digitally actuated sounds – from huge plastic pipes to plant containers and a supermarket bag. The natural world is explored – a forest of ice, rain on pools, the fizzing of life beneath the water’s surface.

 

It’s a triumph of the imagination and a must see for anyone fascinated by how experiential boundaries can be stretched. Described as a performance without performers by Goebbels, the pianos do make a gesture of appreciation to the audience as the piece ends.

 

Unmissable – and vividly memorable. ABD

Is There A New Bond Film?

CRICKET went to see the new Bond film ‘Skyfall’ last week. The cinema was packed… and the one we visited had been pretty solidly booked from opening night the previous weekend. Little wonder when you consider the omnipresence of advertising and publicity for the film. It seems like every newspaper has been reviewing, running Bond features and competitions; that every TV and radio talk show has interviewed the stars; and Bond specials are on every satellite and terrestrial channel. We’ve mocked up the Angling Times cover but we’re sure there were editorial meetings at both Angling Times and Crochet Monthly where supporting the movie with a feature was discussed…

So why have the media got behind this particular Bond film so wholeheartedly and is there such a thing as too much publicity? Does such an onslaught start to breed some sort of resentment amongst the public?

The answer to the first question is probably money and momentum. A new Bond in a Jubilympic year meant that the publicity machine started playing in earnest almost a year ago – and we reckon that much of that was telling trade partners that this would be big. And once that machine started everyone wanted a piece of the expected financial bonanza. So a clever bit of B2B strategy ahead of the B2C.

As to whether they over played their hand from a consumer perspective… well the numbers at the box office would probably suggest not. Skyfall had made £37.2m in the UK in its first seven days – to overtake previous record holder, the last instalment of the Harry Potter series. Skyfall is already 2012's third highest grossing movie and may now be on course to beat Avatar’s £93m for the highest-grossing film in UK cinemas of all time.

So a good UK result. But it was interesting that in talking last week to a Shanghai based client that he had seen very little publicity – strange for a film where one of the main action sequences is set in Shanghai, and a sequence that makes the city look pretty amazing. Perhaps Bond is after all an acquired taste. JS

When does being Customer Centric become digital stalking?

We are big buyers of music at CRICKET. We like independent record shops though when we’re busy Amazon becomes the default supplier. Yesterday the latest CD from Neil Young & Crazy Horse was released – a minority taste perhaps but each to their own. We also like a bit of analogue in our digital world, so late last night I re-visited Amazon to see when the limited edition triple vinyl edition was being released.

 

First thing this morning I followed a colleague’s link to the excellent Pursuitist website and a feature on the late Steve Jobs luxury yacht. I then noticed a bizarre coincidence - the pop up ad from Amazon was recommending the very same vinyl edition of the Neil Young album I’d looked at, but not bought, last night. Obviously this was no co-incidence – a minority vinyl edition from a minority musician that happened to be the last thing I looked at around 11pm on my iPad in the comfort of my home was now being promoted to me on a website I only visit in the office.

 

Clearly the Amazon cookies were busy through the night linking themselves not just to my private home computer but also to my office account… from where I order most Amazon things.

 

Dead Clever? Yes.

 

Customer centric? Maybe.

 

Smart business? No.

 

I don’t think I want to do business anymore with a retailer who is digitally stalking me. Without being over dramatic it feels like an invasion of privacy. When I buy a CD from the excellent bricks and mortar retailer Fopp I don’t come home to find an assistant hanging around outside my house with an armful of CD’s I might like. Just because digital technology enables Amazon to do the equivalent cheaply doesn’t mean it should do it.

 

We’ve talked often in these pages about the importance of managing every aspect of brand behaviour to match a company’s vision and values.

 

Amazon states: ‘Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company’. Making sure I’m only ever a click away from buying from Amazon may make good business sense but I’m not sure if it’s what we want.

 

When Jeff Bezos created Amazon, he said ‘If you make customers unhappy on the internet they can tell 6,000 friends’. I think they may be doing just the sort of thing that turns Brand Champions into Brand Terrorists. JS

The Rhythm of the Brand

John Lennon, in reply to a question about whether Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world, answered ironically that ‘he wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles’. Ringo described himself as "your basic offbeat drummer with funny fills". He was much more than that though, for all the lauded creativity of Lennon and McCartney, Ringo was the pulse, the signature feel of the band.

Charlie Watts, the drummer of that other 60s popular beat combo, the Rolling Stones, is at 71 about to go on the road again. For all the pomp of Jagger and the legendary antics of Keith Richard, Watts, like Ringo is more than the rhythmic timekeeper. He gives The Stones the way they walk musically.

Tickets for two 50^th Anniversary concerts by The Rolling Stones went on sale today. One ticket up in the gods of the 02, for which you’d probably need climbing gear to get to as well as oxygen, will set you back just £460. Something slightly closer to the action approaching £2000.

 A few years back bands rarely made any money out of live performances – these served only to raise profile and drive sales. Now, even at more normal prices, revenues from live performance are often the primary income source for most bands because they no longer make enough money out of selling CDs, vinyl or even legal downloads.

In another part of the media/entertainment forest there was a story this week that The Guardian is considering abandoning the printed paper entirely and going ‘digital only’.

Why would they seriously even consider doing that?

The printed page is the drumbeat for any newspaper. The feature columnists and the by-line staff writers may be the Jaggers of the brand but how their work looks on the page, how it balances pictures and words, how the paper is laid out gives the newspaper its identity – its rhythm and unique signature.

Revenue from the printed paper is undoubtedly less than it was a decade ago but it’s still measured in pounds as opposed to the pence of their offline income. If any of the newspapers manage to invert that ratio and genuinely make money from their digital presence – and it’s a big, unproven if – abandoning their signature rhythm will probably be a great mistake. News vendors with only a digital face - like The Huffington Post - still mimic their printed paper cousins in presentation.

For any brand the need for constant vigilance over what keeps the brand DNA alive is paramount. What may be today’s revenue driver may not be tomorrow’s. What makes the business relevant will almost certainly need to change over time: but what keeps it differentiated will the constant drumbeat of brand. JS

Apple Designers: the new royalty?

 

When a team of senior US based Apple designers attend a conference in Europe later this year they will be following the Apple travel code. This means that no more than two of them may travel on the same aircraft and they will all stay in different hotels. Travel arrangements like this were once the stuff of royalty, but given the recent court decision in favour of Apple over Samsung, Apple designers are clearly the new royalty – at least in Cupertino.

 

 

The court decision also illustrated that patent law is not just about technology or what’s inside a product anymore. Three of the six patents that a jury found Samsung had violated were not about how the iPhone works but covered the way it looks.

 

These days virtually any technology or service advantage can be copied, cloned or re-invented in double quick time. Therefore, brand advantage has to include the design component - the way the product, technology or service is delivered. Brands need be clear about the way this facet of the brand is articulated and mobilised so that it is built in and delivered in every product and at every contact point. JS

Overheard Not Over-Hyped

 

We’ve recently been staring out of CRICKET’s office windows at a couple of rare sights.

The first is of a New Oxford Street where the normal car park of stationary buses is a fast flowing river of big reds  – a genuine success for 2012 Games©®™ and Transport for London’s pre-Olympic strategy.

The second extraordinary view is a heavyweight bus advertising campaign where the majority of the ads are in Chinese. The few that are in English give little clue to as to the advertiser’s brand or product.

It transpires that the advertiser is Yili – a leading Chinese dairy products brand – and sponsor of the Chinese sports delegation here in London. Yili products are not in distribution in the UK so even if the delegation are spurred into action they’ll have to wait until they return home with their medals to stock up on their favourite milk, yoghurt and cheese.

It appears that the campaign is designed to be overheard by the China based target audience. The logic is that by seeing a domestic Chinese dairy brand advertising in the very same West that gives them LVMH, Gucci and Range Rover imbues that brand with coveted Western quality, style and credibility.

CRICKET have always been fans of overheard brand communication – allowing the target audience to discover the message rather than having to constantly bat it away. Exactly how the brand mobilises the campaign within China would be interesting to understand… is the Chinese Gary Lineker standing alongside bus lanes delivering his update on the latest Chinese medal winner?

Either way it’s an interesting strategy for a country not yet known for creativity in brand communications. JS



 

After The God Particle, has the meaning of Britishness finally been discovered?

So, has Danny Boyle found the God Particle of Britishness? Will brands who want to hitch their wagon to Britishness now know what it looks like?

Over the years CRICKET has been involved in a number of ‘Britishness’ projects. We’ve attended research debriefs of widely different calibre on the nature of being British; debated what is and is not relevant for branding purposes, and offered our own – and we believe useful definition. Britishness is not simple up close, and too simple from a distance. It’s a hazardous territory for a brand or a film director to negotiate.

Phrases like Cool Britannia have described moments in time but never captured or represented the whole story. This is because, as the Opening Ceremony illustrated, the narrative of Britishness is rich, long and complex – a pageant hard for international audiences to comprehend.

The Opening Ceremony was a brilliant piece of theatre – like Boris I found myself wiping more than the occasional tear from my cynical eye. It explained cleverly who we are, how we are, what we do, where we’re from.

But sadly it chose not to look to the future – evidenced by a lonely Professor Tim Berners Lee left looking like a prophet in the wilderness. If the Games©®™ had been in the USA, would Bill Gates have been made to stand there holding a copy of ‘Windows for Dummies’? Can you imagine Steve Jobs revealed from beneath a Cupertino middle income bungalow? He’d have wanted visuals of wonder to celebrate his breakthrough vision. But then that’s the British eh? Proud of the smokestacks of the Industrial Revolution (terrific coup de theatre), but hiding our current inventive light firmly under bushels of old corn and Mr. Bean.

Maybe Danny Boyle is saving Britain’s vision of the future for the closing ceremony. But whatever happens, marketeers have to future Britishness if it is ever going to be a pillar of global consumer aspiration for our brands. JS

David Puttnam the British film producer (Chariots of Fire etc), once tutored a young director with the wise words ‘Just because modern technology allows you to morph a cat into a horse doesn’t mean that you should do it’. He was, I recall, suggesting the primacy of relevant storytelling, narrative and character development as engagement devices much more powerful than using the latest special effects for the sake of special effects.

The same could be said of the advent of technology, social media, geo-tagging and the ‘always on’ consumer leads us to believe that our target customers want to engage with us in an intensive, heavyweight way every time they wave at us. Just because we have the opportunity to engage interactively doesn’t mean we should take it for granted.

More and more marketeers are talking about recognising and enabling ‘consumer collaborators’. We have a suspicion that many consumers are already pretty tired at having to shoulder evermore burden in their innocent quest for knowledge, information or even a price. We know that many resent having to leap through a number of on-line sign-up hoops to get a train-time or fare from an airline. In many cases the reward does not outweigh the effort required.

Brand and consumer collaboration now seems to be a one-way street – often in favour of the brand.

Rather than getting all strung up with ‘how can we better reward’ consumers with burdensome layers of interaction perhaps we could do them a favour?

Genuinely make interaction easy.

Recognise that they may just want a telephone number and not ‘an experience’.

Work harder at saying less and meaning more.

Make sure that we always work harder than they have to.

Finally, as a creative director once reminded the industry at large “we must not go about like multimedia lager louts or corporate graffiti artists. Just because there is a bare wall don’t slap a poster there. Just because there is a silence, resist the temptation to fill it with a message” In today’s communicopia we may want to add “…and just because we have the capability to engage interactively respect the fact that the consumer may just want to have a quiet look at you”. JS

CRICKET builds moving image team



Dominic Powers and Helen Persighetti


Two new team members have joined CRICKET to expand the company’s offer in brand-led moving image and digital content.

Helen Persighetti is appointed Senior Producer, having worked with clients Rolls-Royce, the John Lewis Partnership and London 2012. Production Assistant, Dominic Powers, arrives from Another Film Company where he worked on commercials for a wide variety of brands including BBC, Kia, Visit England, COI and Mars.

Helen and Dominic will continue to develop CRICKET’s innovative seminars developed to help companies address the changing role of moving image for internal and external communications.

More info from Louise Barfield mailto:louise@cricket-ltd.co.uk

Fundamental Flaw?

One of CRICKET’s favourite magazines The Word, announced this morning that next month will be its 114^th and final issue.

It’s tough in the publishing world at the moment – in truth it’s been especially tough for the last decade – but we wondered why this magazine couldn’t make when it seemed to get so many things right…

The magazine covers contemporary music, books, film, DVD and popular culture and is primarily targeted at 35+ AB males – a lucrative and traditionally difficult audience to reach and one that is attractive to advertisers.

It has a strong subscription base with big incentives for subscribers.

Every edition came with a free CD of new music.

The publisher and editorial director is a big blogger and tweeter and leads a relatively large and active Twitter community.

There is an engaging weekly podcast – a free 15 minute podcast sampler is available for free on iTunes. If you wanted the full, unexpurgated, album-length deal you have to subscribe to the magazine.

There is an excellent website, effectively an open blog, which is to the readers their on-line community. A ridiculously vibrant and active group of regular and ad hoc contributors on all things music and popular arts associated.

The Word hosted music events on a pretty regular basis in a London music pub and held reader events every few months in venues both in London and well beyond the M25.

It has been the media sponsor of the Latitude Festival, one of the major UK music and arts festivals, for the past few years.

The Word was well regarded in the publishing industry - voted UK 'Music Magazine Of The Year' in 2007 and 2008 and Mark Ellen, the magazine’s editor was this year voted Editors' Editor of the Year by the BSME.

So with lots of things right, what went wrong?

The publisher cites “dramatic changes in the media and the music business…plus the general economic climate…that have made it more difficult for a small independent magazine to survive and provide its staff with a living".

The most recent ABC figures for The Word, covering the last six months of 2010, showed that the magazine's circulation dropped 5.7% year on year to 25,048.

So perhaps it was a more fundamental issue – there may have been a gap in the market but there was not a big enough market in that gap.

Sad news for an intelligent, well crafted magazine who understood and catered for its target audience.

Fast and Furious - technology and brands

In the latest edition of the CRICKET Commentator, we've been looking at how premium brands in high-tech markets compete - when premium price no longer equates to leading edge. In personal and home technology, where consumers are constantly on the look-out for the latest innovation, where does this leave the concept of brand loyalty?  Or, as James Dyson recently commented, ultimately is it the ingenuity and IP of product design that wins hands down?

One Great Leap for Fankind

Every now and then brand marketers look to other creative industries for inspiration.

As music downloads in the UK exceed sales of physical product, what lessons can we learn from the music business - the creative industry under more pressure than most? Recognising that Simon Cowell is not the music industry what have the creatives – the musicians - done themselves, to reshape the way the industry traditionally markets its product?

Let’s take three strong minded highly creative artists – first the band still regarded as one of the most interesting and innovative, Radiohead, hyper prolific American alt country bad boy Ryan Adams and indie singer-songwriter trio Ben Folds Five - and see what bright ideas we could learn from.

When Radiohead self-published their In Rainbows album they asked fans to pay whatever they thought it was worth to download. While some people inevitably downloaded it for 1p it’s reported that the ‘average’ price volunteered for the download was £4. Whatever the real price paid what did subsequently happen was a sell-out of a full price limited edition CD and a bunch of fans applauding the bands creativity and trust in its audience.

Ryan Adams did a deal with his record company that allowed him to publish the songs from what would become his Love Is Hell album as they were being written. They came by way of downloads and a couple of 4 song EP’s over the course of a year. He conducted a dialogue with his fans on his website, scrapped songs that didn’t work well on the road and reworked material that was liked. The majority of fans bought material three or four times over as it was refined and re-released – happy to be part of the artistic process.

Ben Folds is currently trying the Pledgemusic platform Ben Folds Five – a process that makes it easy to allow fans to directly participate in a release and to buy and hear that music before anyone else. The platform challenges artists to offer their dedicated fans other kinds of creative incentives and exclusive items in return for their support. Similar to the Ryan Adams drip release technique it engages fans way up front – not via the traditional tease but inviting them to participate and be involved as they maintain their engagement with the band.

All brands strive to engage and galvanise their most loyal customers - and the music industry is no different. These musicians are employing personalisation to both engage and fundamentally generate additional revenue from a broken business and distribution model. While the majority of any audience may be happy with the vanilla, off-the-shelf product is there a proto fan audience within your customer base prepared to pay a premium for product variants that recognise loyalty and their desire for personalisation?  

Smells like tan spirit

As retailers and shoppers grow tired of the Pop-Up concept, it’s heartening to see the rise of the ‘curated space’ as a way of allowing people to soak up the stories of luxury brands,  OMEGA’s new Olympic ‘House’ being  a recent example.

In London this month, Hermès has installed a multi-sensory exhibition that delivers a beautifully managed tour of the brand's quirky history and 'no stone unturned' search for perfection.

As Emily Bell said recently in Pomp magazine, as the brand celebrates its 175^th anniversary, “Hermès is officially old”.

However, as we all know, age is no barrier to style. Hermès ‘ Forever Leather provides the chance to experience both the touchy-feely textures and craft of the brand (including chatting to Nadja, one of Hermès artisans, in person) to interactive signatory orange boxes.

Walking through each room, visitors are hit by waves of sensory effects – the aroma of the leather, the shock of the white sand in the equestrian section – in a way that is still simple and somehow avoids being ostentatious.

Forever Leather is at 6 Burlington Gardens, London until 27^th May.