MV newsletter - August 2005

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There is a theory, aired by the Early to Rise site for budding entrepreneurs, that people are receiving an awful lot of e-mails and PR releases nowadays.

That may not just be a theory, so you have to stand out from the crowd.

One of their suggestions is to link your communication to a topical news story. People will read that in preference to more general stuff with lots of *%^£s in the subject line.

Well, the big question is did you open this e-mail because it referred to oil prices rises when you might otherwise not have bothered?

If the answer is yes, then maybe the theory is a good one. If not, then who knows?

The Early to Rise site is well worth a read.

How much bottle have you got?

We tend to take a view on how much price the market will bare for a particular commodity and, unless it is land, usually the answer is less and less.

How much would you pay for a bottle of whisky?

Some of you will immediately say nothing at all, because you cannot stand the stuff.

Others will buy it because although you do not like it yourself, you feel you should have some in the house. Our guess is that if you are in this category, some of you will pay more than average because you do not care enough, or buy enough, to check out the prices. You may even buy a reassuringly expensive brand to be on the safe side.

Others will have the options and sources of supply well sussed, and know exactly where to go for the best value for money, which may mean paying a bit more for a much better product.

And if the answer were $US 182,000?

Well somebody is asking just that for an 18th century bottle of Nun's Island Distillery in Ireland, the last in creation as the distillery closed in 1913.

And if you think that they are unlikely to get it, be aware that a couple recently spent $US 58,000 for a bottle of Scotch whisky that they knocked back in an evening.

And if you want to put in your bid, go to Whisky and Wines (where you will find two of them), but hurry while stocks last!

Sell the smell

We have long argued that people know what they like and dislike, and don't have a clue what is important to them.

You ask them why they do things, but the real answer is often entirely different.

How many times has research shown that x% said they would stop subscribing to a particular newspaper because they were disgusted by a headline, only for subscriptions to go up?

If you are an Internet pure play this advice may not be very helpful to you, but try using smell.

Supermarkets waft roasting chicken smell around the shop, house-sellers bake bread, and the British Government is sending out smelly cigarettes.

Why so?

Well, research suggests that young women do not care a less about whether they will catch lung cancer or emphysema in 50 years' time, but they do care if they get kissed or not, and smelly cigarette breath may reduce their chances. So the government is running a health advertising campaign impregnating brochures with stale cigarette smell.

Even by e-mail you can borrow some of this effect. According to neuro-linguistic programming, people who prefer the visual sense respond well to words that describe sights as well as the images themselves. See what I mean? Get the picture? People who have a strong auditory sense, respond well to words that describe sounds. Have you heard the one about xxxxxxx? Listen up, we have a sale on!

The olfactory sense of smell is the sense we can probably least control. We react pretty quickly to smells we like and dislike. According to the UK TV series “The Secret of the Sexes”, men should not wear after-shave because it actually reduces their chances of pulling a girl as their natural odours are more enticing. Better still, they should cover themselves in liquorice (come to think of it, we know a guy who regularly smells of liquorice and he does really well).

So, in your ads, start conjuring up the smells of freshly cut grass, roses, barbeques in the garden, and then trying selling them software. Actually, we really like the smell of plastic packaging too, so just mentioning that will do it for us.

The teeth live on………….

While we are writing off the male cosmetics industry, it might be a good moment to doubt the future of the dental hygiene industry too.

According to recent research, medieval man had better teeth than we do, without the benefits of Colgate et al., because he chewed a lot more and a lot harder.

On the other hand he smelt absolutely disgusting, so the Socialisers and Teeth Whiteners market segment niches should hold up.

Are you just a number?

For many years, we have been advising people not to use numbers as brand names, at least by themselves, as they are so difficult to own legally.

Intel replaced their 286, 386 sequence with Pentium specifically for this reason.

There is a hierarchy of the legal protectability, which runs from lowest to highest:

1. descriptive names - floor mop, flat TV - will work as brand names for a restaurant chain or chocolates, but not for a floor mop or a flat TV
2. numbers - 3663, 286 - very hard to protect, except in combination with a letter - 3i, 3com, 7up, 7-Eleven
3. suggestive names - Prontaprint, Remploy - protectable, but there is a danger of the trade mark having prior use elsewhere
4. common names out of context - Apple, Diesel, Polo - readily protectable so long as they are not describing the fruit, the fuel or the sport respectively
5. invented names - Xerox, Kodak - virtually fool-proof as you invented the name, or the registrar did in the case of Xerox (it should have been Xerex)

Anyway, protectable or not, Interbrand has identified a trend in developing numerical brand names such as for 3663, neuf, 3.

To repeat the old boating lake joke:

“Come in, number 6, your time is up! “

“We don’t have a number 6.”

“Are you having trouble, number 9?”

Coke demands coke in the dressing-room shock!

Still on the Interbrand Brand Channel, there is an article on placing products in movies.

We cannot wait for the desperados to get holed up for 90 minutes in Mud Valley, Georgia, so that we can claim the longest product placement of all time, but it is unlikely to be deliberate on our part. If, on the other hand, the desperados are all brand consultants gone to seed, planning a failed bank robbery, that is us to the letter.

Until that time, it looks like some of the bigger brands like Ford, Nike, Coca-Cola and Apple are having more success.

Come to think of it, the last three times we have seen an Apple computer used in anger was in a film. We look forward to its next placement being in an office somewhere near you.

Are you worth it?

Finally, while we are plugging Interbrand, they have released the 2005 Top Global Brands listing.

Of the top 100, Shell gets the brand turkey award as its brand is worth a whacking 1% of its market capitalisation, with BP neck-and-neck on 2% (we were struggling to continue the turkey analogy, but we think we made it). At the other end of the table, Tiffany & Co are really digging in at 77%, and both Ford and McDonalds have no flies on them at 71% each.

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© 2006, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

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