Erika Clegg: Three tips to turbo-charge your company

Want to grow your company, whatever the economic climate? A brand programme is a great place to start, even if you don’t want to change your logo. It forces companies to simplify their vision, shake out the business plan and clear a path to growth.

I’d like to share some insider secrets about three early steps in one of our branding programmes. Take one of these steps, you’ll see a difference – all three are brand dynamite.

First, research.

The ultimate planner-to-creative alchemy was “Go to Work on an Egg”. This 1950s slogan, attributed to the author Fay Weldon, was reportedly found in a research document that accompanied the brief, whose proposition was: “Having an egg for breakfast is the best start to the working day.”

Research can be expensive, but even basic research reveals market need and underpins creative thinking.

Always be open-minded, and prepared to tear up the rulebook if your findings demand it.

We’re launching a client’s new product using a creative approch that grew from chats with the shopkeepers whose buy-in is essential to success.

From many conversations, a simple, clear strategy emerged, and from that, a great concept.

So get chatting – you’ll be amazed what you discover.

Second, positioning.

Chances are that what you do is not unique. But unless you can reduce competition, it’s hard to make a sale.

Good service and passion aren’t enough – you need demonstrable expertise.

Blair Enns, an authority on positioning, once shared with me a deceptively simple technique to make your company stand out, emphasising that stand out is the only fail-safe route to sales.

It’s a tough process to get right, but give it time.

The results are astonishing and applicable across all sectors.

Firstly, describe the one thing your company can do in its sleep.

We make/create/deliver [activity] for [market].

Now, take the activities and markets and stretch them.

This will show opportunities to develop your business credibly.

For example, “We make cakes for weddings.”

That could expand to: “We make sweet and savoury pastries for weddings and parties.”

Now, consider the expanded version – do you – could you – undertake what you’ve described?

Do you communicate this? Check Google. Are people looking for this?

Do you know 10 things about it that no-one else does? If the answer to any of these is no, go back to your ‘no brainer’ and review.

You can now articulate your claim in an elevator pitch. First, state your position and activity: “East Anglia’s leading baker of sweet and savoury pastries for weddings and parties.”

Then validate: “We work with [client type] event organisers and private clients to [activity] create beautiful cakes and [benefit] delight their guests.”

In a branding programme, this positioning statement can form the basis of your brief, underpinning all creative and channel proposals. But take it out of a branding context, and you have given your business a clear platform for growth and a quick sales intro.

If you find networking tricky, why not deconstruct the statement as an icebreaker? So if you’d made a Mike The Knight cake for a kids’ party you might say: “We make edible fire breathing dragons!”

Finally, embedded creativity.

Companies need a creative thinker at senior level.

If you’re global, you have the optimism and determination of the Far East and India to equal. If your market is local, you will still find competition snapping at your heels.

Creativity matched with financial good sense are key ingredients of success in a tough market. Creativity allows you to keep an open mind for opportunities, new markets, savings and actions that mark you out as special and different.

Some firms now have a ‘Director of Ideas’ but you could also crowdsource – why not install an ideas box in reception so everyone has a chance to pitch in their brainwaves?

Have the guts to be bold. Strategy is a non-negotiable but I strongly encourage creative barrier-smashing too. Remember Cadbury’s Gorilla? Not for you? Didn’t make sense? How would you feel if I told you that Cadbury’s revenues rose by 5 per cent that year?

Sometimes it takes a revolution to make a real impact, and there’s never been a better time than now.

Good luck with these exercises. They will be hard – and may reveal deeper organisational questions – but if you want to grow whatever the market they’re a great place to start. Let me know how it goes!

Erika launched the Southwold-based creative marketing agency Spring in 2006, and her position as business development and creative head of the agency saw it grow from nothing to a UK top 100 agency in just five years. She is a stickler for quality, results and creative open-mindedness and advocates that all Springers aspire to ‘be extraordinary’.

Social Media networks spread the big stories before the papers had the chance to get hold of them, with everything from the Libyan revolution to the sad end of Amy Winehouse tweeted and spread on Facebook, virtually in real time.

Dual screening led to comment on public events, from the X-factor to the Royal Wedding, often replacing any formal newscasting. The media had to adapt, and adapt fast – and some didn’t survive the new era.

But what’s been happening at Spring? Here’s a little run down of the high points of the last year.

January

The year started well with Spring featuring in Design Week – oh those heady days of print! Southwold’s status as a cultural mecca took one step closer to being sealed, courtesy of Lynda Relph-Knight.

Spring’s work with other East Anglian cultural icons kept us busy in January, including Dance East’s academy packs, a campaign for Wayne McGregor’s ‘Far’ and the start of working with Bury’s Theatre Royal on Dick Turpin and The Georgian Horse Challenge.

A Heritage Lottery-funded tourism project, Threads, kicked off this month too, with Spring creating a walking tour around West Suffolk’s wool towns. The book of maps also includes a fascinating history of the area created by a leading Cambridge academic, David Dymond.

The month ended with a hat trick of wins: Spring was commissioned by neighbours Southwold Pier, Suffolk football leaders Ipswich Town Football Club, and for a second year by Champagne Bollinger.

And on the last day of January we said goodbye to green, blue and our little tick, and hello orange and a blurring of the lines between ‘i’ and ‘n’ – yes, Spring’s gorgeous new brand image launched.

February

The shortest month, and the month of love. And we loved Suffolk Business magazine, who kindly gave us a cover and a double page inside spread to introduce our new senior players: ex-Fitch MD Ian Cochrane and planner Melanie Welsh.

We took the Spring message to the Barbican, delivering workshops to London brand managers on Social Media. And on the subject of Social Media, our work for Belvoir Cordials went from strength to strength, with their Springy new website combined with hugely successful competitions causing Pev Manners to have to recruit more staff to manage orders from the site.

Our work for British-built catamarans company, Broadblue, saw us launching a brand new website and marketing campaign to support their expansion. With innovative new vessels launching at boat shows across the globe, owners Mark Elliott and Mark Jarvis are riding out the recession in style.

And the month ended with happy news for our much-loved clients Nursey who, following our submission on their behalf to the Daily Telegraph Countryside Alliance Awards for Best Traditional Manufacturer, heard that they’d made it to the finals.

March

…or more appropriately run – the month started with Spring’s Olympics ad campaign launching for Choose Suffolk and National Express. With trains from Stratford to Ipswich taking just an hour, county tourism chiefs were keen to advertise the fact, and this campaign featured across the rail network and tourism destinations throughout the rest of the season.

March also saw the launch of 2011’s Suffolk Short Breaks guide, which Spring designed, artworked and printed on behalf of Choose Suffolk, and a new Spring brand for Ipswich Waterfront.

Flagship, East Anglia’s largest social housing provider, continued to keep us busy with press, radio and digital advertising and technical artwork employing our project management, copywriting, design and evaluation skills for the fourth year in succession.

We were delighted to be commissioned to provide press and digital comms by society fashion designer Beshlie McKelvie, whose ethics and design have earned her rail space in top fashion stores like Browns. We secured her coverage in industry and lifestyle fashion press including Marie-Claire and Drapers.

Towards the end of the month, Spring hosted Britain’s most easterly twestival event – a coffee morning and quiz at Southwold Pier. A cold but sunny day created the perfect backdrop to a really fun morning, well attended by East Suffolk’s twitterati. The event was live blogged throughout and with prizes kindly donated by joint-sponsor, Adnams, everyone had a fabulous time in a good cause.

In other community news, March saw the first concert in 2011’s Southwold Concert Series – the third outing for this fabulous classic music series of which Spring is patron.

March also ended on a high note for Nursey, whose visit to the House of Lords resulted in a win. Nursey was crowned best Traditional Manufacturer by the Countryside Alliance and Daily Telegraph – we couldn’t have been more pleased.

April

April saw the Springers getting our heads down and ploughing through some serious work.

We solicited content for the crowd sourcing site MySuffolk from such local luminaries as MP Therese Coffey, and submerged ourselves in the briney North Sea for Southwold Pier, as we conceived, developed and built their ‘Lovely Day’ campaign, website and supporting materials.

Our work with George East, which from its Leiston base is one of the UK’s leading non-food suppliers to major retail chains, continued throughout the year. The Springers have been developing packaging for the Tala brand and own-label products for nearly every major British supermarket and department store. This is an exciting, growing East Anglian brand and again proves the region’s quiet entrepreneurialism.

The Drum published an article by Erika’s dad, whose years as a board marketing director of food companies Buitoni and Princes left him with useful insights about agency behaviour as relevant to the digital age as the long-lunch ’80’s. He developed a fan club in Leeds on the back of the article.

Clearly we’d learnt our lessons too, as we found ourselves finalists in the Marketing Industry Network awards, as Marketing Services Agency of the Year.

O&C Butcher, the wonderful Aldeburgh outfitters, took delivery of their first Spring-produced catalogue, a thing of beauty and great statement of the company’s modernisation and growth.

Further down the coast, the Heritage Lottery-funded Woodbridge Tide Mill commissioned Spring to undertake the huge and wonderful task of designing and building their beautiful, interactive new visitor centre. This is a mammoth project which has kept Simon, Bex and others busy for the rest of the year in preparation for its launch next Spring.

May

The Pier’s ‘Lovely Day’ campaign launched, with everything from advertising to menus to staff badges, showing the character and appeal of this wonderful seaside destination. The conversation continued across social media, buses, the website and sandwich packaging – and let’s face it, once you know your waiter likes guitars and cats, you’ll never be short of small talk again!

Springers hit the lifestyle press, too. George’s dad’s cinema, The Electric Picture Palace, provided the backdrop for Lizzie’s Red feature, and Erika had spent a frugal February living on vouchers and online discounts to grace the pages of May’s Prima. Glen’s dad became an honorary Springer too, celebrating his 60th by setting off from Ness Point on a bicycle and kayak journey round the coast of Britain.

Bollinger’s Hay Festival competition soaked us in a wave of playground nicknames. We invited followers to submit their name as Bertie Wooster’s girlfriend – an amalgam of their childhood sobriquet and town of birth. Many indecorous replies ensued, and our sympathy votes went to Nutter, Moocow and Spotty.

Some very exciting new Spring clients for May included The National Trust and wonderful Suffolk light maker Jim Lawrence, for whom we undertook a rigorous marketing and web sales audit. At the same point we also recruited Nikki Barker, who joined us as an Account Director following a life tour of some of London and Cornwall’s most exciting agencies.

The end of the month saw us launch a complete marketing package for Smart, and create a wopping new product catalogue and website for sports kit firm Mark Harrod. Both of these companies manufacture their product in the UK and are run by visionary entrepreneurs – testament to the quality of work and business that we’re lucky to find in East Anglia.

June

This was events season, and many of the Springers’ partners became football widow/ers as the Mark Harrod project team accompanied him to Birmingham and other venues for exhibitions. Armed with video cameras and branded clothing, we joined Mark in interviews, sales and celebrity engagement, including (soon to be) Strictly Come Dancing star Robbie Savage.

Suffolk hit the underground in early June too, with our ad campaign for Visit Suffolk gracing escalators the length and breadth of the capital. Spring’s twitter account went wild with Suffolk expats thanking the team for some wonderful photos of home to enjoy during the rush hour.

Notable East Anglian launches includes TV airfield Bentwaters Park’s new website and print campaign and The Theatre Royal’s launch of the Georgian Horse Challenge – and Anderson ran an ‘Everything but the Cat’ offer at Amwell Mews, Stanstead St Margarets, in which Spring launched a campaign to sell houses equipped with literally everything their new owners could need.

Spring’s big win for June was Ten Lifestyle Concierge who commissioned us to conceive and manage a London membership recruitment campaign during the summer months. Ten is the largest global provider of lifestyle concierge services, and is building its relationships direct with clients in addition to its traditional platform of customer loyalty schemes.

July

Summer saw our home town explode in the colour and bustle that is the tourism season. We always love this time of year, it brings renewed vigour into Southwold – though it admittedly makes the queues far longer at the sandwich shop! There was no rest for the Springers though, as we launched Ipswich Town’s new ‘Suffolk Punch’ business club identity, and covered The Open on location, in real time for Bollinger.

Ipswich Town’s thoughts were also turning to Christmas, and as temperatures soared we were busy creating the ‘Party Pledge’ marketing programme. Christmas party bookers were encouraged to ‘take the party pledge’ to give their colleagues a great Christmas party, and in exchange become the ‘Party Hero’. Their reward was packages containing party packs of Santa hats, balloons and chocolates.

We were joined by Comms Executive Lucy Aldous, fresh from her classics finals at Cambridge. She was immediately immersed in The Suffolk Coast, a content-rich website devised to attract the well-informed, knowledge-seeking off season crowd.

We also launched new cloud computing brand, two10degrees, at the Microsoft Worldwide Conference, Los Angeles, an exciting occasion for us and for our client AWS.

August

Sexy highwayman myth shattered! Yes, the eighteenth-century tale of dastardly Dick Turpin came in for a Paxman-esque drubbing courtesy of playwright Daniel O’Brien and director Abigail Anderson, and Spring created a compelling ‘exploding horse’ campaign to support this hugely entertaining production at Bury’s Theatre Royal.

Meanwhile our internship scheme was in full swing. This year we invited two interns through the formal process, one a designer and one a copywriter. It was, as always, wonderful to see them develop within a studio environment. We also invited our old friend Jack Howson, for whom it was the third year with Spring before heading off to university.

New commissions in August included the wonderful new boutique Spear and Hubble, for whom we created a knockout brand with simple upper case typography imposed on an acid yellow backdrop. This branding continued across the interior design as well as bags, gift vouchers and ads, and as I write Spring’s studio is working on a stunning new website for the high-end Norfolk brand.

September

The arrival of autumn saw us in farmer mode. Maybe it was the influence of the fifth annual Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival but we found ourselves immersed in great East Anglian produce, most notable of which was Havensfield Happy Hens. Spring’s photographic studio became home to a flock of beautiful red hens for a day or so, whilst we learnt their foibles and good sides. End result was egg box packaging, vans, lorries, signage and a website covered in gorgeous, clucking, happy hens. They even won a prize for being the best hen photos in the British egg producer community!

Other wildlife entering our lives this month included baby giraffes, who we fed at the launch of Visit East Anglia.

Back in the town, the Southwold Concert Series’s popularity grew and we were delighted as more and more Southwold businesses chose to sponsor the events. A classical guitar concert given by two Rolling Stones-sponsored musicians drew crowds on a warm autumn night. It’s always a privilege to attend these events and see such large numbers of people from around Suffolk and Norfolk gather to enjoy wonderful music in our town.

Meanwhile Nikki Barker’s promotion to Client Services Director was another clear sign of Spring’s dedication  to our clients’ welfare and the quality of the service we provide. She’s certainly proved a hit with the Eastern Enterprise Hub, for whom we launched a new suite of printed marketing materials in September to support their ‘Superstars’ campaign.

As Autumn drew in, we launched Nursey’s new sheepskin catalogue. This year they have focused on their iconic slippers and snuggly hats, all of which are handmade in Bungay, in the same workshop which has housed Nursey since Mozart’s days.

October

This month we launched an exciting programme of events and activities to reward the Springers for their hard work and broaden everyone’s horizons. From share schemes to a Mind Expanding Grant, the Springers found themselves working for quite a new type of company.

The replacement of Friday fish’n'chips with Friday Gym was surprisingly well received, and our grants allowing Springers to take their loved one out for a meal and an exhibition/ event/ performance in exchange for a production meeting presentation and blog post has seen gratifying take up.

Our first Spring heroes – PR maven Sam Denny-Hodson and our own Non-Exec, Ian Cochrane – visited to talk to the team about their experiences, dispense advice and answer questions, providing some indispensible tips for creativity and innovation.

On the subject of expansion, Spring opened a second office, in Lowestoft’s Orbis Energy Centre. A useful additional space for meetings, breakout sessions and brainstorming, Orbis is also at the heart of East Anglia’s coastal energy economy and provides easy access to Spring for clients across the two counties.

Design Week contacted senior designer Bex Spillings to gauge her thoughts on investment in community focused design. Bex put up a convincing case for the merit of good design in relatively deprived communities to create motivation, ambition and broad-mindedness.

New clients for October included our local public school, Saint Felix, which has retained Spring to create a full marketing programme and outsourced marketing department to support its growth under innovative and charismatic new headmaster Dr Simon Letman.

We were also tasked to create brochures and an ad campaign for two new developments by Anderson in the wealthy Essex suburb of Loughton, seeing us branding, dangling out of helicopters and researching the history of this fascinating area.

Saint Elizabeth’s Hospice, who had commissioned us earlier in the year to support their expansion across the region, this month saw the fulfilment of their plans as they launched across the coast. Spring created a community engagement marketing programme, including extensive door drops, a widespread radio, print and bus ad campaign, and community hub information posters and leafleting.

November

The fireworks brought with them one of East Anglia’s most exciting growing brands – Signs Express. Based in Norwich, the company now has 85 franchise operations across Britain.

We started off with a brief for their 2012 calendar (this involved a bespoke photo shoot for every month of the year, each image disguising an S and an X, and strategic use of social media for monthly competitions), and next year Spring’s work with Signs Express is due to continue across some very exciting projects.

On the coast, we were delighted to be commissioned by Suffolk Coast and Heaths to write their winter newsletter, which filtered neatly into our work on the ever-growing Suffolk Coast website.

Luxury Suffolk retreat Bruisyard Hall, an established Spring client, set about a radical refurbishment, which is due to project it firmly onto the national stage; and Spring’s work with them has extended to the development of a complete marketing programme and all creative and strategic elements contained within it.

Our account management team was augmented with the arrival of another Nikki – Nikki Palmer joined us from Burrows, where she had been managing six-figure global accounts.

December

The festive season launched with an exuberant client party, held on the Southwold Lights Night. We were happy to celebrate with clients new and old the successful passage of another year for all of us.

In addition, Spring was rejoicing at the success of the Bollinger advent calendar, a Facebook campaign that within just three days saw Bollinger’s Facebook following increase by 300% and the level of conversation about them on line by a staggering 4,000%.

December will also see the launch of the new Bollinger website, a beautiful site whose layout is entirely based on user experience analysis. Our commission has just been renewed for the third year, launched with a days’ planning session at Quo Vadis, testament to the strong relationship between Spring and this wonderful Champagne brand.

The Advent season is still young as this resumé of 2011 nears its close, but has seen us start work with an exciting new music brand, host an extraordinarily successful Southwold Concert Series Christmas Concert (over 250 people attended) and make serious headway on the new Spring website. We’ve got some exciting news to share with you early in the new year, too.

So may we take this opportunity to wish you all pleasant reflections on your own 2011, and a wonderful  2012.

The resulting newspaper is now widely available across the region in pubs, shops, TIC’s and offices.

What always surprises and delights us is the effort that this amount of people go to, at such speed. Every month we set a pretty complicated challenge – be it poetry, jokes or fantasy like last month’s ‘perfect other half’ comp – and every month the Belvoir-buying public rise to it with gusto.

This month’s mechanic is the requirement to list the six tracks you’d lay down for your perfect evening (to accompany your Bigham’s meal for two, the prize). It’s been a mixed bag, to say the least. Here’s Aprille’s Top Six Top Six, so far.

1. UB40 – Rat in mi Kitchen
2. The Prodigy – Firestarter
3. Eve Boswell – Pickin’ a Chicken
4. Weird Al Yankovic – Eat It
5. Led Zeppelin – Custard Pie
6. Bananas in Pyjamas

1) Peter Andre Defender
2) Westlife Flying without wings
3) Robbie Williams Angels
4) Take That The Flood
5) Alexandra Burke The Silence
6) Peter Andre Mysterious Girl

1. Sex on Fire – Kings of Leon
2. Valerie – Amy Winehouse
3. Kiss – Prince
4. Your Body is a Wonderland — John Mayer
5. Take You Down — Chris Brown
6. Best I Ever Had — Drake

roxette – sleeping in my car
pwei – defcon one
def leppard – gods of war
deep forest – sweet lullaby
manu chao – clandestino
rolling stones – sympathy for the devil

1) Paul van dyk – for an angel
2) Tinnie Tempah – Pass out
3) robbie williams – angels
4) Metallica – nothing else matters
5) Linkin park – in the end
6) kings of leon – sex is on fire

1. Just What I Needed – The Cars
2. Carry On Wayward Son – Kansas
3. Wasted Years – Iron Maiden
4. You Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC
5. Working Fror MCA – Lynyrd Skynyrd
6. The Weight – The Band

My last day of my two week placement at Spring. I feel like I’ve done quite a bit in the nine days here. And it’s certainly been a fantastic experience.

Tues. I began my placement trying to file the client documents – and after a whole day’s work, I was still only on ‘B’! It was great seeing the diversity in businesses though – and going to some of these earlier this week brought some of the design work I’d seen into reality. Working on the Macs for two weeks has also really helped my knowledge – maybe when we finally get some at school, I’ll be ready to use them! It’s obvious that the Adobe suite is industry standard, so I still have much to learn.

Weds. Had my little bit of design too – helping George to design the promo flyer for local businesses was a great insight into how the ‘great minds’ work. Pleasing that the finished product was similar to my design too. Still haven’t really got over the idea of something created on a screen making it to 250 printed flyers. Didn’t end up blogging on Weds or Thursday … tut tut.

Mon. When I returned on Monday this week, there was a box of them. Needing to be delivered. So, armed with a raincoat and a surprisingly heavy batch of flyers, I marched through the town talking to shopkeepers and offering them Spring’s services. Southwold is rather large when walking! It’s nice seeing all the tourists around, and they’re all cheery despite the weather. When I got back to the office, Simon offered to take me on Tuesday through central London on a helicopter. There wasn’t much else to do, so I grudgingly agreed.

Tues. Apart from the early morning, rain and traffic jams, it was an incredible day – there’s really nothing like seeing London from the air, and it’s so so different from seeing it in a plane. Took some amazing photos of the sights, and I’m pretty confident that it would be the only chance I’d ever have to do something like that. Ta, Simon.

Weds. On Wednesday, I was introduced to the My Suffolk project – a ‘visitor & residents guestbook to post Suffolk experiences’ – coincidentally, a phrase I ended up repeating countless times, as Aprille, Lizzie and I were researching what people love about our county. People came up with some unusual responses, and you can see the full list on the site. We’d travelled to Bury and Snape to collect responses and all in all, collected just over a hundred.

Thurs. Of course, something had to be done with these responses, and on Thursday, I typed them all up to put them on My Suffolk. Never want to hear the phrase “big open sky” again. There were some interesting ideas, though. Also looked through the Flickr pool – a collection of Suffolk images from some impressive local photographers. If you’re on Flickr, and you’re into photography, share your efforts with our pool here. A great way to meet other local photographers.

Fri. And my final day. Just getting a few loose ends tied up – I was introduced to SocialOomph by Travis – and have written and scheduled tweets for the following weekend for My Suffolk’s twitter.

Did you know there are more pigs than people in Suffolk?

Got out into town once again delivering flyers, which was nice – bit of fresh sea air. And just looking through the Flickr again – some of the photos are truly amazing.

Well, thank you Spring, and Erika, Simon, George, Lizzie, Aprille, Glen, Becky, Rob, and Travis – I’ve had a really fantastic time. I hope I’ll be back next year.

Today was made up of looking through the results we got back from the Bury-ers yesterday and putting them up on the My Suffolk site. We had over a hundred responses, and entering these was a challenge, but also pretty interesting finding out what in Suffolk people love.

On the whole, I never want to hear the phrase ‘big open sky’ again. Isn’t the sky the same everywhere?! But apart from that, there were some really interesting opinions – it’s just nice to find out what other people think.

Started looking through the Flickr pool for more Suffolk photographers to add to our collection. If you’re on Flickr, and you’re into photography, share your efforts with our pool here. A great way to meet other local photographers.

Tomorrow is my last day at Spring, but looking forward to getting back out into Southwold delivering more of the ‘Lizzie & George’ flyers promoting Spring’s local business services. Then to say my goodbyes for another year.

Oh, and if you want to see the responses from yesterday, click here. And admittedly, the Suffolk sky is pretty darn good. Thanks to Jonathan Wright for the stunning photo above.

After the excitement of yesterday, Bury St. Edmunds would have a hard job in comparison. But it was good fun – asking local people on behalf of My Suffolk what they love about our county made for some interesting responses.

I went with Lizzie and Aprille to the town centre, well, Waitrose, and in between receiving feedback with distaste for the local ‘Arch’ – a shopping centre that one woman described as ‘landing on the town’, we did manage to collect some positive responses. Here were some of the highlights.

People watching seemed to be a particularly popular activity between many of the interviewees: ‘Our daughter lives in Suffolk, so we love nothing better than to come down for a weekend of walking through the beautiful countryside. The front at Felixstowe is also lovely – perfect for a cup of tea and a spot of people watching.’

Some got pretty spiritual: ‘The deep and wonderful feeling, especially in North Suffolk – a kind of very ancient peace permeates everything & everyone. There is so much to do. Some say without knowing, “silly Suffolk” – I am completely at home here.’

And just plain incredible: ‘We’ve lived here for ninety years and we still love it.’

After we felt the people of Bury were probably fed up of us, we moved onto the maltings at Snape for a quick pester and then back to Southwold to collate our results.

Photo above is from the My Suffolk Flickr pool – a collection of images from Suffolk photographers.

Blogging has, for the past several years, grown immensely in size and popularity. Creating a blog is now accessible to everyone and you can set up a fairly good looking blog in minutes. But because of the ease and immediacy of blogging, it is now common to find yourself lost in deluge of low quality, repetitive posts. Like any creative act, there must be more to than it just money, or popularity, hits and visitors. No one wants to look at something with no purpose, let along spend several seconds (and if you are lucky several minutes) taking in the information contained within an post unless it speaks to them. Your writing should be based on the adage; If you’re bored, you’re boring! And unless there is passion for what you are writing… where will the readers’ passion come from?

Of course having good quality, original content is not the only issue that modern-day bloggers contend with. There also must be an intuitive standard inherent in your work. Correct information, excellent grammar and no spelling mistakes. Often bloggers will believe that ‘more posts equals more interest’. Not so! Your audience can easily be over-saturated by numerous, low quality posts that regurgitate information from other sources of a higher quality. What you have to say or show has quite possibly already been posted about before, perhaps several hundred times! While this is true for most things of a hot-topic, you are an individual and have a unique voice. If you can add a new slant to your dissertation, then your audience will appreciate your thoughts, share your posts and grow and grow and grow!

As the Times newspaper’s MBA notes sets out:

“Branding is the collection of attributes that the consumer has come to expect from a product, which will strongly influence their buying patterns. Branding can be achieved using a company name – it can be applied generically or, as in the case of Kit Kat, on an individual basis. The brand name promises the consumer particular benefits, such as quality and value for money, with these expectations being built up over many years. A brand name is often considered by a company to be its most important intangible asset. In a market where repeat purchases are the key to profitability, a brand name becomes paramount to a product’s success.

“A catchy name and distinctive packaging are vital ingredients in any brand image, but the true essence of a brand identity lies in the consumer’s mind i.e. the perceptions of the product. A company must be constantly aware of these perceptions and try to preserve and build on them through advertising and other promotions. Branding enables marketers to build extra value into products and to differentiate them from their competitors.”

The designer knock offs black market is well known for brand name piracy: a hastily assembled LY in place of LV, Arnami jeans and Praha handbags are a common feature of pavement stalls the world over. Of course we all accept that there are worse aspects to these brand rip offs than the name; and no one really imagines that they are buying the real thing. Notwithstanding that, the luxury fashion houses spend a lot of time and money pursuing the manufacturers of these fakes and stamping out the practice.

No matter that we know the Venice pavement handbag isn’t Louis Vuitton, a worldwide flood of copies does nothing to enhance the desirability of the premium price original. Experts estimate that this practice leads to revenue loss amounting to billions for the real brands.

On the supermarket shelves, brand piracy is rife – not just in similar sounding names but also in use of font, colours, packaging shapes and other visual cues. The own brands are often guilty of this, and it has been known for them to shamelessly filch proprietary brand’s assets. Asda’s attempt to p-p-pick up a Puffin fell flat on its face when the courts sided with United Biscuits’ view that this was far too close to Penguin. Tesco’s own-brand version of I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter earned them Unilever’s disapproval – and weirdly this very public legal battle has almost totally disappeared from the internet, implying that there were some pretty powerful legal rulings put in place.

It’s not just the small or copycat brands who piggyback, either. The American megabrewery Anheuser-Busch lost the right to use the brand name Budweiser in the European Union after a long legal battle with Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar. It wasn’t easy though – this is a legal fight that has been going in in various shapes and forms since the 1870’s.

The easyGroup (best known for its easyJet brand, just one of the 17 it uses to market a wide range of services) has recently taken a Northampton curry house to court, following the restaurant’s rebrand to the name ‘easyCurry’ in a garish shade of orange. Other companies who have felt the weight of Stelios’s wrath include a drinks brand, a coach company and a European financial services company.

So keen to stamp out brand piracy is the easyGroup that one of its key menu items on the group website is entitled ‘brand thieves’ and contains the warning:

“Some people think they can make a fast buck by stealing our name and our reputation… if you see a company that you think is disguising itself as an easyGroup company or that is trying to piggyback off our brand in any way, then please help us to protect both the consumer and our brand. Please email any information to domains@easyGroup.co.uk and indicate if at any stage you have been under the impression that this was a genuine easyGroup company set up by our founder and chairman Stelios. Evidence of confusion helps our case.”

This is followed by a set of case studies detailing how the group has taken brand pirates to court and won. Attempting to steal the easyGroup’s brand profile is, it seems, not for the faint hearted – nor indeed for the wise. In fact, most large companies will not hesitate to take piggybackers to court, since any evidence of brand copycatting – however irrelevent – often has to be visibly stamped out in order to assert the authority of the original brands.

The internet is rife with name disputes. Lastminute.com narrowly squeaked into being allowed to use its brand name in Germany, where Last Minute is a generic industry term. Well known is the practice of buying up likely url’s and then trying to sell them back to their probable owners for a large sum. Some companies are willing to meet the brand url hijackers’ demands, others refuse to be blackmailed (20th Century Fox did not decide to rebrand to 21st Century Fox, so the guy who had bought that URL did not make the $40k he’d demanded). It’s not all about money – in Spain, a man who is angry about the inequality of the national water supply is ’squatting’ on four government department names until the government addresses his concerns.

But why does it matter so much? After all, if a company is smaller, or different, or considers itself to be clearly separate from the company whose brand it’s copying, then is it really going to affect the original brand’s position?

Well, in most cases, yes it is. And it’s not just the big boys it effects – in fact, small and mid sized companies are as likely to fall victim to brand piracy, but with fewer resources available to tackle it.

The first brand has built itself up from scratch. In order to be recognisable enough to be worth piggybacking, it’s clear that the brand strategy and budget has worked well. As we all know, a brand is not just a name or colour – it’s a perception, a marque of quality, a clearly defined area of understanding. Now, if another product or service muscles in on that space, it has the impact of pushing the space around a little, distorting consumer perception, slightly buggering up the original brand’s strategy. In short, it makes life harder for the original brand and for its consumers. If the pirates and the original are operating in the same space, it can be hugely damaging to the original brand, which simply isn’t an ethical way to get a cheap step up the ladder.

To be quite frank it’s not ideal for the brand pirates either, leaving them little room to expand or adapt independently of the host brand’s own strategy. At best, they will find themselves hidebound by the original, and at worst, the wrong end of an expensive, time-consuming and unbalancing legal battle that will force them to take their eyes of their own business growth.

For small and medium sized victims of this copy catting, there often is simply neither the budget nor the time available for them to tackle the problem head on. Their options are to devote budget which would otherwise be spent on marketing, R&D and staff salaries on pursuing a legal case, or to ignore the issue and try to move on, encumbered by this constant new threat to their brand position. Having spent a lot of money on building up a brand, having created a clear recognition in their marketplace, the original company then has to defend its position. Clearly, this is morally unacceptable; but sadly not unusual.

The fact is that, in life, imitation is billed as the sincerest form of flattery. For the imitated it’s no less irritating for that, but usually best ignored. In business, it’s hugely damaging – it can lose people their jobs, make companies go under, kill previously healthy markets. It simply cannot be ignored.

So yes, brand piracy does matter. Hugely.