Starbucks will change logo and “Starbucks coffee” will disappear from the brand’s visual identity.
It seems that this identity simplification intends at allowing the brand to diversify its offer: tea, ice-creams and other types of drinks will soon be part of the product range.
My take:
Isn’t this move made necessary by the pressure of competitors like McDonald’s and Häagen Dasz ?
We recently participated to the “SME week”organized by the Brussels Chamber of Commerce. As experts in strategy and marketing we advised free-of-charge SME which had previously registered for an appointment through the Chamber of Commerce.
We were invited to share our experience in the journal “Entreprendre” (Dec. 2010 issue) and discussed the common problems entrepreneurs were faced with.
I had heard many times that Wal-Mart saved costs by reducing the size of its associates’ business cards. I long kept this story for a myth until I met in December with Ben Dolan in New-York. Ben is a senior Director at Sam’s club, a chain belonging to Wal-Mart.
He confirmed the story and provided me with a comparison of the two formats. He also told me about this internal project which aimed at saving one single line on every receipt. The project was implemented and all in all it represents 60,000$ savings per year !
My take:
When you adopt a cost-based strategy how far do you need to go to keep your costs at their minimum?
I was recently reading an interview of Bill Draper, an American Venture Capitalist, recalling his good and less good experiences with the SME’s his firm invested in. This guy is certainly not the less talented in the industry since he invested in firms like Skype, Hotmail ad OpenTable.
I was particularly interested in his answer on the most common mistakes made by entrepreneurs. Here is en excerpt:
“[…] They overestimate market size and underestimate how long things will take. But what happens most often is that entrepreneurs underestimate the importance of what they don’t know. They know their competition as it is today, and they know that their own product is going to be significantly better. But they don’t know what’s going on in the backroom of their competition”
Oh my God … this is so true. Draper mentions three mistakes that we see very often when starting new projects.
My take:
Years ago 10 venture capitalists (who invested in more than 200 firms) were asked to choose and rate the most importance criteria for the success of a new venture. Surprisingly marketing came first and was rated 6.7 on a scale of 7 and without exception all VC’s were calling for more marketing research.
I still can get excited about very small things, little details of no importance.
In December I met up in New York with Rob Wallace who runs a creative agency which has specialized in design as part of the product experience. He emphasized the importance of packaging (I discussed this aspect of the brand experience a few years ago on this blog) and when coming back to Belgium I stopped at the duty-free shop to by some presents. It was almost Christmas and combos of perfumes, creams and the like were proposed in pre-packaged boxes. While most brands do not pay a lot of attention for the packaging, Hermes does. Look at this wonderful four-color printed box with silver touches.
When one puts some much attention in decorating a common gift box it deserves that you keep it. That’s what I did.
My take:
Well done Hermès … a touch of craftsmanship even in the packaging.
Vandenborre is part of the French retailer “Darty” which became famous thanks to its excellent slogan (and promise) “A contract of confidence” (le contrat de confiance).
What Darty realized well in advance was that consumers shopping for electronics and home appliances want to have a professional hassle-free service they can trust. Their simple idea was therefore to make the customer’s life easier with, for instance, an at-home installation of purchased products. It may seem obvious but as I stressed in a previous post some countries (lie France) just lack the service culture and Darty’s strategy was therefore a good one.
Well, not only do you need a good strategy but you must also roll it out effectively. Let me recount my personal experience (anecdotal) on which we will draw some interesting and broad conclusions.
My old 100€ dvd recorder on which I had recorded some 500+ TV shows dies. I’m aware of some compatibility problems with DVD disks between brands of recorders and decide to take a few disks with me to make sure that the next DVD recorder can actually read them.
Here I come at Vandenborre on a Saturday morning at 10:05am, 5 minutes after the stores opened is doors in Brussels’ biggest in-town mall. The store is empty. All salesmen are in the TV department, laughing and watching TV while I go through the DVD department, some 10 meters away. It is an unexciting display of equipment with a technical description on the left mentioning all too technical facts like power consumption, norms, number of channels, … I’m not a specialist and since none of the products on display are directly available in the shelves for purchase (they are stored in the warehouse like in most stores) the help of a salesman is necessary. After 10 minutes waiting I finally succeeded in catching the attention of one of the salesmen who was so busy at watching TV with his colleagues.
He comes and I explain my problem of compatibility:
Me : “Before I choose one recorder I’d like to make sure that my old DVD can be read. Could you try one of them for me?”
He : “no I can’t”
Me : “why is it so?”
He : “because the DVD recorders are not configured”
Me : “perhaps you could just configure one of them so that we can carry out the test?”
He : “no I can’t. Products on display are not intended to be used”
Me : “what if I buy on your advice one recorder and I can’t read my DVD’s?”
He : “just bring it back and you’ll get a refund”
Me : “OK. So which model do you recommend?”
He : “I recommend brand X with a hard disk capacity of 320Gb. The picture quality is better than the 160 and 240Gb models”
Me : “What makes the pictures better?”
He : “the electronics is better”
Me : “well, maybe it’s better but I don’t need do much capacity as I record mainly on DVD’s. I go for the 160Gb”
He : “if I were you I would stick for the 320Gb. It’s better than the 160Gb”
Me : “No, thank you. 160Gb is enough for my usage”
We then go together to the check out line.
He : “Do you want the reduced warranty or the normal one”
Me : “what do you mean with reduced warranty?”
He : “reduced warranty is 2 years from purchase date, normal warranty 5 years”
Me : “I prefer the normal warranty of course. Does it come at no costs?”
He : “no it’s XX Euros more”
Me : “in that case I go for the reduced warranty. 2 years is enough”
To make a long story short, I went back home, tried the DVD recorder and guess what, it couldn’t read my old DVD’s. I tried to call the store (I had to let the phone ring 64 times) and eventually got the very salesman I spoke to 1 hour sooner. Call the hotline he said, I can’t decide whether or not we will refund your purchase since since you used the equipment already.
How was I supposed to discover the compatibility issue without unpacking and installing the equipment then ?
The hotline refused to take the recorder back because of the company policy and I had to threaten them in writing to finally get the right to bring the product back.
My take:
My personal story may seem anecdotal but reveals several points that Vandenborre got totally wrong.
I was chatting last Friday with the managing director of one the most famous real-estate agencies network in Brussels.
I quickly discussed with him the two posts that we recently published over his industry: the first was showing the state of amateurism of agencies in Brussels, the second the innovations launched by Century 21.
After confessing that he couldn’t grasp the aim of publishing ideas and thoughts on a blog (I’ll come back to that later) he said the following about the non-professionalism of real-estate agencies kn Brussels: “I know it, everybody knows it … so what?”
My take:
At IntoTheMinds the intention of our blog is to share our thoughts, ideas and knowledge with the largest number of readers. We want to offer entrepreneurs the opportunity to open their minds to other ideas, to make them look at the big picture and eventually to question their assumptions. Here’s the difficulty. Human Beings hate questioning their assumptions which often result in inertia. So many opportunities go last that way … what a pity.
Now that you’ve read about the concept behind Abercrombie & Fitch’s stores, it’s time to realize that the concept has been copied elsewhere.
Not far away from A&F flagship store in New-York, you’ll find Hollister store the concept of which is pretty much the same. Actually you just have to look at the entrance and see the half-nude salesgirl and salesman, to grasp immediately the link with A&F (this is a trick used by A&F too).
No clothes to be seen from the street, targeted customers in their early twenties … This is kind of a clone of A&F
My take :
Well, actually Hollister is not really a follower … it’s just a brand owned by Abercrombie & Fitch.
