Tesco seem to think that Berkhamsted is a town of single person households.It is not…there are more families in the town,its a fact,you only have to look at the number of schools to confirm it.

Tesco deny consumers a choice in Berkhamsted by dictating what they can or can not purchase.

A six pack of bread rolls used to be available …not any more

It appears that the limited choice customers have is to buy 4 for a £1 …a saving yes given that each bread roll is scandalously priced at 35 pence…

If you need 6 rolls for the family that you don’t have in this town, then it costs you a mighty £1.70  for 6 rolls…

Why the fuss you might ask?

Simple…customers should be given the right to exercise choice and in this case we cannot.Tesco are more concerned with getting as much dough from shoppers as they can rather than offering food staples at a price that is accessible to family budgets.

The store manager was unable to offer a rational explanation as to this lack of choice merely saying that it was a central decision to de stock the cheaper 6 roll pack option.

Several shoppers agreed that it was a scandal and were vocal in their views that customer satisfaction was dwindling and that they were spending more money than they wanted to. If they had cars,these were elderly, they maintained that they would drive to a superstore where they could purchase that 6 pack of rolls…

Now Tesco have spent millions on an advertising campaign that tells us that “Every Little Helps”…I am guessing that this means every little squeezed out of customers by over pricing their bread helps to pay for the ad campaign…

Doubtless the response, not yet forthcoming from Twitter, will be along the lines of how wonderful Tesco are in terms of their range of offers…

All well and good but please make sure that the basics are taken care of….on that note why is the Basics range not available in the Berkhamsted store?

Don’t tell me…it’s a single person household town and the Basics range is aimed at the family segment of shoppers…

Dragons Den Tread carefully

Watching the new series of Dragons Den has forced me to think that little more about branding and how sometimes a good name just isn’t good enough.

Last nights episode gave us Love Da Popcorn which looks like a good company with a product that will do well.

I hestiated to use the word Brand there because a brand has so much emotional tie ins that Love Da Popcorn can’t possibly have yet.

The fact that the three founders all work in advertising makes me think that they are constructing that brand and that it has not emerged itself from a light bulb moment.I could be wrong of course but my feelings tell me that they are trying just a tad too hard to be quirky,offbeat and far too Ben and Jerry..

The fact that they could not respond to the laser beam of costs that is Theo and had no idea of distribution costs etc was alarming to say the least.It was like those costs were a minor detail…we’ve got the name,a bit of artificial heritage and are trying to be a bit wacky..

In their heads the founders had gone from start to off load without getting the all important middle bit right…I wish them well and have a sneaky suspicion that they will get to where they want to be but in a different form to what they think now.

A brand evolves and its  a case of getting all the parts to be working together before the essence becomes distilled.Marketing,sales, distribution and customer research all play their part.

A good name isn’t enough as Deborah Meaden said when talking last week about Gloven…at least this week were were spared an explanation from Duncan Bannatyne on names for products —Gloven was wrong because it wasn’t a cross between oven and glove like a spoon and and a fork…can’t think how that works

What a spork…

Research can reveal some interesting things if you look

Not just a tree....let me know what you see

It is sometimes difficult to see what is in front of you,sometimes even harder to act upon what you’ve seen.

It is easier to ignore or sideline issues until we are ready to face them,that normally means we never will really deal with the issue.

This can have very serious consequences, a leaky pipe often becomes a burst pipe which means gallons of expensive water all over your new Axminster.

The same is true when considering research and cost effective approachs to listening to your customers.

Factoring in a regular customer research budget needn’t be expensive or a drain on resources.Would companies rather spend a small amount of money regularly or lose valuable customers?

The answer seems obvious but very few companies seem to follow this simple maxim.

The 1-10-100 rule applies here.

Every pound that you have spent on research is well invested.If you had to correct a problem then it would cost you ten times the amount to adjust had you not have spent the early amount.

Should an issue go totally unnoticed until very late in your  customer experience cycle then you may end up paying 100 times what you could have paid in the research phase to put it right.At this point you would have lost valuable customers and the viral impact could well escalate out of all proportion.

In any recession or turbulent trading conditions the three must haves are Training,Customer Research and Marketing…and customer research is a crucial element.

Winston Churchill once said,”the future is one damn thing after another”

How seriously true and how easy is it to forget?

We spend our time trying to catch up on new trends, we have just got the hang of one thing and, zoom,there’s a new gadget that links your Twitter with your Linkedin and sends messages to everyone who has a vowel in their first name…Its makes for a long day when you are trying to master all this technology.

Technology gets smarter than the speed at which most of us can keep up, we get information richer and time poorer by the end of every week.By the time that I’ve mastered one thing to improve my Google rankings along comes some thing else that knocks me back down.

I am a bit swamped by all this techo lingo and just wonder how savvy we all really are..most companies I know all have a social networking presence and some to be honest over play that presence.How many Tweets do we need to tweet to let our followers know that we need x amount more votes? Do we need to let the world know that we are running a 20% off end of holiday discount club?

It’s all about rankings and footprint and about getting the right people to get to your site and all the rest but we fail if we do not use the technology that we have to find out if technology is actually working for us. Not sure I’ve ever been asked what I think of these various platforms?I’m sure that over use is killing the essence of what is trying to be achieved.

If we are trying to drive contacts to our various sites so that we gain business then it seems that we are having to try harder all the time.The competition for attention is just massive and it gets harder to stand out from the crowd.We are not getting on with delivering what we are constantly letting the world know that we are doing..

Rather than tell people that I can do X,Y or Z, I’ve hit on a revolutionary new approach…I’m going to ask people what they want and then give them it. I see this as a very effective plan for the future, one huge crowd will be muffled by their own noise broadcasting a multitude of services and I’ll be a lone voice simply asking,“what can I do to help to your company”..

Will it work? Who knows but at least I wont have to work out what the next Twitter twist does to my Facebook profile..

It is nearly 25 years since Coca Cola decided to give the world New Coke and a text book example of how not to do marketing by ignoring loyal customers.

Background

In 1985 Coca Cola unveiled New Coke on the world. This was a new sweeter recipe that was to replace the “secret formula” that had been around for a mere 99 years.The words “the best just got better” were uttered during the unveiling. It was the start of something special for Coca Cola, unfortunately it was not a positive experience to begin with….

The reaction of consumers was a lesson in how companies meddle with their brands at their peril. Despite all the market research that had been undertaken the company had failed to engage with their customers directly. Research indicated that the sweeter formula was preferred to the existing flavour.

The company failed to grasp that brands should always be viewed through the eyes of customers. Companies may own their brands but they need permission to change or tinker with them.

Customer Reaction

Within 78 days after a barrage of letters and phone calls the original formula returned branded as Coke Classic.

Customers had reacted with such intensity of feeling that it had shocked Coca Cola. The brand was and is such an integral part of American culture that its removal caused almost panic amongst consumers.What took nearly a hundred years to build was almost lost in the blink of an eye.The closet example of such brand destruction in UK terms has to be the famous Ratner speech.Overnight a respected chain of jewelers had its reputation and stock value reduced to next to nothing.

Outcome and Lessons

Coke had panicked at the the thought of Pepsi stealing a march on them. Pepsi was running the taste challenge commercials which showed that consumers preferred their sweeter product. New Coke was the response that went so wrong.

Disaster turned to triumph as sales of the Coke Classic went through the roof. Customer loyalty was reinforced and the brand remains to this day one of the most valuable  in the world.

The lessons of this are clear. Brands generate a strong emotional bond that is a vital strand in success.If any part of the complex interdependency of emotions, value and price is changed then the brand ceases to be the brand.

Consumers expect the relationship to be such that any changes are run past them first…All companies must at all times make sure that they seek regular feedback from the people buying their product or service.Customers react to lack of communication by spending their money with someone who will listen to their views.That someone will always be one of your competitors…