Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

That’ll be for me then: Heinz is launching baked beans in a resealable plastic bottle. So opened packs can be stored in the fridge for a few days. Marvellous.

I fear the £3m through-the-line campaign, including TV advertising, is being paid for by the RRP of £1.79 for 1kg but market forces will prevail!

Read more about this at Brand Republic.

And did you know:

1. Every day over one million cans of Heinz Beanz are consumed in the UK.  That is approximately 485 million cans per year.

2. Between 1941 and 1948, the Ministry of Food did the nation a favour by classifying baked beans as ‘essential’ in the rationing system.

Click here for more Heinz Beanz facts.

Superdry, the fashion label, have seen profits triple. This world famous brand has its roots in Hereford and grew with grants from the Thatcher government.

Founder Julian Dunkerton made this upbeat statement to The Guardian:

We are in a unique position: spitting out cash, trebling profits and virtually doubling sales. I have been in business nearly 20 years and have never had all three growing at the same time.

Today David Beckham, Kate Winslet and Pixie Lott are amongst the list of Superdry customers. I’m sure they are part of the success…read the article in the Daily Mail.

Superdry also gets good coverage on Fashion Monkey.

I wonder how many people thought Superdry was a Japanese or US brand?

The Tories said they would cut back spending on advertising by 40 per cent, as well as introducing new rules to measure its effectiveness.

Then in May we were told, “The coalition government is to freeze its £540m-a-year advertising budget, except on what are deemed to be ‘essential’ campaigns, ahead of implementing plans to axe marketing and advertising spend by up to 50%.

Now they are in (a shared) office what progress are they making? Was all this just puff and PR around the subject of advertising? It may well be judging by the full back page colour advert in my local paper encouraging me to sign up to flood alerts.

Note: the weather forecasters are talking to us about droughts at the moment.

At what point will all retail shops in the UK be the same? Is it inevitable that they will all sell the same product range one day? Think about it:

Tesco sells petrol – BP sells food
WHSmith sells stamps – Post Office sells stationary

Leaving aside the food range how different is Primark from Marks & Spencer?

Perhaps the differentiator becomes who has the best car parking and the best car wash facilities. And it’s interesting to note that even the car wash in the car park is effectively us paying to have security in the area but the car wash facilities are all the same.

Now I know not all shops are the same. And I know that most shops you can tell where you are when you are stood in the middle. I think I am maybe mourning the halcyon days of the independent retailer.

Please cheer me up with your positive stories about UK retailers.

Henry Smithson
C’est tres illogique! ‘Croque Monsieur’ – toasted ham and cheese sandwich = 3.50 Euros. ‘Welsh’ – toasted ham and cheese sandwich, but covered in melted cheese and served in a bowl = 11.50 Euros!!!!!

Kevin Harrington
And they are both overpriced. Mind you, a premium for ‘Welsh’ food is indeed a significant marketing achievement that I may need to blog about! Where was this?

Nigel Tucker
Hey! Welsh food should attract a premium. It’s better than English food, ie chips.

Henry Smithson
This was in France – home of the finest cuisine. In the interests of culinary research Linda ordered the ‘Croque Monsieur’ and I ordered the ‘Welsh’ so we could compare and contrast. Results above.

I’ve yet to get all the details on this but I’ve just been told that employees at a certain recruitment agency are banned from using Facebook. Quite incredible.

We discovered this after we Googled a prospective candidate and found their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. When discussing our observations the recruitment agency said they didn’t use Facebook to check candidates because they were banned/blocked from using the site.

What does this tell you of the agency? They don’t trust their own staff? They are giving less screening of candidates than most other agencies?

And while I’m at it…

Writing this blog post reminded me of the first email I received this morning. It was a spam email from Timothy James Consulting. How do I know it was spam…it was sent to an email address that hasn’t even been released yet inviting me to recruit someone with a skill set that is irrelevant for my team. I’d already told them to remove this address but it is clearly easier for them to carry on spamming me.

So watch out for emails from chris@timothyjamesconsulting.com or anyone else @timothyjamesconsulting.com. I’m not the only person that is not impressed with them, see this blog post.

I quite like this video, it is about how BBC Worldwide present their strategy. It is on YouTube to promote the services of Cardiff based visual solutions company See What You Mean.

It is a good reminder that simple visuals, avoiding the PowerPoint template traps, can be really powerful.

Now where are those slides that I’m presenting on Wednesday?