Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Have you been watching Undercover Boss? This is the American reality series (based on a UK one) that follows four CEOs of large companies as they go undercover within their organisation. They take on entry-level roles in order to find out what is really going on in their companies and what they can do to improve things from their positions of power.

Despite the tears each week and, yes, an obvious PR element, the premise is great. How can you argue with the concept of a top level executive getting out of the office and ~gasp~ working undercover with the employees at the root level.

The show has a positive message and is also surprisingly good tv. What do you think of it?

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Sometimes a business appears that just wins you over right away. For me that business is Book Depository. Have you heard of it?

Ignoring the slightly unappealing name, this is a UK-based online bookstore that has a huge roll of books in every category, at significantly reduced prices to what you find in store AND delivers the books to your door within days at no charge. That’s right free international shipping.

Sure they’ve somehow integrated that shipping charge into the book price, but that’s okay, because the book price is really low. It’s a win-win retail experience for us buyers. It means you can buy one book at a time whenever you want and not worry about postage costs. So of course you end up buying many more books than you would otherwise. I’ve bought eight in the last two weeks and I haven’t spent more than $100 dollars.

Here’s an example:

Today, in Kmart I noticed the new Bill Bryson book At Home for $32. On Book Depository the same book is $24.84. In Borders, it is $34.99.  Readings sells it for $39.99 and on Amazon UK, including postage it’s $33.60.

I ordered it from Book Depository right away . As well as another Bryson title that came up which I hadn’t read (and would not normally have bought).

Smart business. They know their customers and have seen that zero shipping equals higher volume of sales. Have a look for yourself - you’ll be buying books like there’s no tomorrow.

PS. I don’t work for them, I don’t know anyone who does, I’m not being paid to say this. It’s just a really good business, don’t you think?

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

In the UK, Mothercare holds the enviable position of being a brand synonymous with new mums as the number one destination for all things baby and toddler-related. When they announced they were to launch in Australia, my first thought was how on earth will they differentiate themselves in such a saturated market? Well they have and I’ll tell you how…

As a mother of two young kids, one of whom is very new, I join my compatriots in including Chadstone Shopping Centre on my regular baby outing itinerary. When the only way to get your baby to sleep is by having the pram on the move for hours, Chadstone offers much-needed coffee, mindless entertainment, clean feeding-room facilities and an escape from either end of Melbourne’s extreme weather.

For those who live in Melbourne and know Chadstone, the shopping centre has redefined its baby and children’s section following the cosmetic facelift and expansion. I’ve written previously about Pumpkin Patch and its brand decline in the eyes of mums (suffering from Perma-Sale Syndrome for starters. Read the comments to this article and you’ll get a good idea of perception vs reality). Well, Mothercare is at the other extreme right now and been very clever about its Australian market entry.

My mother-in-law has worked in Mothercare London for a number of years and I know the retailer from my time there. Their ELC Kids educational toys have been available in Australia for years and many of them are fantastic, however the clothing is very middle of the road. It’s not higher end designer like Big or Country Road and it’s not cheapie quick ‘n easy like Best and Less or Target. It sits in what’s often thought of as that dangerous middle ground.

My first visit to the store was with little expectation and more out of solidarity to my mother-in-law than for potential custom. It quickly turned into a surprisingly memorable retail experience.

How are Mothercare different from numerous other kids’ retailers? These 3 things stood out to me right away:

1. They have a lot of very experienced staff who are quickly on hand to advise you. And unlike other shopping experiences where you’d rather be left alone, new mums are often desperate for advice and some friendly words (from another adult).
2. The woman who greeted me at the door made a friendly comment about how young my baby’s cry sounded (3 weeks at the time) and introduced herself as a midwife who was there every week and could offer advice beyond the retail, she also told me that
3. There is a baby change room always available in the back of the store with all the facilities I’d need. (I checked it out, it’s super clean, private and stocked with complimentary wipes etc).
   

Those three things right there, coupled with the store stocking all the fundamentals for both a new and more experienced parent, stand them out beyond their retail origins. They have successfully positioned as a source of parenting information and an easy one-stop-shop for any mum.

It’s always a pleasant surprise to come across a business that fills a need that you hadn’t yet defined for yourself.

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

What I’m reading (and RSS subscribing to) this year:

• The Gates Notes: Bill Gates has this week launched his personal new website The Gates Notes which is, of course, exceptional in many ways. The navigation reminds me of mind flow - an information collective set out in an intuitive way. Includes updates of what the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are working on and sections titled What I’m Thinking About, What I’m Learning, Infrequently Asked Questions.  This is someone who could have spent their early retirement perma-cruising the Bahamas on a 20,000 foot yacht and has instead put money and full time resources behind philanthropy on an immense scale. If I had big charitable donations to make, this is where I’d put the money.
• Freakonomics blog: This is the New York Times blog from journalist and economist (respectively) Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, authors of the bestselling Freakonomics and the new Superfreakonomics. The blog was designed to “keep the conversation going initiated in their books and includes guest contributors from different worlds, whose common connections is the application of data and numbers in unique social contexts.
• Branding Strategy Insider: The comprehensive blog of branding strategists Derrick Daye and Brad VanAuken, with regular contributions from the world’s top marketing specialists such as Mark Ritson, Al Ries, Martin Lindstrom. There’s such an overwhelming supply of marketing reading and”gurus” online that you could simplify things for yourself by reading the articles here once a week.
• Brand New: If you have an interest in corporate and brand identity (AKA logos) this blog gives unbiased reviews of who is doing what, and why it does or doesn’t work. Of course a totally subjective topic, but always with a sharp view and copious comments from copious other readers.
• Marketing Ritson: The website and article archive of marketing expert and ‘International Consultant to many of the World’s Greatest Brands’ Mark Ritson. He is a hilarious and totally brutal writer who isn’t afraid to call out a disaster piece of marketing regardless who it comes from. Harvard Business Review Columnist of the Year 2009.

Whose writing do you read regularly?

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

New Zealand is big on promoting itself as the destination of choice for thrill seekers and adventure junkies, but there’s an equally lucrative market they should be talking to more often and that’s young families.

The marketing of New Zealand, at least here in Australia, has long been around the sporty outdoor activity gig - a message now well and truly ingrained. If you want to go bungy jumping, jet boating, heli-skiing, mountain hiking… <insert double-barrel extreeeme activity here> - we know the country to go to.

Now here we are in holiday mode with a very young child and that type of action adventure is as far from mine and my husband’s reality as lounging around bars all day with friends in sexy European locations. It’s not because we don’t want to you understand, we just can’t.

As a New Zealander I know NZ is a great place for families with young kids, especially for neighbouring Australians who are a mere 3-4 hour flight away, but I wonder why NZ tourism hasn’t made a bigger deal about this segment of the market and made sure New Zealand is as analogous with family as it is with adventure.

Here’s my typical mental checklist for a holiday with young kids:

1. How far is it? My child/I will go insane on any flight longer than 4 hours - unless we’re going for a month plus
2. Is it safe? Nothing on the front page today on terrorism, floods, disease, crime
3. Is there good  stuff to do that kids can get in on too? Enough to keep the kids entertained and good food/wine/sights for us
4. Is it easy to get around? I can rent a car and drive everywhere easily or public transport is solid
5. Are prices ok? Accommodation, food, currency is working for me right now

Being from New Zealand, I know NZ ticks all these boxes (except perhaps public transport, but we can overlook that as driving is so easy there). From Australia you’ve arrived within a few hours, you can jump in the car and drive to some beautiful beach destinations, you can jump on a ferry and head to gorgeous island wineries, you can eat in some fabulous restaurants, you can hit the groovy boutiques for a spot of shopping, you can go fruit picking at the best farms around, it’s all there and it’s all very easy with little kiddies in tow.

So I wonder why NZ Tourism doesn’t feature families in their marketing more prominently.  They should run some campaigns in Australia (to start with) that talk specifically to parents, get us excited about having a “milder” NZ adventure, A.K.A. world class tourism that doesn’t necessarily involve leaping off a bridge or having to wear protective head gear. It’s a ripe message just waiting to be picked.

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

IKEA in Sweden have used a simple Facebook function, photo tagging, in a seriously genius way. Watch the short video below and see creativity at is finest.

Agency Forsman and Bondenfors created a FB profile for the store manager, uploaded storeroom photos and invited people to tag the photo with their name.  First to tag won the item. Thanks to Facebook’s news feed, update and forwarding function, this promotion spread like crazy.

Sam Mutimer of Lets Refresh - thanks for finding this one!

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

There’s a marketing crossroads companies come to when they’re at that stage of going from Small Company to Less-Small Company. It’s an interesting time for a marketer who has worked with businesses large and small, as you have to be very diplomatic and appreciate this as a pivotal step for your client.

It’s usually the point when companies have a stream of big business of their own and cannot help but compare themselves with their (usually) much more sophisticated clients. It’s also when there’s a bit of downtime from a period of fast reactive growth and the company starts thinking about proactively approaching new business.

Although logo and branding are only a part of marketing and communications, I still find with the smaller businesses it is this that requires the most urgent attention and it is this that can be the hardest sell.

One of the challenges is the perception of the logo as a simple icon and the psychological price point that the small business owner has versus the large established company.

Where a big blue chip is prepared to pay tens, if not hundreds of thousands for a new logo, the small business owner can’t see how this ‘badge’ can be worth more than a few thousands dollars. A few thousand? Why so much when they can go back to their own designer and get them to knock up three for $500.

Many may think the logo is just a symbol or a mark that sits in the top left corner of the stationary and website, but a brand is not the same thing at all. When a small company comes to that crossroads, it’s a total mindset change that raises them to a different playing field.

Needless to say there are a multitude of core business and marketing strategies that are necessary for successfully growing a small company. When it comes to that professional rebranding step though, I find that’s when the entire company - from senior level through to workers on a factory floor - start to feel the buzz and a sense of increased pride in where they work.

Without fail there’s controversy and disagreement among the staff when the new logo and brand are chosen. There are mutters of disapproval as style guidelines are enforced and the person on the front desk is told no more palm tree email backgrounds or festive signature fonts. There is an absolute uproar when Snappy Snap local printer is put under review and retired because the print quality doesn’t measure up to the new standard.

It’s a challenging time and unless you’re a marketer with total belief in yourself and in your expertise you won’t win this battle and potentially even worse, in the long term you’ll be blamed for not doing what you were hired to do in the first place: elevate the company.

There is inevitably always a good ending to this if done well. As the new signage goes up outside and in the foyer, the new stationary gets handed out and personal business cards go to individuals, as the sales team receive their impressive new collateral, as the vehicles start driving around with new decals and the uniforms arrive in a fresh new style, the website launches looking slick and professional, the trade press runs the wave of concurrent media.

When everything the company produces has the same, strong, consistent brand, that’s when it all comes together and the buzz becomes palpable. The branding controversy all but disappears and the business moves on to the next step of implementing the business and marketing strategy with a confidence in its ability to make an excellent impression every time.

For this reason I will always fight the fight with small business clients and implore them to start working with a small external team of suppliers at a much higher level than what they were in the past. That includes an excellent design, print and web partner - all marketing savvy, all highly experienced and all with initiative and skill to advise you on the best possible solutions.

FYI: A great website that reviews good and bad corporate identity is Under Consideration’s BRAND NEW

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

ecostore is a New Zealand brand of sustainable household and personal care products that was founded in 1993 although I’ve only come across the products on Australian supermarket shelves quite recently. As they’re priced at the premium end of their category, I wonder how they will do and wonder whether the world needs and will buy into another eco household brand. How will this one stand out in a busy category?

New Zealand does have a knack at this enviro branding thing and this is another of those companies that has seemingly come from nowhere (or as they say on their website “from an eco village in New Zealand”) and it is generating significant buzz.

I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for products with environmental declarations and as a new(ish) mum am no doubt bang on their target market. I approach every product with the words organic and natural with suspicion, given how little we customers know of what goes on behind the scenes. For example, I got very excited about the big no parabens marketing schtick adopted by many skincare brands and was later told by colleagues in that industry that products without it can be more harmful unless very short use-by dates are strictly adhered to - and they usually aren’t. It’s a confusing category for customers and one rife with imposters.

ecostore has entered this space with an expanding, expensive range of natural products, a great look and their marketing strategy seems clever indeed.

For instance, founder Malcolm Rands, who started the company together with his wife Melanie, is apparently referred to as “ecoman” in New Zealand. He has an interesting bio and strong ties to environmental causes and councils. He is a believable ambassador for the brand.

Speaking of ambassadors, when launching the ecostore brand into the US, the company took the low budget approach of engaging with “mommy bloggers”. This strategy of sending numerous targetted emails and samples of product appears to have been incredibly successful. I am making assumptions of success because every time I came across a blog that mentioned ecostore, the write up was full of breathless praise. See here, here and here for starters - all randomly found by typing ‘ecostore’ into Google.

ecostore are priced at a premium and are open and unashamed about this. Their positioning is value for money via concentrated formulations and on their website they argue that cost per use often works out to be lower than ‘cheaper looking’ supermarket brands.

If you’re going for the top end of the market there need to be clear justifications for what customers are getting. I suspect we’ve all been broken in and naturally assume organic and environmental products carry a premium, in that way the category has been opened up for ecostore by previous players.

Looking ahead I wonder whether there is a place in the (still) relatively niche market of natural household products for a big player? ecostore is not big yet, but looks set for serious growth.

Will the market continue to embrace a brand that had such humble beginnings as it grows on an international scale? What happens when production moves, as it is shortly due, from New Zealand to include the US? Do we believe that big successful companies can continue to have the same ethical responsibility as a little backyard brand started by an enviro-happy couple?

Look at the demise of Macro Wholefoods in Australia and the very different mood around Anita Roddick’s Body Shop versus L’Oreal’s Body Shop.

ecostore has all the makings of a small business about to hit the big time, but I wonder whether its rapid growth will be its undoing? Hopefully NOT.

NOTE: I work with New Zealand companies but thought I should add that ecostore is NOT one of my clients. I’m a recent buyer of their products via Safeway/Woolworths as it seems to be on sale most of the time. Sale price is still more expensive than most competitive products, but I’m always happy to trial a new brand and pay a premium if it does the job better.

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

Recently I’ve become a bit obsessed with reading articles from the great marketing minds, old and new. I can pinpoint this down to three specific events that are going on for me right now.

1. My husband is doing his MBA and I’ve had lecturer and subject envy
2. My increased use of Twitter has led me to follow some exceptional people and read excellent articles (and conversely see how much tat it out there masquerading as marketing genius)
3. Working for myself over the last four years has meant I haven’t had a marketing mentor to work with

Banksy - monkey inspiration

For the four years I’ve worked for myself none of the above seemed to matter too much. I even stopped several papers short of completing my marketing Masters because I was fed up at regurgitating the same essay in slightly different ways to essentially the same marketing papers with slightly different titles. Marketing academia and marketing departments felt like they had frozen in time, the case studies were all the same ones from the first edition of the textbooks (Ford, New Coke etc), I felt I could learn a lot more by doing it instead of studying it.

However, a polite distance from marketing departments and a mood of change in the professional world has shaken things up and made them more interesting again. If anything good has come out the recession, for example, it may be that it’s forcing failing companies that had sat back and enjoyed the lucky good times to realise they had no recipe for success. The mediocre achievements of their mediocre execs was pretty much pure fluke.

As a result, I (would like to) believe that Thinking and Learning are making a humble comeback.

There are some true experts out there - individuals and companies - who didn’t get to where they are without constantly learning, applying good judgement and generally being excellent at what they do. Out of the seemingly endless myriad of online information I’ve found a manageable handful of those I admire and I’m going to make reading their articles, watching their presentations and seeing who else they recommend, part of my routine. There’s a lot I can learn from other fields as well as marketing - economics, science, psychology, sales, business etc. My professional resolutions have been made early this year.

Is there anyone you recommend?

Bella Katz on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

There is a superb BBC show on Australian Foxtel TV Lifestyle every Tuesday at 8.30pm - it’s called Mary Queen of Shops and centres around Mary Portas’ quest to help independent English retailers modernise and thrive.

Before the show, I had never heard of Mary Portas or her Yellow Door agency. I had no idea that she was considered ‘one of the UK’s foremost authorities on retail and brand communication and is credited with turning Harvey Nichols into the modern fashion powerhouse that it is’. Now that I’ve seen her in action, going into small English retailers and opening their eyes to the fierce competition and reality of becoming viable businesses in 2009 and beyond, I think she’s exceptional.

I’m a marketer but not a retail marketer and I now have even more appreciation for those who understand the retail space at Mary’s level. Intuitively we all know which shops “work” for us based simply on where we love to shop, our handful of favourites. Now I’m understanding the science behind the scenes - everything from the art of merchandising a window to arranging clothes on a rack in a way that encourages buyers to visualise entire outfits. From the store flow and use of space that guides you from section to section, to the skill of brilliant buyers who can forward plan a season and translate often out there styles from the catwalk to every day customers’ every day lives.

I imagine now more than ever retail fashion is really feeling the recession pinch. Driving around Melbourne, a city that prides itself on its little boutiques and independent retailers, the For Lease signs are appearing in the windows of those quirky shops that I wondered about i.e., wondered how they survived and made money. Well, they often don’t survive.

I’ve been surprised from this show how out of touch some (many?) small independent retail owners are with 1) fashion, 2) customers and 3) the business of retail.

I mean basic stuff, like never hitting the streets and talking to or looking at what your target customers are wearing. Never going through magazines and seeing what’s in style, what your store needs to sell, what’s coming up in the next season. Having no clue as to why your stuffy, dingy store with hideously outdated stuff in the windows doesn’t draw people in. 

And I don’t know why I’m surprised at this, because it happens with a small number of all our clients I’m sure, but some retail owners just can’t handle honest advice and put up fierce resistance to change. These may be the same store owners who are about to lose their house, partner and livelihood because for the last 12 months they’ve turned over a measly average of $50 a day in sales.

That defensive obstinance may be ok if you’re a raging success with a fail-safe business formula but when you’re one step away from bankruptcy it’s time to listen to what experts have to say. Anyway, in most cases the reason businesses are a raging success is because they have leadership that is always looking ahead and asking questions, even when times are great.

Mary Portas’ next television series in the UK looks - very relevantly - at the Charity Sector. Not surprisingly those musty dens are also feeling the pain as people hold on to their old clothes and donations of decent stock dwindle.