Mary: Queen of Charity Shops TV show: what can we learn?

While needing to remember that many business shows on TV (like “The Apprentice” and “Dragon’s Den”) are really more reality show and entertainment shows than actually telling or teaching us about business or marketing, I cannot help love many of them.

Though I do wonder how much I and other viewers are actually learning about business and marketing.

My 2 favourite shows in this genre are "Hotel Inspector" (helping failing hotels turnaround) and "Mary Portas: Queen of Shops" (turning round failing shops).

A recent short 3 part series had Mary Portas trying to breathe life into the worst performing Save The Children charity shop in the UK ina show called “Mary: Queen of Charity Shops”. While very entertaining, I did find it taught or made me wonder about a few key things:

You need to be very strong minded and very determined to take on entrenched old dears
But on a more serious note, she battles to get a team of volunteers aged from 60 to well into their 80s who have been volunteering for up to 20 years to make change happen. The learning is that, no matter how good your visions, your ideas, your plans are, you need to get the team on board. Or get a new team who will sometimes! Without that you are doomed. Getting people to accept change and do things differently, without them seeing what is in it for them is a big issue.

You need to get better than damp pants, dirty bras and used junk
The problem she faced was people donate junk that is largely unsalable, and the 30 per cent or so of donations that are tend to very low value. The "supply chain" and "suppliers" are shoddy, erratic and appalling. People going into the charity shops know that. The learning is that it is all about getting better product from better suppliers more reliable on quality. You need to have a great and reliable supply chain and great products to succeed.

You can't sell for over five pounds
The volunteers argued no shopper will ever spend over five pounds in the channel. Mary argued you could train shoppers through better products to reinvent the way they think about your offer. But only through dramatic change in service, products and the “packaging/ look” of the store so they rethink you and your offer. I am not so sure you can train consumers away from price expectations and habits, but if you have any hope you need to look and offer something very different from what they have “learnt” about you. You need a new product and shopper experience.

Did you see the show? Any thoughts?

watch a video of Mary Portas speaking on ITV "This Morning" about the show: click here to watch on YouTube or on the blog posting

IS YOUR BRAND MISSING IN ACTION? What happens when you go on air and people search for you?

Following up from a recent posting I did about how we tend to forget what we do and act as consumers the minute we walk through the door of our office, something struck me this week about how easy it is to miss things - even when they are blindingly obvious.

I was shown some data about how online searches for specific products, especially new ones, dramatically increases as soon as a new TV ad appears. This seems very obvious and rational behaviour. It is something we (as consumers) are all likely do when we see an ad for a new product on TV that interests us. We would go and find out more (and as many people actually are online when they are in front of the TV it is even easier to do.

So, type in your product or product variant you are TV advertising now or have been or about to. What would an interested consumer see and find?

Is your online content and search buying up to scratch when you go on air?

Find out by searching your product or variant right now...there is a google search box on the left hand side of the blog.. try it

Max Factor death in USA: more a comment on the state of celebrity use by a brand?

The news that Max Factor is going to be killed off in the USA (although it seems to be largely dead already!) ruins one of the examples I had often used of having a powerful, competitive Big Idea over time in various trainings and projects I have worked on. How annoying.

It seems that "the makeup of makeup artists" no longer appeals. So what happened or is going on?

In some ways, it is probably largely a sign of the times. Just as Lux (the choice of stars) in Western markets died when the studio system and the glamour associated with big screen stars died as times changed.

Today, with the advent of reality shows and instant and transient celebrity we seem to have lost that small, exclusive and highly glamorous world that the stars of movies used to represent. A world when a few cherished stars and their personas were carefully crafted and managed. Their image and stories carefully managed. Remember this is from time when studios controlled the stories and image so well that a star like Rock Hudson was not even suspected of not be a charming, good looking womaniser.

Now we have a more transient celebrity world. Celebrities still are very powerful as brand spokespersons, but are they seem to be doing more of a job in helping a brand achieve stand out in a cluttered world these days - than selling aspiration and glamour. You can, after become a celebrity yourself much easier than ever before.

So I do wonder if the role of celebrity and those associated with them has fundamentally changed over the last 10 plus years with the emergence of shows like Big Brother (in its 10th year in the UK) and the such like.

Even there we see names rise sharply and burn out just as quickly. Celebrity and stars as a currency and ally for brands is now less about adding to long and medium term values, and more about short term news and fast awareness.

It is the nature of the way we live and how media chases, builds and throws celebrities aside. Possibly the most telling thing is we don't really talk about "stars" anymore - we talk about celebrity.

Of course when chosen well and timely they have a big impact on awareness and trial. But maybe like the makeup artists of stars, they are not as likely to add glamour and aspiration over time as much anymore? I am sure there are many other issues related to Max Factor like products, pricing and distribution, but it still seems that the shine faded as the nature of celebrity and glamour associated with it faded and became less relevant.

Max Factor TVCs
1986 Max factor Ad with Jacklyn Smith talking about the glamour of Marlene Dietrich. The pay off line is "The glamour goes on", so linking to the glamour associated with the old movie stars (as the nature of stars changed even in the 1980s they struggled to have a glamour face as of old).
Watch on Youtube: click here or on the blog posting

TV ad based on the film "memoirs of a geisha" from that linked the brand to it's roots in film. Click here to watch on YouTube or on the blog posting:

This short clip is how Bloomberg reported the news of Max Factor being pulled from the USA: click here to watch on YouTube, or watch on the blog posting:

BOOTS: THINKING WITH THEIR DNA MEANT THINKING DIFFERENTLY/ MORE COMPETITIVELY IN SKINCARE

I admire what Boots the Chemist are doing in the UK on their anti-age line (Boots Protect and Perfect).

They have shown the importance of not just following the set and established ways and norms. In anti-aging the big players and brands, like Olay and L’Oreal, invest in TV as the main media (no doubt constantly wrestling with the TV authority on claims and claim support) and then also have PR and the such.

Boots were more clever. They do not have the same momentum and habit that the big FMCG players have where managements are trained and focused on the TV copy led model. Nor did they have the budgets I suspect.

So they cleverly focused on investing in clinical (which is more in the DNA of a pharmacy thinking company) and released it not through the beauty editor world, but through the science editor and news world. The take out from the clinical was: not many moisturisers have real anti aging effects, but Boots really does over time. One study, just one study.

Science sections in press reported it and news followed. The media did the job of making strong claims.

Then with their retailer mindset, they focused on attracting people into store with copy that said the thing everyone is talking about is now n store, and store displays reinforcing it. They drove traffic based on the news that an amazing product offering was now in store.

They are selling a ton of the stuff. And they never had to fight with authorities on claim support and nuances.

They also acted true to their mindset and competencies. They did not run head on with the big traditional marketers.

Thinking different model seems key these days. Boots are doing it in the UK, while brands like Caudalie are doing it in French pharmacies and Proactiv with direct response TV/ online in the USA. The traditional model may not be broken, but seems no guarantee of success as consumers know the model and how messages are told. The new models seem to get through and get reaction more....

Watch the ad on Youtube: click here
Or on the blog post:

Cassetteboy vs The Bloody Apprentice

Watch on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxi6QDwQyLU

This is pure entertainment. This master mash up of clips from the UK version of "The Apprentice" by a pesron called "cassette boy".

If you watch the show this is so funny.

Other than being entertaining on the blog, this also shows how brands can take ona life of their own and people can add to and extend the brand in their own way. These user generated pieces of content I find fascinating as they often tell you more about what people are taking out from the brand/ offer.

I have written quite a few postings on user generated content. They are entertaining and fascinating.