If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then we were suitably wowed to see the approach to the Central Saint Martins Degree Shows last weekend decorated in The Value Engineers’ red, blue and green colours … they even got the interlinking ribbons working perfectly too!

We’re not sure if the intent of these was also to provide a visual metaphor for the path from complexity to clarity (or simply to be a visually arresting reference to the basic RGB colour palette) but either way, they brought a fabulous splash of colour and inspiration to the regenerated area behind Kings X St Pancras and acted as an excellent lead-in to the show.

In the brilliant newly converted warehouse space that CSM now occupies, the work of the BA and MA grads looked amazing – exciting textiles, challenging fashion ideas and some interesting papers from the Innovation Management MA that act as a pretty good reflection of current thinking in this area, albeit with a deliberately design-led angle.

All the fun is over now for another year, but we’re looking forward to see how we can inspire them next year too

The news that BT have bought the rights to show 38 live Premier League matches for each of the next two years is interesting for two reasons.

It could be said to be a milestone in the journey towards technology platform integration when a telco company outbids TV rivals to win the right to broadcast the most watched domestic soccer league in the world. Are BT setting their stall out for a bigger TV play?

Secondly, the money. The £3bn price tag that the Premier League has put on the 154 live games values each game at an average of £20M - which makes next year’s season the most lucrative yet. BT must have decided that the potential advertising revenue and additional subscribers to their service is worth the outlay. Who can blame them, when this is the exact same model that Sky used to grow their subscription base in the 90s?

What isn’t clear however is what BT are going to do different to make being second choice to Sky as a football broadcaster work for them when ESPN and Setanta before them struggled to top the viewing league table.

The world of financial reporting was startled last Friday (always a good day to catch people napping) with the announcement by Marks & Spencer that it is going to launch an in-store banking service this summer, in partnership with HSBC.

M&S aims to have 50 branches up and running in its stores in the next two years, with 500 jobs created by the end of 2013.

The high street banking sector has been due a bit of shaking up for a while, but what looks like an interesting tie-up still came out of left-field.  On the face of it, this isn’t quite what the doctor ordered.  HSBC is going to be the owner of the accounts and the customers, with a 50:50 profit share arrangement for M&S, so we’re not seeing the entry of a new player in the market, so much as an extension of choice (and convenience) for current M&S shoppers.

And yet.

M&S and HSBC have a track record in financial product provision – M&S Money has been owned by the bank since 2004, and the extension into current accountsand mortgages looks like a logical extension.  In any case, there’s always the possibility that if the new venture is successful then M&S might look to take things completely in house somewhere down the line – as Tesco Bank did with its divorce from erstwhile partner RBS.

Observers have been pretty unanimous in seeing this move by M&S as a range extension, rather than a genuine new dawn for High Street banking, but I wouldn’t be so categoric.

The same names have been coming up in the industry for a couple of years now as the big potential disrupters, but so far have made little more than a ripple; from Metro Bank with its vision of convenient, no-frills banking, through to Handelsbanken, with its proposition of “forward to the 1950s!” Both brands have real potential, but I wonder if there’s the space for them to grow to their full potential in a saturated market space.

The astute observer might keep half an eye on the Co-Operative Bank, which really ought to be making hay in the current climate with its avowedly and overtly ”ethical” proposition, yet which somehow hasn’t yet seized the moment.

In the meantime, we might have to look towards one of the nation’s great retailers for the next step forward in the banking industry – at least the packaging ought to be eyecatching!

Brand necromancy - or how brands are being brought back from the dead - is a phenomenon that we’ve seen more and more in recent months here at The Value Engineers, across everything from toys and entertainment to FMCG. Of course, nostalgia brands are frequently heroes of childhood, and are therefore well worth bearing in mind when thinking about family audiences – something Lou Ellerton, head of our kids and family marketing practice here at The Value Engineers, spends a lot of time doing.

So we were delighted that an article written by Lou on the subject of kids brand necromancers was published by Toy News magazine this month – you can read the article on page 32 of this month’s edition online here.

If you’d like to find out more about brand necromancers and some of the other key trends in the UK kids’ and family marketplace, you can get in touch with Lou on lou.ellerton@thevalueengineers.com.