Last Thursday, eBay revealed its new logo. Like every redesign in branding history, it’s generated lots of feedback, with reactions from everyone from marketers and creative designers to users and non-users. Almost all of the comments have focused on the physical redesign – whether it looks more generic, has diluted its brand personality etc.

However like most creative aspects of a brand there are in fact two set of questions to think about: yes, the executional questions, but before that come the equally important strategic ones.

The public focus on the execution made me think further on the strategic issues of eBay’s redesign of its identity – and in particular, the timings of this. So without wanting to add to the design commentary, let me say that I think that on a strategic level, the timing is about right.

From my perspective, companies should consider refreshing their brand’s visual identity and/or logo when one of the following is happening:

• When the brand visual identity starts looking outdated and not in line with current context
• When it no longer fully represents what the company does or the brand stands for
  It’s important that you avoid a disconnect between who you are, what you do, and what you look like. This may be because your business has taken a new direction or has a new focus. You may have added different products or services, or developed new brand extensions.
• When the company or brand wants to reach new audiences
• And of course you may need to do this at times of merger and acquisition

What companies should not do is to change or refresh their logo or visual identity just for the sake of it. There should be a strategic business purpose behind it.

Changing a company’s visual brand identity has its risks. Not only can it affect brand familiarity or recognition, but it can also affect consumers’ esteem for the brand – and consequently the overall stature of the brand. My colleague Kamil Michlewski gave some examples recently of times when new logos for certain brands have not been well received.

In the case of eBay, the company has moved on considerably since its launch 17 years ago. It’s no longer simply an auction site for mostly used things. Today, almost two-thirds of the goods it trades are sold and bought new and at a fixed ‘Buy it now’ price. So it absolutely makes sense that the company now wants to reflect this great evolution with a refreshed visual identity.

Here at the Value Engineers we have helped many big and small companies to revitalise, relaunch or refresh their brands. So we know strategically when it’s right for companies to do so – and what it takes to build and nourish successful brands over time. If you feel the time is right to do something with your brand, then do get in touch.

When online grocery shopping really took off, around 2004, it was seen as the next big thing. Consumers were fascinated with the idea of hassle free shopping.

Then the novelty of shopping groceries online started to fade as people realised that it took them a lot of time to fill up their baskets, perhaps more than they would have spent if they had gone to the physical shop. At least, they knew more or less where things were physically located. In addition, it was the nightmare of organising the delivery. People also realised that they were missing-out on the great promotions or the new products.

Since then some things have changed (e.g. more delivery slot options, free delivery, etc.) and many people continue shopping online. However, consumers are not really being wooed by the online experience offered by grocery retailers.  It’s still tedious and time consuming. Unless you have the exact name of the variety of the product you want or its code, browsing for it is not really easy as you have to go through long list of small visuals of similar products.

However the online shopping experience for groceries may be about to change now with slingshotshopping.com – a new platform that promises to make shopping easier and more fun.

Slingshot basically allows you to add products to your existing online shopping basket from many places. You could add a product from a facebook page, pintisterest or any page as you see them in day-to-day life while browsing the Internet – meaning that you don’t longer seem to have to browse the entire site of Tesco.com or Ocado.com (or the website of the online grocery retailer you use) to look for a specific product.

The advantage for retailers, on the other hand, is that Slingshot facilitates impulse purchasing, so their sales could go up. Slingshot is already working with the bigger online grocery retailers in the UK – Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and Ocado – and is keen on adding more retailers to its platform. It has been tipped as one of top 10 start-ups in the world right now by Forbes, TechRadar and PepsiCo.

This is definitely a space that all (not only grocery retailers) need to watch out for.

Last week I joined a webinar about Mobile Banking in the UK. There were several interesting insights that were given by some experts coming from well-known financial organisations and also from a mobile banking organisation. However, what really amazed me was how many people use mobile devices to carry out payment transactions in some African countries.

Apparently around 10 million Kenyans (30% of the Kenyan population), use their mobile phones regularly to carry out payments. This is really remarkable especially when you compare it with some of the figures that we are seeing here in UK, one of the most financially developed countries in the world, where just 3 million of Britons (0.5% of the UK population) use mobile banking on a regular basis. So, can this be possible?

I knew that mobile payments were getting big in some African and developing countries but I wasn’t quite sure of the scale. This has got me thinking about the banking leapfrog that we are all going to see in such countries. I know some people could rightly tell me that mobile banking and mobile payment are two different things and that’s the reason of the disparity seen in the context of mobile finance between developed and developing countries. However, the near future will see the integration of the two categories under the umbrella of mobile finances.

So before I continue with my discussion, it is pertinent to clarify that mobile banking, what we are seeing in developed countries, and mobile payment, what we are seeing in acceleration in some developing countries, are currently considered to be two different and discrete categories of mobile finance. Mobile banking is the provision of banking and financial services through mobile devices and includes balance checks, account transactions, alert services, payments, etc.; whilst mobile payment is that type of transaction in which the mobile device is used to initiate, authorise and/or complete the payment.

The main reason why I feel developing countries will leapfrog developed countries in banking is that mobile payment transactions are fast-tracking the proliferation of banking services in those countries, where the unbanked population can be as high as 80% and the banking infrastructure is very weak with relatively few bank branches and ATMs. Clearly, mobile finance is a vital necessity in these markets, whereas in the UK, a smartphone application is seen as a ‘nice-to-have’. In fact, the Central Bank in Africa is already leading efforts to set guidelines and regulations for mobile financial transactions. Furthermore, mobile payments and banking are considered very critical for the maturation economic growth and stability of the African Union.

The other interesting factor to consider is the rapid spread of mobile phones in some developing or low income countries where mobile users are already exceeding the number of banked people. In Nigeria, for instance, half of its 150 million people have mobile phones, whilst 20% of Nigerians have a bank account and internal remittances are very high. Therefore, the introduction of mobile payments there, where the Central Bank is currently examining proposals to operators for mobile banking, will lead to a huge uptake.

The signals of how fast the banking system is moving in some developing countries are very tangible, which means that we should start now looking beyond our frontiers and engrossing some of learning about mobile payment and banking from those unsuspected places not only because technology and the proliferation of mobile applications is moving fast here in developing countries, but also because we will see the banking leapfrog here with our technologically-savvy teenagers and kids.

Last month Diageo, the word’s largest spirit drinks company, shone at the prestigious World Spirits Competition that is celebrated in San Francisco every year. It won 110 medals, of which 40 medals were gold or double gold.

One of the Diageo’s stars of the night was its Venezuelan rum Pampero Aniversario, which won a double gold medal. This is not the first time Diageo succeeds with the iconic Venezuelan brand. In 2007, Pampero Aniversario was awarded the best rum in the same competition, which gathered 86 of the world’s finest rums.

The Pampero brand’s story goes back to 1938 when Alejandro Hernandez, the son of a fisherman from Margarita Island, returned to Venezuela after his extensive travels and founded the Pampero rum distillery with some innovative ideas that changed the way rum was produced in the South American country.  It is alleged that Pampero was the first distillery that set the high quality standards that make Venezuelan rums famous.

Venezuelan rums are well known for their intense and complex flavour. The supreme quality of the Venezuelan sugar cane, produced in a geographical location where climatic factors help to age the liquor faster than in other countries. Then there’s with the guarantee that they are at least two years old (according to Venezuelan law). Finally, the oak casks in which they are normally aged make the local sugar cane spirits amongst the best in the world.

In comparison, most Caribbean rums are normally only 6 months old and many of them are aged in metal barrels instead of oak casks.

Medium bodied, rich and smooth, Pampero Aniversario is simply one of the finest rums in the world according to rum connoisseurs and aficionados. In addition, its unique short rounded bottle, enclosed in a tan leather sack, makes it to stand out from the crowd.

If you think iPhone is the king of all the smartphones everywhere in the world then think again. In South America, especially to Venezuela, two revolutions are happening: a political one, moving the country towards communism; and a technological one, The Blackberry Revolution.

The high cost of Blackberry, between 395 USD and 1500USD, considerably high for most of Venezuelans, doesn’t seem be an obstacle for the explosive expansion of the smart device in the Latin American country.

According to Telefonica, the Spanish telecom company, 70% of the Blackberries that they sold last year were sold in Venezuela. Furthermore, the levels of sales of Blackberries in Venezuela are twice as high as those in Brazil and Mexico combined. This is very impressive because the population of Venezuela is 27 million people whilst the combined population of Brazil and Mexico is almost 300 million people.

The Blackberry Messenger is what has made the device increasingly popular in the South American country, where people love to be connected with ‘lots of friends’ all the time but need to do it in safe way because of the increasing insecurity. The fact that Blackberry users can exchange PINs (personal identification numbers), text one another on a secure platform and better still without paying additional charges for each text message they send, has led to the fast adoption of the device.

In addition, the Blackberry Messenger fits better with the way Venezuelans communicate. It allows them to hold several informal conversations at the same time and show their emotions and feelings across through the use messenger emoticons.

The surge for Blackberries started about two years ago when the device was made accessible to the Venezuelan mass market, which is mostly dominated by prepaid consumers. Thus, Venezuelans, who like to keep up-to-date with last innovative trends, have become one the fastest consumer segment in adopting smartphones. According to RIM, the maker of Blackberry, per-capita adoption of smartphones in Venezuela exceeds that of Europe.

Another reason for the success of Blackberry in Venezuela is its high level of brand awareness and esteem. Brands play a big role in purchase decsions. Despite low income levels, Venezuelans always try to buy the best and most reliable brand for two reasons mainly; (1) fashion and status; and (2) inflation, combined with shortage of goods, leads to people not to save money but to buy things today because a week later they could sell them at higher price if they want to.

And what about iPhone? Venezuelans are very aware of the brand and iPods are very popular devices but Blackberry was the first smartphone that was massively accessible to the people.

Now this Blackberry effect is being seeing in other markets of the region. According to RIM, the Blackberry messenger is helping drive sales in Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile and Caribbean countries. Blackberry was the top selling smartphone in South America in the last half of 2009.

This story of Blackberry in South America is a great example of marketing strategy. Instead of reducing marketing budget in financial downturn times, RIM and Telefonica have looked for opportunities across geographical regions, looked at consumer behavioural trends and pushed consequently the penetration of their products in the fast growing regions.

Remember if people ask you for your number over there, it is very likely that they mean the PIN of your Blackberry, not your phone number!