… for creativity, of course (what did you think I was talking about?). A recent workshop exercise sparked a bit of an email discussion at The Value Engineers on the best way to get oneself in the mood for being creative and innovative. A whole raft of different suggestions came up, from the delightful “watching [...]

  ‘Trends on the Horizon’ brings you the latest emerging patterns that we’ve spotted in consumer behaviour and asks how they could be relevant for brands. As many of you will know our trends practice at The Value Engineers has been going strong for a number of years. Being responsible for identifying and researching sport [...]

Last week we took the formal step of ‘wetting the head’ of the new Manhattan office. It was a small but auspicious step. We had visitors from the UK offices of all of our hub companies, as well as from Cello head office (grilling us over budgets for next year and pushing for even bigger [...]

Chatting to some colleagues yesterday the topic of Aga came up. ‘Is Aga a brand or a product ?’ one of them asked (clearly not brought up in the Home Counties). ‘A way of life’ I replied. By way of illustration, I mentioned Aga sagas (delightfully summed up by Wikipedia as  a “tale of illicit [...]

“[We want] to provide a profitable service for people that would allow them to just drive and not constantly be checking over their shoulder for a cop, or slamming on their brakes every time they see a car on the shoulder of the road, or a traffic light that looks like it might turn red [...]

Strategic wargaming is a critical way to stay ahead of the game. We have developed a range of war tactic cards that help you think about your market in a new and different way. Please see below an example. Surprise Attack & Ambush An ambush or surprise attack of an unprepared enemy can provide an [...]

According to some recent research conducted for Asda, 85% of women worry about the shape and size of their bottoms. This led Asda to team up with ‘bottom expert’ Dr David Holmes and create a new segmentation of female posteriors.  His results showed that due to modern day diets and exercise, today’s ladies have evolved in the bottom department and that the traditional [...]

‘Brand communication is just a reflection of strategy’ – Anon ‘I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant’ – Robert McCloskey ‘The great enemy of clear language is insincerity’ – George Orwell ‘Communicating sameness [...]