Just before Christmas I was stumbling along Regent Street in a haze of bright lights, expensive prices and carrier bags when I espied a little piece of what might be my own personal paradise: a Marmite pop-up shop! The store was selling a range of Marmite related objets d’arts like t-shirts, Andy Warholesque pictures, aprons, [...]

1. “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” (Maria Robinson) 2. “There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting.” (Prince Gautama Siddharta) 3. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” [...]

I’ve just finished reading Steve Toltz’s novel “A Fraction of the Whole”. Near the end there is a line which for me is a perfect example of smarter marketing… “no-one would buy life insurance if it was called death insurance”

Having recently been to Poland on business with one of our financial services clients, I observed that there appears to be a greater variety of brands on the high streets and in the shopping malls there than in UK. Upon my return to Britain I decided to quickly check if there was any grain of truth [...]

1. “Desire is the very essence of man.” (Baruch Spinoza) 2. “Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.” (Kahlil Gibran) 3. “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” (Robert Kiyosaki) 4. “A goal [...]

In my earlier post, I suggested that BMW seemed not to be sticking to a coherent brand positioning. Admittedly, this rather stark hypothesis was based on several pieces of TV advertising, not on the wealth of marketing data we would normally be reviewing. Nevertheless, I felt that there was something not entirely in order with how BMW [...]

Due to poor weather, missed sporting events and the recession the beer and cider categories have not been performing as well as expected. As a consequence, in this year’s Christmas season, supermarket offers on beer and cider have significantly increased. Alex Waters, our Director of Capabilities, comments in this week’s The Grocer: “The winter season [...]

It’s not all hard thinking here at The Value Engineers. Last week we had our annual Christmas party - with the theme of Pantomime. Here’s a section of the cast, gathered for a sing-along. Explaining pantomime to our international colleagues certainly generated some insights about British popular culture…