Move over left and right brain thinking, it’s now all about thinking fast and slow – system 1 and system 2 thinking.

One of the many interesting things about this ‘new’ thinking on thinking is that it’s a great example of re-segmenting a market.

The concept of “re-segmenting a market to your advantage” has long been one of our Disruption Principles. We have often used the re-segmentation of the wine market, undertaken by new world wines when they weren’t able to use the location based segmentation the Franch and Italin wines had been using for centuries as an example of this in practice  The market went  from Burgandy and Cotes du Rhone to Chardonnay and Merlot. In the detergent market, Ariel resegmented and disrupted the established norm when they moved away from Bio and Non-Bio and introduced Ariel and Ariel Colour. Now Daniel Kahneman has resegmented the thinking market to his advantage.

Our disruption principles are a set of 20 guidleines we use to help teams challenge their existing perceptions and investigate new ways to stimulate growth. They are based on an analysis  of 50 of the most successful category disruptions across a variety of markets and sectors from beer to banking. If you would like to know more about them and how we use them please do contact us.

Our research predicted back in May that Obama would win a second term but also that he would win the swing states of Ohio and Florida (currently being processed Obama winning with 97% of votes collated) AND we also beat the pollsters and the bookies in all the states we tested in (Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Texas).

Why Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Texas? Because we knew that they have predicted the results of the election in 12 of the previous 13 elections.

Bookies had Romney as the favourite to win Florida and whilst it was continually polled in October, Romney was considered by most to be the eventual winner.

And we also know which parts of the candidates’ propositions drove voters’ choices!

Just think how our approach might be drive successful concept testing and portfolio management!

The rapid pace of change among kids’ audiences – and the brands targeting them – can make it a challenge to stay on top of what’s happening.  That’s why we produce our quarterly Kidscan report, a free review of  what’s been happening with UK kids and families.  We bring together interesting news & info from the past three months with our own analysis, to give you an easy way to keep up to speed.

Hot off the (virtual) presses, our Summer 2012 edition of Kidscan looks at developments including:

• The big news in the children’s television, film & gaming charts in the past quarter
• How Kindle titles are taking over YA fiction
• The impact of the Games on children’s toys and games (and what a Games it was! We’re still reeling from the excitement of 29 gold medals…)
• Innovation Ella’s Kitchen-style, with the launch of ‘spouches’
• How Wagamama is catering to Gen Xers with its new kids’ menu
• Kellogg’s & the Dairy Council’s solution to getting the last of the milk from the bowl
• Whether Moshi Munchies are a step too far for the Brand of 100 Licenses
• LEGO’s Team GB minifigures – the hottest new collectible to hit the shelves
• Argos’ predictions of the Top 10 Toys for Christmas (yes, it’s that time again, sorry)

Of course, you’ll also find our regular round-up of news, stats and features from the UK kids & family marketing sector. As always, thanks our friends at Swapit for letting us share kids’ hot conversation topics in ‘What Kids Are Talking About’, drawn from their tracker research into the brands that children find cool in the world of FMCG, media, retail and more.

If you’d like to receive a copy of the latest Kidscan report, would like to find out more about our recent work with kids or are interested in our thoughts on a issue you may have on kids or family-focused branding, strategy or innovation, please do give us a call.

If you’re looking to stay up to speed in between reports, you can also follow TVE Kids @lou_ellerton for all the latest news.

Happy reading!

Last week we published the latest edition of our quarterly Kidscan report, which presents a round-up of the news, stats and NPD that have caught our attention over the past three months.

Some of the developments we’ve looked at in this issue include:-

• The spin-offs that have dominated children’s television viewing in the past quarter
• How Fremantle Media’s Tree Fu Tom is winning the hearts of children and parents
• Who’s reading e-readers
• The outdoor toys catering to parents’ optimism…
• …and the toys & board games catering to March and April showers
• The tween & teen phenomenon that is the Hunger Games
• Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventures – the dawn of a new era of toy/game interactivity?
• The top toy superbrands
• How smartphones are driving forward app-related toys
• Bandai’s campaign to encourage father/son bonding
• The return of the Morrisons Disney partnership
• Tilda’s first dedicated children’s rice products
• ’50 Things to do before you’re 11 3/4′ from the National Trust

With 60 pages of analysis, including news, stats and features from the UK kids & family marketing sector, it’s well worth a read. This issue, we’d like to thank our friends at Swapit for letting us share children’s top topics of conversation with you in ‘What Kids Are Talking About’, drawn from their tracker research into the brands kids find cool in the world of FMCG, media, retail and more.

If you’d like to receive a copy of Kidscan, would like to find out more about our recent work with kids or are interested in our thoughts on an issue you may have on kids or family-focused branding, strategy or innovation, please do give me a call or email me.

Plus if you’re on Twitter, you can follow The Value Engineers Kids & Family practice here, with daily tweets of the latest news and views from the sector.

Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago I presented a Webinar on “Repositioning Positioning” which introduced our new brand framework. The framework splits brand positioning into two parts – a long term philosophy of the brand and a series of brand propositions. It differs from many of the standard brand positioning in a number of ways – it allows for more than one brand proposition to be developed and used at the  same time; and within the brand philosophy it recommends that you define a brand vision.

Now the concept of a brand vision is nothing new in itself and there are examples that are good, bad and downright ugly. Some of my favourites include

-          “To make people happy” – Walt Disney

-          “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people” – Wal-Mart

-          “To inform, educate and entertain” – The BBC

-          “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” – Google

And of course the slightly longer

-          “To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” – Star Trek

However having worked on developing a number of brand visions over the years we pooled our experience here at The Value Engineers and have created the attached little  presentation which identifies not the seven deadly sins of brand visioning – the vices, but also suggests seven virtues which can help you trump those vices.

Happy visioning