A few weeks ago, we published the first in a series of papers looking at some of the meaty issues facing marketers today.   Each paper was first presented at our 25th Anniversary conference in London in June 2011:  ‘Back to the future of branding - A look at what the past 25 years of brand marketing tell us about what the next 25 may have in store’. 

Our aim was to encourage new thinking, make a few predictions and perhaps even challenge some of today’s orthodoxies.  We wanted to show that we remain as committed as ever to helping our clients out-think, out-compete and out-perform their competition.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the conference, I’m delighted to present the second
of our anniversary papers, entitled ‘Variations On The Role & Measurement of Brand’.

Co-authored by Sony Ericsson’s Nigel Turner and The Value Engineers’ Paul Durrant, the paper examines how marketers can provide consistent brand cues to help people navigate the exploding universe of mobile technology, while measuring the effect of their activities with discrete, purpose-built tools.

We hope you enjoy it.  If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in the paper, why not submit a comment below, or get in touch with us directly?

If you haven’t seen the latest ads for “the people’s pension” from B&CE check them out – nice little outline line drawing as part of a blue line stretching across the page

http://www.thepeoplespension.co.uk/

They might remind you of something you might have seen a couple of years ago…

http://player.vimeo.com/video/16059637

In an ideal world we simply would never use concepts, we’d produce prototypes of everything because there’s clearly no substitute for the real thing. However, businesses can’t work that way. Ideas must be made to fight their corner and to jump through hoops to justify every level of investment – which therefore makes great concepts and concept writing unbelievably important.

Here are a few tips on how to avoid writing bad concepts and how to write good concepts!

TIPS TO AVOID WRITING BAD CONCEPTS

1.’THE KITCHEN SINK’ PRINCIPLE

Don’t load every thought you have into one concept so there is no central idea

2.HARD SELL

Don’t try too hard and over-claim your product or service. Consumers will see straight through it

3.BORING

Concepts can often be too functional and flat and the language fails to inspire and engage your audience.

TIPS FOR WRITING GOOD CONCEPTs

1.LESS IS MORE

You don’t have to spell everything out literally! Consumers can infer a benefit.

2. TELL A CONSISTENT STORY

An insight, proposition & RTB that fits together to create a meaningful story

3. BE BOLD

The concept should be able to provoke a reaction and a POV that people can react to.

We believe that there are lots of great ideas in businesses but they’ve never seen the light of day due to badly written concepts. As part of an innovation process we think good practice is to review past concepts to understand why they failed and see if there is any ‘hidden gems’ that got lost in concept translation!

We’ve written an ‘A-Z of concept writing’ to provide guidance on how to make the most of concepts. To find out more, please contact The Value Engineers

In 1986, among other world events, The Value Engineers first opened its doors for business. In 2011, we celebrated 25 years of helping our clients build successful, profitable brands.

For us, it was never a time to look back, but rather a time to look forward and think about the coming challenges and fresh opportunities presented by an ever-changing and increasingly competitive landscape.

On 9th June, 2011, we hosted a seminar in London, entitled: ‘Back to the future of branding - A look at what the past 25 years of brand marketing tell us about what the next 25 may have in store’. 

During the seminar, we presented six papers alongside some of our past and present clients, addressing a few of what we felt were the big issues facing branding and marketing. Our aim was to encourage new thinking, make a few predictions and perhaps even challenge
some of today’s orthodoxies. We wanted to show that we remain as committed as ever to helping our clients out-think, out-compete and out-perform their competition. Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing some of the papers that were presented that day.

Here you’ll find the first of these papers, co-authored by The Value Engineers’ Katy Mousinho and Confused.com’s Mike Hoban. In a time when every market research company is repositioning itself as an insight provider, their paper asks: ‘What’s beyond insight?’

We hope you enjoy it. If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in the paper, why not submit a comment below, or get in touch with us directly?

Here in The Value Engineers kids practice, we’ve been doing some exciting work recently on the girls’ properties and toys market, the companies moving from targeting kids to targeting family audiences, and innovation for 6-10 year olds, among others.

Fortunately, we somehow found time amidst all that work with our clients to publish the latest edition of Kidscan - our complimentary quarterly report on all that’s hot in branding and marketing for kids & families.

It’s been a busy time, with the long awaited publication of the Bailey Report, the Easter films fest and the start of the outdoor toys & games season, to mention just three of the topics covered.

In other news, the past quarter saw some significant new arrivals in the television viewing charts. New properties dominated the pre-school charts at CBeebies, for example, pushing longstanding favourite Charlie & Lola into third place. 3rd & Bird, Yoko! Jakamoto! Toto and Octonauts are all emerging as strong contenders in the pre-school market, while Grandpa in my pocket has managed the difficult feat of attracting both pre-schoolers and their older siblings.

In books, meanwhile, it seems the supernatural may finally be losing some of its appeal, as the charts remained free of vampires, ghouls and other such beasties for the second quarter running.

With the conclusion to the Deathly Hallows premiering in London’s Trafalgar Square tonight and people of all ages camping out on pavements in anticipation, it’s no surprise that Harry Potter dominated the character charts last quarter, and we’ll doubtless see the merchandise climb back up the toy & gaming charts over the coming weeks. 

Finally, for those counting the days till they can start their Christmas shopping (!), our news round-up covers Tesco’s prediction for this year’s bestseller: the foot-high robots, Fijits.

You’ll find all of the above and more in the new edition of Kidscan, including film, TV, gaming and toy charts, and our analysis of a baker’s dozen of brand and marketing launches for kids and family.

So if you haven’t yet requested a copy, why not drop  me an email at or tweet The Value Engineers Kids practice @lou_ellerton, and get up to speed?