The Value Engineers Kids and CITV collaborated recently to host a kids seminar with the theme of ‘Measuring Up’. There was a great turn out from clients to witness an excellent and stimulating range of presentations from CITV, Dr. Amanda Gummer (Child Psychologist), Ella’s Kitchen and of course The Value Engineers Kids.

The opening session reviewed the current dynamics and challenges of the kids market and contextualized this in a critique of key trends over the last few decades. The presentations then took on a positive and practical perspective on the opportunities for future constructive brand development with a mix of academic theory, strategic principles and practical case studies from Ella’s Kitchen and CITV, all of which successfully highlighted how this new generation of kids can be engaged to build long term positive brand relationships with both kids and parents.

If you missed this event and would like to know more, you are very welcome to email me – or if you’d prefer to talk please call +44 (0)1494 680999…

On Wednesday 17th March I was a guest speaker at the seminar entitled ‘Children in the Commercial World’. This was hosted by the Westminster Media Forum whose remit is to facilitate debate of key social issues to help inform policy making. It was extremely well attended with a mixture of both commercial companies, charities, lobby groups and politicians. all of which boded well for stimulating and construct discussions. However I was quickly disheartened to witness the chasm of opinion between those that support the involvement of children in the commercial world and those that are vehemently anti-brand and called for nothing short of the termination of all kids brands and media channels.

Industry groups such as the Advertising Standards Association and ISBA were present and helped to highlight how tightly-regulated the kids marketing sector already is and how seriously brand owners take their moral reponsibilities. Sadly this seemed to aggravate rather than appease the anti-brand extremists and as such the debate tended to go round in circles rather than finding common ground for us all to agree on and move forwards.

On the basis of this experience I sense that the kids marketing debate will rage on in political circles and further underlines the importance for companies to ensure that their kids marketing activities leaves little scope for future lobby group and media attacks.

Following the success of last year’s inaugural Cello Group Conference, we are very pleased to announce this year’s theme.

For our second annual Cello Group Conference, we bring you a viewpoint from which to survey the expanding landscape of Health and Wellness: ‘Welcome to Wellbeing’.

This wide-angled approach will give you a broader perspective on Wellbeing, access to latest thinking across sectors and marketing disciplines, and the chance to consider how to best position your brand and business for healthy growth.

Featuring speakers from across our sister Cello companies and their clients in the public and private sectors, we also have a special appearance from Professor Kate Pickett, author of influential book, ‘The Spirit Level’.

This free event will be held at the Wellcome Collection in London, on 27 April, and will run from 1030-1600.

For more information on the conference and to register, please visit the Cello Conferences website.

Our first Closeness Breakfast took place this week. Despite the terrible British weather conditions, forty people made it to Wallacespace St. Pancras in London, for a delicious breakfast and an hour of “Consumers Through the Looking Glass”.

We were really glad to have the opportunity to showcase our Closeness capabilities – combining our own thinking with successful client case studies. To whet your appetite, here is a brief summary of what was covered on the day:

Anna Eggleton, Director of Closeness at The Value Engineers, kicked off by asking company executives “how do you experience your brand’s service?”. Very often this is totally different from how the majority of their customers do! Having customers explain why they value or dislike an aspect of your service can really focus practical brand building. Talking to customers face to face also gives employees a sense of inspiration and excitement, fuelling a new commitment to growing their brand.

Nicola Craig, Head of Customer Insight at BSkyB, exhibited the rigorous Closeness programme that BSkyB have developed with The Value Engineers over the years. Aligning company thinking with customer thinking can have a fast-moving and positive effect on the way people within organisations tackle specific business problems. Our joint Closeness programme has not only embedded a more customer-focused culture within the executive team at BSkyB, but also contributed to an award winning advertising campaign for the Sky+ service. As she summised, “this allowed us to meet the human face behind the numbers”.

Charlotte Vicary, Senior Consultant, talked about some of the less obvious merits of a Closeness programme. We heard about the freedom of direction, the memorability of ‘out of comfort zone moments’, the power of honesty and the salience of story telling. Closeness can also help link businesses back into their brands through internal myth-busting, telling the story behind the numbers and giving senior executives the reality check they sometimes need.

Finally Katy Mousinho, Director of Insight, told us how one single Closeness event has the power to change how organisations think about the role their customers play in their business. Closeness can really help clients understand their own segmentations – rooting brand planning and strategy in powerful human insight.

We hope to follow the Closeness Breakfast with further events to share our ideas on other aspects of successful brand building that we work so hard to develop. We look forward to seeing you and your colleagues at one of these events in the future.

For more of our thinking on Closeness, please contact Anna Eggleton.

As previously mentioned, the first (but certainly not the last) Cello Conference was held in London on 11th June. The theme was ‘Creating Consumer Chemistry’ and the focus was on joint Cello / client presented case studies showcasing the work of five Cello companies. This included our very own Giles Lury discussing ‘Smarter Marketing’.

For those who couldn’t make it, or to revisit the day, the video below gives a flavour of the different speeches and presenters. Watch this space for details of the 2010 Cello Conference…