On Sunday, The Value Engineers were delighted to be asked to contribute to two news programmes. Lou Ellerton joined Stephen Dixon and Gillian Joseph on Sky News Sunrise to discuss the multi-million dollar ad business that’s the Superbowl, building on the recent blog post from Richie Heron.

Ads in the Superbowl have become an event in themselves – not just for those in the advertising and marketing world, but also for the general American public. In fact, a survey last year found that more people in the US tuned in to watch the advertising than to watch the sport! It’s become an unofficial competition to see who’s got the new best ad, meaning that the viewing public are more engaged on the day and brands are keener to be there. The result is that prices are pushed ever further up, as we’ve seen with this year’s media costs.

Of course, the use of the Superbowl to showcase great advertising is nothing new. Coca-Cola began the trend in 1979 with its Mean Joe Green ad, to be followed by Apple’s 1984 triumph. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad launched the Apple Mac with an anti-establishment tribute to George Orwell’s ’1984′. Despite being aired only twice, it remains acknowledged by the industry as one of the great executions of the past 30 years.

Following her appearance on Sunrise, Lou went on to talk with LBC Radio’s Emma Baxter and ex-Interbrand chairman Rita Clifton about the ‘demise’ of Britain’s high streets. Sparked by Sir Terry Leahy’s comment  that the closure of small shops is a “part of progress”, the debate covered the inevitability or otherwise of such closures, and what the independents can do to combat it.

While there’s no easy answer, here at The Value Engineers we believe that continuing success is as always dependent on offering something bigger, better or different. Given that the stores can’t compete by size, it’s up to traders to focus their efforts on offering better, different, and possibly more specialist products, services and shopping experiences.

Of course, the biggest factor in the decline of local high streets is consumers’ willingness to compromise their support in favour of convenience, ease and lower prices. There’s no point in complaining about the closure of small traders if you’re doing all of your shopping on Amazon – it’s a case of ‘use it or lose it’.

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, bags, boxes and jigsaws. Of course Marmite itself was available in a range of sizes and formats. 

As a lover of the sticky black stuff I was bowled over by this store and intrigued about the idea of pop-up stores in general. Clearly the pop-up is not a new idea but this was my first such store, was in a very prestigious location and was attracting a lot of interest from passers by. What a fantastic way to promote a brand: massive exposure, huge footfall, strong word of mouth. To add to it all the store had its own Twitter feed so that true devotees could keep track of the high jinks going on at the store on the move.

With all the closed units on high streets due to the current downturn what a great way for brands to get out there and promote themselves, without taking the hit of a full store lease. Love it or hate it, that Marmite sure is clever.

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 in it…

I have used the number of brands in major shopping malls in Poland and UK as proxy for the variety of brands on the high street. It looks as though the largest shopping mall in Kraków has almost 60% more brands than the largest shopping mall in London. This might be somewhat skewed by the fact that the calibre and stature of brands at Westfield in London is substantially higher, subsequently requiring more space and visibility.

In order to correct for the ‘premiumness’ of Westfield I looked at one of the largest, and very democratic, shopping centres in Europe – MetroCentre in Newcastle / Gateshead. It turned out that it had approximately only ten more brands than the Kraków mall on a total square footage nearly twice as big.

This is by no means conclusive evidence that there is a greater variety of brands on the Polish high street, but it seems to begin telling a consistent story. Therefore, I decided to risk a series of hypotheses which might start to explain this phenomenon. Here they are in no particular order of plausibility:

Hypothesis 1: brands disappear as industry players consolidate in a mature market economy.

Hypothesis 2: consumers in Poland expect and demand greater variety after the austerity of the socialist years, where there were only few, state-sponsored brands available.

Hypothesis 3: UK is a country with greater social capital than Poland (as understood by Fukuyama), therefore, people ‘congregate’ more around socially vetted (trusted) brands.

Hypothesis 4: UK citizens and Polish citizens are different when it comes to their preferred risk levels (which could be explained through Hofstede’s Uncertainty Avoidance Index). This might lead the former to being more cautious on when it comes to brand choices and inversely may drive the latter towards being more adventurous with what brands they buy.

Hypothesis 5: the spread of modern marketing thinking, techniques and process has led to less haphazard product and brand launches in the UK when compared with Poland.

Do follow me on my quest to find out:

• a) whether the original observation holds true,
• b) if it does, which of the hypotheses gets hammered down in the relentless process of elimination and which withstands the scrutiny…

Superbrands, Cool Brands, Mega Brands - why not a list of the “Quiet Brands”? Isn’t it time that the brands that don’t grab all the headlines and make the noise got their 15 minutes of fame?

So in my list of the best Quiet Brands there will be no room for the luvvies’ brands with  have media appeal and appeal to media types. The usual suspects of Apple, Nike, Innocent and Gu will all fall by the wayside. Instead I nominate -

Greggs the Bakers – not just for students but a no-nonsense chain of great tasting, great value bakery and sandwich products which has made sure but steady progress across the nation

Primark – love it or loathe it, it’s rapidly becoming the most seen carrier bag on a high street near you

Lakeland – The housewife’s secret source of everything for the kitchen; the modern “Tupperware” without the parties

Suggestions on a (virtual) postcard please!

I noticed that research company Forrester reported this week that, whilst the wheels are falling off the high street, online retailing is set to buck the downwards trend.

As consumer confidence is increasingly battered by the tempest of recession, redundancies and beloved brands vanishing from the high street it is perhaps hardly surprising that shoppers are becoming more and more price sensitive, and will increasingly turn to the internet to price check and transact.

With a staggering ‘over 50%’ of the UK population still not shopping online there is still a real opportunity for manufacturers and retailers to turn the downturn into an opportunity and to maximise online sales, but there are real challenges along the way.

1) There is major uncertainty. This will be the first recession in which online retail will play a wide and significant role

2) Few segmentation models and consumer insights adequately understand how different segments are going to respond

3) More high street names are going to topple. Some manufacturers are going to see key partners vanish

So, challenging but exciting times. I am certain that increasing price sensitivity will push not only greater numbers of consumers, but a higher share of people’s spend, through online channels. What will be fascinating to see will be how the late majority and the laggard consumers embrace online retail, and how the online space evolves to accommodate and exploit their needs.

In particular, many brands may now get the opportunity to engage with existing loyalist consumers in a new environment, providing not just a helping-hand in the downtimes but also the possibility to build even stronger relationships with them.