Last Wednesday, The Value Engineers were delighted to be asked to contribute to ITV1′s Daybreak show.

Lou Ellerton appeared on the show at the ungodly hour of 6:40am to talk about Tesco’s trials and tribulations with its Fresh ‘N’ Easy brand in the US, Philip Green’s decision to sell a 25% stake in Top Shop to a US investor, and the opportunities that a Royal baby might create for British brands. It’s an eclectic selection of topics, we agree!

If you’d like to see for yourself how Lou got on, the show is available here on ITV Player until Wednesday morning (12th December). Her comments start at 00:37, just after the ad break.

For anyone who has ever enjoyed the Subway Meatball Marinara, can I suggest the new complete Italian meal in a sandwich format? The new Tesco Lasagne Sandwich. It’s made with two thick slices of bread, a filling of diced beef in a tomato and herb sauce, layered with cooked pasta sheets and a creamy cheddar, ricotta and mayonnaise dressing.

As an avid innovation-watcher this new sandwich reminds me of an innovation trend of the 1990s: “Fusion Foods”.  Back then “Fusion Foods” was all about the blending of different cuisines and recipes, which led to new products like Chicken Tikka Masala Pizza. The current crop of fusion foods seems to be all about blending portable lunchtime formats with Italian foods.

And to prove the point BP Wild Bean Cafe has recently introduced a range of Pizza Wraps – which, as the name suggests, are a blend of pizza slice and a wrap. They are heated in the café’s on-site ovens and come in special ‘hot hold’ packaging designed to make them easy to eat on the go. I’m reliably told by a colleague who has tried one  just how good they are , so I’ll be trying one soon – all in the interests of innovation watching, of course.

If, like me, you’re a bit of a hoarder, then the Christmas and New Year period may have been a time to go through those old stacks of papers and throw lots of them out. As well as getting rid of things, however, it is also the time to find those little scraps which you thought might just be useful sometime in the future, or were just too good to lose.

Luckily for me I found one of those scraps. It was a small cutting from City AM from April 5th 2006. I kept it because it was such a good example about the power of a clear and simple vision and supporting set of values.

It relates to Tesco and quoted Sir Terry Leahy who said that a brand vision expressed in just 10 words had helped turn the supermarket into a global player. Leahy said that just before he was made Chef Executive in 1997, the directors had come up an agreed “core purpose” for the business – “To create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty”. Additionally they agreed two supporting values “No-one tries harder for customers” and “Treat people how we like to be treated”.

Since then Tesco have launched in Europe and Asia, extended into financial services and telecoms, to mention just a few of the things that have changed. But Tesco’s vision and those values haven’t changed. As Sir Terry said at the time “the bigger you are, the more important it is that you have a clear vision and a set of values that everyone understands and lives by”.

For me, great brands are built on their vision and values, their core DNA and while this remains consistent over time they also recognise the importance of preserving that core whilst stimulating change.

Retail banking is facing some massive challenges; costs are increasing as banks compete to deliver more, a broadening competitive set is changing the rules (e.g. new entrants like Tesco bank bring a new experience) and high st banks remain mis-trusted.

This all leads to the big question: “how do retail banks make money out of everyday people with everyday current accounts?”. There are 3 strategies that retail banks need to adopt.

1. UPGRADING
How do they convince customers to pay for value added accounts? The retailing banks historically have given this for free. What will convince customers of standard accounts to upgrade to premium accounts?

2. CROSS-SELLING
How do retail banks cross-sell more products to existing customers? Mortgages, savings and investments are the key products that retail banks make money on. How do they convince existing customers to buy these products?

3. CUSTOMER ACQUISTION
Historically, this is the hardest strategy. Switching accounts is very rare. According to thinkmoney.com only 7% of consumers have actually switched bank account in the last two years, with 75% of people never even considering it! How can the retail banks convince customers to switch to their bank? What are the key triggers? In the future this will be especially important considering the growing power of aggregators.

There has been much consternation in and around Westminister about the return of the “Orange man”. No MPs aren’t about to be Tango’d in another stunt for the Britvic brand but rather Tony Blair was back on the political scene.

As someone who has been asked to comment on Brand Blair for the BBC a couple of times, I thought I might venture an opinion on the reaction his speech generated, a marketing opinion though rather than a political one.

The two most obvious things to say from a branding  point of view are that the speech generated a lot of coverage and comment, and that the comments were very polarised – which is in fact exactly what you might have predicted for a strong values-led brand.

The strongest brands not only have great awareness and generate strong emotional responses and those responses are unlikely to universally positive.

Manchester United evokes strong passions – millions fanatically follow them, millions of others sing “Stand up if you hate Man U”.  Microsoft is huge but talk to Apple users and they will tell you another story. Tesco dominates the UK retail scene but it has a growing number of detractors – and of course Marmite famously celebrates the fact that is a love it or hate it brand.

So the fact that Tony Blair’s speech got so much coverage and that coverage was mixed just goes to prove that Brand Blair remains one of the strongest brands in British politics.