This weekend a few sport-loving Engineers made the trip up to Manchester to watch John Mousinho, son of our Joint Managing Director Katy Mousinho, play in the League 2 Play-Off final for Stevenage Borough FC vs. Torquay United FC. Despite the horrendous traffic on the M6 we all made it in time to see a Stevenage victory, made even sweeter by John scoring the only goal of the game in the famous Stretford End at Old Trafford.

Having only secured promotion to League Football last year the prize at stake for Stevenage Borough was promotion into Football League One, a new challenge which begins in August. Congratulations to John and the Stevenage team from a very proud Katy and everybody at The Value Engineers.

Just in time to cure lingering New Year’s hang-overs, Starbucks announced a change to its logo:  no longer will “Starbucks” and “coffee” appear on its products. Just a tailed siren will stay put, coloured in white and green. Pundits, journalists and coffee lovers each have a view. While reaction has been mixed, on key criticism is being voiced: that the logo change may limit Starbucks’ capacity to deliver on its ‘core’ product; coffee.

Yet in my view, these concerns are misguided. The logo change reflects a broader business and brand strategy.

New joiners at The Value Engineers receive weekly training on all areas of branding in a course called ‘The University of Gav’ – named after one of our experienced Engineers. A core lesson of our Uni is that brands must deliver through its products. Richard Brandson, the serial entrepreneur, said as much: “The brand is only as good as your product”.

So, where does this fit into Starbucks? Three years ago, it was down in the dumps – Frappachinos did not taste as sweet in the context of the global recession. Its CEO battled back: closing stores, but also diversifying products: in addition to coffee, it expanded into icecream, music, and tasty in-store snacks. Since 2009, it has run a series of unbranded stores that serve as ‘laboratories’ for new in-stores concepts, such as ‘open mic’ nights – a favourite of poets everywhere.

Moreover, as international sales become more important to Starbucks, a broader sense of its brand becomes important. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Taiwan may already have local coffee favourites, but what they get with the new Starbucks logo is something bigger: a unique in-store experience that delivers beyond coffee.

In sum, it is not all about coffee anymore. To be successful as a business, Starbucks needed to be something bigger – and that’s what the logo represents. It is a source of entrainment: a brand that represents quality across its products and does so while being a responsible corporate citizen. The new logo isn’t just a visual gimmick – it represents Starbucks’ broadening ambition.

As already trailed through the appearance of the Empire State building on our website, we are delighted to announce the launch of The Value Engineers North America, which is possibly our most exciting news since the company was founded twenty five years ago in 1986! 

To celebrate this great moment, we held an open house at our offices in Manhattan with the great and good of marketing and a sparkly snowman all dropping by.  Thanks to all those dear friends of The Value Engineers who came to raise a glass to our new venture.  For those who could not make it here are a few snaps of the night.

We are very proud to announce the arrival of Tim Kaner as Associate Director focusing on Capabilities and Customer Experience.

After graduating from Cambridge with a degree in Modern & Medieval languages, Tim spent the first part of his career in advertising at BMP and then Leo Burnett on categories ranging from beer to banks, shampoo to cereal and trains to Tropicana.

In 1999 he moved client side to Sony Europe, taking responsibility for the development of regional brand and product advertising and the management of creative and media agency relationships. He also worked with a global team to relaunch Aiwa as a youth-targeted brand. In 2004 Tim was appointed Director of Marketing Communications and from 2006 ran the Marketing Strategy Office with a mission to help Sony Europe build a more customer-centric sales and marketing culture. He led a change programme whose scope covered marketing capability, designing and embedding common processes and developing and implementing tools such as customer segmentation. Amongst all of this he also found time to complete an MBA, act as an adviser to the Young Enterprise scheme, be on judging panels for Account Planning Group and IPA effectiveness awards and speak at various conferences.

Tim is passionate about helping organisations understand how they are seen through their customers’ eyes and about using these insights to identify where value can be created through customer experience improvement. He and his wife have two teenage children to keep them on their toes. He tries to find time to improve his sushi making skills and enjoys skiing and scuba diving!

We are really pleased to announce the arrival of our new 2010 graduate intake of Marketing Analysts – Inese, Liana and Kwamina. They join David Holland who started earlier in the year.

Inese Smidre’s degree in Archaeology and Anthropology at Keble College, Oxford allowed her to spend university holidays doing some fascinating travelling and fieldwork. In the summer of first year she stayed with an indigenous group in Amazonian rainforest to study the social and cultural changes their community is undergoing in the face of globalisation. The following year, she changed focus entirely and spent two months in Berlin doing own ethnographic research on graffiti and street artists and their work. Inese comes from Latvia but has lived in England for the last ten years. Her interests include travelling, studying languages and studying art (appreciating not creating graffiti)!

Liana Gregorians graduated from Trinity College, Oxford this year with a degree in Modern Languages. At Oxford she was involved in music and dance, made some tentative steps into the drama scene as a director, and spent a year abroad in Paris, which satisfied and deepened a love of all things French. Liana’s working background is in fashion press and PR, but a desire to get stuck into the finer details of branding and finding out what makes people tick eventually led her to The Value Engineers. In her free time, Liana enjoys travelling, spending far too much money on clothes, and trying to catch up with all the English books she’s missed out on in the last four years.

Kwamina Korsah graduated with a history degree from Magdalene College, Cambridge in June 2010. During his time at Cambridge, he represented the university at rugby and was a member of the college student union committee. He has previous experience in the world of advertising, having undertaken a three-month internship at Mediacom in the summer of 2009, focusing on consumer insight and working on brands such as Bonne Maman, Green King, Max Factor and Volkswagen. He has also worked as a member of the ‘impact team’ at Abercrombie and Fitch in London – a real brand experience!