Our Chairman, Paul Walton, was recently quoted in Marketing Week discussing the growth in global male personal care brands. The full article by David Benady is available here if you have access to their Pitch section – if not then you can read what Paul had to say in the extract below:

‘The multinationals have piled into the male personal care area over recent years. “Everybody is looking for growth in flat western markets, and male grooming is such a happening area,” says Paul Walton, chief strategy director at Cello Group. But he says there are serious questions about how effectively personal care giants such as P&G, L’Oreal and Unilever are managing to cut through in the male grooming market. The difficulty, he believes, lies building  global personal care brands for men when in some markets, the whole idea of men paying too much attention to their appearance and applying skin moisturisers is considered effeminate.

“You won’t sell many ‘L’Oreal Men Expert Hydra Energetic Eye Roll-Ons’ in Dayton, Ohio. In New York and Los Angeles maybe, but men in mid-America listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd do not do skincare,” says Walton.’

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.

As per our earlier blog post announcing the Cello Consumer Chemistry conference, the Cello Group held its inaugural customer conference in the fabled Lecture Theatre of the Royal Institution on Thursday 11th June. The topic, appropriately for the scene of pioneer scientist Michael Faraday’s great demonstrations, was Creating Consumer Chemistry. The key themes were the value of smarter marketing in a constrained economy, the power and potential of using customer creativity in product development and the application of digital techniques to consumer marketing.

More than 150 people including representatives from some of the UK’s biggest and best known brands such as Boots, BP, Carphone Warehouse, Post Office, ING Direct, Xerox, Nestle, Mothercare, Heineken and GSK gathered to hear five speakers focussing on some of the latest marketing strategies including how businesses are working harder in the financial crisis.

The event included presentations from major global names such as British Airways and Unilever on how Cello companies’ innovative marketing techniques had helped their businesses.

Mark Hassell, British Airways’ Head of Customer Experience, gave attendees an exclusive preview of the new BA Club World and First service. But, he told delegates, investment in new hardware is not enough. It has to be supported by re-definition of a ‘tired’ service proposition – rather than merely by a quick ‘sheep dip’ or by re-defining performance management. Gillian James, from employee engagement experts TMI, then explained how they had worked with the cabin crew – the ‘fingertips’ of British Airways’ service – to create not just good service (which generates no loyalty) but great experiences (which do). The results? A significant increase in customer referrals and satisfaction scores which far out-performed the business case assumptions.

Krishan Lathigra of the COI and Nancy MacDonald, from research company 2CV, demonstrated how to adapt the traditional focus group methodology to make it more effective. They made it more interactive (think a private Big Brother style diary room for respondents) and they gave consumers a greater role in originating creative material. This had provided vital information and insight in the creation of a website run by The Financial Services Authority (FSA) giving money advice to young people between the ages of 16 and 24.

Andrew Needham from research consultancy Face, in a presentation co-authored with Ana Medeiros of Unilever, showed the power of co-creation. He talked participants through the process of identifying the key 1% of ‘Adfluentials’. Supported by global case studies on Axe / Lynx and Comfort, he demonstrated just how powerful and how fast ‘democratised’ innovation can be and how effective leading edge consumers can be not just in creating new propositions but even in creating new Axe fragrances.

Stephen Priestnall of Oomph and Ian Traynor of the Co-operative Financial services focussed on how disruptive digital aggregatorsand comparison sites are changing the nature of the customer journey with examples drawn from the auto industry.

Giles Lury, from The Value Engineers, used ten ‘deviant’ marketing axioms to challenge the audience to think harder and smarter as well as maximise what they already had to beat the current economic downturn. Pick your fights carefully, learn when to say no and bend the rules in your favour were three of the principles that he explored.

Cello Group Strategy Director Paul Walton, who chaired the Conference, said the event had been a great success and had highlighted some interesting talking points, adding: “Swapping ideas and success stories is an exercise to be encouraged at the best of times. However, in the financial turmoil that has touched everyone in recent months, it has never been more important.

We were glad to be able to collect together some really important industry figures, who delivered fascinating insight into how different companies have been able to connect to their consumers using innovative methods.”

Should you have missed the conference, watch the space – video clips of the conference will be uploaded on our website soon. Please also check out the Cello Conference Website for upcoming events.