Jo-Ann Fabrics, a retailer in the craft and fabric space, wanted to sell more sewing machines.  Presumably this is no different to any of their competitors or, indeed, any organisation. After all, when in business is it not about selling more things to more customers more frequently?

Where Jo-Ann Fabrics approached things differently to others in in a simple premise: they actively pursued a strategy to understand their customers and what would work for them.  Now, don’t just skip over that last sentence.  Read it again.  It is definitely unordinary for an organisation to pursue active strategies and tactics to get under the skin of what their customers do and what motivates them.  Most organisations talk about it; very, very few do something about it.  The important point is to know how simple it can be to do.

Jo-Ann Fabrics used their website as a mechanism to understand what would appeal to their customers.  They did this by making the website a test and learn laboratory whereby different customers would automatically and randomly be shown different offers, website designs and tone of voice.  They looked at what customers actually did, rather than what they said they might do in a focus group.  From this, and following through to which customers purchased (or did not), they were able to gain insight about which overall propositions were most successful.  This, in turn, enabled them to think deeply about what was motivating their customers in order to hone how they communicated with them.

This led to quite a surprising offer for customers.  A deal which, on the face of it, sounds pretty dull and not very good:  Buy one sewing machine and get a second one at 20% off.  However this deal was successful-and not just in selling more machines.

But why? Well, at some level, customers evidently found the prospect of saving 20% on a second sewing machine worth having. However, generally, customers are not going to want two sewing machines and 20% is not exactly an awe inspiring discount.  The point is the offer acted as a catalyst for these customers to talk to friends, relatives and colleagues, any of whom may or may not have been in the market for a sewing machine.  It is no different to the classic ‘member get member’ schemes which you see in all sorts of industry but are often not very successful (certainly the ones I have seen in banks).  So why was this one successful?

I think it comes back to customers’ more deep seated reasons for pursuing a hobby such as sewing.  Making curtains or repairing clothes fits very much in a nurturing emotional space for people.  It relates back to the ‘gatherer’ role of our prehistory and because this is so deep rooted in our psyches, connects at a far more emotional level than the pure rationality of ‘20% off’.  What this means is that people really want to connect with others around this type of activity.  They want to share with others what they get out of it and they want others to (emotionally) benefit in the same way that they do.  It’s why you see sewing classes and clubs.  At Lexden, we have repeatedly seen with certain audience types that craftsmanship, in the form of activities like sewing, often has a significant place in their lives.  And these people often interact very closely, and have strong influence, with others who hold similar values to themselves-a lot more so than for other audiences.

When you know the above, deciding how to communicate with these people in a way that will resonate with them is much simpler.  It will just ‘feel right’ to them.  So when Jo-Ann Fabrics put this understanding together with an offer they had already observed working, the commercial benefits were multiple.  They had people finding time in their busy lives to have conversations about Jo-Ann Fabrics and about their sewing machines.  They had multiple amateur salespeople closing deals for more products.  They tapped into a pool of brand new seamsters who may not have even realised they wanted to have a sewing machine.  They have converts who will come back to buy more fabric, buttons and cotton thread (okay, so this is where my desire to know about sewing starts to diminish).

Looking at customers from a different startpoint, in order to get to a different result.  Incorporating a deep seated understanding of what makes customers tick.  An obvious and simple solution (in hindsight).  All stitched (sorry) together to give multiple benefits to the organisation.  Pretty unordinary.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

I have seen this played out in numerous focus groups involving all age and affluence groups. And the knock on effect is that whilst ten years ago the economy never featured higher than tenth place in ‘Concerning Societal Issues’ trends studies it now knocks other issues out of the park. And ‘value for money’ ambitions dominate proposition development projects we run, where ‘exclusivity’, ‘prestige’ and ‘kudos’ once featured as themes to explore.

I have accepted this economic climate is a new norm and we work within it. And assumed the rest of polite society would behave the same way. So imagine my surprise, and delight, when I took a trip recently and stumbled into a world full of happy consumers revelling in consumerism blissfully tuned out to the mood of the rest of the globe.

This was a sight I hadn’t seen for quite some time. As I looked around I realised this world I’d entered simply refused to conform to the changes demanded by the new market conditions.

Instead it had done something really quite simple instead. It had not buckled or deviated from delivering its two ‘old school’ driving motivations for existence;customer happiness and a unique brand. When I looked around I saw the advantageous signs of how this played out everywhere…

- Every street has a 100% retail occupancy rate
- Every outlet is brimming with goods and devoid of ‘sale’ signs
- Slogans such as ‘nothing makes a child happy like a new toy’ hung instead of the more familiar ‘buy me now’ desperation banners
- Every day the doors open for morning trade hundreds of waiting customers sprint in with smiles on their faces
- Customers queue for hours again and again for the experience the attractions of the town offers
- Without consideration customers purchase products they could get elsewhere for half the price
- The experience of the street has as much attention given to it as the products purchased there
- And consumers stay out until 11pm nightly to line the streets and pay homage to the face of the establishment in a firework fuelled carnival type parade.

It sounds unbelievable, but trust me, it is true. In this world Peter Pan is more real than a double dip recession.

So who has managed to keep this high street and it’s town prospering when all around them falter?

Sir Philip Green? Mary Portas? Sir Stuart Rose?

No. It’s none of the above.

It is in fact Mickey Mouse.

And along with his friends and supporting cast of thousands, they’ve created an enduring parallel world incubated from the trials and tribulations of the real one. Disneyland Paris (although I am sure the global experience at any park is the same) is a place where your recessionary evoked inhibitions dissolve and your joy for life is energised.

The customer experience is driven by satisfaction and fulfilment. Forget removing friction from the buying process. Forget price pointing. Forget competitiveness. This place proves when you think customer and act for the customer all other strategies are unnecessary. Delivered in a consistent fashion from the valet to the man at the top when he joins you for breakfast.

For brand and proposition specialists like Lexden, this magical kingdom is a reminder of what can be achieved when you choose to look at the opportunity from a customer’s perspective. And contains a bounty of ideas on how to keep customers coming back for more, happily ever after.

Posted by Christopher Brooks.

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris & @consultingajai.

The pattern I noticed even in our body of work is the popularity of the technology themes. Commerce is obsessed it seems. That’s good news for us because less than 0.5% people buy technology. Like everything consumer’s buy, it’s because it fulfils one emotional state or another.

And clients value our ability to humanise the emotional benefits of a technological advancement adopted by a brand for its customers. But even we can’t escape a lot of the time a technology is involved in part of, or is the solution to our proposition work. But in a world where Apple, Microsoft, Google and IBM are the best global brands, should I be suprised?

So when we come across a story where an advancement is being made which doesn’t leverage technology, it stands out. And when it’s a passion/need motivated start up taking on some of the biggest brands in an established market…and turning heads, we knew it must be subscribing to the Unordinary approach we preach. We were right, so explored some more.

Friends Vicky Marshall & Jonathan Self were looking for an alternative to processed dog foods. They were new dog owners and alarmed by the stories associated with processed dog food. Ranging from skin infections from ticks in the wheat to plaque in dry foods causing tooth decay. The more they read the more they discovered, such as claimed links between processed food and behavioural problems in dogs and even associations with cancer. They were convinced they would find a better way.

They discovered ‘fresh food’ diets. But it’s not part of the major pet food manufacturers’ product portfolio, so isn’t well known. Even rarer than a vet who would say feeding raw was bad for a dog (after all how did dogs survive before processed tins arrived!), was finding a company that provided raw food for dogs and supporting diet plans to help owners. Supported by a local vet they (and here’s the unordinary bit), without anything more than a belief and desire to do better for their dogs, created a company to produce and distribute Raw Food diets. Darling’s Real Dog Food (which has become Honey’s Real Dog Food) was born. With a new dog each but beyond this no credentials, (Vicky and Jonathan are financial services marketing heavyweights) they knew the learning curve would be steep. But they backed themselves and took the leap.

Armed with a vision for healthier pets and a few recipes Vicky headed off to the local farmer to buy a cow. The farmer explained he was used to the cast off cuts going towards dog food, not prime cuts. These off cuts would be treated and processed before a dog saw them. Vicky and Jonathan heard all they needed to know they could provide a real alternative. And so, with a few years experience under their belts now (and some amusing tales), what was a desire to help their own dogs live healthier lives has become a business involving more than 20 people.

And when you read and see how they approach their work you realise here is a company truly dedicated to its stakeholders: pets and their owners.

Honey’s Manifesto for Success

1. Honey’s will assess every dog individually and tailor a food plan for them (with one woman this meant plans for all 8 dogs!)

2. The food plans contain approximately two-thirds raw meat and ground bone and one-third grated raw vegetables – prepared daily on their premises

3. If a customer wants to take the responsibility of sourcing their own food, Honey’s are happy enough because they have another dog converted to Raw food plans even if not the order

4. Honey’s have no waste products because it’s all quality cuts of meat and they use the bone

5. Everything is 100% organic, locally sourced and farm assured

6. The planning and first week’s food plan are free, so that owners can trial the difference before committing

7. Honey’s supports dog rescue shelters that reach out to them

And are they making a difference at Honey’s?

Absolutely. The raw food is providing a better more healthier option for dogs on the plan, which in turn is making owners feel better about their canine parenting skills. The lady with the 8 dogs (mentioned above) has found that after 6 months the savings on her vet bills significantly outweigh the cost of going raw. Vicky has spoken on BBC Radio London’s ‘Barking at the Moon’ dog programme and has been inundated with follow ups from dog owners thanking Honey’s for improving the weight, the life expectancy and the behaviour of their dogs.

They also now exhibit at Crufts. Vicky recalls that at their first turn out people were saying, ‘what’s this?’ and at the most recent event people were saying, ‘I’ve heard about this. I must switch over’. Coupled with the book, the website, a team of converted influential dog owners spreading the word and a growing number of vets giving the thumbs up, things are moving along nicely.

And with requests from wholesalers to go mainstream (which they won’t because it dilutes the quality), they know they are heading in the right direction.

In fact, when I spoke to Vicky she felt that from a marketing perspective (Vicky was a former senior marketer at Nationwide) this may have been her most successful ‘prospect to new customer acquisition’ and ‘customer retention’ experience so far!

In a billion pound market with clear leaders, it’s great to see a new entrant with a different offer. So the skills Vicky and Jonathan ascertained in their respective marketing roles which taught them to stick by the customer with a differentiated and meaningful offer, have come good. In a market as far removed from financial services as imaginable.

If Honey’s Real Dog Food is anything to go by perhaps you can teach an old dog industry a new trick or two, after all!

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

With that in mind we went to the Prepaid 2012 conference and expo in Victoria last week to see what the industry was saying, what was new and what type of beer they were serving.  As usual, we found lots of interesting people with great insights, new technologies and innovations.

We attended a really interesting session about the use of prepaid in marketing, hosted by Kevin Harrington, Managing Director of Global Prepaid Exchange.  He spoke about why retailers such as Starbucks and Subway offer promotional offers to their customers via gift cards, allowing them to put money straight into the hands of the consumer.

He articulated the benefits the retailer gets from understanding their customers better through the data which is captured.  He explained how retailers can typically expect to get higher margin sales, new customers they would not otherwise get and incremental sales of 40% above the amount loaded onto the card.

But the story we liked best was his last.  He told the audience about a prepaid programme which was implemented by the US Navy aboard their aircraft carriers.  On first glance it would seem hard to equate how the benefits a retailer gets from a gift card type programme can equate to the goings on aboard a warship.  But that would be looking at things from the conventional gift card perspective.  Instead the Navy looked at it differently.  Any (military) ship has to run as efficiently as possible.  That means they are compelled to look at any way they can to make improvements to their operations.  Ships whose job is to go to war always have limited resources and have to ensure their logistics are as simple as possible.  It is against this backdrop that they saw an opportunity to totally take away cash from aboard the ships via a prepaid programme.  By doing this, they removed the need for sailors to carry notes and coins.  They removed the need to have ATMS on board.  They removed all the security issues of having huge amounts of cash aboard.  And they removed the need to have specialist personnel to look after all that money.  But what was the biggest benefit to them?  Well by removing all the physical assets associated with cash, they made the aircraft carrier lighter by three tonnes-you can imagine the savings in fuel costs alone of such a reduction.

It could be that this was a brilliant display of unordinary thinking on the part of the US Navy.  Or it could be that it was simply a fortuitous by product of their decision to do something different in their ‘business’.  Either way, I don’t think it matters-they got enormous benefit by thinking about their problem differently and being brave enough to change the way they do things.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

More recently, I came across a similar anecdote (courtesy of ‘Have I Got News For You’) but with an even bigger discrepancy between the size of David and Goliath.

The Olympic Games, both as a spectacle and as a brand, long ago ceased to be about competitors simply being the best in their chosen field and participating in an event which is the pinnacle of their careers.  The Olympics are a commercial machine.  With London 2012 forecast to cost anywhere between £9 and £11 billion, private sector funding in the form of sponsors is a hugely important component of this.  And these sponsors, because they are paying very large sums of money for the exclusive right to associate their brand with the Games, want to make sure their investment is protected.  This means they do not want other brands muscling in and compromising their objectives.  This makes sense.

What it means is that, legally and officially, there are defined guidelines and rules about what a business can and cannot do with regard making any type of reference to the 2012 Olympics within their own marketing or business operations.  These guidelines are detailed, specific and enforced with the might of the IOC and Acts of Parliament and apply no matter whether you are a multi-national competitor to the lead sponsors or the lady with a small business on the corner near the site.  Whoever you are, you cannot use the Olympic rings, the number ‘2012’ alongside ‘London’, the mascot, the Latin motto: Citius Altius Fortius….the list goes on and on.

But this post is not about that they whys and wherefores of this.  It is not about whether the IOC has problems with corruption of whether the ‘Zil’ traffic lanes will cause chaos and confusion in the summer.  It’s not even about how many medals Team GB (another term which cannot be used) will win.

It is in fact about how a tiny established business has dealt with being impacted by the biggest travelling show in the world. It is a story of what the owner of Café Olympic in Stratford, on the doorstep of the Games, has done in response to the enforcement order they were served with by the authorities looking after the interests of the Olympics sponsors. This ordered the cafe to change the name of their establishment for the duration of the Games, since it infringed the rule which means the words Olympic’, ‘Olympiad’ or ‘Olympian’ cannot be used.  The owner estimated that it would cost £3000 to alter the name, signage and related material.  Or maybe more to refuse, which would then make a contribution towards the funds to cover the £9-11 billion.

So what does someone do when they are faced with something which would, in all likelihood, force the closure of the business and the loss of their livelihood?

Well it forces them to think differently. Which in turn enables them to create an unexpected solution.

This is what they have done:  they have covered up the ‘O’ on their sign so that the establishment is now called Café Lympic.  Given the location of the Games in the east end of London, the solution gets better if you imagine, in your mind’s voice, how the owner might say it.  Think someone like Bianca in Eastenders and you can see why it is the perfect victory.  Worthy of a Gold medal in fact.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

If there is something I admire in a person it is when they are true to their inner brand. What do I mean by this? Well most of us will compromise the way we want to do things in life due to one circumstance or another. We will find a reason to explain why we couldn’t do it our way, or how the ‘system’ prevented it from happening as we planned. But I don’t think that has to be the case.

If your thinking, personality, decision making and actions are aligned to your inner brand, then there is no reason why you can’t still achieve what you want on your terms. And for that you need to start with one believer (you) and when you achieve, you will notice an army inspired by you too. It is these ‘true to their inner brand’ characters in life that you don’t see too often. But when you come across them they should be celebrated for they are the true pioneers. Of course Steve Jobs takes his place at the top table of the Unordinaires but here are three other candidates to sit alongside him (four if you look closely).

#1 Bubba Watson

I’m not a big follower of golf on TV, but I’ve been captured by Bubba’s story. He has recently won the US Masters at Augusta and is ranked 4th in the world. But when asked, he describes himself as “a Christian,  a husband, a daddy, a pro golfer and an owner of General Lee 1. My style is #awesome” – in that order (at least he does on Twitter). In the world of golf, convention would say learn the game from lessons from professionals in clubs. Be taught by the best. However, Bubba has never had a lesson in his life (apart from one with his Dad). And where safety shots in a competition out of the rough can tactically turn a game, Bubba says, “If I have a shot, I have a chance” – as his shot from the rough on the 17^th at the Masters showed. He has an unorthodox swing and he owns a General Lee. His website states, “I didn’t get this far in my dreams”. If Bubba had trained his game through lessons, or been more fixated on golf than his family would he be this successful or this happy? He stuck to his inner brand, did it his way and still reached the top.

# Kyle MacDonald

It was probably Malcolm Gladwell who introduced me to Kyle’s work. This is a visionary who traded up a red paper clip to a house. Inspired by the ease of playground trades and finding his other ideas weren’t generating revenue for him and his girlfriend, Kyle set up a barter site and asked if anyone would swap anything for a red paper clip. Two girls thought it was fun and swapped a fish pen. He exchanged this onwards and upwards including old lawnmowers, concert tickets, a motorbike and eventually a house.

He kept to his plan, he believed someone would have more need for what he had to trade than he did, and that would be rewarded with something of greater value than he traded. It worked. It’s an unordinary life plan and maybe one too risky for most of us. But it is now marketing folklore and a great demonstration of the power of perseverance.

#3 Lionel Logue

I watched The Kings’s Speech last week. Although I know the story quite well, the film helped to crystalise something I had overlooked about the brash and bolshie Australian, Lionel Logue. And that was his commitment to his inner brand. He, without qualification, rose to Commander of the Guard under George VI. As an unqualified speech therapist, his experience from helping WWI soldiers gave him confidence and passion to help others. But what came with Lionel was a fierce ‘on my terms’ conditioning which was not compromised even when invited to assist the King of England. The result was an inspiring speech from a King, comforting the nation at a most fragile moment under the cloud of WWII commencing.

Lionel flew in the face of tradition and centuries of familiarity to achieve the task he was set. And never (according to the historians), wavered from his view of what would work.

These three characters all share that same accolade of achievement without compromise. They had no Sherpa to guide them, just an instinctive moral compass.

Too often, we default to the conventional path, or as Stewart Lee brilliantly portrayed it in his latest stand up tour, we get by in Carpet Remnant World. A tale of compromise which will have you striving to achieve more on your terms should you be brave enough to see the show. If you haven’t seen Stewart Lee before; don’t go please. By his request.

There are many more idols and figures of inspiration out there. Follow them. Learn from them. Watch them make it up as they go along. See them take uncalculated risks. Finally applaud them when they successfully arrive at their destination with their integrity intact.

Find your inner brand. Find your purpose. Find your path. Stick to it.

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands. 

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Wilson Harrell was an American entrepreneur with a highly effective domestic cleaning product, Formula 409, and had got it to a point where he had approximately 5% share of the market.  He was confident in his product, knew that customers liked it and felt sure that he could continue to grow.

Then the type of bombshell which, you would think, any entrepreneurial outfit must dread: the behemoth producer of consumer goods, Procter and Gamble, started test marketing their own competing product.  Regardless of whether P & G’s new product might be better than Formula 409, Harrell knew this was a grave threat to his business.  With P & G’s gigantic marketing budgets and expansive distribution networks, the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to do something.

Harrell knew two things which would prove critical.  Firstly he knew his customers.  He knew what they liked about his product, how they used it and how frequently they purchased it.  Secondly he knew how an organisation like P & G would behave and that they would make their decisions with a primary focus on their internal targets, processes and requirements.  It was from these insights that Harrell developed a two staged strategy.

Formula 409 discovered that P & G were planning to test their product, Cinch, in Denver.  Harrell knew that, like any big organisation, P & G would see how their product performed in this test to then decide how to formulate their national launch strategy, project sales volumes, apportion advertising spend and forecast how quickly they could anticipate their return.

But how could Harrell hope to compete on a nationwide basis?  Realistically, he simply did not have the resources and pockets to put Formula 409 up against P & G all over the US.  If Cinch rolled out nationally, prospects for Formula 409 were bleak.  Surely his only option was to leverage his knowledge of his customers, take the gloves off and go into battle in Denver in the hope that he could beat Cinch and hence dissuade P & G from going national?  No.  Instead Harrell stopped all advertising of his product in the Denver area.  He discouraged reorders from his customers.  He let Cinch win and P & G rolled it out nationally.

At this point, Harrell implemented the second, genius, stage of his strategy.  Along with a half gallon size of Formula 409, he bundled a second smaller sixteen ounce bottle, priced it at a huge discount and sold it to whoever he could.  He knew that his customers liked his product, would find his promotion attractive and would buy it.  What he also knew from his prior experience of selling Formula 409 was that when they bought it, they would not need any cleaning liquid for at least the following 6 months.  They would be out of the market and would not bother to look at Cinch.  Thus, Cinch’s potential audience became much smaller than P & G expected and they were not able to hit the aggressive national sales targets they had projected from the Denver test.  This, in turn, meant they did not make the returns they had forecast.  Which, in turn, meant that Cinch was withdrawn from the market within 12 months.

Which meant the little guy won.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands. 

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Hiring the wrong people costs businesses millions.  From the CEO who formulates the wrong strategy, through the senior manager who cannot appropriately engage their staff to the operations associate who has a problem with punctuality, the upfront financial cost of getting these people in the business is never recouped.  Let alone the non-financial costs in terms of lower morale for the staff who were there before the person started, and who probably knew there would be problems from day one.

So much about deciding whether a person will fit into an organisation comes down to deciding on the ‘chemistry’.  Now this is something you cannot get from a beautifully written two page CV.  It is pretty difficult to ascertain from a one to one interview.  And you only gain marginally more information from one of those group interview exercises where individuals are observed by senior managers, whilst completing a task as part of a team.

Very few jobs do not require a significant amount of interaction with fellow colleagues and staff members.  If a new hire does not fit in with the existing processes, procedures and personalities then it is not hard to see that the team dynamic will be altered and productivity will suffer.  It can have a major impact on the business.

Pret a Manger have an interesting way of mitigating the risk of this happening.  They ask all prospective new hires to work for a day in a typical Pret shop (for pay).  At the end of their day, the existing Pret team members then vote on whether they should be hired.  Simple.

There are, I think, two reasons why this is a great approach.  Firstly it gives Pret the best chance of making the right hiring decisions in the first place-who better than the team members the person will work closely with to make the decision?  And secondly, by empowering the team to make the hiring decision, Pret makes the team jointly responsible for ensuring the success of the new staff member.  Since they are on the line for the decision, there is no way they won’t make every effort to assimilate the new hire.

It is certainly a different-unordinary-approach to the market norms for hiring staff in the coffee shop/fast food industries.  But if you look at Pret’s growth, consistent customer experience, happy looking people and low staff turnover, they seem to be in a very different place to their competition.  Who says democracy does not work?

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

But some internal stakeholders might claim that repeating the same process of improvement will only lead to diminishing returns and eventually become counter productive. And at the risk of being presumptuous they are possibly right. This ‘tackle the problem head-on’ approach will probably not arrive at any business transforming outcomes or miracle consumer betterment either.

So what’s the alternative? Well you may not need to change the process which is the usual focus. Instead, be unordinary in your thinking and simply think more broadly about what customer improvement could mean. We typically focus on the sharp end. But we don’t always need to connect the improvement to sales. Improvement to brand perception or purpose of business can increase overall consideration which in turn increases the chances of customer preference.

Here’s an example from the unordinary thinkers at customer data authentication company CAPTCHA. When they looked at the improvement challenge side-on it enabled a much stronger and more significant ‘customer’ betterment to emerge.

An estimated 200,000 hours are spent by us every day typing in words to authentic ourselves as human users and not computer viruses on millions of websites across the world. The folks at CAPTCHA knew that whilst serving a beneficial service to us consumers, we saw it as a bit of a tedious chore.

Thinking about what could be done to improve the situation and pondering a more interesting way for individuals to verify who they are, the marketers at CAPTCHA concluded that what they’d created was still the best solution for customers, even if we didn’t get excited about it.

So they looked at the challenge from a different angle and framed it as as, ‘How can we make better use of the experience?’ This changed the direction of their thinking and attracted new attention. Google, now their parents, shared a project they were working on to digitise ancient books in order to ensure the scripts were captured and preserved electronically forever.

They were using “Optical Character Recognition” (OCR) which photographically scans the word, and then transforms it into text. However it often does not recognise words which it flags up, as the image below shows.

To get these missing words authenticated requires manual intervention. Which if paid for would be expensive and time consuming…enter reCAPTCHA. And with it those 200,000 hours of free consumer resource every day!

How the reCAPTHCA miracle works?

The image of the unknown text is sent in the form of a reCAPTHCA code to the website where you are authenticating you are who you say you are – added as a second word to a ‘known’ first word. And then when you authenticate your personal details you now type in two words. As the first is known, if you match that correctly, reCAPTCHA accepts your deciphering of the second word too. And when it has 15 consistent matches from different users, the word is created from the image and added to the page from which the OCR took it.

So every time you are deciphering wobbly letters to verify you are not a virus, look for the ReCAPTCHA logo. If it’s there you are participating in the world’s largest book digitisation programme ever.

And with over 250,000 Google books and old copies of the New York Times currently being updated, your authentication code is achieving more for society than just protecting your identity online. Future generations will now have access to old, rare and important fragments of history that may have perished without digitisation, thanks to ReCAPTCHA and you.

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands. http://www.lexdengroup.com

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris or @consultingajai.

I think this analogy holds when you think about the dynamics of competitive commercial markets.  Just look around.  So often, customers see very little discernible difference in the major elements of what is being offered to them.  The place to differentiate is in the mass of small things within a product or service which can make a difference to customers.

But which small things will make the difference?  It would seem starting with the customer would be a logical place-Sir Terry Leahy, ex Chief Executive of Tesco, used to say “follow the customer and the profits will come”. I’d been told about the following example, but was reminded of it’s impact a recent event I attended.

The world of pensions and annuities is complex, competitive and not overly dynamic.  It is defined by the market norms with little or no innovation.  When a customer has to purchase an annuity they will typically follow a reasonably painful process where they phone around a number of providers to individually obtain quotes from each.  These will last for 30 days.  There then follows a period of careful consideration since this is a hugely important financial decision-it is about your future income in retirement so has massive implications and will not be something you want to rush.

A certain pension provider did something in recognition of this.  Call centre staff said that individuals holding a pension with the provider were first obtaining an annuity quote from themselves before ringing around a number of other providers to check out what else was available.  They would then think about their decision for a few weeks before ringing the provider back to tell them what they were going to do.  It was from here that call centre staff spotted the opportunity.  Very often, the amount of time people had taken in making their decision exceeded 30 days.  This meant if they wanted to choose a different provider, they would need to ring back and obtain a fresh quote.  Staff noted that customers would get exceedingly frustrated at this point since they could not now get what they wanted without another loop of time and hassle.  So staff advocated a simple change in the business: they made their quotes valid for 60 days.  This meant that when a customer was getting frustrated, staff could immediately give customers an option by simply saying that their quote was still valid.  And guess what many customers did?  Despite the fact that a customer could, presumably, still get a better deal by obtaining a new quotation, the provider’s own conversion rates increased.

By providing a simple solution, or alternative, at a point where the customer really wanted it, they were able to generate positive benefit to their business.  And in competitive markets, it is this type of little thing which can be the difference between glory and defeat.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris or @consultingajai.

I was lucky enough to be at an inspirational evening with SJ Watson last week including a reading from his best-selling crime novel, ‘Before I go to sleep’. As many will know this is his debut novel, in fact the fastest selling crime book ever from a new author. And before it even hit the number one spot in the Times crime novel list, Ridley Scott had snapped up the film rights. Which for an author who still holds a part time (although not drawing a salary) post with the NHS his story seems more like fiction.

During the evening he revealed how this overnight success actually took many months of writing and editing and a few years before that believing and growing in confidence as a writer. Which owed as much to the creativity in his process as anything else.

As the evening unfolded I was looking to pick up tips to help stimulate my own future writing ambitions but, in truth, I was finding I was also picking up a number of creative thinking suggestions to improve my present occupation as a strategic marketer.

Through his explanation of the creative writing process I found there were some interesting parallels between his world and my own. We both look to create a plan to achieve a goal and are heavily reliant on smart interpretation of research to create structure and need to inject this with creativity to achieve compelling output. Whilst I’m not convinced a strategic marketing plan would ever make the Richard & Judy Book Club, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be a boardroom page turner.

I believe great marketing strategy is achieved when you focus on where you take ideas to, not where you take them from. So with that in mind, indulge me and I’ll illustrate two of the many things from the world of crime writing which you can apply to the strategic marketing day job:

#1 A crime novelist researches characters; a strategic marketer looks deeply at customer insight

In order to breathe life into characters and develop their profile, SJ Watson looks for neatly packaged articulations of a life. And he finds these in obituaries, where a person’s entire life is summarised. Their stand out moments, achievements and defining characteristics are captured in a few short paragraphs. Very quickly you recognise and establish a portrait in your mind. Take this back into customer insight activities to frame segments and you will find it a very smart, and quite dramatic way to bring a segment to life. Try it, it works.

#2 A crime novelist builds his story around ‘magnetic ideas’; a strategic marketer develops ‘propositions’

SJ Watson also spoke about the strength of an idea as a magnet. It can be measured by the amount of related elements that can be drawn and attached to it. Which, in turn, strengthens it. Look at strategic marketing and we seek to build propositions which achieve the same magnetism by being able to incorporate the assets of a brand, resonate with the emotional needs of customers and optimise the capabilities of a business.

However, perhaps marketers try too hard to tick all the boxes of the proposition build checklist or an A3 mind-map template.  If, instead, we think about it within the laws of magnetism, it allows the mind to reach out to a wider selection of ‘attractive’ elements. And, when visualised, these elements will be pulled towards the central thought. You’ll find that your mind will repel the less attractive but those elements it allows to attach will make the central idea even more powerful.

Both are unordinary approaches to arrive at better outcomes for conventional challenges. That evening made a big impression on me. I caught up with the author afterwards and he acknowledged the importance of looking beyond the obvious places to find something extraordinary. The fruits of his method are in abundance in his novel. Do read it, it’s wonderfully original and executed in a captivating fashion.

Overall it reminded me of the extra energy and different perspective you can gain when you look at the challenge from an alternative starting point, or even apply a different logic and approach.  And, by doing this, you get to interesting outcomes you may never have considered.  Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris and @consultingajai.

Generally it is tempting (and rational) for businesses to talk about the specification of their product in customer communications since so much of their internal resources are focused on improving their products.  “We put a lot of resource into making our product faster/cheaper/bigger/smaller/ lighter/thinner-we should tell customers just how much”.  Thus we are bombarded with numbers and stats which, for most people, are pretty irrelevant (640 GB hard drive, 16 megapixels, £3,000,000 repatriation insurance cover).  And even if the numbers are relevant, let’s face facts, it is a little dull.

But does this have to be the case?  It is not that I think that the specification is not important-far from it.  It is just that it has to be made relevant to me before I will engage with the product or brand.  And being relevant to me starts with communicating about a product in a way that I remember.

I guarantee you will remember this.  An iPhone smoothie.  Check out this video for a brand of blender you will never forget (millions already have):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

I have no idea how Blendtec decided to come up with the “Will it blend?” campaign.  However I would like to think it went something like this:

The smart marketing guys walked into the lab whilst the geeky manufacturing people were goofing around (ignoring health and safety) shoving all manner of objects into the blender they had built.  The smart marketing guys, tired of simply producing press adverts with a pretty product picture stating the blade speed and a reference to “makes nice smoothies”, spotted an engaging way to tell the Blendtec story to their customers.  One of them went home, got his video camera, knocked on the CEO’s door and told him what they needed him to do.  Two hours later they posted a video on YouTube.  A few years on and well over 100 blended objects later, the videos have won multiple industry awards and coverage on shows like Jay Leno to millions more potential buyers. Blendtec and its campaign have had more than 180 million views on YouTube.  180 million. If anyone has any idea what kind of conventional marketing budget it would take to generate that much engagement with that many customers then let us know.  In a rather understated way Tom Dickson, the founder of Blendtec and star of the videos, says it best: “Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercials and our retail products”.

Whilst writing this post, I thought about going to the Blendtec website to check out which metal the blades were made out of and how many revs per minute (is this even a proper blender metric?) the specification is.  But I didn’t.  Because it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that this brand of blender has been communicated to me in a very unordinary way that I will probably never forget.  It brought a smile to my face, proved to me that it is a great blender and has encouraged me to tell many other people.  I am not currently in the market for a blender.  However when I eventually am, there is no way I will not check out Blendtec’s blenders as part of the process.  And I think I will probably end up buying one-although I doubt I will bother to find out what metal the blades are made out of.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Taking control of a situation and not being a victim.

Deciding to be proactive and finding the best way to hit the ball back.

These are all states of minds.  They are specific behaviours and a way of thinking that individuals and companies can choose to exhibit and practise.  They can lead to powerful, different outcomes and create positive advantage for organisations.  Consider the following.

The late 50s and early 60s was the time of the Cold War.  Two ideologies and two main protagonists:  the USA and the USSR.  However Fidel Castro’s Cuba, given its proximity to the US coastline, occupied much of Washington’s thinking.  The US government were intent on trying to precipitate a popular uprising against Castro and force the overthrow of his government.

Over the years, numerous strategies and tactics were employed by the Americans to try and persuade the Cuban people of the merits of democracy and the benefits of US life.  One such initiative however, had an unforeseen consequence.  The US government loudly made it clear that any Cuban citizen who braved the sea journey and arrived on its shores would be granted citizenship.  Intended as a positive public relations story for the world, it did not really end up that way.  The Cuban hierarchy sensed an opportunity: overnight, they released all the inmates from their prisons, gave them a couple of boats, and waved goodbye and good luck to them on their journey to a new life in the land of the free.  Not what the Americans had in mind I suspect.

A second anecdote from the world of marketing.  The Virgin brand has been around a long time now and has maintained a justified reputation for looking to do things differently (see our recent post on Virgin Money’s recent entry into UK banking).  It seems they have a culture which values pitting their thinking against the other players in their markets, putting customers first, and maybe making life difficult for the competition.  The following is, in my opinion, one of their best demonstrations of this.

In the mid-eighties, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic were locked in a battle for the lucrative transatlantic market.  As the summer season came around, British Airways ran a big promotion giving away 5,200 seats for travel on June 10th.  Not having been there at the time, I am unsure of the exact commercial objectives of the promotion.  However, it seems fair to guess that garnering some positive news coverage and a halo effect of letting so many people fly for free would be obvious benefits.  I wonder what the reaction at BA was when they saw Virgin’s ads the next day?

“It has always been Virgin’s policy to encourage you to fly to London for as little as possible. So on June 10 we encourage you to fly British Airways.  As for the rest of the year, we look forward to seeing you aboard Virgin Atlantic.  For the best service possible.  At the lowest possible fare.”

 The promotion generated lots of media coverage for BA.  And each time it was mentioned, guess what?  So was Virgin’s response.

We are all capable of thinking in a way that is front foot and proactive-it is an attitude rather than a tactical device.  It is not defined by the market norms or the strength of your competition.  It is simply about being unsatisfied with other people setting the agenda, often simply to retain the status quo, and figuring out how to move the conversation to a place which benefits you and your customers.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123.  And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Many marketers and strategists are, I fear, suffering from the affliction he described.  After all, how many companies do you see with advertising campaigns which are essentially variations on similar themes (nice looking car driven by nice looking person to nice sounding music), offering customers the same promotions as the competition (50% off/75% discount/last day of the sale today) and with products and propositions which are so similar that customers do not really distinguish between different providers?

The above can be perfectly valid strategies.  However, if companies are wanting or expecting consumers to start to behave differently-to buy on something else apart from price or to appeal to previous rejecters of their offering for instance-then they can only hope to succeed if they approach things differently.

Volkswagen’s The Fun Theory applies this concept. They started out with a question-could people be encouraged to behave differently by simply making things fun to do?  In other words, there are many things in life which can be considered a chore, difficult to do or simply not appealing.  We all know that most people can be coerced, in certain situations, to do something they might not really want to.  However, how much better would the solution be if those same people changed their behaviours because they wanted to, because it was actually fun?  It is a hugely simple and powerful premise.

An online campaign and competition tested this hypothesis by inviting people to submit their ideas, some of which were turned into reality.  For instance, the stairs at an underground station were turned into a huge piano so that people “played” notes as they walked up and down-with the effect that they were encouraged to walk instead of taking the escalator.

Or a litter bin in a park with a sound system so that when rubbish was dropped in it sounded like it was falling to the bottom of a well.

Nice viral marketing campaigns, but why did VW do this?  One of their core business problems has been to encourage more people to drive environmentally friendly cars.  Their hypothesis is that people are more likely to do this if it can be made more fun.  Therefore, through The Fun Theory initiative, VW are changing the perspective from which they themselves look at how they serve their customers.

The initiative has resulted in VW has being able to generate different, better types of solutions for their customers in their core business.  For instance, they are prototyping an in car children’s entertainment system which only functions in the back seats when the seatbelts are properly engaged.  Anyone who has been in the situation where their children suddenly decide to take off their seatbelts on a long journey can testify to how this might make for a less stressful experience.  VW would have been unlikely to come up with such a solution without the mindset change allowed by The Fun Theory.

And this is the point.  The Fun Theory means VW are looking at their problems-both old and new-from a different perspective.  They are employing a different way of thinking to get to better solutions for their customers, helping to change entrenched behaviours and create daylight for VW in cluttered spaces.

Einstein would have approved as he was driving his Golf Variant MultiFuel-not because the scientist in him was impressed that the CO2 emissions are 169g/km, but because the person in him thought it might be rather fun.

At Lexden, it is this type of thinking that inspires us since we think you get to better outcomes when you use less conventional approaches.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

When you take a look at the picture there are three elements which you should notice.

Whilst you can’t argue it’s a change table (element 1), you may argue that the new branding (element 2) of Pizza Express does not give it ownership over black and white lines. Whilst I agree, I do applaud their strength to not overhaul the ID in 2011, and opting for a ‘retouch’ instead. And then applying it throughout their livery (I’ve worked with bigger brands who live in a state of limbo between ID’s for years because they ignore the detail).

It is from Pizza Express’ Ocean Terminal restaurant in Leith, which is where I found myself one evening in December, having finished a workshop for a client, with some time for Christmas shopping. And as a father of a 5 and 1 year old I am pleased to see change tables in more and more Gents these days, reflecting the fact that us dads change plenty of nappies too.

But neither of these elements are what grabbed my attention. As an experienced proposition development marketer, what impressed me was that someone has acknowledged the ‘change of nappy’ event involves two people; parent and baby.

By doing so they’ve been able to take a step back to see how both can have a better experience of dining at Pizza Express and simply added a mobile (element 3) above the change table. When you look at it from a parents perspective the mobile is a useful distraction for them, but look at it from the babies perspective it’s a new stimulating entertainment centre to amuse whilst being changed.

Pizza Express also provide crayons and mats for children at the table. They could be there as ‘things to keep the kids quiet, so the adults can talk and order’, but I believe Pizza Express think more deeply than that they will have thought, ‘it’s entertainment for children because we know they think it’s boring waiting for a routine event such as a meal’.

And by thinking like this Pizza Express demonstrates it recognises that everyone is a customer and has needs which should be catered for within their dining experience.

Commercially, the crayons and the mobile might encourage parents to choose Pizza Express over chains without such facilities. But what it really says to me is that Pizza Express has the capacity to step back and look at the wider vista before making changes, ensuring they are to the betterment of all their customers; whatever their age. From branding to baby changing.

Posted by Christopher Brooks, Director Lexden.

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

To find out how our unordinary approach could help you with your marketing challenges contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123, M: +44 (0)7968 316548. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Lena Andersson wanted to find a way of combining her love for her home town of Copenhagen with running. So she decided to start jogging tours of the city. It may seen an obvious thing to do, but it’s the ability to turn her two passions into a business which demonstrates unordinary thinking.

It’s a hit and tourists are booking up Lena so they too can combine their loves of ‘off the beaten track sightseeing’ and running. By keeping up with her 6.30min/km pace, customers can head off to unseen areas or join Lena for her different perspectives tour; such as the 7am business run.

And as Lena says, ”it keeps me energised for the whole day”, much more than her shipping executive job ever could.

http://running-copenhagen.dk/

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Virtual real estate agents can make up to $150,000 a year in Second Life.

They buy nothing real and selling nothing real.

After all when you are in a virtual world, you are still in the real world. And yet land with planning permission is bought from virtual land owners, virtual property developers build the property with virtual materials and a virtual estate agents rent it to an avatar who is a version of something that doesn’t really exist; an alter ego.

And considering these business’ reputations in the real world, have been built based on the quality of their workmanship, customer service and interpersonal skills – how do they transfer these tangibles to an intangible virtual world? Because they do.

It’s made even more puzzling if you consider how a brand or marketing director would plot this activity on a classic business ‘growth’ matrix. It doesn’t fit the model, it’s beyond diversification. That’s not to say virtual commerce doesn’t fit, but just it needs a little extra thought to figure out how. It’s undoubtedly an unordinary growth strategy. And one that pay dividends without leaving the desktop.

http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=13107800

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

This American based set up brings together students without cars and those with cars. And through a shared car scheme provides the owner with cash and the student needing a car, with wheels.

This is a great example of an unordinary proposition where ‘a dead asset’ is being made to work harder. This is a trend we have seen in areas of Europe and hope to see more from inspirational entrepreneurs making more out of what they already have. Take 2 minutes to look at the promotional video.

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

I stay in a number of hotels each month so am happy to stay in the less conventional business hotels. I find the conventional hotels too automated in their strive for service excellence. I like variety and spontaneity.

So when I was booked in to Citizen M in Glasgow I had no preconceptions.

Although the low £69 a night, including breakfast price tag, did signal a very small alarm in my head.

The décor looked modern and attractive. And then I started to observe a few oddities from the normal arrival and settling in experience I go through:

• There’s no reception,
• Staff wear black,
• The building is full of bright Perspex and plastic on the inside but is a black box on the outside.

And when I got to my room it was compact. But when I asked if I could upgrade I was told every room in every hotel is the same. So I returned and hung my clothes in the same space as my bed, my sink, my shower, my TV and my desk. All of which was approximately 2m x 4m x 3m.

But within about 30 minutes of being there I started to get it…

The ‘minimalistic’ approach I had witnessed in the room was reversed in the public space; there were copious numbers of break out lounge areas with Ligne Rosset style furniture, there were shelves of pop art and nude impression works, there were eight Macs for business use, blossom trees in the TV area, Earl Grey tea served in silk purses, Café del Mar music and many Alessi practical sculptures scattered across the hotel.

And on taking a closer look at the detail in my room the walk in shower (which was in the room, not off it) had lighting which changed colour, my TV movies were free and there were inspirational messages on all my complimentary toiletries.

And at breakfast not only were Innocent drinks on the menu, but the staff (who also fixed my colleague’s safe, checked us in and helped us set up on the macs earlier) was now the chef and asked us what we thought of her new muffin recipe and should she keep it? We found out everyone is empowered to do everything.

And as I was finding out, their attention to detail was in the areas that really mattered, whilst the places they had compromised (such as big rooms and reception) were actually not important. The only reason I’d decided they were important was because market convention had led me there. Citizen M has decided to change the rules and by doing so has potentially changed the hotel selection criteria.

What they had done here is take a step back from the whole hotel experience and asked ‘what is it that guests really want from a hotel when they are city exploring?’

And they had focussed on making the aspects more important to their clientele the best they can be. Which as the price tag shows, can be more distinctive and more of an experience than the expensive alternative of designing a conventional hotel. Inspirational.

I ended up taking more photographs of this set up than I have of any other hotel I’ve stayed in.

I was so intrigued that I asked a member of staff about the thinking behind it. He explained that empowerment is a key value of the brand.

A brand which they spend a number of days understanding before they are allowed to start in the hotel.

The smart people of Citizen M have applied unordinary thinking too. They’ve achieved so much more by taking a step back and understanding what is really important for a great stay, rather than listening to conventional criteria or attempting to improve on the competition.

By doing so they have designed a hotel which has more of what customers want and less of what they don’t need.

Citizen M contacted me when I first posted this and I am reassured to say my observations and interpretation of their strategy was correct. I did promise them a batch of pics I took (more than I took of the Wynn in Vegas, or the Elms in Worcestershire – personal fav’s), so I will do this.

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

That said, one project proved to be a very different case for TMH. The branding agency won the pitch to develop the brand for a ‘first in the world’ concept aqua park for children. The difference is that children don’t need their swimming costumes. The brainchild of Majid Al Futtaim Leisure, Aquaplay is a park full of water-based rides and attractions rather than slides and pools. Described by Karen Iley of Time Out Dubai as being like “Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory – only with water flowing all over the place instead of chocolate”.

As requested, TMH developed the brand positioning, livery and visual iden. Regardless, Paul followed his instinct and finally found the answer one evening walking along the beach in downtown Dubai. He created a range of oceanic based characters, each representing a different ride. These friendly creatures had a soft illustrative style and playful personalities too. He revealed the characters to TMH, along with a big idea he’d had which he felt was strong enough to get Aquaplay’s interest again.tity guidelines which the client loved. And that should have been it. But something troubled creative Paul Green. The rides, whilst united by the brand Aquaplay, did not connect together in any other way. He worried that customers might not fully get the ‘completeness’ of the proposition either. However, being a pragmatist as well as a creative, Paul realised that a simple ride naming exercise would probably not be welcomed by Aquaplay who now needed to invest energies in the marketing of the park. They had moved on.

Out of courtesy, Aquaplay agreed to meet. When presented with the characters, they thought it a nice idea but were keen to return to their destination marketing tasks.

That was until Paul explained the bigger purpose of the cute characters: their commercial angle. Paul described a well worked through merchandising opportunity for the characters he had created; 8 soft toys, 8 pen and pencil sets, 8 jigsaws, 8 t-shirts, 8 cups, 8 downloadable games etc. It was then that they absolutely bought it. It has enabled AquaPlay to add a brand new income stream by creating a gift shop into its business model. Now live, the merchandise is extremely popular as children look to take memories home of their favourite experience from the day.

Paul’s instinct was right. By stopping and considering the wider opportunities, Paul had found a brilliant way to enhance the agency’s reputation, generate extra revenue for the park and, importantly, strengthen the Aquaplay proposition. Paul’s unordinary approach has created an exceptional asset, which would never have prevailed had he allowed convention to rule and ‘moved on’. Paul Green can be found at http://www.thisispaulgreen.com/

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

All our software, systems and mobile phones enable us to work more productively, generate improved solutions and treat customers better (presumably). But does the technology make us lazy in our thinking and blind to simpler, better solutions?

Consider the following. A friend who works in Hong Kong recently told me this story.

Last year he returned back on business to a hotel in Bangkok which he had previously visited on holiday three years earlier. Getting out of his taxi, he was warmly welcomed by a uniformed chap at the entrance to the lobby who offered to take his bag and engaged in the usual bit of hotel chit chat.

He approached the front desk to be greeted by one of the beautifully presented hotel receptionists. “Welcome back, sir-it’s so nice to have you staying with us again”. He was a bit surprised. He tried to get a quick look at her computer screen to see what kind of customer management system she was using. He cast his mind back to how he had booked the hotel (his secretary had arranged it over the internet) and what information he might have given which would have enabled her to welcome him as she had. He was genuinely puzzled since he could not recall providing anything which would have helped her.

So he asked. Evidently, she was at first a bit coy in that very Thai way, but my friend was insistent and she cracked. She pointed over to the man who had previously carried his bag and who was now greeting another guest. “Watch what he does when he comes over to us with this lady”. My friend did not notice anything in particular. Seeing his blank face, she explained: “The first question he asks a guest is ‘is this your first visit to us here?’ If it is, he carries the guest’s bag in his left hand, if they are returning it’s his right hand. I just look out.”

This is currently one of our favourite stories of unordinary thinking. Does anyone have something which beats it? We would love to hear about it.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat, Lexden.

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands. For more information on how we can help you contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Where a problem exists when the status quo solutions are unattainable, unrealistic or simply not right, then that can be the catalyst to drive a different type of solution.  Something unordinary.

The Jaipur Foot is an example of this.  Named after the city in India where it was designed in 1969, it is a rubber based prosthetic limb for below the knee amputees.  It is hard to think of something which meets the needs of its intended audience so effectively.

Made with local materials (primarily wood, rubber and aluminium) it is light, mobile and very hard wearing.  Users are able to run, climb and ride bicycles, making it well suited to the lifestyles of the poorer people for whom the Jaipur foot was designed.  Time Magazine voted it one of their 50 best inventions in the world. The foot has deliberately never been patented and costs about £20 to produce.  And it is not just its cost that makes it compelling-the foot takes just 45 minutes to build and only a couple of hours to fit.  The lives of amputees are changed instantly.

And, to date, on the day (31st October 2011) the world’s population ticks over to 7 billion people, the Jaipur foot has been provided to 1.2m people who have lost their leg below the knee-many the victims of landmines.  In some of the poorest, war ravaged parts of the planet, every single day people are being provided with the mobility, freedom and self-confidence to which we should all be entitled.

In more developed countries, artificial limbs cost tens of thousands of pounds and are designed, tested, manufactured and marketed by materials engineers, bio mechanists, surgeons, advertising agencies and patent lawyers.  They are often fantastic products-but just not viable in terms of cost or design for the bulk of people on earth.

The Jaipur Foot was originally conceived, designed and prototyped as a collaboration of just two people.  A surgeon, Dr P K Sethi, with no formal training in orthopaedics, and Ram Chandra, a semi-literate craftsman.  All it took was an unworkable existing solution, the resources they had available and the vision, ingenuity and passion of two unordinary people to make a difference.  It is an inspiring story for us all.

Posted by Ajai Ranawat

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands. For more information on how we can help you contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on  T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

Adding to Austrian Airlines and Tounge ‘n’ Cheek we bring you Dock Dogs.

Hundreds of dogs jumping off a jetty into a water tank. Bonkers? No, a business.

I first came across this idea last year at a county fair in Suffolk and saw it again recently which reminded me of its popularity. And it’s the popularity of it which is most striking because Dock Dogs have managed to turn a basic exercise for a dog into a spectator sport and a business.

We love to be inspired by unordinary propositions. For us they tick all of the reasons above. When we find them, we make a noise about them.

Meet Cristiano Meheghin. An Italian foodie who fell in love with London street food. He felt the time was right to push street food in to new spaces. So he brought his family a book of recipes using offal, quinto quarto (translated as the fifth part of four) passed down by his grandmother from Piedomt, to England to bring a new flavour to the streets.

Based at the Southbank, Cristiano uses cuts from the one third of the animal normally thrown away. But supplemented with the flavours inherited from his grandma he is able to create tasty food from these less expensive cuts, which makes the business model work.

An unordinary proposition for the modern palates of Londoners which is achieving stand out on the streets.

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.

This blog is based on a couple of experiences I had from earlier this year…

…I am writing whilst on a short haul flight to London Heathrow from Vienna. Seats on short haul flights are typically uncomfortable. Leg room on short haul flights is typically restricted, unless you fly business class, which I don’t.

I am sitting in a seat which isn’t making my back ache or pushing my knees against the back of the seat in front, and I am travelling economy. So how has this been achieved?

Simple really, by the design folk at Austrian Airlines applying a little ‘unordinary’ thinking to the issue they want to solve.

• The challenge they started with was the leg room.
• But by widening the criteria to ‘how to make customers more comfortable in their seats’ the areas of improvement increased.

And as well as the passenger improvements to the seating specification being delivered, it also would have proved more satisfying for the designers and the airline too.

The outcome of the enhancements are a 5 cm slimmer more ergonomic seat and therefore 5 cm more leg room.

If the brief had been a single minded focus on improving the leg room only, would the ergonomic seat have been the solution? Almost certainly not.

The focus would have been on reducing basket space or something similar. A redesigned chair would have been seen as out of scope. But by combining the issues, the adaption costs of the leg room improvement and the more comfortable seat can be offset against each other.

This is testament to the value of ensuring that customers are at the heart of any activity, ‘customers first, profits follow’ as I heard it put by a leader for a global giant in it’s field.

And Austrian Airlines, as it is in this case, has achieved this by widening the vista thinking from ‘leg room’ to ‘customer comfort’.

Interestingly it’s really about focussing attentions on the real issues and not getting side tracked by distractions. And being unwavering in that focus; the bigger picture approach.

Vista thinking enables this. It ensures value creation or value proposition development is strategically aligned. This then empowers all involved to focus with confidence at a tactical level.

Posted by Christopher Brooks

Lexden is a marketing strategy agency which creates unordinary propositions to motivate customers and deliver commercial advantage for brands.

For more information on how we can help you, contact christopherbrooks@lexdengroup.com or ajairanawat@lexdengroup.com, or call us on T: +44 (0)20 7490 9123. And you can follow us on Twitter @consultingchris.