How could a business owner benefit from the programme?

Mary herself comes across as very authentic and natural.  She doesn’t do consultant-speak, she is very unstuffy and wears cool funky clothes (I especially like the ankle boots!) , she gets up early cheerfully if she has to, and she is sensitive to others feelings but not afraid of confrontation, nor of saying when she feels down.  Above all the has a great energy and sense of purpose…and a sense of humour!  All very refreshing and a good role model.

She operated in the real world and was on top of the facts. She said that 5000 small shops closed last year, and that half the number of greengrocers exist now compared to ten years ago, despite the fact that in the UK we spend 8 billion on fruit and veg a year.  Plus the salient point that sales of local produce have increased by a third, and that the veg box market is worth £ 170m.

She enrolled others in the vision and kept going despite setbacks.  One sister was on board with the new ideas (so she suggested she be in change) one was resistant to all change, and one was on the fence.  I was particularly impressed that she commented on the lack of enthusiasm even while they were in Harrods Food Hall, and was happy to challenge.

The shop moved from undifferentiated to specialist. Doing one thing well (providing quality local produce to the local community) made the shop better and more relevant than the supermarket.  Dominating a niche as a specialist is more effective than being generalist.

The personalities of the sisters became part of the brand rather than simply being all about the fruit and veg.  It made the shop more memorable with the new logo and photographs compared with its previous incarnation or a supermarket.  Small businesses naturally have loads of personality.

The physical premises became more inviting. With Mary’s magic wand and money from either the BBC or her company the shop became  more contemporary and more values-based. Local prodice was not only sourced but also described more fully.  Customers were invited to come in to a welcoming space, to read, to come to the launch party, and of course to take action and buy.

The owners’ assumptions about their customers were challenged. The sisters were shocked by the negative attitude of shoppers in the supermarket “before” and couldn’t believe “after” that providing what they thought customer wanted would be acceptable.  A woman said she would pay £ 10 – not the £8 they had imagined, and one man on the step of his house said that he would enjoy receiving a surprise box of fruit and veg for the week.  Mary made the most of this by giving him a hug!  Sometimes businesses have to listen (and it can be tough) and sometimes take the lead, and this was a lovely example.

I am sure there were other aspects which will occur to me at some point.

Did you watch the programme?  What did you like about it?

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The Simpson are 20 years old!  When the programme first started it was rebellious and iconoclastic.  It was not aired here in the UK for some time.  I  remember neighbours who had gone to live in the States saying how they loved it, but many of their new friends didn’t feel comfortable with the humour.

From rebellious child to national treasure.

Homer has been extolled as an example of fatherly virtue, (by George Bush if I remember correctly)  and the programme has included the names /voices / voice alikes of many mainstream celebrities .  After a while a new contender arrived who was more ground-breaking than the original  (in this case it was “Family Guy” )  and The Simpsons  became perceived as the  old friend we were all comfortable with.

Expectations of a product or service change as it becomes better known and liked.  Customer loyalty can become fanatical.  Star Trek fans come to mind… and I am sure there are adults in their thirties who know most of the words to the Simpons programmes!

If you have a well-loved service or product in your arsenal make sure you take the loyal fans with you when you update it. The brand they love may need to be tweaked for changing conditions, but it should still be easily recogniseable.  Customer loyalty means opportunity.

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Every small business owner knows that customers who know like and trust you are more likely to stay with you.

Provided you can keep on pleasing the customer they are unlikely to want to go off into the big bad world on their own, and take the risk of disconnecting with you.  After a while the familiar seems safe, and resistance to change becomes the motivating force. As a small business you have the added potential for a more personal relationship with your customer, and they will genuinely not want to leave.

In the old days we all stayed loyal.  Loyal to our bank, loyal to our mortgage company, loyal to our insurance provider, and loyal to our utilities provider.  But we are not in the old days any longer, and in the new world it seems that the new customer hits more targets more quickly, and helps to grow market share.

I have just had a conversation with a friend of mine who noticed that her home central hearing / servicing /electricity contract had increased by 25% over the previous year.  She got an alternative quote from another supplier which was 50% cheaper, and then rang the original provider to tell them she was leaving.  Within a blink of an eye her quote had reduced from £ 40 per month to £ 10 per month.  Her first response was outrage.  Why was the price inflated for a loyal customer, and then dropped when she said she was going to leave?  If there had been no price increase, she would have been happy to pay as before.  That was her first thought.  Her second thought was to follow the money, and make the saving.

She has been retained as a customer.  But at some cost.  She now no longer feels loyal to them, and when the contract is renewed again next year will fight to the death (make a phone call) to keep the price as low as possible.  She has become a savvy customer, motivated by price, and is no longer a natural customer.  She is going to write and complain, and will expect a convincing response.

Banks, insurance companies, and mobile phone companies are notorious for giving preferential treatment to their new customers.  The net result is that existing customers feel aggrieved, and loyalty is lost.

Price is part of the reason why consumers buy.  The other parts consist of branding, values, and customer service.  Treat customers well and natural inertia will help them to stay with you.  Treat customers badly and they shop around for price.  Small businesses have a natural advantage for staying in the warm pool of customer loyalty and avoid being caught in the cold ocean of price alone.

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The judges gave higher marks to Ricky Whittle, who had more talent, but Chris Hollins was the winner voted by the public. And the public had the final say.

Marketing a small business is also a talent contest: authenticity is easy as a small business, and talent is only part of the mix.

• You can be known for who you are.  You don’t have to make up cute personas because people buy from people they know like and trust.  Part of the knowing, liking and trusting comes from the fact that being authentic could even be better than being perfect.
• Chris was always the underdog and Ricky was always the most talented all the way through the competition.  Because Ricky was so good, people may have taken his talent for granted, and failed to get on his side.
• While Ricky was “cool” Chris had a sense of humour that was expressed more both in his conversation and his dance.  The Charleston was an entertainment tour de force with wit and fun as well as excellent dance steps.
• Ricky was warm and friendly but Chris was more open, and threw himself into the dancing with a refreshing exuberance and passion.
• Chris and his partner were happy to make fun of each othe.  They seemed very fond of each other but did not take their relationship too seriously, so we the audience could become part of it.
• Their partnership had strogner branding. They were referred to as “Hobbits” and as a couple as “Cola” – Ricky and his partner Natalie were not so easy to identify and know.

The people who buy your products and service may prefer a warm open personality to breathtaking talent, too.  What a relief – we can be ourselves!

Coverage in the press:

• Underdog Chris Hollins beats Ricky Whittle to take Strictly Come Dancing crown (telegraph.co.uk)
• Strictly final is watched by 11m (news.bbc.co.uk)

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I was asked this question yesterday  and had to confess I didn’t know.  The ones that say “the real Simon Cowell”  are no more likely to be right than the others.

It was easy to work out by following some of the links that they were not real. ..but it still didn’t answer the question about who is real.

Now I know the answer as it was revealed in an interview with Evan Williams who with Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey founded twitter.

Well-known people are verified on twitter and there is a blue tick / check mark to show which is the real one.

Look at Demi Moore. Looking at the Simon Cowell entries on twitter none of them have the blue verification sign.    Could it be they have not verified him?  Unlikely.   The truth is that Simon Cowell is not on twitter at all.  They are all fakes.

Shame.  Some of them are quite realistic!

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This information about space is presented as an extension of Google Earth, so effectively Google lets you look around all corners of the world.   The Moon section is selected within Google Earth.

Anniversaries are always an opportunity for renewed interest about a subject, and it is no surprise that Google has launched this feature to coincide with the space anniversary.

This helps Google take its brand into the stratosphere and:

demonstrates Google as a major player in partnership with NASA and the folk-hero astronauts

subliminally gives the message that Google is master of Space as well as Earth.

The direct benefits are that Google will capitalise on and contribute to search phrases  and news stories about the space anniversary.

This information about space looks much more like an identified product than the other services available from Google.

I wonder what is next…

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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You pick from your prescribed themes and off you go. This is true for Wordpress.com. At Wordpress.com your blog is hosted on the Wordpress.com site so effectively you have the benefit of the masses of traffic that goes to the site, it is extremely quick to set up but you don’t get your own domain name, and you are not building your own business asset.

Then it transpired that the place to go is Wordpress.org where you can sign up for a blog under your own domain name. So off I went, did it all, and have got juicy statistics about 2 weeks later of 13,000 hits. If I had been on the .com site they would all have gone to the greater Wordpress site not to my domain specifically.

Having got the .com / .org division clear in my mind at last I was completely bemused by the instruction to get an API key from Wordpress.com. Not being naturally technical I felt rather exhausted by the whole thing and procrastinated. I had separated the two Wordpress sites and couldn’t put them back together again. I thought I was going to be forcefully swept into some blog vault from which I would never appear… and my blog would be torn apart by ravening wolves.

I so completely didn’t trust the instruction that I put a comment on twitter and asked for help but none appeared. So a week later I decided to believe the instruction and obey it. I have just been over to Wordpress.com, filled out the profile and signed up, and now am the proud owner of an API key.

Wordpress.com - get the key

The point of the API key is to help remove spam from your blog. I am glad to say I have had no spam yet, but know that the client blogs I work on get a lot. So spammers I am ready for you. Bring it on. Let’s test this API key – and make sure it is worth it!

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If you don’t know about her watch this video.

Susan Boyle on \"Britain\'s Got Talent\"

She’s lively, funny, disarmingly honest (never been kissed), and what I found really amazing was the way she did not respond when Simon Cowell called her a tiger. She wasn’t going to be pushed in any kind of box. And the voice – amazing.

In terms of branding – which had never crossed her mind I imagine – she was talented, modest and natural. Now she has had her hair dyed brown and her eyebrows plucked. The question is – does it matter? Well the voice will carry her through the competition and I imagine the hair will make her more attractive. The pity is that there are pictures of her in the paper today with a shawl on her head. So she is covering up the change when what we really associate with her is authenticity. The compromise position I suppose would have been to keep the hair grey but get it cut more flatteringly.

Her biggest battle was over: she already had the standing ovation, she already heard that nobody had been on her side. There will be lots of people watching the finals who want to support their decision to see her as an uncorrupted star waiting to be discovered, and see her as the underdog who can win without artifice. It would have been easier if she had stayed just as she was. It has all become a bit more complicated now.

So for a £ 35 hair cut she has lost something valuable. But who can blame her? There aren’t many women who would not have done the same. As the audience we wanted someone to effortlessly believe in amongst the doom and gloom. We wanted to put her in the branding pigeonhole which says “Natural and talented.”

She will of course be an inspiration to journalists, bloggers and image consultants and hairdressers everywhere. The most watched YouTube video to date is likely to be replaced by her next performance on the show… but we will be watching for something else as well, this time.

But who can blame her?

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Many of the tasks are simply about being a street trader so I made a special note to look at one where they had to create a brand for a breakfast cereal. I was left wanting to know more about the task and less about the arguments between them. I suppose the real problem is that the show is more soap opera than business, and for us to engage with the characters we have to know them better. Perhaps the show will be more satisfying when there are fewer contestants and we can get to know and like or dislike them more.

The highlight of the Apprentice viewing for me was the conversation with Mary Portas, the ad man, and Jenny Eclair in the follow up show. There was fun and a look at the real issues behind what it takes to do the task. The interesting part was that Alan Sugar thought pantsman was simply dreadful (pants), but by the time Jenny Eclair had finisihed with the idea it seemed the audience also thought it was great! The real issue seemed to be that Kimberley took someone who had performed into the boardroom at the end, and should have taken someone who did not contribute. The audience did agree that she should have been fired, even though the panel did not.

8.1 million viewers watched the opening programme in this series – a record – I wonder what has happened to the viewing figures now… must check.

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Two very friendly assistants told me that they can still get stock, as they can for other companies in the group .. Spode, Royal Worcester, Waterford Crystal, but that no more is being made. They said that the Waterford factory in Ireland has closed down also and all production will be shipped overseas, and Waterford is a ghost town, now. They thought an American company had bought it.

We had a good chat about it being sad that British household names are disappearing – as you do on a Saturday afternoon – and there was some shoulder-shrugging about the fact that people don’t buy expensive dinner services any more. However the shop was piled to the ceiling with Villeroy and Bosch. Rather to my delight there was no talk about the recession being to blame.

While I know nothing about the inner workings of Wedgewood et al, I had been shocked when news broke that they were going into administration. Especially as I had recently bought a few amazing and wonderful Wedgewood dinner plates for a friend of mine. They were a contemporary take on the Willow Pattern and utterly wonderful .. loved by my friend and much complimented by all who ate off them.

So I thought Wedgewood had its finger on the pulse of modern taste and were making products that people wanted. In fact I was really impressed! (Sell wonderful products and market them well and you bet I am impressed!)

The other reason that I was sad about Wedgewood is that the firm has pioneering in its blood. It has been going for 250 years and practically pre-dated the industrial revolution. Josiah Wedgewood had a revolutionery idea to use production methodology rather than have one potter making one entire piece. In ten short years he had developed a new ceramic process for dinner services and become the favourite of Royalty.

What are the lessons for small business?

Look for opportunities even with well-known brands who might be having problems with debt/bankers.
Supply what people want.
Use the most effective production process.
Market your history as a benefit… not as history.

I may have inadvertently mis-represented the Wedgewood situation. There is no further information on the Wedgewood Website so if you know more please add a comment. Thanks.

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