In through the outfield

21 October 2011

Dana Levy Bags & Jewellery Design – another Success Story

My colleague Julie Simkin has written this post on one of her success stories:

I always get excited when I hear from one of my Business Start-Up clients and hear that their business is doing well. This was the case last week when I heard from Dana Levy. I first met with Dana in November 2009 when her business was established, but Dana felt it was the right time to grow and expand into new areas.

When I asked Dana about her experiences with the Business & IP Centre she said:

‘The Business and IP Centre has been very useful in helping me move forward with my business. As well as using the library’s extensive research facilities, I have also had one to one sessions with their knowledgeable Information specialist , Julie Simpkin, and also I had a one to one session with an ex- ‘Dragon’. These sessions were really useful as they were personal and tailored to my business needs.

The Business & IP Centre also organises really interesting lectures, events and workshops. The most recent workshop I was lucky enough to attend was on Social Networking by Kimberley Davis who featured on the Apprentice a few years ago. She was absolutely brilliant – Very informative and delivered her presentation in such a fun and interesting way.’

Designer Dana Levy grew up in London and has been designing handmade jewellery and accessories for over 10 years. Her creative journey began by spending long summers in the spiritual city of Jerusalem, which then lured her to relocate there and complete a Fine Arts degree at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design. It was while she was based there for 7 years, immersed in Jerusalem’s rich culture and beauty, that her inspiration for designing jewellery and accessories truly began.

Once back in London, the Dana Levy brand began with yoga & meditation accessories using beautiful silk damask fabrics found on her travels in the Middle East. Those damask fabrics soon became her trademark across all of the lifestyle accessories ranging from yoga & meditation accessories, to backgammon travel rolls and tote & evening bags. The careful selection of luxurious materials matched uniquely with symbolic charms is an expression of the ancient and modern worlds coming together.

As soon as the Dana Levy lifestyle range was established, the designer started her jewellery lines inspired by the exotic sights and traditions from the Middle East. All of Dana’s jewellery pieces are handmade and incorporate semi-precious gemstones, Czech glass beads and beautiful charms, amulets and talismans that have spiritual meaning, such as the ‘Hamsa’ hand, a symbol for good luck, and the Evil Eye, a symbol for protection.

All collections are designed by Dana and hand-made using the highest quality materials exclusively sourced from around the world, including the Middle East and Russia.

Dana Levy’s unique pieces have been featured in fashion magazines all around the world such as Vogue, Red, Grazia, and Elle to name just a few. They are also firm favourites with fashion editors and stylists alike.

http://www.danalevy.co.uk/

13 October 2011

Inspiring Entrepreneurs Media Maestros – 12 October

Just back from a great Inspiring Entrepreneurs event, Media Maestros chaired by Real Business magazine founder Mathew Rock.

He kicked off the evening by talking about his own experience of building a successful media business.

He listed six key points he has learnt over the years:

1. You are you own brand. So make sure you have a point of view you can express to the media.
2. As much as possible, tell your story yourself. Be your own PR person.
3. Don’t worry if you’re shy, just tell your story with your passion.
4. Digital dialogue, means you don’t have to depend on broadcast media.
5. Understand the new media hierarchy – chatter, promotion, influence
6. Influence still matters, be ready for that first, serious article to build your reputation.

Shazia Awan the founder of Peachy Pink and Max Core, kindly returned to the British Library following her succesful talk at our Mothers of Invention evening in March.

This time, as well as sharing her amazing success story, she also included some practical advice for getting media coverage.

She had five years experience of working in Press Relations, but wanted to go into the fashion industry.

She argued that advertising is often too expensive for a small business. But that the media are open to entrepreneurs making contact with them directly.

In order to maximise the impact of the initial launch of her Peachy Pink brand, she organised for 50 underwear models to walk down Bond Street on a very nippy day in December, wearing Peachy Pink underwear. By spending three days ringing every newspaper, magazine and media outlet she could find (with a follow-up reminder the evening before), Shazia ensured her story appeared in every red-top newspaper. As a result the store sold out within two days, and she received contact calls from 15 countries.

She talked about the danger of entrepreneurs trying to keep control of every aspect of their business, as it grows you have to learn to let go a bit. And you need to be clear in your own mind how using PR will help grow your business.

When asked for examples of mistakes she had made along the way, she said she prefers to think of them as learning curves. Viral marketing can be effective, but you can get carried away with it. As Peachy Pink becomes an international brand, they are beginning to capitalise on their London and British connections.

Next came a panel discussion with Jonathan Moules, Louise Third, and Rob Pittam:

Louise Third is a director of Integra Communications
–    Plan media work
–    Do quality research
–    Top tips
o    Plan ahead – only a few have a marketing and PR plan within their business plan
o    Identify your key audience
o    What is news – look at your press release and say ‘so what’.
o    Be realistic about the coverage you can expect

Jonathan Moules is enterprise correspondent at the Financial Times
–    Read the newspapers you are going to pitch to
–    Understand the kinds of stories they are looking for
–    Your story pitch should be like your elevator pitch – short and simple
–    Test it out on friends first
–    Learn how to build a relationship with a journalist – have an opinion on a subject
–    FT readers can see through marketing bullshit

Rob Pittam is a television and radio correspondent, he was also broadcast presenter for the BBC Working Lunch programme.
–    Don’t be afraid to ring newsrooms, they appreciate how hard it is to cold call.
–    It is passion that gets people on to television.
–    Sex sells – although journalists won’t admit it.
–    Journalists will give feedback – email first then follow up with a phone call
–    If something has already happened, it is too late for broadcast media to cover
–    The story is always about people not things
–    Think about the audience, so you will need to let a bit of control go to the journalists.

The evening ended with a busy Question and answer session:

Q – Do you need different PR for different life stages of your business?
A – Identify your key messages for the long term, then identify the key ways of getting these messages across. Start local, then regional, then national. For Business to Business services, start speaking at events to raise your professional profile.

Q – Can you use historical stories?
A – Good stories from the past can work in the print media, but not for broadcast. But the bottom line is that there needs to be a great story.

Q – How to get into professional journals?
A – Be prepared to write your own articles.

A – PR is a drip-drip process, you may not get any mention of your company name each time.

Q – How can you benefit from an important story in the media?
A – Develop your role as an expert / commentator.

Q – How do you leverage a personal brand?
A – Planning is key. The media need to be involved before your launch.

Q – How do you find time for PR?
A – Make sure you block out a couple of hours a week in your diary.

Q – How do you get celebrity endorsement?
A – By getting your product into their (or their agents) hands to try out. Even celebrities love a freebie.

Q – What kind of PR works for service businesses?
A – Look for specialist publications. They will often have a lower threshold for news and articles.

A – Patience is essential. You have to wait for the right hook to hang you news item on. Set up a Google alert to track opportunities.

7 October 2011

Media maestros: Innovative strategies for small businesses – next Wednesday

Shazia Awan I’m really looking forward to our next Inspiring Entrepreneurs event, Media Maestros next Wednesday 12 October from 6pm here in the British Library.

We have an impressive panel of industry experts, including: Matthew Rock, Jonathan Moules, Louise Third and Rob Pittam. We also have a special guest speaker Shazia Awan, founder of body enhancing underwear Peachy Pink and Max-Core.

Publicity is the key to getting new customers and a mention in the right newspaper, magazine or online social network can make all the difference. Getting noticed by the press can also sometimes help to reduce the costs in your marketing budgets.

Matthew Rock is founder & editor of Real Business magazine. He will lead the discussion and also give a summary of the latest media trends.

Shazia Awan is the founder of Peachy Pink and Max-Core. Her products are firm favourites with stylists and celebrities and she will talk about her experiences of gaining press attention.

Jonathan Moules, enterprise correspondent at the Financial Times

Louise Third, director of Integra Communications

Rob Pittam, television and radio correspondent, he was also broadcast presenter for the BBC Working Lunch programme

15 September 20116 October 2015

Effective Writing And Communications with Kimberly Davies and Steve Trister

Yesterday I attended another of Kimberly Davies‘ Marketing Masters days. This time the topic was Effective Writing And Communications and featured guest speaker Steve Trister the creator of Performance Dynamite.

I not sure if Kimberly is a geographer at heart, but the four days I have attended have been located in south, east, north and now west London. I’m not sure where she will go next now we have covered all four compass points.

One of the consequences of moving to a new location each time, is that the rooms often have technical glitches with the sound or vision, or in yesterdays case, both.

Kimberly copes with these challenging starts to the day with an impressive level of professionalism and humour.

Kimberly spoke for most of the day and was excellent, however the highlight of the day for me was actor and business coach Steve Trister the from Performance Dynamite..

He walked to front of the room wearing a doctors mask and mumbled something to. That got our attention. He then asked us to name the number one disease in business. We came up with a range of suggestions, but failed to give the correct answer; Vomiticus Contentinaatum – otherwise known as puking content, or verbal diarrhoea.

I have to admit that working in one of the largest libraries in the world with over 150 million items in our collection, this is a disease I am all too well aware of falling prey to.

The cure to this disease is to make an emotional connection with your audience (of one or more). This of course is much easier to say than to do. So you need to prepare, by building the right mindset.

You need to tell yourself every day that you are already connected to your audience, then you need to mentally rehearse by visualising the event in advance (some of which will be scripted, and some not). This is similar to the way professional athletes prepare for a competition.

You need to be clear on the emotion you want to conjure up, be in state (or in the moment with no distractions), and to commit 100% to the performance.

Steve had investigated the famous research by Albert Mehrabian on non-verbal communication. He found the commonly quoted result, that clues from spoken words, from the voice tone, and from the facial expression, contribute 7 %, 38 %, and 55 % respectively to the total meaning, is wrong, as it it relates only to the communication of positive versus negative emotions.

Our voice is critical to how we communicate to our audience, changes in vocal emphasis (the stress we put on specific words) can completely change the meaning of what we saying. He asked how often do we take note of how we are actually speaking. He explained that our tongues are muscles, so we should exercise them using tongue twisters.

He also covered body language and the use of gestures, and how these can be used to reinforce or undermine our verbal messages. He said we should practice expressing our business activity in the form of charades. This made my mind boggle at how I could show the British Library through mime.

Steve illustrated each of these points with victims (sorry volunteers) from the audience, and guided them through. For the final example he had a professional photographer give an excellent and clear mime of his business.

Finally he said we should find an emotional story that will relate to your audience.

Needless to say Steve used all of these techniques during one of the most engaging and memorable presentations I have ever seen.

You can see a YouTube video of Steve in action, and an interview with Smarta.com.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPrZ2ElG-Yo]

Here are my notes from the rest of the excellent day:

Learn the 20 rules of communication that should never be broken

Kimberly’s no. 1 life lesson;
“You can reach anyone in the world with, seven phone calls or less, saying the right thing.”

Statistics show that 50% of marketing spend is wasted.

Led to the idea for Sarsaparilla – to detox your marketing – Marketing Purification

Definition of marketing
Anything that affects the perception of your company. From logos to staff behaviour.

You are exposed to 4,000 brands every day. So how does your business stand out?

Know your audience
–    Who is your target market?
–    Who is your idea client / decision maker?
–    What motivates them?
–    Profile (gender, age, health, wealth, culture, interests, position, salary, budget, etc)

Then put yourself into their shoes.
– How can you make their life easier?
– What is in it for them?

Then find your voice (written language).
–    Who would narrate your content?
–    Think of a character of personality best suited – perhaps Steven Fry for the British Library
–    Who would your audience relate to and want to hear? Admire? Look up to? Believe
–    Imagine their voice each time you create marketing content

Keywords
– Ten words that best describe your business – For the Business & IP Centre: innovation, inventions, information, support, advice, help, entrepreneurs, business-startup,
– One word that best describe your business – knowledge

Unique Selling Point
– What truly makes your business unique – For the Business & IP Centre: The largest free collection of free market research and business information in the world, with expert guidance.

USP
– You need to be the only…
Misconceptions

Testimonials

Focus on the benefits for your customers
–    List them – information, advice, contacts, training
–    What problem can you solve?
–    How can you make their life easier? – a clearer view of what they need to do to start their business

Key Messages
–    What are the three key things you want people to remember about your business?
o    Business & IP Centre at the British Library at St Pancras central London
o    Free workshops and advice
o    Free access to market research and business information.

Branding
Professional photos
KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid
Formula for success and to avoid writers block
Navigate
Incentives
Call to Action
Ask questions – keep the dialogue going
Relevance
The Elevator Pitch
The who, what, where, when and how of your business

I still think Sarsaparilla’s elevator pitch is the best I have come across;

50% of marketing is wasted. Sarsaparilla is a marketing consulting and training agency that specialises in marketing purification – the process of detoxing your marketing, protecting you from The Flash, Fluff, and Fakers, and helping you make more money with less.

5 September 2011

How to revive a brand

On the way home from a recent road trip to Scotland, I made a ‘pit-stop’ at a McDonalds restaurant near Birmingham.

I’m not a regular customer at the ‘golden arches’, so was very surprised to discover a waterless urinal
with a sticker on it saying it saved 100,000 litres of water a year.

This is all part of McDonalds’ efforts to combat the negative press that has built up over the years. In particular the reaction to ‘McLibel’ case and reaction to the 1994 documentary film Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock.

McDonalds have created a website to allow you to Make up your own mind, which currently contains 24,000 questions and answers:

Your Questions
A dedicated Make Up Your Own Mind team from across McDonald’s is working hard to answer your questions. You can ask whatever you want, and we aim to answer even the toughest question within two weeks in an honest and straight-talking fashion. The ‘Questions & Answers’ can be searched either by keyword or by sub-sections – this should help you find the information you’re looking for.

The website also includes reports from their Quality Scouts.

What is a Quality Scout?
Quality Scouts are members of the general public from around the UK who are curious about McDonald’s business. They are not paid, and have no ties to the company. All they do is take an honest, behind the scenes look at McDonald’s and report back. And they’ll tell you exactly what they hear and see.

I have to say I am impressed by their efforts, but wonder what it will take to change public opinion.

Two examples spring to mind:

Fiat cars of the 1970’s, which became notorious for their rust problems.

In response they built the Tipo in the 1980’s (a car I owned), and gave it a fully galvanised body, giving it better rust protection than almost any other car on the market. However, it took many years for their ‘rust bucket’ reputation to disappear.

A more recent (if fictitious) example is from The Archers radio show where an outbreak of E. coli, has resulted in regular customers deserting Ambridge Organics, despite having been given the all clear several weeks ago.

24 August 2011

A Land Rover for all seasons

Land_Rover_Defender_Serengeti — The actual Defender that took us through the Serengeti

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am interested in niche products and markets. Previous examples include A cake slice with a musical difference and Luxury foods in terribly bad taste.

Driving to my parents house the other day, I notice an unusual garage by the side of the road in shape of a thatched house (The Thatched Garage). Even more surprising was the extent of the niche of their shiny objects filling the forecourt. Not just off road vehicles, or even just Land Rovers… they only sell the Defender model of Land Rover.

However, they have been doing very well thank you occupying this tiny niche for over twenty years.

Having recently spent two weeks on safari in Tanzania, I have new found admiration for the sturdiness and off-road capability of this particular product of the Land Rover factory. After hours of pummeling on corrugated and rocky roads, I fully expected the vehicle to start shaking itself to pieces. But our driver had spent ten years driving the same car, and explained that all it needed was a thorough service after each adventure to be as good as new.

16 June 2011

The Apprentice episode 7 – Can engineers be successful entrepreneurs?

Last night’s Apprentice show was as entertaining as ever, although it had extra appeal to the over 60’s and ‘lads’.

In my previous job I created and edited our staff newsletter, so this weeks project of producing a free magazine was of particular interest.

As is always the case with The Apprentice, the teams were given almost no time at all to come up with the concept, the title and some content, including a photo shoot. The next day they then had to sell their ‘finished’ product to three media buying agencies.

Team Venture sensibly went with the over 60’s market as this is now a fast growth area, thanks simply to demographics (see my blog on The growing grey market in the UK). The others more predictably went with the ‘lads mag’ target audience. Although they didn’t seem to be aware that this has been in decline for at least five years (see our YouTube video of Loaded founder James Brown).

Team Logic initially planned to go for something tasteful and business related, rather than the clichéd girls in their underwear approach. But, somehow they ended up with something quite tawdry. It may have had something to do with their project leader Natasha Scribbins‘ belief that ‘porn sells’, or perhaps the lure of a catchy headline, with ‘How do you blow your load’, being the most memorable.

The teams struggle to come up with decent names for their magazines, the 60+ one was called Hip Replacement (it was supposed to be ironic), reminded me of our struggles when creating our staff newsletter.

After a company wide competition, with some very poor entries, we ended up with the uninspiring name of ‘The Insider’. I also remember all too well the hours we spent toiling over our story headlines. If it hadn’t been for my colleague Christine, who it turned out was something of a natural sub-editor, our headlines would have been almost as cringe worthy as those on The Apprentice.

Once again the winning team were as surprised as the viewers at the outcome. In this case one of the media buyers decided to go for an exclusive with the tasteless ‘lads mag’, giving them a massive winning margin.

And on the losers team was Glenn Ward, whose misfortune was to be a software engineer. As Alan Sugar said ‘I have never yet come across an engineer that can turn his hand to business’ so Glenn was fired.

This seems a rather biased approach to the selection process, but as Nick Hewer explained on the follow up show You’re Fired, Sugar has twice given engineers companies to run in his business empire, and they both times they failed.

This seems a rather un-scientific sample to base his decision on. The names of Bill Gates of Microsoft, Steve Wozniak of Apple Computers, Bill Hewlett of Hewlett Packard, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, show that software engineers can indeed be successful business leaders.

13 June 20116 October 2015

Linking Marketing and Sales with Kimberly Davis

Having previously covered social media (The Marketing Master Class – Social Media for Business), Kimberly Davis kindly invited me along to the third in her Marketing Masters Series. And this time the topic was Linking Marketing and Sales.

Kimberly started with a very simple definition; Marketing is anything that represents your company.

Marketing vs Sales
–    example of a football team – team is the marketing effort – the striker is the sales
–    Better if different people due to different goals
o    Marketing – long term – brand building – consistency – impersonal
o    Sales – short term – translates interest into a sale – personal (one to one)

Fear of sales
–    If your product is good, you are doing them a favour by telling them about it.
–    It’s is just a conversation – not a sales pitch
–    People buy from people they know, like and trust

Company name
–    You should be able to say what you do in two words
–    Forget witty tag lines that say nothing
–    Example – Campbell’s condensed soup – Sasparilla marketing detoxification

Target market
–    Forget your gut instinct – you can’t sell to everybody
–    Who is your ideal customer?
–    Create a profile for them – age, race, interests, position, salary etc

Selling the right thing
– What is going to make you the most ROI (return on investment)?
– Are you selling the right thing to the right people?

Identifying need
–    Where does it hurt for your customers?
–    Solve a problem
–    People buy what they want, not what they need.

Focus on the benefits
–    What are your benefits?
–    What problem can you solve?
–    How can you make their life easier?

Unique Selling Point
–    What are you USP’s?
–    Be ‘the only …’
–    Focus – If you try to be everything to everyone, you will be nothing to no one

The Elevator Pitch
–    It is the most important thing in your marketing strategy.
–    You have twenty seconds to make an impact.
–    Can you clearly articulate what you do in that time?
–    People will decide whether to file or forget you based on this.
–    No more that two short sentences long.
o    Who, what, why when and how?

Communication
–    Find the right words to use
–    Keep it simple
–    Focus on fears and needs
–    Read it out and hear how it sounds
–    Test it on lots of people and get feedback
–    Ask them to say it back to you to see what they remember

Kimberly’s elevator pitch for Sarsaparilla:
50% of marketing is wasted. Sarsaparilla is a marketing consulting and training agency that specialises in marketing purification – the process of detoxing your marketing, protecting you from The Flash, Fluff and Fakers, and helping you make more money with less.

Sales across the Marketing Umbrella
Branding
Business cards
Literature
Social Media
.com
Merchandise
Eshots, flyers, emails etc
Website
Testimonials
Advertising

PR
– Getting other people to say it for you

Networking
–    Time to use your elevator speech
–    How to get in out of a conversation – ‘I don’t want to keep you from networking with other people here’… Don’t be too obvious
–    Business Cards
–    Carry a nice pen – cheap pen = cheap company
–    Think beyond the person in front of you – they may know someone relevant
–    Ask for what you want – they may be able to help
–    Pay if forward
–    5 minutes per person

Ways to measure your return on marketing investment
–    Take an inventory
o    List of clients and what they buy from you
o    Review you client profile
    How many
    Average spend
    Repeat clients?
    Their profile – hobbies, interests etc
    When they buy
    Why they buy
    Survey with SurveyMonkey
o    Do your market research – not with family and friends
o    Gives you a starting point for measurement

Creating a process (funnel?)
Positioning
Permission Marketing
Incentivise your customers
Data capture
Generating new leads
Ask why people aren’t buying
Cost of customer acquisition
Retention / Customer service
Multiple revenue streams
Reminders
Experiential marketing

Pricing
Referral and Affiliate plans

Stop selling and allow people to buy from you

Find a mentor
A Hobby or a Business?

Sharon Wright and Magnamole

Kimberly’s keynote speaker for the final slot of the day was Sharon Wright, who’s claim to fame is delivering the best pitch in the history of Dragons Den.

–    Took one day off in the first year of developing the idea.
–    Single parent entrepreneur
–    ‘Think big and you will be big’
–    Decided to start with the biggest BT
o    2 hours of negativity
o    6 Sigma proof required
o    Would be virtually impossible
o    Had never been done before
o    One positive – the product had legs

–    First paying customer was with Cromwell tools – told them BT was a buy (a bit cheeky)
–    From creation to market within 6 months
–    Strong self belief is 1st important ingredient for business success
–    Aim was to be the best presenter on Dragons Den – achieved this goal
–    Preparation (2nd key ingredient for business success)
–    Practiced her three minute pitch 100 times a day for three weeks
–    Read all of the Dragon’s books to help choose which partner to go with
–    After the show was aired Sharon received 7,000 emails
–    Was now working 22 hours a day, seven days a week.
–    Loneliness of starting a business (3rd key ingredient)
–    As time went on her self belief began to drop
–    Met Tony Larkin at the British Inventors show who offered to invest in her
–    Sharon has now sold her Magnamole to an American company keeping a 10% holding.

– The most important lesson learnt was to trust her instincts, and get a business mentor. You are often too emotionally close to your business to make objective business decisions.

– Story reminds me of one of my earliest blog posts on Dragons Den
Dragon’s Con.

Sharon’s book ‘Mother of Invention – How I won Dragons Den, Lost my mind, Nearly lost my business and ended up reinventing myself’, tells of her personal struggle as a single mother, inventor and entrepreneur.
It has been reviewed on my colleague Steve Van Dulken’s Patent Search Blog.

13 June 2011

A cake slice with a musical difference

Whilst shopping for a new corkscrew today, I stumbled across another fine example of a niche within a niche, (Luxury foods in terribly bad taste).

This time the niche in question is cake slicers (also known as cake servers). And I am rather ashamed to admit that the source of, what is in my opinion, a rather naff product is my homeland the United Kingdom.

As you can see from the photo of the bright pink packaging on the left, the manufacturers are well aware of the rather tacky nature of their product. In fact the Kitsch’n’fun range from Kitchen Craft is deliberately aimed at the fun end of the market.

Kitsch’n’fun is a novelty range of items taking on a life of its own. Having quickly developed with some of the most talked about and fastest selling items available. Ideal accessories or pocket money gifts, the selection continues to grow and appeal to the youngster in all of us!

However, the photo does not tell even half the story. But, fortunately I was able to track down a video of the Cake Server in action on YouTube. Of the choice of four tunes available I think the wedding march has to be my favourite, as my mind boggles at the idea of it in action at some posh wedding. I challenge you to watch the video more than three times in a row.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT32uyA3pP8]