It seems the Netto brand will disappear in UK after the sale of  193 stores to Asda. So this search button will no longer help!

Market share seems to be the mantra for supermarkets and this deal may keep Asda at number 2 behind Tesco.

The question for the brand is will Asda be able to compete with Lidl and Aldi

Value for money takes on a wider importance during a recession.
Cost conscious buyers can move down a price band to help balance the budget. Being positioned as a value for money organisation in this market like Primark, Netto (now Lidl or Aldi) or a Ryan Air can help sales and brand exposure.

Netto have just posted an above average market growth of 7% and the future is bright (the future is Yellow to coin an old ad campaign). These strong results have been earned over years of brand positioning.
You can’t become a VFM organisation overnight if you haven’t earned the credentials.

This site reviews all the larger house builders and construction companies here. It also provides occasional papers on housing related subjects.

Unfortunately it does a poor job on Branding which surely rates a mention in the list of factors affecting the share price of builders.

A reasonable job is done on it’s own branding with a clean site, clear strapline and simple logo with a good twist by having a www.org url. As an information and commentary site it is strong on economics and current trends.

Is your business up to speed on current trends for your market sector? Completing your own blog can a discipline that will help to keep you at the leading edge.

If you can own the territory that goes with the strapline ‘The Cot Specialist’ then your brand should stand out in the crowded market. This chosen phrase demonstrates a consumer benefit and an aspiration for the young business and I wish them well.
Please keep the website fresh.

Nursery Today is one of the UK’s many trade magazines. A good knowledge and working relationship with your trade press and your customers press is one of the simple intellectual assets you can acquire for nothing if you work at it.

‘The freshness update is like an enhanced version of the QDF algorithm. QDF applied to searches that were trending whereas the freshness update applies to searches where a user is likely to need new information.
Brands

The big losers in this update are going to be brands. Anybody who has carried out a reputation management campaign knows that the golden rule is to first move the negative listings down to page 2 and then to take over the brands landscape with strong pages that are hard to shift – sub-domains, twitter pages, wikipedia pages and facebook pages are all good examples of pages that can keep negative results on page 2.

This worked fine in the past (unless there was a huge story that triggered the QDF algorithm) but now that Google is continually surfacing fresh stories the task of reputation management gets a lot harder.’ Read the rest of the article or sign up for their twitter and RSS feed

I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards

Blue Harbour                                       North Coast.
Collezione                                            Limited Collection
Autograph.                                          Classic
Indigo Collection                                 Per Una
Nearly Naked                                       Portfolio

‘The M&S brand is one of their strongest assets….   they will shortly be promoting  ‘Only at Your M&S’ … and say they will then develop the identities of our sub-brands – and  for the first time launch brand advertising.’

Watch this space or watch out for spaces.

Asda and Farmfood would like to gobble up Iceland.
The Co-operative Group are looking to bank on a bid for some Lloyds Bank branches.
Boots think that Healthcare at Home will be the right medicine for them.
British Airways will be flying high if they buy British Midland from Lufthansa.

If these deals go through there will be lots of money for the supplychain who will rebrand the newly acquired assets on behalf of the new owners. Shop fitters, printers, and umpteen service companies stand to gain along with the funders and dealers.

Facilities management is not only alive and well it is a growth industry for some wide awake brands such as the RFM Group.

It can be hard to put over an FM message when the service you offer is tailor made to each client. This may be one reason why RFM have updated their image, colour scheme and web site content.
See our view 3 years ago.

For a change this post focuses on your tangible assets. FM is one way of ensuring your ‘Property’ is clean, safe and well maintained. The right external and internal image is an extension of your own brand.

A comprehensive service of this kind is provided for free by Duedil.com drawing information from several sources including Companies House, Patents Office and legal searches.

Other suppliers in a similar market include:

• Open Corporates UK link
• Panjiva a leading intelligence platform for global trade professionals.
• The European Public Sector Information Platform EPSI Platform is less beneficial but it must get better.

Old Standbys include Companies House and Dun and Bradstreet

Brands and company names serve different purposes and should not be interchangeable.

Consumers buy brands they do not buy companies. Investors buy companies with assets that can include brands.

Brands often have different destinies to the destinies of the companies that own them. Either can out last or out live the other.

Horlicks is a brand within GlaxoSmithKlien but can stand on its own without parent endorsement. GSK has had many business iterations and gets no particular benefit from it’s link to Horlicks. Horlicks has been owned by four differently name legal entities since 1968 but the product was named and patented in 1873

Corporate endorsements are primarily for the trade although investors may be able to sleep easier at night with Horlicks.

Best of Both Worlds

• Brands should have precedence over company names.
• Ideally the brand and company name should be the same or inextricably linked. This goes to business focus and shows simple clarity. Coca-Cola or Xerox are clear about the product first and the corporate entity is secondary.
• One test to apply is to ask what is the name of the brand and what is the name of the stuff in the packaging. If the answer is not the same you create confusion for the consumers.
• In most battles over brand versus company the brand should be allowed or forced to win.
• Unless the brand wins you can’t have the best of both worlds. Coke will be coke and not Dasani or vitamin water.

‘FairTrade’ is a worthy strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Its purpose is to create opportunities for producers and workers who have been economically disadvantaged or marginalized by the conventional trading system. Growers and producers can join Fair Trade which provides certification and use of the mark for products which comply.

FairTrade fortnight until 14th March 2011 should help boost sales using the theme Show Off Your Label. It pays to advertise in other words. In the same period last year sales soared 40%.

Composite products can be approved including four beers, two of which are from the Co-Op plus one from Hebden Bridge called Fair rade Ginger Pale Ale. A triple marketing wheeze for this micro brewery as they get a name check, box tick and are searched on the Fair Trade web site.

If you are interested in fair trade and retailing try Bafts for links to a variety of helpful organisations

If you are to use Fair Trade within your marketing mix understand the values and ethos that is implicit and explicit in the activity. Good retail examples include CafeDirect who have a slogan ‘Bringing Quality to Life’ and Traidcraft.

Fair Trade in Numbers

9.3 million cups of tea and 6.4 million cups of coffee every day!

2.3m Chocolate bars and 3.1m Bananas daily

7.5 Farmer suppliers

500 Fair Trade towns

Sales estimated at 3.9 billion euros

And something to shout about 250 Fairtrade wines available I’ll drink to that.

For more information

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