Bon Brand

The most popular cigarette brands in 1940, by sales volume, were Camel, Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, Raleigh and Old Gold.

In the UK we could select our cancer stick of choice from Benson and Hedges, Black Cat, Cadets, Cambridge, Capstan, Consulate, Embassy and Kensitas where you used to get vouchers to spend on gifts.

Other brands of cigarette that I remember were from Players Weights, No 6 and 10 or Navy Cut, they had the slogan ‘It’s the tobacco that counts’

Add to those lists Craven A, Piccadilly, Davidoff, Senior Service, Woodbine and Pall Mall amongst many others and you can see that branding has been a major factor in the tobacco industry. I do not know when Gitanes first came to the UK.

Brands in the UK 2011 include:

Lambert & Butler
Regal
Benson & Hedges
Camel
Richmond
Marlboro
Mayfair

Brands are not for ever as those lists show.
Add other brands we have missed via our comments section.

The best way to look up UK company information on financial records, stock market information, litigation, directorships and some personality searches may be using the tools of the new industry called Open Data or the Open Data Movement.

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

Location location location is the retail mantra and for ‘Liberty’ the Regent Street location is second to none. Add to that the iconic building and what is now thought of as old world charm. There is also the pedigree, longevity, customer loyalty and service expectation that comes with this retailer.

More important still is the unique product offering with exclusive fabrics and bespoke designs.  TV, ‘reality antique shows’ eulogize about products branded ‘Liberty’ as being quality above and beyond the norm.

If you are in retail go for the new mantra differentiation, differentiation, differentiation.
Form Bespoke Jewellers are differentiating Christmas gifts with their Eternal range. Each piece is hand crafted in England with a guarantee about the ‘Carat’ or weight of diamonds used in the exclusive gift. View

Lost Focus

Who would expect defunct Focus to feature with Liberty. Well I am taking a liberty to reduce the number of posts on similar topics in this case retailer image.

What is your marketing effort is devoted towards? May be it is Loyalty, Integrity, Customer awareness or sales volume. It is so easy to undo your good work.

Our local DIY and gardening store insisted on a 33% increase on the price of garden compost between Sunday and Monday this week. The old and only price of £9 was displayed prominently and after lugging the heavy bags to the checkout they were clocked at £12. On complaining I was told that of the new price came in that morning. It looks like Focus had ‘an invitation to treat’ themselves.

Update On Lost Focus

Focus DIY lost the retail and business plot and went into administration then bankruptcy in May 2011.

No one bothered to save the brand name!

You can’t keep a good personal brand down and I believe millions of people will recognise Adam the Gardener from his 1940′s strip giving gardening advice in the Daily Express. ‘In the 1940′s Adam the Gardener was a national treasure.’

The original classic has just been republished as a hardback by Chatto & Windus part of the Random House Group.

Released in time for Fathers Day and picking up on the trend for allotments, self sufficiency and nostalgia this could be a surprise best seller.

Brand Image
Don’t you just like the hat, pipe and stance of Adam?
The waistcoat and neckerchief harks back to a different era.
Trust was engendered by Adam, the Daily Express and the authors of the series (Cyril Cowell & Morley Adams).

Factors that build and develop strong brand values with your staff include:-

Leadership brings with it good management which leads to a happy team and thereby success. Leadership helps staff believe in the brand and the culture.

Feeling valued goes direct to the heart of how proud people are to work for the company.

Personal growth and opportunity to advance, coupled with good use of existing skills.

Relationship with manager and management is cited as the reason over 50% of leavers have for changing jobs.

Team Spirit , friendship and support from colleagues increases productivity and personal well-being.

Fair pay and benefit that are appropriate in relationship to both the market and internally within the company.

Worklife balance will impact on the appropriateness of stress levels.

Public perceptions of your company its ethics and community responsibilities. Employees are more effective when they are emotionally invested in the brand’s greater purpose.

Recruitment of employees that bring something to the company and fit with your company culture.

ZapMeta is a meta-search engine. Meta search is a tool that provide users the ability to simultaneously search multiple search engines under one interface. It is a fast efficient and popular search tool that deserves wider exposure.

Along with web search, ZapMeta offers a directory based on data from The Open Directory Project.

The business name works for me and the logo is easy to relate too. Not trendy but effective.

South Riding must be a brand because it is not a place (there are only three Ridings in Yorkshire).
In charades South Riding could and should be a book and an audio CD (Mmmm) available from amazon

Winifred Holtby’s classic novel of 1930′s Yorkshire has Sarah Burton starting as the headmistress of Kiplington High School for Girls. For branding a school I doubt that would pass muster in the 21st Century.

Times and brand names change but the BBC needs series like this to sell abroad to pay for it’s pension fund deficit.

Plants are a bit of an obsession with Crocus the online garden nursery. A seasonal business it may be but the business model seems to be perfect for this type of digital brand.

They do not focus on the Crocus or even Croci but offer a wide range of plants garden tools and gifts.
Crocus have a link to ‘gonegardening.com’ which didn’t work for me so I suggest they stick organic growing not webmastering.

Marks & Spencer has been involved in legal action with Interflora since 2008 for bidding on the keyword “interflora” using Google AdWords.
Now as reported by Blogstorm SEO Blog ‘the Advocate General has issued his Opinion on the matter and found in favour of Interflora.’ Now we only need to see the Court of Justice of European Union show the same good sense.

A combination of increased bids for the brand pushing up advert costs and customer leakage to competitors means that the brand is always the loser and Google is the only real winner.

Read more about Advocate General Rules on Interflora vs M&S in Brand Bidding Case by 

A brand is a brand and a company is a company.

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.