Spontex Queen of Clean

Spontex is one of the UK’s biggest cleaning product brands and required a new brand logo for their campaign to find the ‘Queen of Clean’. Consumer activity included a nationwide search for the UK’s ‘Queen of Clean’, fronted by Aggie MacKenzie from C4’s How Clean Is Your House.

Based in Worcestershire, Spontex designs, produces and sells a wide range of domestic cleaning products covering all aspects of cleaning including mopping, scouring, dusting and washing up.

New Media Age

Mindbubble, branding and web creative developed by BCC,  is Face Group’s online co-creation community for the historically challenging to target 25-50 female market. The innovative tool was included in a very informative article on the New Media Age website earlier this month. It included Mindbubble as an example of an effective tool that brands can use to collaborate and connect with their consumers, something we at BCC strongly believe is the future for brand development.

The article discusses strong examples of how brands are successfully using all sorts of social networks and communities to close the void between themselves and their target market:

Other FMCG brands are experimenting with tapping into third-party communities. Mindbubble, an online community aimed at women aged 25 to 50, was launched in May 2009 by co-creation agency Face, allowing collaboration with brands on product development and marketing.

Aquafresh, Boots, Comfort and Surf have been involved in piloting the concept. “It provides a platform for exploring ideas more dynamically, building on consumer feedback iteratively with input from various people internally as well,” says Joel Dawson, head of digital marketing at Boots UK. “This approach has proved to be a useful tool for product innovation and has provided us with a number of ideas which are currently being brought to market.

To see the full article click here

Timothy James Consulting website and rebrand

Timothy James Consulting are a senior appointment specialist based in central Bristol with an impressive client list. They originally approached BCC to create a new website and, after consultancy, realised that it was time to refocus their brand and its strategy. We developed a brand and web creative that truly reflected the TJC brand in every way.

Certus Sales rebrand and website

Certus Sales are a specialist sales recruitment consultancy based in London, Reading and Leeds. They provide sales recruitment services to the business to business marketplace. Following a multi-agency pitch they chose BCC to refresh their brand proposition and online web offering. We delivered a unique, dynamic CMS website allowing jobs to be found easily with functionality such as CV uploading. The site was of course fully optimised for search engines (SEO). Like Certus their website is unlike any other, driving the unique selling points of their service offering,

Mind Bubble branding

We originated and developed both the branding and web creative for Mind Bubble. It’s an exciting online collaboration community for 25-50 year old web savvy, creative and articulate women.

25-50 year olds are historically a hard market to target but incredibly important as they are the gatekeepers and decision makers for the majority of household purchases.

Mind Bubble effectively uses the online community to extract the opinions, ideas and creativity of women throughout the marketing process.

http://www.mindbubble.com/

Brand Building in a Recession

With any economic downturn every company naturally looks at its outgoings to see where they can make cut backs. Reducing the marketing budget can seem like a quick and easy fix, after all it’s not going to effect sales in the very short term, and can make an instant sizeable saving. Some of the biggest names around including Coca-Cola have reduced budgets in reaction to the current climate. Its surprising that this is the case as history has shown that continuing spending through a recession can reap big rewards when others are pulling back. With less competition the impact per £1 spent will be more effective gaining valuable market share and voice.

Overseas in America and in the UK the likes of Diageo, Kellogg’s and Kleenex have been increasing their marketing expenditures in relation to forecasted sales. The good advice is to keep spending, yes we would say this, but again looking back this can be a wise move in a knee jerk environment. In a downturn consumers think longer and harder about what they expect in order to part with their hard earned money. Brands need to work harder, not pull back, to motivate purchase and build their brand equity. When the bust turns its ugly head back into a boom the brands that have spent smart will be riding high and reaping the rewards – sounds simple right? Okay, it’s not that simple, as many factors determine whether marketing expenditure in a downturn will really reap the rewards. This is when it comes down to the knowledge, insight and understanding of your consumers and the right agency to originate and activate your communications.

The recession can leave consumers tainted and your consumer’s behavior can be very different to what you once knew. With less spending by brands on building equity and consumer’s propensity to question a brands value and consequently their loyalty to it, it can be a real uphill struggle.
Brands such as Kellogg’s have been increasing expenditure with great effects. Even in light of a mild recession in 2001 they continued to spend money and in 2007 spent $1 billion on advertising, a first for them. They increased their price points following increases in higher production (ingredients) costs which many would have advised against in view of the markets. Their second quarter profits were up just over 9% proving that this was a good move. Mark Baynes, Chief Marketing Officer stated, “Brands are much more than flakes in a box. We believe it’s critical, when the economy gets tougher, that people should be seeing the value of our brands constantly.”

Strong spending now feels like a real risk to those holding purse strings but with risk comes potential large rewards. It’s imperative, now more than ever, that a marketing/brand manager has the right ‘real time’ advice and the right agencies in their tool belt.

Phipps Stone Centre's branding

Peninsula branding

Blow Creative developed a new refreshed brand logo and proposition based on Peninsula’s unique core values and service offering. In Peninsula’s words “The brand encapsulates Peninsula’s unique and forward thinking approach to the full document lifecycle and the partnership approach with our clients, employees and suppliers.” (Peninsula Marketing Manager)

Nectar Core Creative

Nectar, a extremely successful points rewards organisation ties into some of the biggest names around, required a brand extension for their small business awards. Blow Creative developed and refined the design that will be used to support and highlight some of the UK’s best small businesses. http://www.nectar.com/business-sba2009/

MedCrowd branding

We love a great idea at Blow and MedCrowd is definitely one. It is a secure online community for healthcare professionals to share expertise and is sure to be a massive success later in ‘09. Blow originated the branding which encapsulated MedCrowd with a industry related colourways and modern yet non alienating font usage. The use of the ‘O’ and the tag line created an easy to understand and recognisable brand logo.

Blow Creative also developed the accessible website (web 2.0 platform). Medical professionals span a wide demographic so Blow ensured it did not solely cater for one group and alienate others. Look out for the website coming soon…