News

Change nothing, and nothing will change...

Posted by Andrew Grant on Tuesday 24 Jan 2012, 16:59:00

Tesco have issued their first profit warning in over 20 years with their new CEO stopping short of blaming global expansion and out of town hypermarkets. Philip Clarke has promised over £500m investment in core UK operations refocusing the retailer on fresh produce and customer service. Hitting their bottom line.As an active member of Scotland's Entrepreneurial Exchange (a network for growth focused businesses in Scotland with £1m turnover or more) I had the honor of often sitting next to a captain of industry or multimillionaire businessman (or woman). When in such great, experienced and successful company it's hard not to ask, "how did you do it?"Each and every one of them cited the same things:Passion, Determination, Never giving up, Belief (adding being in the right sector, at the right time selling something people wanted to buy) But dig a bit deeper, normally after the main course, a few glasses of champagne and before the evening’s speakers start and you get a ‘money can't buy’ lesson on how to grow a business. Empire building, the downfall of some of the greatest companies ever created. There are so many examples of good companies, that focused on a core proposition, aligned their human resources and marketing to deliver this proposition, built formidable reputations and became great (RBS, STV, AOL) BUT instead of remaining great, they refocused on growth, on empire building. Often fueled by greed (delivering investor returns) ego or both the company failed to remain great. They simply became big, having lost focus, passion and self-belief. Will Tesco agree they have fallen into this group, recognise that it is a great British retailer and retreat from their global campaign. Or will shareholder greed and senior management ego drive the business to pursue growth in developing economies where it has no experience of operating in, a corporate culture that is at odds with regional attitudes and a one size fits all approach that doesn't cater for local appetites? Empire building is very much a phenomenon of the post Thatcher entrepreneur, big is best; where turnover, office size, location and staff numbers are seen as a measure of success. I don’t know how many times prospective clients in a pitch process asked me: what’s your turnover, where are you based, how many staff do you employ. The ironic thing is, today most of the agencies we lost out to back then, because they had big turnovers, with glorious offices populated by payroll, are now bust. Gone forever. Nothing more than a name check on the ‘100 Greatest Ads Ever’ TV show and subject of folklore and old skool stories. Nation1 is one of the first agencies (yes that’s true by the way) to accept the new economy and adapt the agency business model to accept the fact that the way the economy is now is the way the economy will be. We’ve shut our physical offices, we’ve handed back the keys and we’ve sold all our furniture. We’ve binned the server (it was out of date, a few months after we bought it anyway) and moved all core services and process to the cloud, we made all but five of our staff redundant and re-employed the best on a pay as you go project by project basis, we’ve hunted high and low (and managed a number of recruitment and procurement rounds across the UK) to assemble the best in breed with regards to human resource and digital talent, we’ve handed over equity to senior players and we’ve refined our offer to focus on products and markets, we’ve incentivized our teams so their interests are our interests which are our clients interests (and vice versa) and we’ve aligned our resources an award winning standard at competitive costs. It was one hell of a roller coaster ride but today Nation1 is a lean, mean effective marketing machine that can count Barclays, Grant Thornton, CitizenM and Glasgow City Marketing Bureau as clients. The final step in this initial journey is to launch our new positioning. Our new website(s) go live in February promoting our three core specialisms: Nation1: (DIGITAL CONSULTING) joining up the digital dots by offering high end, top level KPMG style consultancy (but digital) exclusively for financial institutions and professional services firms. This is where our senior team (consisting of: strategy/planning, creative, social, search, mobile and media) help these guys (at a senior management and/or board level) get their heads round the fast changing digital economy, what this means for them, how it will affect their business, what they need to do and organizational change to be implemented to make the most of it. Joining up the digital dots (both internally across different departments and externally over multiple agencies) to deliver efficiency and maximize returns. Great British Mobile: (UK RETAIL APP) after the successful development and distribution of the iPhone and Android destination retail apps for Glasgow, we have further developed the app (which includes GPS store listing, real time offers, in app advertising, local retailer offers, push notifications, local events listings and local business listings) so that for the fixed price of £9,950 other cities, shopping Centre’s and destinations can have their own version of the app (both iPhone and Android) with their branding, data and local information. Shoreditch Social Club: (SOCIAL MEDIA FOR RETAIL) its not just about stats and numbers, its about engagement and sales. We’re focused at turning footfall and browsing consumers into active shoppers and purchasers. By taking the day to day headache of social media away from retailers who don’t have an in house resource, managing their central and regional Facebook and Twitter activity making sure every mention is handled professionally. For retailers that have social covered and a full time skilled resource in house our team can bring local and central teams and agencies together helping them work smarter, delivering more effective, creative and engaging campaigns. Added to this we deliver training, support and best practice as well as helping the biggest names on the high street manage their different agencies, recommend where they should be and how to get there, delivering cost effective strategy and resource management offering solutions that deliver commerce.Keep you eyes peeled for our new websites; email marketing and social media activity kicking off this spring followed by the launch of our events and PR campaign across London in September. If you are a bank, professional service provider, retailer or destination give me a shout to find out how Nation1 can take your headaches away EMAIL ANDREW

posted in: News from the MD

People don't give a shit about burgers

Posted by Andrew Grant on Tuesday 25 Oct 2011, 10:11:00


I remember meeting the CEO of a leading UK car rental business UK two years ago selling him the idea that he should set up a Facebook page with a competition to spot branded vans around the country to win prizes.

He was impressed, intrigued and equally terrified. The old "don't put your head above the parapet" mentality….

Nowadays it seems everyone is jumping on the Facebook bandwagon (and this could be Facebook’s downfall. Maybe, just maybe). According to recent research kids are now far more likely to engage with social content via their Blackberry messenger service or Twitter. After all its not very cool to be on a website where your gran is your friend. But Facebook’s downfall: I have faith that the guys at Facebook HQ will sort this current trend out and come up with some killer creative app that addresses the granny effect.

It always astonishes me how clever people fail to get their heads around so-called technological advances. Social media is really the same as handing out leaflets or advertising in the paper. You wouldn't buy a billboard and shove one of your daughter’s nursery school paintings on it to promote your law firm, so why do so many companies feel its OK to adopt the digital equivalent online. A bad social media presence is far worse than no social media presence at all and once its up - who is going to manage it, update it, engage with your fans and followers through it and what's your KPI and ROI etc etc etc

I was sitting with the CEO of Trident Insurance (a Nation1 client) showing him how Facebook worked and what other brands are up to. So many (that should know better) are getting it dangerously wrong. Take McDonalds for example http://www.facebook.com/McDonaldsUK. One of the biggest brands on the planet and they have only 38,635 UK followers. Their Facebook wall is a dreary list of old adverts special offers and a countdown to the re-launch of the Big Tasty. There are few user comments and no real engagement. Even Ministry of Sound are pretty piss poor (and they should know much better. Tut tut guys)

It seems the amount of "Likes" you get is the measure of success. The other day BA announced "hurrah we have 100,000 likes' I posted the following comment: “Not very good to be honest. U have more staff than that. Ur FB page needs an injection of creativity and social engagement” I then got this comment in reply: BA usually responds (and fast) to negative comments posted on its wall. It’s been almost an hour since yours and there is still radio silence. There were not even comments from other people after that. Except for the number of employees (I checked), you are right! I cannot believe you left BA speechless”

To punt insurance for Trident we developed www.facebook.com/perfectpenthouse. The idea is simple: everyone loves showing off their homes and people love looking through the keyhole. Known within the building industry as "house porn”. So we teamed up with Dwell, Stirling Akroyd the London estate agents, Virgin Atlantic to offer the best photo submitted of home made interior design a holiday to Miami worth £10,000 and Ikea to offer monthly e-vouchers. Added to that we are using our wall as a destination for all things cool about design, interiors and architecture, aggregating stuff from other sites and inviting guest bloggers to get involved with style tips and advice. Most importantly we headhunted a guy that loves interiors, design and architecture running it all for us. Not some social media executive.

As a wee aside its worth pointing out anyone that is looking to run a ‘Like’ campaign on Facebook that you now need to develop an app to run this, as Facebook don’t want you using their own functionality and have recently been taking down pages that exploit this.

Social media is all about creative ideas that get people engaged and following through, with openness and integrity. Use your nut, get all your employees involved (if THEY can't be arsed - forget it), integrate your email marketing and blog. PR and advertising. Set objectives and measure them.

People don't give a shit about burgers, insurance or rental cars. So you need to give them something to talk about, to share, to get involved with. Its the same as the old billboard: come up with a great creative idea and the rest runs like clockwork (in fact with Facebook, come up with a killer core creative idea and sit back and watch them do it for you).

posted in: News from the MD

Club nights and porn stars

Posted by Julie Pallisco on Wednesday 14 Sep 2011, 21:28:00

That’s the end of summer, officially. I have had the best summer of my life. I kick started the journey with the opening parties on Ibiza in June, followed by a weekend in Amsterdam (to meet a client!), a few more trips to Ibiza, ten days in Barcelona ending on a high hanging out with Sharleen Spiteri partying on a yacht in Ibiza.

As much as I’m name-dropping and showing off, there is a point to this.

Back in the day, when I was working in the world of nightclubs in Glasgow, you’d be hard pressed to find a venue in Ibiza that didn’t have as its star attraction a UK super club as resident: Cream, Gatecrasher, Ministry of Sound, Twice as Nice, Clockwork Orange and Renaissance were the big boys. Blag a guest list to any one of the islands top mega venues today and you’ll be hard pushed to find a brit on the dance floor, let alone the line up. If club promotion is one the most innovative and creative breeding grounds for great marketing ideas (where anything goes and clients sign off just doesnt exist): what does this say about the future of the UK’s creative community?

It’s a popular belief (and one I agree with) that the great innovations on the marketing front start with porn, infect the clubs, evolve into music and spread across brands.

A great example of this is how the porn studios are giving away total free access to their content, setting up aggregator sites with full access to some of their most popular work and promoting that content across a range of ‘white labeled’ gallery sites making it look as it the content has been illegally uploaded or stolen. The viewer therefore feels as though they have got one up and something for free and tell their friends about their discovery.

Last year, Spanish mega club Supermartxe (that now owns the Friday night, top billing, Ibiza residency at Privilege - the worlds largest club which can hold 14,000 people) decided they needed to do something amazing to spread the world they now had this enormous space to fill. What they did employ one of the worlds top dance producers to create a chart topping dance track (that still gets airplay across the worlds clubs and radio stations today).This track advertised the club, location, launch date etc within the lyrics. Next they asked media whore and global IT girl Paris Hilton to strut about a $30m Miami style MTV Crib surrounded by beautiful dancers taking the piss out of the track and herself with a severe helping of glamour and style. Finally they seeded the video across influencer blogs and forums worldwide. Everyone from NO.1 blogger Perez Hilton to the pop fans on Facebook commented, tweeted, re-tweeted, followed, embedded, ripped and downloaded the stuff. They encouraged people to rip apart, rip off, reproduce and remix everything. The content went viral, spread like a Trojan Virus and the super-club still own top billing in Ibiza today.

Some time ago, when Nation1 were developing the marketing material for our annual legendary Halloween bash we asked the sponsor if we could use their TV advert and cut in our own footage to create a video that promoted the event but was in keeping with the theme and their brand. The response was, “there is no way you can touch our brand assets.”

This is the moral of the story and the reason for my showing off and name-dropping (well actually there is no excuse or reason for that!) Today and for the foreseeable future, to be successful in the social space you MUST accept that you are not longer able to control your brand, like a Nazi the way you once did. Brand guidelines should be rewritten and replaced with ‘my brands guide to letting it all go”. To really succeed in social you have to develop the platform, create the social object , stimulate interest, engage the audience and ignite the imagination. Then sit back and accept what happens next, happens next. The respect you get for this will be far greater than the protection you achieve from over the Gestapo style controls.

I ‘like’ the Pepsi group on Facebook and I was surprised to see that when they asked the question on their wall last Friday evening “Pepsi Movie Night: stay in with a Pepsi tonight but what’s your movie choice?” as well as the typical posts like Twilight Saga and Star Wars etc someone posted Lesbian Dildo Sluts. Pepsi did not edit this out or remove it.

Search has become so competitive and AdWords is so expensive that social is a great alternative, if done right. Make sure you do it right.

Whilst I have been enjoying the good life, the Nation1 team have been working hard to ensure its also been a great summer for Nation1: MacLean Electrical (one of the worlds leading component suppliers to the oil and gas sector) returned to ask us to develop a brand, website and marketing campaign to launch and promote their new Lighting and Energy design company. Top five global accountancy firm Grant Thornton appointed our senior management team to work alongside them in a consultancy capacity to develop a digital strategy for using social media to target new customers and build deeper relationships with existing clients. Trident Insurance’s social media project created and executed by Nation1 was a resounding success with the client re-appointing us for another 6 months to develop and evolve the activity. And the online marketing campaign by Nation1 for SocietyM (the business club concept from award winning Dutch hotel group CitizenM) has smashed all targets set and keeps on growing.

Nation1 also celebrated two years in London this August (how time flies) by teaming up with Richard Draycott and Gordon Young of the Marketing Industry Network and Harry Fowler of Cogs Agency and putting on a mid-summer piss up at The Light Bar on Shoreditch High Street. With access to a private outdoor courtyard, free bar, stunning weather and deep blue skies the event was a perfect way to celebrate with friends and clients, old and new.

Check out the pics here from our summer party here

Check out the Supermartxe track here (Youtube)

posted in: News from the MD

Club nights and porn stars

Posted by Andrew Grant on Monday 12 Sep 2011, 21:28:00


That’s the end of summer, officially. I have had the best summer of my life. I kick started the journey with the opening parties on Ibiza in June, followed by a weekend in Amsterdam (to meet a client!) a few more trips to Ibiza, ten days in Barcelona, ending on a high by hanging out with Sharleen Spiteri and partying on a yacht in Ibiza.

As much as I’m name-dropping and showing off, there is a point to this.

Back in the day, when I was working in the murky world of nightclubs in Glasgow, you’d be hard pressed to find a venue in Ibiza that didn’t have as its star attraction a UK super club as resident: Cream, Gatecrasher, Ministry of Sound, Twice as Nice, Clockwork Orange and Renaissance were the big boys. Blag a guest list to any one of the islands top mega venues today and you’ll be hard pushed to find a Brit on the dance floor, let alone the line up. If club promotion is one the most innovative and creative breeding grounds for great marketing ideas (where anything goes and client sign off just doesnt exist): what does this say about the future of the UK’s creative community?

It’s a popular belief (and one I agree with) that the great innovations on the marketing front start with porn, infect the clubs, evolve into music and spread across brands.

A great example of this is how the porn studios are giving away total free access to their content, setting up aggregator sites with full access to some of their most popular work and promoting that content across a range of ‘white labeled’ gallery sites making it look as it the content has been illegally uploaded or stolen. The viewer therefore feels as though they have got one up and something for free and tell their friends about their discovery.

Last year, Spanish mega club Supermartxe (who now own the Friday night, top billing, Ibiza residency at Privilege - the worlds largest club which can hold 14,000 people) decided they needed to do something amazing to spread the world they had this enormous space to fill. What they did was employ one of the worlds top dance producers to create a chart topping dance track (that still gets airplay across the worlds clubs and radio stations today).This track advertised the club, location, launch date etc within the lyrics. Next they asked media whore and global IT girl Paris Hilton to strut about a $30m Miami style MTV Crib surrounded by beautiful dancers taking the piss out of the track and herself with a severe helping of glamour and style. Finally they seeded the video across influencer blogs and forums worldwide. Everyone from No.1 blogger Perez Hilton to the pop fans on Facebook commented, tweeted, re-tweeted, followed, embedded, ripped and downloaded the stuff. They encouraged people to rip apart, rip off, reproduce and remix everything. The content went viral, spread like a Trojan Virus and the super-club still own top billing in Ibiza today.

Some time ago, when Nation1 were developing the marketing material for our annual legendary Halloween bash we asked the sponsor if we could use their TV advert and cut in our own footage to create a video that promoted the event but was in keeping with the theme and their brand. The response was, “there is no way you can touch our brand assets.”

This is the moral of the story and the reason for my showing off and name-dropping (well actually there is no excuse or reason for that!) Today and for the foreseeable future, to be successful in the social space you MUST accept that you are not longer able to control your brand, like a Nazi the way you once did. Brand guidelines should be rewritten and replaced with ‘my brands guide to letting it all go”. To really succeed in social you have to develop the platform, create the social object , stimulate interest, engage the audience and ignite the imagination. Then sit back and accept what happens next, happens next. The respect you get for this will be far greater than the protection you achieve from over the Gestapo style controls.

I ‘like’ the Pepsi group on Facebook and I was surprised to see that when they asked the question on their wall last Friday evening “Pepsi Movie Night: stay in with a Pepsi tonight but what’s your movie choice?” as well as the typical posts like Twilight Saga and Star Wars etc someone posted Lesbian Dildo Sluts. Pepsi did not edit this out or remove it.

Search has become so competitive and AdWords is so expensive that social is a great alternative, if done right. Make sure you do it right.

Whilst I have been enjoying the good life, the Nation1 team have been working hard to ensure its also been a great summer for the agency: MacLean Electrical (one of the worlds leading component suppliers to the oil and gas sector) returned to ask us to develop a brand, website and marketing campaign to launch and promote their new Lighting and Energy design company. Top five global accountancy firm Grant Thornton appointed our senior management team to work alongside them in a consultancy capacity to develop a digital strategy for using social media to target new customers and build deeper relationships with existing clients. Trident Insurance’s social media project created and executed by Nation1 was a resounding success with the client re-appointing us for another 6 months to develop and evolve the activity. And the online marketing campaign by Nation1 for SocietyM (the business club concept from award winning Dutch hotel group CitizenM) has smashed all targets set and keeps on growing.

Nation1 also celebrated two years in London this August (how time flies) by teaming up with Richard Draycott and Gordon Young of the Marketing Industry Network and Harry Fowler of Cogs Agency to put on a mid-summer piss up at The Light Bar on Shoreditch High Street. With access to a private outdoor courtyard, free bar, stunning weather and deep blue skies the event was a perfect way to celebrate with friends and clients, old and new a successful start to our London adventure.

Keep on growing.

Check out the pics here from our summer party here

Check out the Supermartxe track here (Youtube)

posted in: News from the MD

 

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