I’ve just reread the late Paul Arden’s  ’It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be’. It’s a gem of a little book that uses the creative processes of good advertising as a metaphor for business practice. Rather like the way that Machiavelli’s The Prince is written about power and government but is used as a guide to management.

As executive creative director of Saatchi and Saatchi, and I quote Dave Trott writing in The Independent newspaper, “Arden was the ringmaster behind the whole creative circus that saw British Airways become ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’ The Independent become the new intelligentsia’s favourite newspaper, Margaret Thatcher the nation’s favourite leader and Silk Cut their favourite fag (English slang for a cigarette for any American readers).”

One fascinating extract from the book in particular got me thinking about the strategy, positioning and marketing of brands for business start-ups. And how it’s essential when developing a brand from the beginning, from a blank canvass so to speak, to have a clear, simple focus and vision.

“When Charles Saatchi started his ad agency it was regarded as a creative boutique. His brief for the company stationery was to make it look like a bank (about fifteen years later they tried to buy one bank).

He also invested a third of his capital in a full-page advertisement in The Times.

The effect was to make his creative boutique appear an established company.”

A simple, clear brand strategy with a big impact marcoms activity to help start making the brand vision a reality. But what else would you expect from Saatchi and Arden?

Two important dates this year for the Mini, Britain’s most successful car of all time that influenced European car production for at least two decades.

One - the 50th birthday of Alec Issigonis’ designed Morris Mini Minor and the Austin Seven. Two - the 40th birthday of the seminal film The Italian Job, starring Michael Caine and the Mini Cooper S.

According to Peter Collinson, the film’s director, British Motor Corporation (BMC), who manufactured the car, were not completely committed to the film project at all. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that they offered the filmmakers just three Mini Coopers. The production company had to buy the remaining 25 needed for filming, albeit at trade price. They clearly hadn’t recognised the benefits the film could bring to the brand.

Fiat, by contrast, understood the commercial marketing potential of the film straight away. They offered as many Fiats, and limited Ferraris the production company needed, plus cash of $50,000. The producers turned down their generous offer however as it would have meant replacing the Copper S with the Fiat 500, missing the point of the film, somewhat.

BMC’s management seemed unaware of the value of the opportunity at the time – a full length commercial for the Mini brand. In contrast, BMW the maker’s of the New Mini, understood the opportunity and supplied unlimited cars for the remake of the film in 2004. They also gave some financial support. The film was a critical and financial success, grossing over $170 million worldwide. That’s quite an audience for the Mini brand, which prospers under BMW.

As Oscar Wilde commented,  “a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. 

Google, became the world’s first $100 billion brand this week according to a report to a business analysis report by BrandZ. While studying the paper, we were all struck by the number of technology brands in the top 20. The power of the brand in the technology sector is stronger than ever and as important as ever. Especially in today’s economic climate, where the brand can help see businesses through difficult times. 

As everyone knows Google was named as a misspelling of Googol - the number one with 100 noughts after it. So, even at 100 billion, the brand has quite a few noughts to collect before it reaches parity with its parent!

Top twenty most valuable brands 2009 in $M:

Google - 100,039; Microsoft - 76,249; Coca-Cola  - 67,625; IBM - 66,622; McDonalds- 66,575; Apple - 66,113; China Mobile - 61,283; General Electric - 59,793; Vodafone 53,727; Marlboro 49,460; Wal-Mart 41,083; ICBC 38,056; Nokia 35,163; Toyota 29,907; UPS 27,842; Blackberry 27,478; HP  26,745; BMW 23,948; SAP 23,615; Disney 23,110

We relocated to new offices last month after 16 years in the same building. As you can imagine, we had amassed a considerable amount of archive material, old equipment and junk, all carefully stored in our basement. Languishing, forgotten in one of the dark recesses, we came upon our original file server - a Macintosh SE/30, circa 1988. It was configured with a massive 8 MB of RAM and an 80 MB hard drive, which ran at a blistering 16 MHz clock speed! As I wiped off the dust I just wondered to myself. Would it still work after so many years of neglect and damp, not to mention a flood? We powered the old Apple Macintosh up and retired to a safe distance, cowering behind a solid desk just in case. Well, out rang the familiar start-up chime like a long lost friend. Then up came the screen, all nine inches of it, in glorious black and white. What a little marvel, welcome back!

The SE/30 was the forerunner to the current iMac range, a compact elegant computer in an all-in-one unit. It was quite a radical design at the time, although I remember Sun’s SPARCstation Voyager had a similar design philosophy but not a similar price. In 1994, the Voyager was aggressively priced at $13,995! Surprisingly, it didn’t sell, but became hot property when production stopped. Ironic.

Our Macintosh SE/30 now has pride of place in the Beechwood museum alongside a Sun-3 workstation. Not an extensive collection then, I hear you cry. No, but I wonder what will be in the museum in another 16 years? An antique iPhone? A quaint olde-worlde wireless mouse? Or maybe a strange object that used to be called a keyboard?

Last year, web analytics company compete.com ranked the top 25 social networking sites by monthly visits.  A year later, they re-ranked those same sites to see how the positions had changed.  Facebook.com took the number one position, pushing myspace.com into second place.  Third in the list was Twitter.com, which jumped up a remarkable 19 places in 12 months.  Another high climber, was the business networking site and one of my favourites, Linked In.

In January 2009, in the US alone, facebook.com had nearly 69 million unique visitors to the site.  Worldwide, it has over 175 million active users and the fastest growing demographic is the over 30’s.  For marketers, the growth of social networks simply can’t be ignored.

The weak pound may be bad for Brit’s heading abroad this summer, but, for businesses looking to sell their products and services into Europe and beyond, it could bring a little ray of sunshine.  Assisting businesses with their international marketing campaigns for over 20 years, Beechwood are experts in the translation and localisation of marketing communications.

High quality translations remain an enigma for many businesses.  That’s why we have put together a seven step guide to better translations which can help to improve overseas marketing efforts.

Download our presentation guide Seven Simple Steps to Better Translations

I first became aware of Wally Olins for the corporate identity work his company Wolff Olins produced for companies like BOC, 3i and Apple Records in 60s and 70s. So when the chance came to participate in an interview with the great man for the business magazine, Pipeline we published on behalf of IntercontinentalExchange, it seemed foolish to refuse.

Although the conversation with brand guru Olins took place six years ago, his insights are arguably more relevant now than ever. I hope you find it as interesting and thought provoking as I do.

The interview republished by kind permission of Philip Algar, economist and energy journalist in our Thinklets section.

There’s a scene in Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982) in which a photograph is constantly enlarged until the subject is clearly visible - pure science fiction. Well no, take a look at this photograph of Barrack Obama’s 2009 Inauguration in which you can zoom in on the image to see the smallest detail. It’s made up of 220 images and the final image size is 59,783 X 24,658 pixels or 1,474 megapixels, 295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera. An architectural photographer friend of mine said a number of years ago that we wouldn’t shoot digitally because the detail wasn’t there yet!