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?

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.

Beechwood recently polled marketing professionals and asked them, what was the most important factor when selecting a marketing agency?

The results of the survey found that the three most important criteria for selection were:

1. Demonstration of results
2. Industry experience
3. Cultural fit

Given the pressure on marketing professionals in these difficult times to achieve measurable success, it was perhaps little surprise that 50% of participants considered an agency’s ability to demonstrate results as the number one factor.  This was closely followed by industry experience, with 42% considering this to be the first priorty in agency selection.

However, many marketers were keen to point out that these factors alone would not ensure a good fit between agency and client.  As one Senior Marketing Officer for a major financial corporation remarked, “The most relevant factor is how good a cultural fit you sense between the agency and the group managing it.  I’ve seen excellent agencies and great brand teams collide due to a poor cultural fit.  And egos have a huge role in generating the “fit” sensation”.

The creation and origins of company names – so central to their brand and image – springs up quite a few surprises. Some company names, that we now take for granted, come from interesting sources of inspiration. Others are just plain safe and dull. So let’s run through an alphabet of company names.

We start, as usual, with A is for… Apple.

Apple  - As everyone knows the Apple Macintosh is named after the American variety of apple called the McIntosh and was chosen in part because Steve Jobs had worked on an Apple Farm one summer. It is also suggested that Jobs was a great fan of The Beatles’ record label Apple. A further theory, (truth unknown) is that the Apple logo with the bite taken out was a homage to Alan Turing.

Alan Turing is considered the father of modern computer science. He worked at Bletchley Park during World War II as a code-breaker and helped cracked the Enigma machine. He was also a homosexual who, when outed, it is rumoured, committed suicide by eating from a cyanide laced apple.

Alfa Romeo -  the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was added to make the brand name we know now.

Adidas - the German sports-good company takes its name from its founder Adolf Dassler or ‘Adi’ Dassler, as he was known.

Adobe -  it is said that the U.S. software company was named after the little creek that ran past the homes of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.

Aldi - the German discounter store (see Chris’s blog ‘Flight to Value’) is also named after its founders. It takes the first two letters of the family name ‘Albrecht’ and the first two letters of the word ‘discount’. Cunning huh?

Asda - the British Supermarket chain comes from an abbreviation of Associated Dairies.

Asus - the company takes its name from, Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The first three letters of the name were dropped to place the company name in a higher position in the alphabet. Perhaps we should change our name to Eechwood.

Aston Martin - the British car company’s name comes from the founder Lionel Martin and the Aston Hill races near Birmingham, UK where the company was first founded.

Atari - this word comes from the language of the Japanese board game ‘Go’. ‘Atari’ is when all of an opponent’s stones are threatened with capture - a bit like ‘check’ in chess, apparently.

Audi - the car manufacturer was founded by Lionel Horch in 1909.  He took the name from the Latin translation of horch (hark in English). Audi is the imperative form of audire - to hear.

A&M records -  was named after its founders Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.  Incidentally Moss,  also a  very successful  horse breeder, named one of his horses Zenyatta after The Police’s third album Zenyatta Mondatta.

Amstrad  - the British electronics company is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. We’re sorry Alan but when it comes to originality in name creation ‘You’re fired!’

How refreshing to receive the new Heineken commercial as a viral yesterday. It lifted my spirits during these bleak days, thanks tbwa neboko in the Netherlands, great work. 

Heineken walk-in fridge

On September 29th, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index plunged and all of its constituents’ stocks fell, all bar one: the Campbell Soup Company. Investors flocked to the iconic brand, which makes some of America’s favourite soups and its shares went up by 0.3 percent. That’s a very good clue to the type of brands that will prosper in 2009 - those that represent good quality and excellent value for money.

According to Interbrand, as value for money rises up the consumers’ agenda, two early beneficiaries of consumers’ changing mood have been German hard-discount supermarket chains Aldi and Lidl (read Mark’s blog on brand names, coming soon), which have been gaining market share across Europe from established giants. It used to be shameful for the middle-class to shop at discounter stores but now their brands suggest intelligent buying.

For consumer, read business. I believe now is the time for agencies to respond as partners to their clients in these challenging times with solutions that deliver good quality and excellent value for money. The flight to value is for all of us to embrace. As a marketing agency, Beechwood have always liked to think we offer our clients value. And with the current weakness of sterling against the dollar we now offer our US clients more value than ever.

Working with brands across EMEA, as a copywriter and creative director, I’ve seen my fair share of language translation glitches.  So when I was sent this little nugget of knowledge I just had to share it.  Some English phrases were translated by computer, one way and back again, using 5 different languages.  How did the software cope with 10 consecutive translations of the same piece of copy?  Judge for yourself.

1) I’m a little teapot, short and stout.
became
They are a small potentiometer, short circuits and a beer of malzes of the tea.

2) A cookie is just a cookie, but fig newtons are fruit and cake.
became
Biskuit has expert of biskuit, but Newton von Fig is fruit and hardens.

3) When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.
became
If the moon fixes its eye like a great vector of Fleischpie of the vector of Pizzapie, is the lover.

Laugh? I almost cracked my ribeye steaks. One final point, at Beechwood, we always use mother tongue translators for all our client’s EMEA  localisation work.  We find it’s a better way or which after 10 translations becomes  - ‘We discovered it, an avenue of butter’.

Please let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who came to our 21st birthday party at the Museum of Brands in London. I hope you enjoyed the evening. Also thanks to those of you who couldn’t make it for your kind words of congratulation.

Emma’s choice of location for the party was truly inspired, not only because it’s the world we inhabit (all things brand) but also because it provided a common and fascinating topic of conversation.

Our industry, like so many others has undergone an amazing change over the past two decades. In 1987, the Apple Mac was still in its infancy, the DTP revolution was in the basement being planned and Flash was a floor cleaner not a software. To airbrush was to airbrush, ink and compressed air - not a pixel in sight. Magic markers, layout pads and Letraset, a great British invention, were ubiquitous. And how we were dependent on those “stuck in traffic” motorbike couriers. The fax was the height of technology.

A lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same! A great creative idea is still a great idea. All that’s really different is the landscape in which the idea appears. This was driven home to me at the museum as I watched those classic commercials from the 70s and 80s. Heineken, refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach, and happiness is a cigar called Hamlet - a golden period for British advertising.

Thanks once again and especially to Andrew Gulland (07885 721 917) for taking all the wonderful pictures. A closing thought, “The only good ideas are the ones I can take credit for.” R. Stevens, Diesel Sweeties, 11-13-06