Alex Woodruff Biz Buzz

I was delighted to be talked to (AT) so politely by the German VDA Chairman (car makers’ association). NOT!

When I visited the website for the Frankfurt Motor Show (known in Germany as the IAA), he told me I AM interested in exhibiting. Really? Maybe you’d like to ask an English native speaker why this statement really does not come across the right way. It sounds totally arrogant. Like a command. YOU ARE interested.

Fancy phrasing this as a question? And while you’re at it, please take that word IMPRINT off your website. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Oh I’m tired of trying to tell this to arrogant German advertising agencies. Ok, I give in. It’s right. And I AM interested in exhibiting….

Lilac logistics?

How do you market a service that nobody can see, measure or experience until it happens? Tangible products can be shown, in physical terms. Intangible things (like services) can’t.

One solution some companies use is to turn the abstract “process” into something more visual. This company on the right, Müller, has decided to make its logistics “Lilac”. So it provides “lilac logistics”. This will make it easy to design advertising and gain recognition. The colour acts as a brand mnemonic.

Yellow in any language

The same trick has been used by postal services providers and companies like Yello, the spin-off company of electricity provider EnBW. Electricity really is an intangible service. In fact you really see nothing of it. So they have taken this abstractness and given it an identity. Useful when you enter new countries (as seen here in Sweden). Assuming of course yellow has no bad cultural meanings outside Germany.

Talking of exporting your colour, it’s interesting to see what the lilac Müller people have done with their English website. As far as I can see from the awfully direct translations on the site (”LILA REPRESENTS THE UNIFICATION OF TWO FORCES”), they are Lila. Or are they Müller? And this introduction is weird:

“Lilac (or lila as it’s called in German) represents the synergy of two forces: Thought and action, utility and emotion, the mind and the heart.”

Surely that’s six forces, or does running logistics in lilac/lila allow you to count differently?

What do the following have in common: onions, apricots, Brussels sprouts, watermelons and cauliflowers? Since 1 July 2009 they’re on the list of 26 items that can be marketed in Europe with knobs, bumps and curves.

The money-wasting regulations that classed cucumbers with a bend of 10mm per 10cm of length differently from cucumbers with twice as much bend have been overhauled. Yes, curvy cucumbers are now permitted. Mother Nature is back in our shops. And the unbent banana is back (sorry, that’s “bananas with ‘abnormal curvature’ of the fingers are back”).

Some are delighted (”How anyone ever sat down in an office in Brussels and got paid an enormous amount of money to decide on the correct curvature of a cucumber beggars belief.”). Some (still) find it ridiculous (”We fear that the absence of EU standards will lead member states to establish national standards and that private standards will proliferate”).

This should be forbidden. Well: it is.

Oh well. What should producers do? Go with the flow? Lobby and campaign for more change?

I guess it depends how much time and money they have. The EU seems to have plenty of both, even if it doesn’t always know what to do with it.

But there’s bad news: the top ten items that account for 75% of EU fruit & veg sales (including tomatoes, lettuces, endives, lemons, limes and apples) are still under tight EU controls. Unless shops label them clearly as a “product intended for processing”.

Sorry kids, you may never get to see a real tomato. Unless you enjoy making processed foods.

Online, and pushing the new service

Pons, which English dictionary users will know more as Collins, has finally taken the plunge and not only gone online, they’re openly advertising the fact.

This will have been a tough decision for a company that sees itself as a seller of books. In strategic terms it represents a small but potentially far-reaching step into product development (bottom left box if you know your Ansoff matrix).

Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) has been forced by the tide of online events and the tsunami of wikipedia to do the same.

A good decade after the inevitabilty of the internet was accepted by technology experts, it strikes me both Pons and EB were a bit slow on the uptake.
EB did its best to stem the tide. For years their sales staff stood in airports trying to convince you that you really needed 20 volumes of carefully researched knowledge on your mantlepiece. To no avail.

Free trials available online

But going with the flow meant solving some major problems for a company used to thinking in print, the most obvious of which is how to generate sales in the day and age of free, real-time information.

They’ve both picked a ploy, made a lot easier by the strengths of their brands, but my o my, they were slow.

Let’s see, now they’ve realised you sometimes can’t stem the tide of change, how well their original cash cows survive. Or will their books be swept away, like a sand castle on the beach? Their customers will decide…

Following a mega deal with Royal Dutch Shell, German Telekom off-shoot T-Systems is now actively operating in Malaysia after taking over its global DP systems.

Pink, or magenta?

You may be familiar with the corporate colours of Telekom and as happens with many strongly branded companies, a mention of the name is enough to conjure up a world covered in flags, logos and buildings adorned in one colour. For T-Systems it’s magenta.

So far so good.

But… apparently in Malaysia this is the colour used to signal homosexuality. Like pink in many other countries. Or the rainbow symbol. Oops. According to my sources at Telekom (who shall remain anonymous), this is not quite portraying the image T-Systems wanted as a global supplier of technology solutions and consulting services.

Stand closer, and read.

There are strange laws and legal obligations in every country. In England banks promoting mortgages have to warn you that your house may be at risk if you fail to keep up payments. In many countries medical companies have to warn you about the possible side effects, in Germany with “Ask your doctor or pharmacist about possible risks and side effects”, in the US with “always read the packaging”.

Some of these warnings are sensible, others are totally ridiculous.

The “small print” on mobile telephone advertising belongs to the totally ridiculous category. I managed to capture the small print on a poster for BASE mobile telephones. But if people have time to read through it, do they honestly expect them to stop in front of the poster and get out their magnifying glass?

The same warnings are placed at the end of mobile phone ads on German TV. For about 2 seconds! How the hell are we supposed to read it? What use is a law that doesn’t actually help people?

On everyone’s lips.

Well, as often happens with the MBAs, one of the confectionery ideas suggested in the latest round was based on energy, this time in combination with another big brand in what was clearly a co-branding strategy.

When I saw this concept, it felt very much like it was targeted at the MBAs themselves. Hmm.

There were of course other ideas in the group, one similar but by no means identical to a spray chocolate idea we’ve had in the past, but eventually the “Red Bull marries Trebor Bassett’s” concept conquered all.

Don’t blink - it’s adiads

Question: Why do the Chinese copy big brands and produce fakes of their own?
Answer: Because they can.

Can in the sense of “are not stopped” - by the authorities, who have obviously not got the situation under control.

Can in the sense of “know how to” - having been trained by western companies.

When planning the P for Place, western companies are quick to jump at opportunities. One is to find a local manufacturer - in keeping with “contract manufacturing” strategies to outsource the second part of the value chain but keep control of marketing and sales yourself.

Spoken properly, that’s g-star not g-stal

The problems with this strategy:

1) Quality - Mattel can tell you all about this after recalling more than 9m toys due to Chinese quality problems. The boss of the Chinese company paid off his workers, sent them home, then hanged himself.

2) Goods being sneaked out of the back door and sold on the black market

3) You train people in other countries to become your next competitor - they copy the technology (after you showed them how it works) and before you know it, you have the sorts of products in shops that Bernhard spotted in Lhasa.

Apparently Mattel have stopped producing some of their goods in China, and were even considering returning production to the States. Funny that.

Designed for those with superior knowledge?

When Fiat’s multipla was launched in 1998 it was hailed as a triumph of modern design. The high headlights were an ergonomic stroke of genius. It reaped so much acclaim that it was even put on display in the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Yet it was a sales flop. Strangely, despite all the praise from designers - who are obviously superior to me as a lowly car driver - in 2004 it underwent a major facelift. The objective: to shed its original styling for a “more restrained look”. The ultimate aim: to attract more buyers.

Just goes to show - sometimes you should listen to your buyers, not people removed from reality in an abstract world of “art” and “modern design” (whatever that is).

Did they do focus groups? Did they conduct any market research?

There are plenty examples on the internet these days of products that don’t translate. My favourite still has to be the Nova car, which in South America basically meant “doesn’t go”.

So it’s refreshing to see examples of challenging names within the same language.

Would you apply for a job at this company? Or invite them in to work on your business systems?

If you do, prepare to meet the founder: Mr Boring.

And before you ask - yes, they do have a website (boring.com). And as it says on the website, “Find Everything Boring”.