All posts by rachel_eaton

From inception to opening: Building Nairobi Garden City

Managing a mixed-use real estate development on the scale of Garden City – 200 homes, 25,000 sqm of office space, a hotel, a 3 acre park and the largest retail mall to date in East Africa – means dealing with a complex community of suppliers. So, when it came to PR and marketing support, the Garden City team were looking for a simple and complete solution.

Gong’s ability to field a combined team of PR specialists and design from Gong Creative, based in both London and Nairobi, enabled us to partner with Garden City on all its mar-comms requirements.

We refreshed the Garden City logo and created a striking new slogan and visuals to capture the sheer variety on offer. A new website and social media channels mean Nairobi residents have been able to watch the buildings rise from the ground as well as find out about letting and sales opportunities.

At the end of May 2015, the long-awaited shopping mall finally opened, to great acclaim. On-the-ground, Gong secured front-page trailed Financial Times coverage as well as extensive local media news for the event. The FTreported that Garden City provided the perfect location and was the “right partner” for shopping giant Walmart to finally enter the Kenyan market – previously “a prize beyond its reach.”

 

Collective Genius

COLLECTIVE GENIUS

Narda Shirley

Challenger brands and innovation often go hand in hand. But how easy is it to break into a mainstream category like yoghurt in the UK when it is dominated by major organisations like Muller and Danone with brands like Muller Corner and Activia?

I have been fascinated by a newcomer called The Collective for a while, not just for its utter deliciousness, but also because it looks so different from everything else on the shelves. And I don’t mean artisan ‘hand knitted’ yoghurt that is only available in a few independent delis, we are talking Waitrose and premium branches of Sainsbury’s here.

I could sense an Innocent-like approach to the brand, not just in its packaging design, web site and tone of voice, but also in its location. Innocent’s invitation to pop into Fruit Towers in west London was always intriguing, as is the location of The Collective brand owner, Epicurean Dairies in Acton – an area not known for its lush pasture!

Buoyed with the confidence of curiosity, I gave them a call and co-founder Mike Hodgson agreed to tell me their story. The web site gives a strong clue as to the origins of The Collective in New Zealand. It turns out that Mike was on the lookout for a brand he could get excited about to launch in the UK, using his considerable experience of working in the yoghurt and fresh desserts category. ‘I hadn’t done a start-up, and it was something I needed to do for myself.’ Unsurprisingly perhaps given the trajectory of The Collective in the UK, it turns out that Mike knows his way around supermarkets and brands. In his career he has worked both for corporates, (like The Greencore Group and St.Ivel) and entrepreneurs (he was a consultant to James Averdieck the founder of fresh desserts company, GÜ).

At Greencore, Mike was MD of the ready meals business, but after his years as a corporate man, he jacked it all in, took his family on a round the world trip and bought a pub in the Lake District. It was during that world trip that he says he ‘fell in love with NZ and admired their ‘go for it’ spirit. Returning to run his gastro pub, he showcased wines from New Zealand, which began his successful connection with the country.

Whilst running the pub, he struck up his relationship with GÜ, initially as a part-time consultant, but after it was successfully sold to Noble Foods in 2010, he took on the role of MD full time for a year. He credits these experiences as the catalyst for The Collective in the UK.

“Running the pub enabled me to really connect with the public again, seeing my customers’ reactions to the specials board every day, talking to them first hand to get immediate feedback on what they liked. The engagement really fuelled my passion for great food and gave me the impetus to do something on a bigger scale.

“The GÜ experience convinced me I could do something similar, but this time for myself. I was actively looking for a business idea UK at the same time as The Collective were thinking about expanding overseas. I only had to taste the product to know we’d found something really special. The challenge was to replicate the unique bio culture that produces the yoghurt’s extraordinary consistency in NZ here in the UK with British milk. We also wanted to tweak some of the flavours to British tastes.”

We discussed the lemon (my favourite) as a case in point. “I’m a Northener and to me the obvious way to go was towards lemon curd. Similarly we gave Russian fudge flavour a taste of Devon toffee.”

Mike enrolled his business partner, Amelia in the venture. They had worked together at GÜ. He credits Amelia and her relationships with, and knowledge of the supermarkets, as being a major factor in their success to date, that and their manufacturing partner in the venture.

“When you are launching a new product, you can go one of two routes – capital intensive (and therefore inherently risky) where you set up your own manufacturing operation or outsource to a specialist manufacturer. We chose the second option so that we could focus all of our efforts on sales and marketing. But even beyond that, we actually convinced a manufacturer to become the third partner. Giving them skin in the game has created stability as well as instant credibility for the integrity and reliability of our supply chain with the supermarkets.”

When I asked Mike what really motivates him about a start-up, he laughs and says that he now appreciates what people mean when they say you have to be a bit mad to be an entrepreneur. He cites the values and the attitude of the business as the way in which they really want to make their mark. “We just want to be easy to do business with, and be really helpful, that’s why I’m happy to talk to you. We don’t court publicity, but if people are interested in what we are doing, that’s great. My wife does all of the customer service and feedback – it’s a hangover from the days of running the gastro-pub, because we really believe in listening to people and taking what they say on board. If we have a loyal customer base who feel valued, we know that they will help get the word out about how good the product is.”

One of the most compelling things for me in hearing this challenger brand story is that Mike is not a groovy young MBA grad with a disruptive idea. He has worked his way around and through the industry and even taken a step back from corporate life before deciding to start-up his own thing. He says of the challenge, “ I think I have a slightly masochistic need to do something that’s hard and that other people think is (to quote some) ‘very brave’ or ‘bloody stupid’ Clearly managing to achieve hard things gives you a strong purpose and achieving that is very satisfying.”

He is proof that a variety of experiences and perspectives can add up to being able to see things in a new light. He is a ‘portfolio man’ who has taken inspiration to launch a company at the point when in a different generation, many people would have hunkered down and waited for retirement. For me, the standout elements of the story are the factors that have set the scene for rapid growth: Sector experience of sales and marketing, distribution and supermarket relationships; manufacturing and supply chain stability and integrity; a tried and tested product with a distinct brand personality that just needed to be localised and a business partnership with Amelia that had been forged in another successful company. And of course, the entrepreneur’s special sauce; relentless desire and self-belief.

The results speak for themselves, turnover is already exceeding £10m and they are on target to be profitable this year. It all adds up to an irresistible recipe for success.

Can we really ever have true innovation and entrepreneurship within Financial Services?

Renny Popoola

2015 has seen lots of noise around the emergence of new challenger banks in the UK with much being said about the potential for emerging firms to take on the big players and provide a credible alternative for consumers. The outlook for the sector looks promising. Whilst Metro bank was the first business to obtain a full banking licence in 150 years, 6 new banks have been authorised since 2013 and dozens more on the pipeline.

Clearly, the industry is aching for a game-changer. A company, firm or idea that reinvents the way the public engages with firms and delivers banking and financial services to customers that is relevant and accessible.

We have seen such game changers disrupt the leisure industry (AirBnb, Housetrip), transport (ZipVan, Uber), communications (WhatsApp, Skype), entertainment, (Netflix) and to some extent health (Myfitnesspal, Fitbit). Most have become leaders in their own sphere paving the way for a new wave of brands to offer a traditional service with a modern twist.

With systemic changes occurring in many other industries, it does raise the question- what will be the financial industry’s uBer?

The digital age has completely revamped most spheres of our life in an enormous way. But, the impact on how we bank, invest, insure and save has been relatively minor. Whilst the concept of financial advice has undergone some change with comparison sites and online forums, many other facets of financial services have yet to experience their digital awakening.

This is surprising considering that we’re repeatedly reminded about customer dissatisfaction with financial services.  The fact remains, barriers to entry are significantly high despite the regulators’ efforts to encourage innovation and competition. Obtaining authorisation is more often than not a long and expensive process.

Historically, disruptive financial brands have tended to be spin offs or marketing exercises from the larger players. For example, whilst Sheila’s Wheels innovated how insurance could be marketed, it was part of the HBOS group. Even firstdirect, regularly heralded as a game changer in the UK banking sector due to its reputation for customer service, is owned by HSBC.

It’s not a surprise that innovation within the financial industry comes mainly from established players, but it does highlight the difficulty for outsiders to reinvent the market. To some extent, the increased regulatory and capital requirements placed on financial services providers for consumer protection is the biggest hurdle to true innovation in the sector.

What we are beginning to see are individuals, once part of the establishment, looking to shake up the industry.  We’ve seen Nutmeg founded by former stockbrocker Nick Hungerford,  offering an accessible alternative for wealth management, and Stockopedia started by a former investment manager, allowing DIY investors to beat the banks.  With the recent shake up of the pensions industry, such alternative investment services are likely to experience increased demand.

In banking, new players like Atom Bank, Starling and Fidor aim to capture market share through offering digital services. Again, what unites these brands are founders with significant experience with the big players exploring gaps in the market to innovate.

Financial services are still some way off from experiencing its version of Amazon, completely turning the industry on its head. There is a possibility, because of the risk involved within the sector, that it will never experience such upheaval. What is increasingly evident is that if such digital innovation is to happen, it most likely will from within- be it an experienced individual who wants to change the status quo or even a traditional firm with new ideas on offering financial services.

 

The Knot’s intro to the Circular Economy

The enigmatic employee-owned business of engineers, designers and consultants that make up Arup played host to another brain tingling Knot event last night which brought together the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Product Health and Arup’s Global Resources and Waste team to present ideas on The Circular Economy.

 

I’m not quite sure who coined the phrase, no one was claiming any firsts – but the round the world sailor, MacArthur apparently had an epiphany about doing more with finite resources whilst on her extraordinary solo voyage. She launched the Foundation in 2010 to champion the movement. It has 100 members including Arup. Ella Jamsin from the Foundation explained how our linear relationship with products begins at the design stage where they are conceived to be disposable, which in turn leads to US$2.7 trillion of economic value being lost to landfill every year.

 

There are 4 building blocks of a circular economy;

    1. Design and production (things that are designed to be reused)
    2. New business models (that sell access to products rather than the products themselves
    – for example Philips selling light, not lamps)
    3. Reverse Cycling (when things are taken apart so that components can be redeployed)
    4. Enablers and Favourable Systems (such as business collaborations and platforms that facilitate this)

 

Arup provided examples from its work in the built environment that included finding new uses for materials in building facades at the end of their useful lives (apparently it is a tough gig being the front of a building and 15 years is the average lifespan) and reusing steel without having to melt it down in a resource intensive way, just by paying attention to the way it is joined to other components in the original build.

 

Tamara Giltsoff, representing Product Health answered the question of why the Circular Economy will gain market traction with the example of a new business model that ensures ‘longer and healthier lives for powered products’ – in the first instance, batteries in remote places.

 

The trend towards the ‘internet of things’ heralds a near future where products will be able to continuously report in on their own useful state. In Product Health’s working example, batteries powering off grid solar energy in remote locations in Sub-Saharan Africa can send data on their performance and useful life. Being able to monitor individual battery performance enables significant resource savings as it will be possible to isolate and remove the one battery that has failed in an array of say, 10 batteries, where previously, if one failed, functionality was lost and all ten batteries would just have been replaced.

 

This remote relationship with products also enables companies to turn off the power if the customer doesn’t pay. Whilst this sounds draconian, the reality is that remote control to this degree means that people who can’t afford to buy kit outright can lease it, and the provider has a way to administer the defaults at very low cost, which makes the entire model commercially viable. An interesting take-out on the business model innovation is that it is the data and the connection that generate the long term commercial value, not the product.

 

Reflecting back on the last Knot event at Google that examined the future of retailing, the subject also turned to the internet of things and the importance of tailoring experiences using information on consumer behaviour and preferences. It seems that whenever we future gaze, more connectivity is the constant theme that comes through with implications for new service-driven business models. Now I wonder how to apply that to PR………………..?

 

 

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Which came first, the brand or the values?

 

Narda Shirley

One of the defining characteristics of challenger brand start-ups in the food industry is that they are unencumbered by legacy. They can source from where they like and the entrepreneurs behind the brands can lay down any number of guiding principles that give their brand a feel good factor that helps it stand out. Whether it’s good for the environment, good for producers, good for you, or a combination of all three.

‘Doing the right thing’ and ‘making a difference’ are often cited by entrepreneurs as their driving motivation for the hard graft of getting a new business off the ground. So it’s vital that they weave that ethos into the brand communication, making their values part of their business DNA.

But what happens to these small companies when they grow? How hard is it to maintain an ethical stance that is pragmatic and profitable at scale? Is the cycle of growth and sale to a larger, deeper pocketed company in part about being able to afford to stay true to your founding values? Or is there always a compromise once the entrepreneur cedes control to a bigger corporation?

We took a cursory peek at 3 British brands that have sold out – in each case ending up in the hands of US corporations.

Husband and wife team Craig Sams and Jo Fairley launched Green & Black’s in 1991, the first Fairtrade chocolate in the UK, sourcing directly from farmers in Togo and Belize who were rewarded with higher prices for using environmentally sustainable practices. Green & Black’s worked with William Kendall’s then private equity firm, Nemadi which engineered a sale to Cadbury in 2005 (which in turn was acquired by Kraft in 2010). An interview with Fairley in 2013 revealed that Green & Black’s Head of Sustainability went on to do the same much larger job at parent brand Mondelez. Fairley also cites Green & Black’s influence as the reason Cadbury first went Fairtrade with Dairy Milk setting off a domino effect that also saw KitKat and others follow suit. So it would seem in this case, that an early adopter challenger brand became a Trojan Horse change agent inside the major brand that acquired it.

Pret a Manger hit on a successful formula based on principles of product freshness, avoiding additives. Pret also started its own foundation to help feed the homeless. In 2001 McDonald’s bought a third of the business, which was later sold to private equity firm, Bridgepoint. In the meantime, McDonalds has successfully turned its own brand credentials around in terms of building a reputation among consumers of having an ethical supply chain. But back then, the perceived differences in values perhaps helped prompt this quote from Pret that “McDonald’s has never had any day-to-day role in Pret, nor has it had any say over what we do, nor how we do it.” (NB. Julian Metcalfe, one of Pret’s original founders went on to open Itsu. Proof perhaps that there’s a certain type of entrepreneur for whom once is not enough).
Paul Lindley founded Ella’s Kitchen, the UK’s bestselling baby food company, without a shred of retail or food industry experience. He did however have a background in media and children’s brands from Nickelodeon. He is quoted as saying “What has always driven me is the idea that business has a responsibility to be good for society.” Founded in 2006, Mr Lindley sold to US food company Hain Celestial for $103.5m last year. Hain’s main website offers up a slightly dated CSR Report from 2012, but it is front and centre on the home page which at least demonstrates the emphasis the company puts on its sustainability credentials.

In each of these situations, the challenger brand has led with its values and sustainability message. As an entrepreneur growing your own business, you get to decide what you stand for, and how you communicate it, without having to justify it to analysts or shareholders. It’s heartening to think that brand values that were once perhaps viewed by the city as a potentially costly indulgence by entrepreneurs are now increasingly priced in at a premium when it comes to a sale.

 

Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security

OLAM PRIZE FOR INNOVATION IN FOOD SECURITY

Olam will be announcing the winner of the Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security, in partnership with Agropolis Foundation, at the Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture on 16th March 2015 in Montpellier.

The prestigious event convenes leading agricultural scientists from around the world. The shortlisted candidates have been judged by an international jury in conjunction with the Louis Malassis International Scientific prizes. The winner will receive a total prize of US$50,000, comprising US$15,000 as a personal award and US$35,000 as a grant for further research.

 

What’s driving Kenya’s entrepreneurs?

 

Beverly Amira

This last week has been consumed in a flurry of activity for Maarifa in Nairobi – a company set up by a serial entrepreneur who believes in the power of education to lift and propel a nation. Maarifa’s CEO Scott Royster is a man on a mission. He is already successful, having floated a media company in the US, so he has nothing to prove, so what is it that now drives him? Like many other entrepreneurs working in Africa today, I believe Scott is driven by profit with purpose. He won’t deny he wants to make money – in fact it is essential to his private equity investor, ECP, that he can show a return on capital. And it’s essential to the universities that Maarifa invests in that Scott and his co-founders know how to make money. World class tertiary education is not sustainable on a shoestring.

Being able to challenge the status quo, make a difference and turn a profit is a tall order. But entrepreneurs – successful ones, at any rate, are extraordinary people who can do just that. Which brings me to another entrepreneur, Njeri Rionge. Gong has been working with Njeri for a while now, helping put the power of her personal brand to work. Oscars night was made all the more special for having a Njeri on the red carpet. She hasn’t added film producing to her impressive skillset, but she has appeared as the ‘talent’ in a new ad for Cadillac. ‘Dare Greatly’ is a new multi-channel campaign that features a diverse mix of talented people from Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Wozniak to Boyhood film director, Richard Linklater. Njeri is there for her great daring as a former hairdresser who propelled herself to the point where she brought internet connectivity to ordinary Kenyans in the form of Wananchi – the company she founded. It’s extremely gratifying to see Kenya represented in that line-up, let alone a black woman. We’ll watch the fortunes of Cadillac with interest on the back of this new campaign – who knows, it may just qualify as a ‘challenger brand’ with all this edgy new attitude!

Staying with cars, I want to highlight the work of a very different marque – Mobius Motors, a Kenyan company that makes affordable off-road vehicles. They came to our attention through our work for Garden City. Behind the brand is social entrepreneur, Joel Jackson who discovered the big challenge facing rural Kenyan communities is immobility. His vision is to build more affordable cars designed for degraded road environments.

To keep costs down Mobius strips the vehicle of non-essentials, such as power steering, air conditioning and even glass windows (!), and instead invests in suspension and handling. As such, Mobius has dramatically reduced the cost of its cars putting them within reach of small business owners. Like all successful entrepreneurs, Joel has a bold vision; to build Africa’s first mass-market car brand to aid economic growth and create a positive social impact. That’s what I call a driving ambition.

 

Entrepreneurs: How (not) to get attention with Twitter

 

Sarah Caddy

Oops. Sir Richard has made another splash in the gossip columns this week with his ever-so-slightly cringe-worthy simile choices:

blog image

The tweet split opinion in the office; some were mortified, others impressed that he clearly writes his own tweets (surely this would never get past a corporate comms professional?!). One thing we all agreed on: busy entrepreneurs can sometimes unwittingly strike the wrong tone. It takes time to consider all of the possible implications for our words (or pictures – Branson’s twitter feed includes the odd twit pic of “students changing their world one app at a time” – all of whom happen to be attractive young female students). Of course, this is why there’s a place for corp comms professionals to take over the grunt work of a social media strategy – one that our business leader clients are generally delighted to pass over. But we keep them focused – what does your overall Twitter stream say about you?

Entrepreneurs are focused on the big picture, and they often stand out by breaking a few rules. Case in point? Mario Gabelli’s FTfm face-to-face interview this week. Asked whether taking Gamco Investors public in 1999 was the best decision he’s ever made, the entrepreneurial CEO investor (startlingly) said, “Being born was the best decision I ever made.” Not what his PR team might want to read in terms of landing key messages, but then it probably won’t affect his investors’ opinions if he continues his solid track record of returns.

The final irony? On further investigation of the Virgin blogsite, we discovered that Branson’s offending simile was in fact a direct quote from that great British hero (renowned for taking action), Winston Churchill. That’s another fact about great entrepreneurs: the media will always delight in having fun with them.

 

Falling for entrepreneurs

 

Narda Shirley

I heard the story that Jo Malone used to be a beauty therapist working for private clients in London before her fragrance empire took off. Listening to Desert Island Discs, I was intrigued to discover that she had learned about cosmetics as a child going to work with her mother and later taught herself from books. In this case, an entrepreneur’s inspiration was forged from early life experiences rather than the yearnings of an executive at a big fragrance house to go it alone.

So I started thinking about the ways that entrepreneurs are inspired and whether there’s a particular profile of person who manages to launch the definitive challenger brand of their time. Let me define that a little bit better – I count Soho House, Green & Black’s, Sipsmith, Daylesford Organic, Firmdale Hotels, Moneysupermarket.com, Lastminute.com and Workspace among great challenger brands in that category.

When I think of all the entrepreneurs I have worked with, they do seem to fall into two camps: People who are industry or sector experts who start their own business to improve on an existing product or service (these are the SYC entrepreneurs – keep reading, all will become clear). And then there are the people who seem to just appear from nowhere with something so fresh and new that it redefines a category. I call these the NSYC people because you – never saw them coming. Of course technology, and more specifically the internet has massively increased the ranks of the NSYCs. The tech stuff is well documented. From Ariana Huffington to Jeff Bezos, I’m not going to give a second’s more thought in this blog to ‘digital disruptors’. As a group, the SYCs are generally much less feted by the media, but I’m willing to hazard that their overall success rate is much higher in aggregate.

Another way of thinking about this is whether people sit down and try very hard to invent a challenger brand, or whether the idea is etched into them by their daily experience of working in a company that just can’t or won’t step up. I think that there are many professional services businesses that fall into this latter category. From what we’ve seen of lawyers, management consultants, search firms and innovation teams, it’s very hard to truly innovate in the service sector without sacrificing margins, mainly because it’s people who deliver your brand experience. And if you want the best people in a competitive sector, you need to develop them, or be able to afford to pay market rates.

From a communications perspective, the NSYCs are a dream to PR because they satisfy our constant hunger for the next ‘new’. But let’s be honest, we Brits like a challenger brand, full stop. There’s something deeply attractive about the idea that an earnest entrepreneur is out there somewhere burning the midnight oil trying to create a much better customer experience. Perhaps it’s being cared about as customers rather than the incremental service gains that we really fall for.

 

Communicating the water crisis: breaking the loo taboo

Sarah Nicholas

Last week saw the Economist Events’ inaugural World Water Summit, convening leading authorities on water management, governance and policy, sanitation, international development and innovation. Staffing the press desk for the Summit, we had a busy day securing no fewer than 34 interviews between speakers and media, and listening with interest to the discussions bouncing between keynotes, panellists and an expert audience.

An interesting theme raised by several speakers was the need to end the ‘stand-off’ on communicating the issues around the water crisis, whether this is companies talking to their investors, shareholders asking pertinent questions, or governments and NGOs campaigning to change toilet habits around the developing world. With the first UN World Toilet Day being celebrated next week, the stalemate is thawing around the ‘loo taboo’, with speakers from agribusinesses such as Syngenta, environment ministers from around the world and non-profit organisations such as WaterAid and the Gates Foundation pursuing ‘faecal sludge management’ systems as innovative solutions to expensive sewerage infrastructure. News that only about 35% of government-built toilets in India are used shows that infrastructure and innovation must be combined with a sustained communications campaign to change aspirations and behaviours.

In the financial community too, people are beginning to speak up about water and why it matters for investors. The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project is tasking investors, accountants and businesses to ‘measure what matters’ and consider natural capital as well as the more visible bottom line. Meanwhile, Ecolab is helping businesses to translate the risks and rewards of water management into hard figures and actionable information through the Water Risk Monetizer, launched at the Summit. Never has the time been more ripe to start talking about the real impact of water and sanitation.

Read more in this selection of coverage from the Summit:

The Telegraph – Geoffrey Lean column

BBC World Service – Business Daily ‘Worldwide Water Crisis?’ podcast

Huffington Post – welcome address by HRH The Prince of Wales

Thomson Reuters Foundation

Farming First – Key themes for Agriculture

Search #WaterSummit and @EconomistEvents for more lively debate