Oxygen Insight

Below you will find a selection of recent articles from Oxygen Consulting.

	Looking through the froth to find the cause at Starbucks Brands with a cause was my recent plea (see: what does my brand stand for? Leisure Report January 2008). Let us ignore the companies bordering on the irrelevant and connect with those that genuinely stand for something. Life is too short to waste on companies that are fickle, fake, or those peddling mediocrity. Once customers find their corporate soul mates, then organisations can stop fixating on short-term campaigns and convoluted incentives because there now exists a real and deep sense of connection. The types of organisations where genuine customer and corporate synchronicity exists will vary. For some it will be the local organic butcher, where the provenance and welfare of animals is paramount. It may also be the health club, which has triggered a remarkable transformation in an individual's health and well-being, or the ambience of the local cafe, which has the extraordinary ability to pause life. However, when we scratch away the surface of these businesses, what do we discover? Perhaps there is no enduring cause after all, but simply a business that through its geographic proximity has found some custom. How deep is a company's cause? During a recent interview with Joe Cirulli, the founder of the Gainesville Health and Fitness Centre in Florida, which has previously been voted one of the world's best health clubs, I vividly recall something he said while we were discussing Gainesville's core values: 'We define integrity as always doing the right thing even when no one is looking'. It was the 'when no one is looking' part which resonated with me. This is the real acid test. When a company's moral compass gets tested and where some organisations are revealed as peddling a superficial campaign under the guide of a cause. Gainesville is guided by the Mark Twain maxim: 'When in doubt, tell the truth'. This deep-rooted sense of integrity has helped Gainesville to retain some members for over thirty years and to become a genuine 'third place' in members' lives. Read more Looking through the froth to find the cause at Starbucks Leisure Report March 2008. To download file, click here.
	What does my brand stand for? As we say farewell to 2007, just over 16,000 UK companies did not plan a Christmas party. Instead, an insolvency practitioner was surgically extracting every pound of value for beleaguered creditors of these failed companies. According to the latest BDO Stoy Hayward Industry Watch report, UK corporate failures will rise by 7% in 2008 and by more than 10% in the leisure sector. So why do they fail? According to The Insolvency Service, the three key reasons for corporate failure are loss of market, failure to deal with tax affairs and 'other management failures'. Loss of market was cited in just over half of all UK compulsory liquidations. Loss of market is a 'catch-all' term that really means that customers were mis-treated, mis-sold, ignored and taken for granted. How should we feel about these corporate fatalities? Undoubtedly, many people's lives (normally committed staff) will be profoundly affected by their demise, but in the majority of cases, will their customers miss these companies? Probably not and the reason is that most were extraordinarily ordinary, offering mediocre, poor-value goods and services to under-whelmed customers (e.g. undifferentiated food propositions, web sites that nobody needs, unscrupulous home improvement companies and a raft of unnecessary business-to-business intermediaries). Why did these companies exist in the first place? What was their compelling purpose? What did they stand for? Perhaps, not very much which explains why most will not be missed. Read more What does my brand stand for? The Moodie Report February 2008 To download file, click here.
	Low prices everywhere So, are you a Waitrose or a Lidl shopper? A few years ago, you would have been one, neither, but certainly not both. How things change. Now, British consumers are running rings round marketers by being a Waitrose shopper on Monday and a Lidl customer on Wednesday. Marketing textbooks tell you this should not be happening. Prospering consumers used to shop at premium quality outlets, while the financially-challenged ('hard-pressed' and 'of moderate means' to use the geo-demographics parlance) were reluctant guests at their local budget or value store. But not any more. And it is not just groceries where we now display extraordinary promiscuous buying behaviour. Chief Executives now fly easyJet; people mix and match a £500 Hugo Boss suit with a Debenhams shirt and Sales Directors drive to a £26 per night Travelodge in their luxurious Mercedes. The following figure illustrates the pervasiveness of this trend. Read more Low prices everywhere Ray Algar & Neil Burton ADMAP Marketing Journal December 2007. To download file, click here.
	What does my brand stand for? As we say farewell to 2007, just over 16,000 UK companies did not plan a Christmas party. Instead, an insolvency practitioner was surgically extracting every pound of value for beleaguered creditors of these failed companies. According to the latest BDO Stoy Hayward Industry Watch report, UK corporate failures will rise by 7% in 2008 and by more than 10% in the leisure sector. So why do they fail? According to The Insolvency Service, the three key reasons for corporate failure are loss of market, failure to deal with tax affairs and 'other management failures'. Loss of market was cited in just over half of all UK compulsory liquidations. Loss of market is a 'catch-all' term that really means that customers were mis-treated, mis-sold, ignored and taken for granted. How should we feel about these corporate fatalities? Undoubtedly, many people's lives (normally committed staff) will be profoundly affected by their demise, but in the majority of cases, will their customers miss these companies? Probably not and the reason is that most were extraordinarily ordinary, offering mediocre, poor-value goods and services to under-whelmed customers (e.g. undifferentiated food propositions, web sites that nobody needs, unscrupulous home improvement companies and a raft of unnecessary business-to-business intermediaries). Why did these companies exist in the first place? What was their compelling purpose? What did they stand for? Perhaps, not very much which explains why most will not be missed. Read more What does my brand stand for? Leisure Report January 2008. To download file, click here.
	Start the digital dialogue When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web at CERN in Switzerland in 1991, we wonder if he envisioned a future where consumers would harness its coalescent power to bargain down the price of virtually everything and allow the anatomy of organisations to be forensically examined, mouse click by mouse click. The Power of Opinion Taking just 10% of all UK health club members creates the capacity for nearly three million annual opinions to be posted in discussion forums, blogs and online communities on everything from the tepid swimming pool water during last night’s swim to a video rant on YouTube about an unnecessarily long notice period to quit a club. Consumer Generated Content Readers will know the above phenomenon as consumer generated content (CGC), but does this label really propel organisations to explore this exciting opportunity, or does it just wash-over as yet more fleeting tech-jargon? Assuming the latter, we propose re-defining 'consumer-generated content' to 'consumer generated conversation'. This should resonate with organisations because it helps to visualise an active and spontaneous dialogue that is taking place today – more opinions have been posted in the last minute. It also conveys its viral characteristics; a trickle that can become a torrent if consumers smell deceit or disdain. Browse to www.ihatedell.net where employees and customers vent their rage about 'Dell Hell'. Just one member has written over 1,550 posts during the past four years, averaging a post a day. Perhaps, all they wanted was a replacement laptop battery. Consumers may rant and rage, but does it affect purchasing behaviour? It seems it does according to a recent YouGov social media for brands survey which found that six out of ten UK respondents would abandon a travel purchase if they read negative opinions. Slightly less for consumer electronics. Google your company now and get a sense for the on-line conversation taking place. If your sales pipeline is slowing perhaps it is clogged with negative consumer chatter. Read more Start the digital dialogue, Leisure Report November 2007. To download file, click here.