Sam Waterfall speaking at World Juice 12, Barcelona, Spain

On Tuesday 17 October I was speaking in the NPD Stream at the FoodNews World Juice 2012 Event. Following an excellent opening keynote presentation by Zico Founder Mark Rampolla and a series of discussion style interviews, the 400+ attendees made their way to a number of focused streams for the afternoon learning.

I was speaking in the New Product Development (NPD) stream alongside Datamonitor on Global Juice Beverage Trends and talks on Sustainability. My topic was “How to Push Brand Value”.

The morning’s discussions highlighted the industry’s concerns over commoditisation, the threat of the ‘high in natural sugar’ story and the difficulty faced by those trying to add meaningful consumer value to the category. [..]

McDonald's is using the new colour screen payment machines to advertise their food, their drinks and their charity contributions.

If you’ve been shopping, eating or even just walking around London in 2012 you’ve perhaps noticed the new digital street marketing or the new colour screen card reading payment machines in retailers around the capital?

I took this photograph in McDonald’s in Moorgate, London in May. The world’s leading quick service restaurant chain has been fast to adopt this new technology. With larger, full colour screens, these PIN machines go far beyond accepting your Big Mac payment.

They are set to display a series of messages. These particular units showed a repeating cycle of images including promotions for muffins, promotions for McDonald’s freshly ground coffee and an awareness raising image for  Ronald McDonald House Charities.

When you put your card into the machine to pay, you can’t help but see at least one of these messages, maybe two or three. And you may start watching even more, your attention attracted by their movement as you wait for your fast food to be served. Whether you see one or more, it’s a great opportunity for retailers to [..]

Obvious Marketing - Winning without needing to engage consumer effort in thought!

You, me and all our consumers think in two very different ways.

Did you know that if you create your marketing to appeal to one of these ways it is likely to be far more successful?

Can you believe that most people are still trying to design their marketing and communications to appeal to the other way of thinking?

Well, it’s true. And as part of my passionate campaign to encourage you to change your marketing and focus less on the clever and more on the obvious, in this post I’m introducing the Nobel Prize winning work of Professor Daniel Kahneman.

Professor Kahneman’s 2011 book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” summarises decades of research which goes a long way to debunking that foundation of traditional economic thought, that humans are rational with their decision making.

Let’s take a look at the big idea in the book. While it may seem [..]

Brand Excellence Series: Staropramen - Differentiation through Provenance

This post is part of my series on “Brand Excellence” – learning from the best in class examples so we can reapply what really works.

Have you noticed how certain places are associated with great quality? France in general, and Paris in particular carry an instant association with luxury and high-end goods. Whether we are talking Louis Vuitton luggage or fine fragrance and couture from Chanel, the Paris provenance builds further caché into these super brands.

A more interesting example for me is how we associate the finest chocolate with Switzerland and Belgium, yet neither grow the raw material, cocoa. Their reputation has been built by their chocolatiers and their skills in production and craftsmanship. Italy, likewise is famed for its espresso, yet no coffee beans are grown on its soil. The brand power comes from the expertise and the appeal is strengthened by the expertly crafted and repeatedly told and reinforced story of the location.

Following this theme, I’m impressed with the example of the Staropramen brand, which centres its brand story on its brewing heritage at very heart of the Czech capital, Prague.

Beer, like so many categories has marketers deep in thought (sometimes despair   crying into their pints) as they try to find ways to effectively and ownably differentiate their product from that of their (often very similar) competition.

Yet in this UK press ad, the Staropramen brand makes the task seem simple. They cleverly build on the UK consumer’s idealised view of Prague and use the location in conjunction with the story of their enduring expertise to position an experience in the [..]

Emirates Sponsor the London Tube Map with its "Emirates Air Line" Thame Cable Car

Granted there are cheaper ways of working on your brand awareness, but actually having your brand name added to the London Underground Map as a Tube Station name makes quite a statement of your brand intent.

That’s what UAE national airline, Emirates, has done. Except, they’ve gone one better. It’s always a smart move to make sure your branding initiatives are inline with your brand essence. So a station would be an imperfect fit for an airline. That’s why Emirates have sponsored the new Thames Cable Car or cleverly named “Emirates Air Line” which ‘flies’ between “Emirates Greenwich Peninsula” and [..]