Tag: consultancy

Air Business: From A to Beyond

Posted on by allotmentuser

We are delighted to launch our new rebrand of leading distribution and subscription services business, Air Business and their subsidiary, Quadrant. Our early research indicated that Air Business are the ‘first and last link’ in managing subscriptions and distribution of magazines and newspapers, and are known within the market and particularly by their clients for their reliability, exceptional customer service and human approach.

The ‘Big idea’ was that Air Business doesn’t just take things from A to B – they use their exceptional customer service and support to take clients on a journey spanning acquisition and retention right through to data analysis, physical and digital delivery and beyond. It was this insight that led to the brand proposition; From A to Beyond. This clever twist on language familiar to the sector perfectly sums up Air Business’ strong service mentality and illustrates the added value they provide through their brilliant customer service.

The new brand and proposition has been bought to life across all Air Business touch points, including the website (www.airbusiness.com). The design uses a red flowing line which runs throughout the whole brand, connecting and interacting with human photography and clever brand messaging to tell compelling stories of success.

If you’d like to learn more about The Allotment’s rebrand of Air Business, you can see the full case study here.

Finally, a big shout out to Roll Studio and John Angerson, both of whom we collaborated on throughout the project; Roll on the build of Air Businesses stunning new website and John who shot some beautiful black & white people shots which are integral to the new human look and feel.

Victims or Victors

Posted on by Paul

“Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.” Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix

Working in ‘brand space’ has always been fascinating but in the last few years the speed of change in technology and its impact on customer’s expectations has given rise to a preponderance of businesses that are potentially either digital ‘victims’ or digital ‘Victors’.

Clients that come knocking at our door are often either incumbent businesses, striving to grow, retain and protect what they have, or are start-up upstarts looking to reinvent the value proposition in a product or service sector. Often the mindsets in these two businesses are poles apart. One sometimes risk averse and ponderous, the other agile, bright and sometimes shallow in experience. It’s intriguing and I have often wondered why ‘big brands’ with all their smarts and deeper pockets fail to grasp their role as ‘market makers and innovators’.

I think there is still a legacy ‘systemic’ issue of a brand management structure that rewards custodianship rather than creativity but I think it also goes deeper than this. Management also has a short-term ‘denial’ perspective that counters mid-term risk taking, even though disruption is clearly on the horizon. Many successful organisations fail to look for new things their customers want because they’re afraid to hurt their core businesses. This has been called the innovators dilemma (1). An inertia caused by the risk of the unknown and the fear that the distraction of focusing on the horizon will lead to a lack of focus on near term sales and revenue plans.

The interesting model below from McKinsey clearly illustrates the point where an incumbent’s existing business model, for a short-time, out performs the theoretical new model. Adapting to market change has created some stagnation in growth but in the longer-term has ensured the sustainability of the business. Kodak and Blockbuster are good examples of businesses that succumbed to a period of myopia, ignored the inevitable digital disruption and failed to adapt as a result.