June 15, 2005

anybody want free wine? (cont.)

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Yep, my Stormhoek wine free­bie offer is still open. Any Bri­tish blog­ger over 18 years old is wel­come to par­take.
Like I said before, the wine is still in South Africa. As soon as it’s ship­ped to the UK I’ll let you know etc.
I’ll be wor­king more on the Stormhoek blog over the next few weeks etc etc etc.
Here’s an idea I like pla­ying with: Buil­ding brands for 1% of the cost it takes the com­pe­ti­tion. Not half, not a quar­ter, but 1%.
Is that pos­si­ble? Hell, even if you’re doing it for under 5%, it’s enough to get the big boys to pay atten­tion. And buy you out at a later date for obs­cene amounts of money.
A few months ago I was wri­ting a lot on one of my favo­rite sub­jects, “The Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand”. I guess this is the kind of stuff I’m tal­king about.
[SPEAKING OF GLOBAL MICROBRAND:] English Cut just made it to Num­ber Four Goo­gle Search for “Savile Row”. Hello, Long Tail.
I spoke ear­lier about the impor­tance of get­ting English Cut on to Page One of Goo­gle. “If you have the best tai­lor in the world but he isn’t on Goo­gle, does it mat­ter?” etc.
Shit. This is huge.

10 Responses to “anybody want free wine? (cont.)”

  1. Dan says:

    It’s third now. And second on google.ca.
    Congratulations.

  2. melissa says:

    Hi Hugh
    Off topic
    just to say your Geek event was fan­tas­tic last week — many thanks!
    Melissa @ Boris John­son office

  3. Rick says:

    Looks like it’s wor­king… English Cut is now #2.

  4. Jim Wilde says:

    “What I’m seeing is a mas­sive dis­con­nect bet­ween the cul­tu­ral and tech­no­lo­gi­cal, bet­ween the inter­nal and the exter­nal mar­kets.
    Very few peo­ple outside the blo­gosphere know what the hell I’m tal­king about. They get it in theory, but inva­riably they’ve been wor­king for too long in spe­cia­li­sed indus­tries that acti­vely dis­cou­rage seeing the big pic­ture. Too busy guar­ding their own patch to be anything other than sec­retly hos­tile.”
    Hugh, don’t know if I got your culture/tech idea, but here is what we are up to. We have a cou­ple of orgs not only seeing the big pic­ture inter­nally, indi­vi­dual mem­bra­nes, but seeing an even big­ger pic­ture pulling in ideas from everywhere — exter­nally. Tra­di­tio­nal bud­get pro­ces­ses and resource allo­ca­tions are get­ting bum­ped out for inter­nal mar­kets where resour­ces are bid on. Yeah, even the sec­re­tary has chips in the game. Infor­ma­tion is no lon­ger the domain of the pri­vi­led­ged. They are using — Ideas­cape — to make loose pie­ces of infor­ma­tion con­fi­gu­ra­ble and acces­sa­ble to everybody.

  5. Peter Cooper says:

    Yes, it’s totally pos­si­ble, Hugh. I’m not in the same mar­ket (I’m a deve­lo­per), but I’ve been able to deve­lop big things on (less than) 1% of the bud­get avai­la­ble to the com­pe­ti­tors, and can still trump them on fea­tu­res. It’s totally pos­si­ble but it demands you “think dif­fe­rent.” You do, and that’s why you’re going to keep on winning.

  6. Alex says:

    For what it’s worth, English cut also has the dubious dis­tinc­tion of being num­ber one if you spell it Savi­lle Row.

  7. Somebaudy says:

    I live in Bel­gium. Is it really a problem ?

  8. hugh macleod says:

    I wouldn’t call it dubious at all. A lot of peo­ple miss­pell it as “Savi­lle”, espe­cially Ame­ri­cans. And a lot of our busi­ness is Ame­ri­can ec.

  9. FYI says:

    “English Cut is sprea­ding up my pan­ties”
    Queen of Savi­lle England

  10. Mar­ke­ting wine through con­ver­sa­tions has to work — Odd­bins sell loads of wine through it staff recom­men­da­tions writ­ten on cards on each shelf (Waters­to­nes do something simi­lar with books). It works because the peo­ple who work there share the pas­sion ( so it wouldn’t work in Tesco) — and it works because it gives you a story to tell when you get to the din­ner party etc.
    Fas­ci­na­ting to see if you can repli­cate that with a blog based approach — I’ll drink to your success.