June 15, 2005
anybody want free wine? (cont.)
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.
It’s third now. And second on google.ca.
Congratulations.
Hi Hugh
Off topic
just to say your Geek event was fantastic last week — many thanks!
Melissa @ Boris Johnson office
Looks like it’s working… English Cut is now #2.
“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.
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.
For what it’s worth, English cut also has the dubious distinction of being number one if you spell it Saville Row.
I live in Belgium. Is it really a problem ?
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.
“English Cut is spreading up my panties”
Queen of Saville England
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.