How will the London Olympics affect the economy?

How will the London Olympics affect the economy?

London 2012 official Olympic partners:

·      Adidas

·      BMW

·      BP

·      British Airways

·      BT

·      EDF

·      Lloyds TSB

After London was selected to be the host city of the 2012 Olympic games on the 6^th of July 2005 many businesses immediately saw a big opportunity to utilize the developments and investment from the government to show Sebastian Coe why London beat Paris by 54-50 votes.

Another group labeled as an official provider and supplier is Westfield, shopping center supplier with a few based around the country but more notably in Sheppard’s Bush and Stratford City. Stratford has had a considerable amount of redevelopment. Work started in early 2007 with the view of all construction being completed by 2020 the additions have seen 1.9 million ft Westfield, a large premier inn hotel and 4,850 new homes helping to put Stratford on the map.

This development has helped local businesses within the city creating more revenue for the businesses although on the other hand commodities such as rent has become less affordable due to the increase in development and the rise of property prices as a result.

Many landlords are looking to cash in on the games as a result of the development thanks to the Olympics, with the rental market prices at the time of the games, on local flats and houses set to reach un-thinkable prices that they have never reached before for people to be close to all the action.

Moreover many small businesses are to expect a surge in customers and spending especially based in London as millions of people enter the capital. From businesses selling merchandise to food, accommodation (hotels and B&B’s) everyone will cash in with prices being put up all over.

However arguably the most profitable part of the Olympics this year will be on transport. Millions of people will be making their way in, around and through the capital meaning that busses, trains will be operating to maximum capacity and taxi drivers will be fighting their way through a busy capital to take advantage of the impatient and claustrophobic.

No copyright intended

Image taken from:

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=2012+olympics&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1279&bih=649&tbm=isch&tbnid=Dp1gamYdJNctPM:&imgrefurl=http://www.london-attractions.info/olympic-park.htm&docid=JsT3KVNrKZKqFM&imgurl=http://www.london-attractions.info/images/attractions/london-2012-olympic-park.jpg&w=400&h=311&ei=kihNT7_dAYas0QXllLWeBQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=512&sig=102174241805041392403&page=1&tbnh=124&tbnw=161&start=0&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:0&tx=126&ty=14

Do Slogans Still Have A Part To Play In Business Today?

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/management-advice/9075668/Think-Tank-Brands-still-need-words-to-get-the-message-across.html

 

 Discussion on - an article taken from the Telegraph online, posted on the 11^th of February 2012.

 

Inspiration gained:

 

•    How slogans can animate a company and its employees, not just shape what consumers might think about its brand
• The most affective slogans, with examples
• Slogans that are not very affective, with examples
• And how now brand names are used more than catchy slogans

 

 Why slogans do animate companies?

 

It can only take three words to animate a company, for example:

‘Never knowingly undersold’ - John Lewis

‘Every little helps’ – Tesco’s

‘Just do it’ – Nike

 

One of the most iconic is ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’ – Heinz Baked Beans. Which has been used since it was founded 1967 within a pub. This being particularly clever because of the similarity of the words and the letter (s), which should be at the end of the words with a (z), still has an understandable but unique affect.

 

These slogans have animated these companies within the United Kingdom and overseas. Creating massive brands, which can be recognized purely by three simple words.

 

These simple words are used especially by brands such as Nike because of their strong global presence; the words are more understandable than John Lewis’s slogan ‘never knowingly undersold’, which may be more difficult to a global audience to understand.

 

Although it "acts as a reminder to our customers of our pricing policy', a company spokesperson has explained, "its main purpose is as a discipline upon our central buyers to ensure that, in arriving at their selling prices, the best possible value is offered to our consumers".

 

This shows that John Lewis’s slogan has more than one meaning, which could be confusing for potential consumers and for people understanding the brand.

 

 

However the simplicity and shortness of Nike’s slogan means it only has one meaning and therefore helps to make it more memorable and easier to brand their products with. For example the slogan often features on their products such as t-shirts. This makes the slogan more affective for the business and more recognizable to a wider audience.

 

 

Other factors of a business may be more important than slogans:

 

Slogans need to be used well to be affective in a positive way otherwise they can have a negative affect and give the wrong impression of a brand.

 

Designed to demystify the intimidating world of DIY, Ronseal's "Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin" was originally rejected for being too boring.

 

Audi's ingeniously re-purposed "Vorsprung Durch Technik", spotted on a wall and plundered unapologetically on a factory visit, was similarly rebuffed in research, this time for being "too German".

 

Slogans have also become less of an important factor more recently due to the name of the brand or company being seen as a lot more important.

 

Understanding and leveraging their power remains an important and potentially lucrative task for marketers’ because, as Mark Twain once put it: "Actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often".

 

Images are arguably more important than three words. Visual association is a lot more common with the colour red for example being associated with ‘coke a Cola’. An advantage of a strong brand image is also that there is no language barrier like slogans that are used.

 

‘Jingles’, jingles are often used to create brand recognition, which is very recognisable, especially for children. For example ‘BN, BN’ was immediately recognisable when being advertised on television and a lot more affective on the younger generation.

 

However, finding a brand name, which is simple, memorable and catchy, seems to be key to success for many businesses nowadays.

 

For example: ‘the twitter affect’, in 2009 twitter was the most spoken word in the UK according to the global language monitor dater. By that time the business had only been running for four years.

 

Moreover the card industry is an example of where businesses have used unique names to create more affect, for example: Funkypidgeon.com and Moonpig.com

 

No copyright intended 

 

Images taken from:

 

 

 

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=joh+lewis&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1279&bih=605&tbm=isch&tbnid=eoSje12J9ShwXM:&imgrefurl=http://searchlocaljobs.co.uk/john-lewis-jobs/&docid=7L3x5DNyePhX0M&imgurl=http://searchlocaljobs.co.uk/john-lewis-jobs/images/John%252520Lewis%252520Store.jpg&w=250&h=166&ei=7OlLT9m3MYuu8QPzwtmzDg&zoom=1

 

 

 

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=nike+just+do+it&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1279&bih=605&tbm=isch&tbnid=VkEj8vb1aRvrXM:&imgrefurl=http://blog.crowdspring.com/2010/07/tagline-slogan-marketing/nike-just-do-it/&docid=O3mDE8zfqD_diM&imgurl=http://blog.crowdspring.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/nike-just-do-it.jpg&w=581&h=581&ei=DupLT4GoMInu8QO2t9C0Dg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=121&vpy=170&dur=419&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=121&ty=120&sig=102174241805041392403&page=1&tbnh=118&tbnw=130&start=0&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

The Moonpig 'success story'

Nick Jenkins launched Moonpig in 1999 after he saw a gap in the card market. With ecommerce just taking off at the time he thought it was an exciting opportunity to start an online venture. His attitude was,  “ I decided that if I was going to start a business I didn’t understand, it might as well be something that no one else understood either ”. Rizk, S., (2009) Jenkins created a strong image for his brand with a pig in a space helmet, he developed this when carrying out his research into what to name his company and no results would come back from search engines when he entered the name.

A unique selling point is the factor or consideration presented by the seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than the rest of the competition. One of the key points of Moonpig is the range of popular cards that are found on the high street that are able to be customised to include photographs and faces which has helped to secure 90% of the online card market. One of the strategies Nick Jenkins used was to expand what Moonpig could offer and he did this buy merging with Photo Box in the summer of 2011 in a 120 million pound deal. Nick Jenkins commented "Stan and I both believe that we can now offer a much wider range of photographic products to our customers while adding our own Moonpig creativity. We can also take our core greeting card product to countries which would be difficult to access as a standalone business." Sheahan, T., (2011) Moonpig’s revenue has now changed from £90,000 in their first year of operation to £31.2m in 2011.

The revenue has changed so dramatically since 1999 because Moonpig’s marketing mix has also changed dramatically in the last 12 years. The products Moonpig offer have increased to more than 10,000 customisable cards and with the merge of them and Photo Box their products are not just cards giving the business more markets to operate within.

Companies now operating in e-commerce face tough competition as only very little collateral is needed to set up a business and make it look professional. As a result many markets are saturated unless a new concept is developed and a strong brand is created. A strong brand is most commonly created within markets today by using unusual names so that when typed into a search engine there are only few results.

"The days of accidental naming are over," says Naseem Javed, the founder of ABC Namebank, a New York-based consultant specializing in corporate nomenclature. To stand out in the overcrowded global marketplace, he says, a company's name must now be especially odd. "Ten, twenty years ago you could start a business and take the name in any direction," he says. "Now, with 200 countries on the cyber-platform around the globe, finding the right name has become an expert's field. A company that took this on board when competing with the likes of Moonpig was Funky Pigeon after they took on the ‘twitters effect’ when creating their online greeting card brand.

New businesses entering the e-commerce market face oligopolists with their already established brand identities. Finding the strong unique selling point and creating the right brand can now be the difference between success and failure.

Moonpig is currently an established force in the online greeting card industry, however they currently only have a small percentage of the market as a whole and with more competition by the day, Moonpig are having to constantly create new marketing campaigns and offer more to their customers to differentiate themselves from competitors such as Funky Pigeon. However this is proving more difficult as competitors are trying to create as bigger similarity as possible to save on marketing costs and make it more difficult for Moonpig.com to become a monopoly within the market.

Moonpig’s costs are being affected as a result of competitors paying to associate their brand with theirs in results for searches within online search engines, taking away the advantage of having an unusual brand name.

“The name is a bit of a hot topic at the moment!  It was very useful in the early days when you typed in moonpig to a search engine and just got the moonpig website returned. Unfortunately that is no longer the case as Google now allows anybody to bid on our trade name and recent European court cases have failed to protect brand owners from this type of paid search bidding.  The result is that lots of people try and piggyback on our traffic using paid for search on the term Moonpig.  This isn’t in itself a problem; we can see that all of the people searching for ‘moonpig’ do come through to us despite other advertisers so we don’t actually lose the traffic.  What is more of an issue is that because more people are bidding on it the cost of bidding on your own trade name increases considerably.  The result is that everyone in our sector now pays considerably more for search to advertise their own brand names.   It seems to me that the only real beneficiary from this is Google who must be seeing increases in revenues at the expense of brand owners who are now forced to pay extra to advertise their own brand names” Ahrens, D., (2010)

Moonpig are facing a lot of threats from competitors, however they are operating in a market that is not affected by recessions as people always have birthdays and there are events in the calendar such as mother’s day and Christmas where people exchange cards. One issue may be the disposable income of their targeted market however with the modern busy lifestyle people lead, people are more happy to save themselves time and pay more but have the added bonus of not having to worry about buying the card and posting it. The convenience factor makes using the website so appealing.

Moonpig should continue to develop their brand ‘Adding value to the product by branding involves a great deal more than merely giving the product a catchy name. Branding is the culmination of a range of activities across the whole marketing mix, leading to a brand image that conveys a whole set of messages to the consumer (and, more importantly, to the consumer’s friends and family) about quality, price, expected performance and status’ Blythe, J., (2008) Their slow expansion strategy and continue to increase the products that their UK website offers and look to continue to establish themselves within Australia.

Ahrens, D., (2010) Interview: Iain Martin, MD if Moonpig.com, Available at (http://www.grapevine-consulting.com/2010/11/interview-iain-martin-md-of-moonpig-com/), (date accessed: 31/10/11).

Blythe, J., (2008) Essentials of marketing, Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Rizk, S., (2009) Moonpig: Nick Jenkins, Available at: (http://www.growingbusiness.co.uk/moonpig-nick-jenkins.html), (date accessed: 01/11/11).

Sheahan, T., (2011) Moonpig.com acquired by PhotoBox in £120m deal, Available at: (http://www.printweek.com/Business/article/1081764/moonpigcom-acquired-photobox-120m-deal/), (date accessed: 02/11/11).

Spitznagel, E., (2010) ‘The Twitter Affect’, THE CORPORATE NAME GAME, Who Owns Your House, available at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201103199948.htm, (Accessed: 17/11/11)

Image taken from: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=moonpig&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1279&bih=649&tbm=isch&tbnid=UEFZSZo6f7fthM:&imgrefurl=http://www.igimages.co.uk/blogarchive/2009/juneblog.html&docid=HSJCK_EG7fxC8M&imgurl=http://www.igimages.co.uk/blogimages2009/june/moonpig.jpg&w=322&h=348&ei=v-FLT82lBdOD8gPN5-ypDg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=177&vpy=164&dur=723&hovh=233&hovw=216&tx=94&ty=120&sig=102174241805041392403&page=1&tbnh=130&tbnw=120&start=0&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

No copyright intended