Hoffi announces more FREE seminars for Welsh Businesses

Following the success of our last two seminars, which covered branding and online strategies, we have been working on the arrangements for our third seminar and have a date confirmed. In this seminar you will discover why your brand is the most valuable part of your business, and why a good brand can benefit you.

Taking place on Thursday 14th of April, at Enterprise House, Cardiff Bay *.

We will be there from 8:30am where you will be able to get a coffee and a bit of breakfast, before we start at 9:00am.

The initial seminar will run through some examples of what branding is and what it is not. After a short break we will then continue to look at why having good branding is valuable for your business and what the key ingredients of a good brand is, we will be particularly concentrating on how to use your brand to position itself in the marketplace.

This will take us up to 12pm, when there will be around an hour or so for networking (we will be around afterwards should any of you wish to chat about any particular issues you have.)

We hope you are interested in attending the event and look forward to seeing you all there. Please note places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

For your place at the seminar please email elin.williams@hoffi.com quoting reference: brandemail

* Enterprise House is located opposite the train station on Bute St, Cardiff Bay.

The Training Room, Enterprise House,
127 Bute Street, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff CF10 5LE.

Look forward to hearing from you

Image for illustrative purposes only and does not include whole market.

We have had a number of conversations in the office recently about the development of branding and the products and services it offers. There seem to be a number of branding and business ventures that are coming together to create a rather different type of output.

Firstly lets look at some history. In the Western brand scape it has been quite rare for a brand to move to different markets or sectors. There are probably two that spring to mind that have challenged this view. Virgin and in a similar way EasyJet. These brands have managed to create a strong brand over a range of sectors yet kept their core values in these new ventures. However if we look further afield to the Asia market and in particular the Japanese market. Which for years has had companies that diversify from it's initial product/service to encompass many other products or services. Some examples would be Mitsubishi (air conditioning through to Cars), Or MUJI (electronics right through to the food market). Another line of branding and business strategy is the well publicised Starbuck's strategy of opening as many coffee shops as it can in the area to then drive out other competitors. So for a short term loss per shop there would be a long term gain for the brand and company.

So if we look at companies are combining these two strategies and using this within one market sector. The theory being swamp the market with different brands offering the same product but in a different way, whether that be different through look, age range, values etc. An example close to home is Admiral. A Welsh based company that has a huge protfolio of insurance options. for example Admiral themselves provide car insurance, then there is confused.com that also provide car insurance then there is also elephant who also provide car insurance, Diamond who also provide car insurance, I think you get the message. So each brand is targeted at a specific area of the marketplace, and all of them owned by Admiral.

In the same way, but with a slightly different approach is Ariel who have for many years developed their washing powder range to be the next best thing for cleaning your clothes. Recently they have stretched their brand to Stain removal products. So extending their product range within the same market.

So what is happening?

This scatter gun approach to business seems to be at first highly self defeating (being expensive to develop a brand, and setup an infrastructure for a new company), yet if we look at it another way these companies are already very established within their market they are invariably one of the leaders in their marketplace and they are vigilant about threats and other companies challenging their market share. So instead of fighting through just one offering why not make the offerings multiple and make the offers niche or bespoke to markets within markets?

The rule seems to almost feel (in the Case of Admiral at least) become large and dominant through a wide brand offering (Admiral) then diversify into smaller conversation offerings for smaller groups and niches (confused.com, Elephant etc). This can also be seen in other companies such as Google who have grown into the largest company in the world and now they are refining and developing new ventures that are aiding in the development of niche responses to their market, and also fending off other companies which maybe trying to break into these markets.

INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

For those of you who have read Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point you are going to be familiar with some of the thoughts that come out in the film. It is also a lovely piece film and as I am going to New York next week it's nice to see snippets of the city.

Andrew and Carwyn, went to visit Sainsbury's today to take some shots of Truly Scrummy Organic in-situ. It was great for the guys to see them on the shelves after all the work that was put into them from us and the Truly Scrummy team.

Filming in the CIty Centre from Hoffi on Vimeo.

We have been working hard since we got back on new projects and this year we are going to be showing them in different ways. This was a small clip of a piece we are working on at the minute for one of our clients. More to come soon.

Well when we started back in the day we had loads of experiments on the go. Playing with materials and looking to use them within projects. Recently we have been working flat out and the experimenting has reduced so this year we will be resurrecting this. This is El putting one of our first concepts to the test. Keep your fingers crossed for us. As IDEO say Fail Early Succeed sooner.

More of this in 2011, only takes a bit of innovation and loads of work.

10 business models that rocked 2010 - by @nickdemey

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

10 business models that rocked 2010 - by @nickdemey

View more presentations from Board of Innovation (BOI).

This is not really a new thing but something we are going to see a lot more over the next few years. Ever since the Wii came out in 2006, the games console world had been changed. Now with the likes of Microsoft, launching it's kinect add-on to the XBOX games and the physicality of these games consoles are going to be more and more influential in day to day life. Combine this to the development of Augmented Reality and it looks like we are going to have a very different experience of computers of the past.

Our second what's new for 2011 is an internal development. Hoffi has been going now for nearly five years (birthday in February, and we welcome cake). Over that time we have gone to see a few exhibitions and visited a number of events.

Well this year we have decided to make it a bit more structured in what we do. So we have developed trip days that will work hand in conjunction with our knowledge transfer monthlies. The trip days will be anything from going to see and exhibition to taking part in a fun run!!!!. We are aiming to get the planning book out this month to plan around three of them for 2011. More than likely we will be putting the plans on the blog before we go so if it sounds interesting we might even see you there.

So What's new in 2011, take time out to experience new things that re-inspire and invigorate you. That's the plan.

So in our first What's new for 2011 we thought we would go straight to eating. Thinking you still want more we came across the top ten trends that we should see in 2011 according to Leatherheads food research.

TOP FOOD TRENDS IN 2011

Reformulations and stealthy reductions. (Initiatives such as the removal of artificial additives and ingredients will continue into 2011).
Sustainability high on the agenda
Health and wellness
Riding out the recession
Ever-expanding tastes. (Cuisines from regions around the world).

Provenance. (British will be the core focus for consumers when demanding provenance).

Small indulgences ( Consumers to forgo large expenses in favour of 'treats' in inexpensive forms).
Frozen foods market beginning to thaw?
Less is more/convenience. (Consumers will continue to demand convenience to fit in with ever-busy lives).
Obesity to get bigger. (innovations within the ingredients sector will allow companies to explore the addition of fibres and proteins and their effects on satiety).

You can see a larger article here