Six reasons why long-term productivity growth has flatlined in the UK .

                                      

One business issue that keeps resurfacing here in the UK is that of productivity. The big question is, 'Why has it flatlined here since 2008?' I noticed that, yet again, the Bank of England has predicted 0% productivity growth for this year in the UK.

I have much experience of living and working in other cultures. I was born in the Netherlands and lived there for a time. I have also lived and worked in South America, Spain and India, and most recently, in the USA from 2005-2015. Therefore, I have some practical context to explain what's happening in the UK, relative to other global economies.


1. Business transactions take too long to carry out here in the UK. For example, buying and selling our house in Boston took less than a month. In the UK, it takes far longer.

2. Business people need to be bolder. They also rely too much on gut feeling and should incorporate more data, more rigorous thinking, and fewer biases into their decision-making

  

3. Training and education. A lot of British businesspeople need help to write accurate, grammatical English. They need help to do basic maths. 

Lack of education has got to be a key reason for our poor productivity. We need better education - more executive coaching and business education, both online and traditional. 

And the general level of primary education needs to improve here. Spelling, grammar, maths, you name it. Knowledge of foreign affairs, news and even a foreign language is good too.

4. Investment has got to come a close second. If you want to be a productivity ninja, you need the tools. I worked at one company where I was managing a six-figure marketing budget, but the company gave me a faulty computer that crashed the entire time.   

Talk about an unproductive false Economy! All the evidence points to us needing to spend more on equipment, from essential productivity apps to tools like DocuSign or Microsoft Teams, to speed up business interactions. In addition, there is far more employee training in the US. 

When I was at business school, many MBAs were financed by their employers. I rarely see that in the UK. Why aren't UK companies trying to develop their employees -  sending our employees on professional training to boost their skills or even actively encouraging employees to get training themselves. 

I have done much of this in my career, but these efforts were only supported regularly in the US. In the UK, companies prefer to poach talent from other companies rather than develop talent internally.

5. We have seen a fall in leadership quality in the UK. You only have to look at the government right now. Our Prime Minister pledged five points that he would improve. Most of those situations are now worse, and he hasn't even improved one

Failing to hit these goals will undoubtedly reduce our productivity and competitiveness as a nation.

 

6. We in the UK have a fatal weakness for conventional wisdom. I'm paraphrasing Dominic Cummings here. But undoubtedly, one of the reasons his Brexit campaign defeated the much better-funded and institutionally backed remain campaign was because his team was creative and unorthodox. The other side was neither (To clarify, I was and am pro-European Union, but I admired the Brexiteers' strategy and execution).

The current conventional wisdom is that productivity will rise if we all return to working in the office. 

Even though productivity declined for fifteen years or more before the trend for remote work even began. 

If you want help thinking more unconventionally, I recommend this Malcolm Gladwell book for inspiration. 

website.

Bela Hatvany, Harvard MBA, inventor of the touch-screen, talks about keeping his investors and employees happy.

 Successful business founder and investor, inventor of the touch screen, Bela Hatvany, talks about founding your own business.

After selling multiple companies for many hundreds of millions of dollars, Bela founded the world's first charitable giving site in 2000, Just giving.  

Bela talks about his start-up business philosophy: He embraces not only looking after his investors but his employees too.

Four reasons you should be allowed to work from home.

A long time ago, I had a boss who insisted that we always meet up in craft beer pubs even though two of the marketing team were non-drinkers and none of the group enjoyed craft beer.

He also insisted we wore jackets at a retail digital marketing event in July in Chicago when it was baking hot and all the other attendees were in t-shirts and button-downs.

He got mad at me because I took a day off after an exhausting three-day event to go skiing at a mountain resort nearby. 

Well, he also didn't allow our team to work from home on Fridays when the ENTIRE rest of the office (including him) was working from home on Fridays. 

Why do companies, even some nimble tech startups insist that all their workers work in the office EVERY. SINGLE. DAY?

Here are my reasons why you should let your employees work from home

1. Productivity. In the UK this is at an all-time low. And I have to assume part of the problem is created my distrusting management who can't believe that their team is conscientious enough to clock in a full days work while they are at home.

The most productive I've ever been is when I've worked from home one day and in the office for four.  I almost always end up getting more done on that one day I'm working from home.

But I'm a big extravert (100% extravert in Briggs Myers). If even someone like me who thrives on working with others, benefits so much from working from home, imagine how much your talented, hard-working introverts will gain from it.

2. Open-plan offices. The preponderance of open-plan offices is proof that, as the writer, Somerset Maugham put it “The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.” 

Almost every company has them, and virtually every piece of research on them shows that they are ineffective. They do not create open, warm, friendly, convivial environments. Generally, they create the opposite. 

If you want to have a great, honest conversation with a colleague, your open-plan office is not the place to do it. 

3. People have lives. When I had that boss who refused to let me work from home on Fridays, I had two small children. My wife was also working a demanding job, full time as a recruiting manager for another tech company. 

I also had some health issues which thankfully I don't have anymore. It would have meant the world to me, my wife and family. It would have multiplied my loyalty to the company more than anything, including money. 

4. Commute. Some of the companies I've worked for have been one and a half hours from my house. If I had had to go into the office every day, that would be fifteen hours travelling a week. Some part-time jobs are fifteen hours a week! Not to mention the toll on the environment of all that travelling. And the cost. 

And two of the ways companies still manage to screw up the work from home experience....... 

1. Out of sight. Out of mind. Yes, I'm working from home. No, I'm not happy to be ignored entirely. I've worked in a few roles that were WFH almost wholly, and this happened way too often. When it did, I found it almost impossible to have those tough but necessary conversations like thrashing out the annual budget.

2. Some people don't adapt to it well. HR directors having conversations over the phone that should be done face to face, at the very least on a video call. 

Bosses that keep shifting conference call times, or being late for them, in a way that they would never do for in-person meetings - they'd be too ashamed... You get the picture!

Social media has turned the world upside down - How have marketers responded?

The Doors is my favourite 'old-skool' rock group. Their lead singer, Jim Morrison, graduated from the prestigious UCLA Film School, where he studied with acclaimed film director Francis Ford Coppola. Morrison was also a poet*.

One important aspect of Marketing is getting attention. Fifty years after his death, Morrison still generates a massive following on social media. The Doors are still as relevant as ever and sell many records (Jim Morrison's grave in Pere La Chaise Cemetry is Paris's third most visited tourist attraction).

In 2005, when I was pursuing my full-time MBA at Boston University School of Management, I had the idea of writing a paper about organisations like the Doors that had a devoted fan base drawn to their authenticity.

When I wrote my paper about 'realness' in Marketing, I was influenced by a Harvard Business School case study** written by Susan Fournier, the new Dean of Boston University's business school. 

She wrote a case study about the Harley Davidson Owners Group, or ‘Hogs'. It was HBS's first-ever 'multi-media' case study.

Harley-Davidson does not compete with other motorcycles in any typical way. Its motorcycles are not particularly fast, reliable, or eco-friendly.

They are certainly not cheap. BMWs, Yamahas, Ducattis, or Hondas will outperform them in every way. However, what Harley-Davidson does have, which the other brands lack, is a unique bond with its customers and the Harley-Davidson community.

The Harley Davidson Owners Groups ('Hogs')

The Hog Club goes on rides, and the riders catalogue their adventures. A few years ago, a marketer suggested that Harley use dirt—and grease-free chrome. 

But the Harley team shot this idea down instantly. They believed that part of the appeal of having that bike for a Harley owner is cleaning the grease off it after a hard day's ride.

Lululemon (image below) is another top brand with an almost cult-like following. Lululemon isn't just a product; it's a lifestyle.

Since I wrote that paper, a celebrity and property developer, Donald Trump, first put himself forward as a candidate as a publicity stunt to increase TV ratings on his show 'The Apprentice'.

Donald Trump made many outrageous statements during this period. Yet every time the political experts said, "That’s it, he’s crossed the line. He's finished; he just got more popular," the pundits couldn't believe it. 

Similarly, Nike took a decidedly political stand on Colin Kaepernick, quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, kneeling during the National Anthem to protest against racism in the USA.

Most marketers at the time said that Nike made a terrible mistake by releasing this ad. Today, 80% of marketers still say that you shouldn’t take a strong position at the risk of alienating your customers.

However, just as with Trump, being controversial worked for Nike. Nike has made six billion US dollars since that ad, which was loved and loathed in equal measure.

Further reading (authenticity & community): The Power of Microinfluencer Marketing. 

 

*Extract from ‘The Movie’ - a poem by Jim Morrison

The auditorium was vast and silent

as we seated and were darkened, the voice continued.

The program for this evening is not new.

You’ve seen this entertainment through and through.

You’ve seen your birth, your life and death

you might recall all of the rest.
Did you have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?

** Harvard Business School - Building brand community on the Harley-Davidson Posse Ride

Google CFO says sponsorship was the key to her success

I've always admired powerful and accomplished women. So I was excited to go along to see Dame Minoche Shafik, Director of the LSE (who herself was the highest-paid University head in the UK until she voluntarily decided to forgo some of her salary last year), talk to Google's CFO, Ruth Porat, about the future of the school at LSE 2030. Ruth Porat is the highest-paid executive at Google, making $47 Million (£38 Million) a year.

Ruth and her husband, Anthony Paduano (who runs a law firm), met as students at LSE. They were at the LSE to discuss a new endowment scholarship fund they had established for women students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Dame Minoche said at the start of the talk that her ambition for the LSE is to be the leading social science institution with the most significant global impact. It is already ranked 2nd in the world, just behind Harvard University.

Ruth began her discussion by talking about the importance of AI. She said that they were using it at Google to reduce their energy costs by 30%. AI is also at the heart of its algorithmic search engine.

Ruth said that AI is a simple concept and not hard to understand if you break it down right. But that on the face of it, the terminology makes it sound highly complex. The key to understanding AI, as with most topics, is education. 

Ruth added that the future of AI impacts every industry. It takes a combination of Social scientists and engineers to build AI systems. Later in her discussion, Ruth talked about the importance of education. She said that much of business life is jargon, but you need to be educated to cut through that.  

Ruth went on to talk about her father, who instilled the importance of education in her. Her father attained a PhD in physics and then became a Stanford professor, where Ruth also studied (Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, LSE).

Ruth talked about how to change the company culture. She said that this always starts at the top. She gave some great examples of how she changed Morgan Stanley and Google's culture to make it more ethical and supportive of diversity. Any tech company that wants to progress today, needs to be cognizant of these forces.

She asked the room how many women had experienced men talking over them in business meetings. Everyone laughed in acknowledgement.

Ruth then said that when this happens, she always points it out, since, as she put it, 'if you don’t want my voice now, then do you even want me here in the room?'.

The most important part of Ruth's talk for me was how she transformed her career through her relationship with great sponsors. Initially, she said that she had worked at Morgan Stanley for an egotistical boss who had taken credit for all of her work.

Ruth realised that despite her best efforts, she would get nowhere with this individual at this company. So Ruth began to search around for someone who wanted to take a risk on developing her.

She did say that often employees think that this person will just appear as if by magic. However, Ruth said that She had to 'earn the right' to have a great sponsor who could provide her with judgment, insight and help open doors for her.

Ruth explained how one sponsor persuaded her to take a job on the financial trading floor, a notoriously male-dominated environment. It served her in her career, though. Later a sponsor helped her secure a role in Financial Institutions Risk at Morgan Stanley in 2006, which really catapulted her forward to her eventual role as CFO at Google.

One sponsor said to her: ‘I will be your senior air cover. I think you’ll soar, but I will have your back if you run into difficulties.’ Ruth said this is what she now says to those in business that she sponsors. 

Dinner with a fellow LSE alum at The Delaunay after the talk.

What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur?

The most successful start-up I ever worked for was founded by a guy who was brought up in a village in the Indian Himalayas. He is now the wealthiest Indian immigrant in the USA, with a fortune valued at $20 Billion.

Jay founded the Cyber Security Software company Zscaler (Full Disclosure: I have shares in it), for which I worked in Marketing in 2015 & 2016. He founded Zscaler in 2008, and it is now valued at $50 Billion on the NASDAQ. Zscaler had its IPO in 2018.

His house didn’t even have running water. His family was clearly not wealthy. Read about Zscaler, founded by Jay Chaudhry, here.

Jay Chaudry, CEO of Zscaler, grew up poor, in a Himalayan village

(Himachal Pradesh).

The second most successful startup I worked for was also founded by Indian immigrants to the USA. You can read about Visual IQ here. Nielsen bought Visual IQ (I don't have shares) for two billion dollars the year after I left the company.

Most startup founders I’ve worked for, have a genius of varying degrees, and an aspect of their personality that psychologists would define as ‘Hypomania’.

Harvard Medical School defines Hypomania as 'a mood state or energy level that is elevated above average, but not so extreme as to cause impairment'. The incidence of hypomanic personality is much higher than the average in immigrants and entrepreneurs (and those living in the USA, a country made up of immigrants).

Many people buy into the myth that the average successful startup founder is young - probably a guy in their mid-twenties. In fact, the average age of a successful startup founder is actually forty-five years old.  

I learned a great deal working for another founder in the US, again called Jay, who had been a child prodigy. At 16, he completed a triple major degree at Carnegie Mellon in Computer Sciences, Russian, and Mathematics. 

He became the USA's youngest MBA at age eighteen and management consultant at Bain & Co., again at age 18. 

Jay once told me that Carnegie Mellon told him he was too young to pursue an MBA at their University at sixteen. 

He then managed to get an offer for a scholarship to take a PhD in Finance at Wharton. He threatened Carnegie Mellon that he would pursue his studies at The University of Pennsylvania if he was not accepted into their MBA program. 

That's how he got into Carnegie Mellon's MBA program at such a young age. 

I became Jay's Head of Marketing and right-hand man. It was fun, but it was also torture. Jay was 'always-on', which was exhausting for an average 'regular joe' like me.

“Following your dreams is dangerous,” a 31-year-old woman who runs in social entrepreneurship circles in New York, and asked not to be named, told Quartz. “This whole bulk of the population is being seduced into thinking that they can just go out and pursue their dream anytime, but it’s not true.” 

The truth is that founding a company is typically not a purely rational act. A Founder has to have outsized confidence and vision to put his or her plan into place. 

This is not necessarily the act of a normal person. By that logic, not everyone can be an entrepreneur. The fact that I have worked for so many startups means I have at least a little of the entrepreneur's mindset myself. 

These are the characteristics I've seen in most entrepreneurs I've worked for. You might want to call it genetics, personality, or something else entirely:

1. He (or She) is flooded with ideas.
2. He is driven, restless, and unable to keep still.
3. He channels his energy into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions.
4. He often works on little sleep.
5. He feels brilliant, unique, chosen, and destined to change the world.
6. He becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles.
7. He is a risk-taker.

Does this sound like an entrepreneur or founder, as you know? 

Go to my website.

Please check out Feedspot, a great blog founded by Anuj Agarwal. I'm excited that Feedspot has chosen my blog to be on its list of the top 200 tech blogs. I'm honored—thank you! Here's their list. 

What's the most important leadership skill?

What skills does a leader need? The top leadership skill listed on LinkedIn is persuasiveness, which is closely aligned with Charisma. See John F Kennedy, below, possibly the twentieth century's most charismatic and glamorous leaders, whose vision led to the first man on the moon fifty years ago.

             Below: 50 years since the first moonshot - Inspired by the leadership of President John F Kennedy

Without persuasiveness, how will you get people to follow you? 

The second is Formidability. My friend John Hynes, a formidable leader, built a $25 billion city in South Korea and redeveloped Boston's seaport for $4 Billion. You can learn more about his formidability if you click on his image.

Below: John Hynes, CEO of Boston Global Investors

One leadership skill that will be absolutely paramount in the next ten years will be adaptability. It won't be the strongest or the toughest that will survive and thrive in a world that's changing faster and more unpredictably than ever.

It will be the most flexible leader, able to change rapidly when needed, sometimes overturning his entire strategy overnight when the circumstances dictate it.

                                  Is Leadership born or made?

Trait theory suggests that it is born. Leaders tend to be extraverted, conscientious, and smart, all of which have a genetic component. Intelligence is between 50-80% inherited, for example.

But there's a counter-argument that 50% of the population believed that you can develop leadership and that it's a learned skill. After all, Leadership is more about EQ than IQ, and Emotional Intelligence can be learned.

The 34th President of the United States, Dwight.D.Eisenhower once said, "The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office."

Why Culture eats strategy for breakfast

That phrase was first uttered by Mark Fields, CEO of Ford Motors and then popularised by the management guru Peter Drucker. 

This statement must connect with people since I've heard it many times and not just in Organisational behaviour classes in my MBA program.

Culture is crucial for several reasons. Your organization needs an appealing culture to attract talent. Top recruiters no longer talk about 'culture fit' -  They talk about 'culture add'.

 - You want to adapt your culture to accommodate all kinds of personalities and backgrounds. That means being as flexible as possible.

Delivering High-Performing Teams through Strategic Leadership

HR Webinar with Andrew Cocks, Head of employee branding at HSBC, and Dr Josef Scheurlein, Leadership Consultant

Did you know that 'diverse' doesn't just mean from different ethnic groups, females or cultures from the main? It also applies to cognitively diverse?

 - According to extensive research, the most successful teams have the broadest range of thinking styles to develop innovative and effective solutions.

And neurodiversity is one of the hottest new topics - with conditions like ADHD and even Aspergers and Autism no longer being seen as disabilities but often as 'superpowers'.

Your company must do its best to make its culture appealing since it wants the best skills to further the business.

In the UK, we have skill shortages in software programming, digital marketing, engineering, and all analytics roles, particularly those in data science and most digital roles.

- on LinkedIn, 'Data Scientist' has gone from zero searches to the no.1 top search in the last ten years. 

In the UK, this 'skills gap' is costing our Economy £6.3 Billion per year. When hiring, companies are forced to look at anything that will give them an edge over their competitors. 

There is an even more pronounced skills gap in the USA. I have seen figures for this 'gap' varying from one Trillion to three Trillion US Dollars over the next ten years.

Google and Facebook are well known for their beautiful offices and perks. Salary is another way to attract talent. 

However, culture is the most important. The top employees want to work in an environment that fits them best. And it shouldn't be a 'cookie-cutter approach'.

Over fifty per cent of employees say they would not take a job at a company that did not share their values. 

With Millennials and Generation Z, this percentage is even higher, Seventy per cent or more. Millennials make up one-third of the workforce and will soon be in the majority. 

So, culture is the future. And it's surprisingly easy and cost-effective to improve your culture. How?

- Simply by listening to your employees

- & remember this part - always act on what they tell you

Right now, one of the most critical cultural issues is how organizations will manage 'the new normal' after the Pandemic. 

- What do you think will happen? 

• Will it go back to 'business as usual'? 

• Is working remotely now the 'new normal' and being in the office 'the exception'?

• Or will we find a middle way - a combination of working from home with some days in the office?

One day, companies will see Culture as they do Brand today: Essential rather than desired. 

I predict that the company's culture will soon be measured on its balance sheet, just as a brand started to be fifteen or twenty years ago. 

If you were to put a value on your company's culture, what would that be (in Dollars or Pounds)?

What's a company culture that you particularly like? or dislike? 

Want to find out more on this topic? Go to my website.

Arup Breakfast events - Six rules of Event Management

Working smarter, not harder

They told me they'd tried it before, and it'd been a flop. However, I was confident my first event for Arup's new email management software tool would be a success.

You don't have to have much money, but you must always aim to work smart. Many companies make the fatal error of starting marketing too late, and then it's a mad rush to get everything done in time.

Running an event without the correct 'runway' of time for marketing is stressful, arduous work. People often don't think very well in that situation.

Unless you are one of the 2% of the population who can genuinely multi-task, typically, you will lose 15 IQ points when you try to accomplish this; it is not a 'smart' way to run an event!

I held our first event in Arup's headquarters in London on March 14th. 28 Hands has its second breakfast event on Wednesday, 8th May. 

I aimed for 16 at the first event and made 22. I already have 50 attendees registered for the second event, which is still one month away. 

Thursday, March 14, was a big day for Mail Manager. Not only did we have our first breakfast event, but we were also running the Viewpoint Mail Manager webinar: Viewpoint for Projects and Mail Manager integration.

That month, my other marketing manager, Joanne Waddell, and I increased our email campaign numbers from an average of 2000 to 123,000! Joanne is one of the best marketers I've worked with, so we had fun building that success together!

I also managed to generate some low-cost PPC and social media leads.

Senior Client Manager, Mario Christophides, started the morning with hard, but fair, statements:

Other industries are quicker to adapt than construction.

UK productivity issue, which we address by working longer hours

We can achieve better productivity by collaborating more closely.

Lucy Prior then provided an overview of how Mail Manager helps Arup capture 80% of their project correspondence. 

She explained that Arup developed Mail Manager in response to email becoming a significant problem for their business, particularly commercially sensitive information being locked in inboxes.

Project Managers and Engineers were not sharing data across their teams, and in frustration, Arup developed Mail Manager for their own employees.

Lucy Prior,  Mail Manager's Top Salesperson, presenting a live software demo.

   

         
Paul Hill is an information manager at Arup's program project management office.

Paul leads Information Management on large projects using a variety of software, including Common Data Environments such as ProjectWise, which Mail Manager integrates.

              Paul Hill, Information Manager at Arup, with Lucy Prior, Mail Manager's Senior Salesperson.

                     

Paul said that at Arup, thanks to Mail Manager, email is no longer a problem; we have solved it.

He demonstrated by showing us the 'Social network' of projects he was working on, and how one project, in particular, he’d been working on since 2011.

Paul showed us that hundreds of people had sent over 35,000 emails during this project. Using the Mail Manager search, he can access anything across the project in a matter of seconds. 

Six rules for setting up, running and following up on your first event:

Planning, Planning, Planning

1. PRE-EVENT EMAIL MARKETING

 I set up an email automation campaign for one month or more before the event. My automation will include a series of 'if/not' decision trees; If my prospect opens and clicks on the first ever email I send them one which is more personalised and has more detail in it.

If not, I send them an email that will try to capture their interest with a catchy subject line and a variety of topics.  If my prospect hits on the event landing page but does not sign up, I will send them a reminder email a few days later, again, perhaps with some video of a previous keynote and so on.

I create a top Landing page to maximise the number of attendees. 

2. SOCIAL MEDIA

Create 'buzz' around the event. Fortunately, I have a lot of friends in Branding who know a lot about this. One used to work for HSBC, another ran EMEA Brand Management for Hyatt Hotels,  and yet another friend of mine was Chief Creative Officer at Coca Cola. It helps to talk with 'ideas' people to develop events and marketing that will 'hit them between the eyes'.                                                                                                                                                                                      

3. LISTEN TO YOUR PROSPECTS

You can use social media to understand your audience better.  Posting titbits on Linked In or Twitter will get you many reactions. Monitor these religiously to get a feel for what your prospects want to see and hear, not only at the event but before and after it. I also use surveys at the event and online tools like Survey Monkey. However, keep these short and sweet. No one wants to spend twenty minutes filling out hundreds of questions. Limit it to five, with the option for them to leave comments. 

4. KEEP NOTES ON WHAT IS WORKING AND NOT WORKING

At our last event, one of our prospects asked if we had sent him an Outlook calendar invite for the date. I had not, but I checked into our new CRM system and saw that I could send invites en masse. I will certainly be doing this for the next event. Your prospects and customers know what they want better than you. Remember that.

5. HAVE SOME BIG NAMES

I'm a startup to mid-size kind of guy. I tend to do well in those nimble, fast-growing companies. But we all like to hear about the big names, whether it's celebrities, billionaires, supermodels or large organisations. Some names I've had at events I've run, have been anyone from Verizon Wireless to Black rock, from Mckinsey to TJ Maxx.

6. SHOW THEM THE LOVE

I always want to show my prospects that I care. I want great food, inspiring talks, fantastic giveaways and attractive hosts.

My attendees have taken valuable time out of their busy schedules to see us. I want to do the absolute best to make that an outstanding and hopefully memorable and useful, experience for them.

To continue your Marketing journey and understand how to generate leads and bring them through the marketing flywheel to close, read more of my blog, and my website.

Breakfast event link

Marketing Strategy with the Hyatt Hotels branding lead

Henny Frazer, Ex-Director of Brands EMEA & APAC, Hyatt Hotels (second from left).

One of my pleasures is meeting up with an old friend after a long absence. For the last five years, Henny has been living in Zurich, Switzerland. I lived in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, for the previous ten years. It was great to meet Henny after all this time.

 The Ivy, King’s Road, during the Chelsea Flower Show

We met up at The Ivy Chelsea Garden, on King’s Road, which was appropriate for several reasons;

First, it used to be a Dive bar called Henry J Beans that we hung out at when we were younger. The restaurant has ‘grown up’ over the years.

Secondly, it’s a unique restaurant, and Henny is an expert on them. Hospitality is her business; Specifically, luxury travel and hotels.

Henny Frazer

                     

My experience in branding comes mainly from working with agencies and corporate communications teams. My sector is fast-growing tech companies. Henny has worked with well-established luxury brands.

I’m fascinated by branding. And who could deny Henny’s undeniable talent for branding and strategy?

We both had travelled around India with a friend for several months in our 20s, and we talked about that first. I was touched by the experience: 

This included attending the famous 'full moon' parties in Manali & Goa; Camel trekking in the Thar desert for a week (I raced my camel driver); Getting lost for two days in the Himalayas; Along with various other exploits too numerous or too inculpating to mention (luckily we took no video back then).

The internet is a double-edged sword; in some ways, it’s helped strengthen and give new dimensions to brands. In other ways, it has commoditized a host of products. 

Price comparison sites have hammered the hotel business; it’s also eating into margins in the airline industry. A race to the bottom has ensued in the entire hospitality sector.

The hotel business has also been threatened by disruptive technologies like Air BnB. More recently, Covid-19 has brought the industry to its knees.

Henny talked about this and her work to make brands stand out and capture strong positive emotions and loyalty, which is falling among customers generally.

Andaz Hotel, Delhi

I was eager to find out more and asked Henny for examples. Henny told me a great story about her marketing initiative for The Andaz Delhi. 

Many hotels are having the same conversation: We are glamorous, cater to your every need, we’re beautiful & luxurious, and so on...

Connecting with the young and fashionable in Delhi

Henny had a different idea to connect the hotel with the history and culture of Delhi, including the new young hip culture growing in the city. The main message for the Andaz brand is:

‘Arrive a Visitor, Depart a Local’

Henny and her team produced a book describing the 401 reasons to fall in love with Delhi.

Why 401 Reasons? It’s simple - Andaz Delhi has 401 guestrooms. Every room has its own reason, which is defined in the book.

Besides, as you enter each guestroom or suite, you will find a unique piece of art illustrating each reason.

The book covers a range of subjects, from art and architecture to local delicacies, nature, and shops. They produced the album with reasons like:

Reason No. 161 - Lassi                     

‘Lassi is the much-loved yoghurt drink enjoyed all over  India. The sweet-tart drink is consumed in vast quantities in Delhi and may be served in fine hand-etched silver and brass cups, terracotta tumblers, and even plastic cups.’

Then the book would be left on this page for guests staying in room 161. Here’s a link to the booklet.

Reason No. 258 - Delhi Blue Pottery

Henny changed the conversation and developed a deeper, more powerful bond with Hyatt customers.

We covered a wide range of branding & strategy subjects at lunch. But I think my favorites were: 

Grand Hyatt’s powerful ‘Living Grand’ message.

The Hyatt Centric brand offers a springboard to discover a city. I had enviously admired footage of Henny at a Flow Rida concert at Hyatt Centric Chicago Magnificent Mile.  

Or the Hotel Du Louvre - The hotel team worked on rebranding this hotel as it has become part of the Unbound Collection by Hyatt. This hotel is all about slowing down and really becoming inspired by Paris.

If I had to pick a favorite Hyatt Hotel, I'd probably go for the Martinez in Cannes, which I used to stay at with my dad. 

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Data in a Day