new rac products

Thomas Crapper and Half Moon Bay

Half Moon Bay to Launch Thomas Crapper Merchandise at Spring Fair

Historic bathroom brand launches fun gift range

Award-winning giftware company Half Moon Bay have signed a two year deal with Thomas Crapper & Co to launch a range of merchandise including toothbrush holders, mugs, and even an emergency plumbing kit (complete with rubber duck!) for the UK retail market.

The brand, launched by the eponymous plumber at the height of the British Empire in 1861, introduced plumbed bathrooms and luxury bathroom fittings to the world – and picked up a number of Royal Warrants along the way. It opened the first ever bathroom showroom, on King’s Road in Chelsea, and made sanitaryware fashionable and aspirational.

This new range of merchandise is both fun and practical with four ply toilet paper printed with humorous sayings one of the products expected to do well as consumers look for interesting and innovative gifts bearing the iconic Thomas Crapper logo.

Adam Bass, director of Golden Goose (Thomas Crapper’s licensing agency) said: “Thomas Crapper is a world renowned brand name that is ripe for development. The merchandise launch is the first step in the roll out of some very exciting plans for 2011.”

‘We are very excited to launch this new gift range, it truly offers something unique to the market. The history of the brand taps into the current demand for nostalgic yet fun gift products,’ said Ashley McCracken, Senior Product Manager for Half Moon Bay.

Thomas Crapper continued as a family business from its Victorian roots until the mid-1960s when it was taken over by a rival firm. Today, it is a privately owned, independent company producing the finest British Made authentic bathroom sanitaryware, fittings and accessories.

Branding 3.0

Hi and happy new year. 2010 was certainly interesting and, as in other years, I've taken the liberty of writing an article about new media's changes and their effects on branding, it's presumptuously called BRANDING 3.0.

Please let me know if you'd like a copy and I'll send you one. Otherwise it will be published in the latest edition of Innova

Great expectations...

Can't say too much but big announcement planned for Thomas Crapper day - January 27th 2011. Happy new year to everyone.

Watch a Typical Day in New York City.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaj2P-dSi8&feature=player_embedded#

Interesting Licensing

http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/10/27/Zippo-Fragrance.aspx

Golden Goose Stand at the Brand Licensing Show 2010

Thank you to those of you who visited us.

The first registered trademark

Well with a name like mine, what else was i going to do?

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?detailsrequested=C&trademark=1

check out NYC video

1 minute 31 seconds - NYPD

1 minute 41 seconds - Taxi cab

Clearly, iconic images, 54 million views so far!

Start spreading the news...

http://www.licensing.biz/news/5616/Golden-Goose-takes-bite-out-of-Big-Apple

Ode to Italy

Italy is to England

what colour is to grey.

Suspicion, mistrust and inhibition

give way to passion, thunder, exotic emotions,

shoes, leather, luxury and lace.

A modest vulnerability

bursting buttons with pulchritude,

an epic conquering history

rich in Roman tragedy and gods,

bountifully spreading lore and progress

from delicacy laden sacks.

The peasant's simple fare

raw, authentic, uncultivated

the marching foundations

for this modern supremacy,

sustaining noble ideas

with rustic flavours and textures.

The taste of the street

history and hot dust combined

as the world flows past

pollinating the atmosphere

with a fine layer of flour.

new client coming soon

So good they named it twice....

Pizza and Pasta Research

This is what 6 hours of researching the pizza and pasta market looks like...

Gamechanger

Just thought i'd share a new word from the lexicon of management speak... i suppose you could call the Iphone a gamechanger in mobile communications...

the end of google?

Google has copied Bing... in a case of the tail wagging the dog, someone within Google has fearfully decided that they need a left hand nav, after the search results... single handedly undoing the founding principle of the company - don't clutter the screen... why copy your imitator unless you've run out of ideas...is this the beginning of the end?

licensing.biz profile

Nice profile on Licensing.biz....

lifespans and volcanos

The average ant lives for approximately 90 days. By my reckoning that makes a 4 hour picnic last about 0.18% of an ant's life. If you take the average human lifespan of 75 years and calculate the same percentage you come to around 49 days... by that reckoning, if the Volcano is to humans what a picnic is to ants, it should be safe to fly over Europe again by June 3rd

RAC Publishing

Veloce Publishing Ltd becomes RAC’s publishing partner

Leading British automotive publisher, Veloce Publishing, is delighted to announce that it has teamed up with one of Britain's oldest and most esteemed motoring organisations, RAC, to produce books carrying the RAC brand.

The first fruits of the new relationship will appear in the Summer of 2010 in the form of -

"Electric Cars - The future is now"
Are electric cars a feasible alternative to conventionally powered cars? Here's a comprehensive guide - aimed squarely at the man and woman in the street - to the cars you can buy now, and what the future holds, priced at £12.99

"The Efficient Driver's Handbook"
With fuel prices at record levels, here's a timely guide to fuel efficient driving techniques and car choice, priced at £9.99

"Roads with a view - - England's greatest views and how to find them by road"
A beautifully produced large format hardback featuring 44 breathtaking views, and how to get to them by road. Priced at £24.99

Many more books are in the pipeline, including technical books based on RAC's extensive automotive experience and data.

Rod Grainger, Publisher at Veloce, says: "This is a really exciting development for our company. It's a prestigious association with a hugely respected organisation which not only marks a coming of age for Veloce, but presents a huge range of potential publications which can be created in association with RAC

Article about licensing for leading brands

Have just finished an article about licensing for leading brands... please mail me if you'd like a copy.

Intro to latest article due for publication in October

With the world cup now over and the Olympics looming on the sporting horizon, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves, “what’s the big deal about being number one?” Why the fascination with winning? Like a lot of British people I’ve got a soft spot for the underdog, the heroic failure who cares more about the taking part. And yet, from a straight licensing point of view, sales of the Eddie the Eagle T-shirts are unlikely to eclipse Bode Miller’s Alpine Skiing for PlayStation 2. So perhaps the reason for the obsession with winning is most obvious in the world of business – to the victor go the spoils.

In their legendary book ‘The 22 Immutable laws of marketing’ marketing legends Jack Trout and Al Ries explain that “The main rule is to be number one…the second [man to arrive on the moon] will not be remembered. Being number one is not always possible and certainly not always easy. Number one will need to look ahead to continue its strategy but will also have to look back, to verify what the followers will do. It is difficult to stay number one.”

For many brands leadership is a valuable positioning statement, and for good reason according to David Aaker in Brand Leadership: “Leadership… can inspire employees and partners by setting a high brand aspiration level… for many customers a leadership brand provides reassurance…implies quality...and/or innovation that translates into solid functional benefits.“

But the most direct relationship between leadership and the bottom line is indicated by a piece of research by British marketing scientist Andrew Ehrenberg which suggests that customer loyalty is proportional to market penetration. From this, Jean Noel Kapferer concludes that ‘it is difficult to generate increased loyalty in the long term without also increasing market penetration … the future of a brand thus depends on its … ongoing ability to attract new customers in order to increase its market penetration and in the meantime demonstrate its relevance to a changing world.“

Restating this in more simplistic terms, an increase in market penetration achieves a double whammy driving new customer acquisition and growing existing customer loyalty. Most licensors get very excited about the first part of this sentence - ‘wow’ they say, ‘New customers! New revenue! New business! New profit!’ failing to appreciate the importance of the second part.

For a leading brand licensing will only every generate a minute fraction of the value that would be achieved by a growth in market share, so why do it? what’s the attraction? You might as well ask Roger Federer what’s the appeal of winning another grand slam title? Surely you’ve won enough Roger, why keep doing the training, the work, the effort. After making the obligatory references to Switzerland his family, and his sponsors, Roger would probably reply – “I’ve made all the effort to get here, to be the best in the world, and now I want to make the most of it while I can, before my crown inevitably falls I want to win everything I can. And that’s the essence of my brand.”