Sunny Thinking Marginal Gains
by Sunny Thinking
How amazing was the Grand Depart of the Tour? Some of the best crowds, the best athletes and definitely one of the best shows I've ever witnessed. But what can brands and businesses learn from it and other great sporting events taking place this summer?
There's so much we can take from the likes of the Tour, Wimbledon, the World Cup (deutsch effizienz) and forthcoming Commonwealth Games. Not just about inspiring us all to get sporty, big kids and little kids to boot, but for us marketing folk, what we learn about how brands engage too. Just take the Tour Caravan for example - a unique spectacle in itself with brands like Fruit Shoot, Yorkshire Tea and McCain adding a massive amount to the party and enhancing their brand experience.
This fantastic extravaganza got me thinking about what else the cycling world teaches us from a branding perspective. It got me thinking about Team Sky's very, very clever Dave Brailsford and his wonderful theory of 'Marginal Gains'.
“If you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together,” Dave Brailsford
How do us marketing folk and brand ambassadors bring his theory to life? How can this philosophy help your business? What marginal gains can your brand or business make to help tell a better story?
For me, Brailsford is spot on. If you improve everything about your brand experience by 1% then the impact is massive. Your brand identity is made up of so many small ingredients and if all of those are improved the benefits will be immense. The devil's in the detail. What is your USP and story? How should that be translated in a unique way? Unfortunately, in a digital age many businesses and brands seem to be slowly homogenising. Many are guilty of engaging on social media exactly the same way as their competitors for example. The language and conversations they have arguably don't really mirror their brand proposition. The successful ones are authentic and true to their brand ethos and have a unique personality.
So what marginal gains can you make? Improve the tone of voice of your brand, the creative design approach, the copy style, the photography and images you use. Review the media you use to promote yourselves, review your analytics and treat your creative marketing plan as an organic plan that you can tweak and improve for the best ROI. Even drill down to the suppliers you use. Can you use a better paper for your printed promotions or different formats and finishes for that extra added value. The same with your packaging and POS.
Surround yourselves with great people and learn the art of collaboration to increase your knowledge and experience. Suppliers like Label Apeel are fundamental to us and help provide such marginal gains for our clients. They come up with solutions to help our clients packaging leap from the shelves and give that competitive edge. If we're working on a packaging or labelling project they know the industry inside out. Their experience and expertise as the UK leading label printer helps bring our visions and ideas to life.
Being sporty is one of the cornerstones of our business. In the sports sector, we've turned our passion in to an expertise in helping build brands and launch new products, put bums on seats, generate sponsorships, promote active lifestyles and maybe most importantly support grass roots sports initiatives. But it's more than this. It's what we learn from the sport sector that we use to help all our clients. Sunny Thinking provide clever ideas to help brands and businesses tell their story. It's the added extra and attention to detail in all our creative solutions that provides the marginal gains to help give significant advantages to all our clients.
Now where's my bike? Five of us are taking on the route of Stage One of the Tour on August Bank Holiday to raise money for The Children's Adventure Farm Trust. Please sponsor us on our Just Giving page.
