10 May 2017


Protecting your


brand in a modern


BY WILLIAM PEAKIN


“It has taken generations to build the Harris Tweed brand into the popular global phenomenon we see today,” says Lorna Macaulay, chief executive of the Harris Tweed Authority. “It is our job to guard against unauthorised use of the brand and we take that role very seriously.” Macaulay was speaking about


the appointment of SnapDragon Monitoring to help protect the Harris Tweed trademarks, which include the iconic Orb, on the world’s busiest e-commerce marketplaces. The Edin- burgh-based intellectual property defender will monitor e-commerce, social media and auction sites for misuse of the Orb brand and will help prevent online sales of counterfeit Harris Tweed products. “SnapDragon Monitoring will help us do that effectively in the digital world and protect our reputation in the eyes of businesses who invest in Harris Tweed and the customers who buy their products,” added Macaulay. The Orb is the oldest British certi-


fication mark in continuous use and may only be used on, or in relation to, genuine ‘Harris Tweed’ cloth or products. In recent years the Harris Tweed Authority, the legal guardian of Harris Tweed and the Orb mark, has taken action against the misuse of the Orb, including forgery of the recognisable Harris Tweed labels which were sold for use on products that had no connection to genuine Harris Tweed. The Harris Tweed Orb guarantees the highest quality tweed, dyed, spun and hand-woven by islanders of the Outer Hebrides in their homes, according to laws outlined in the Har- ris Tweed Act of Parliament. SnapDragon Monitoring helps


small and medium-sized enterprises to protect their intellectual property and tackle online sales of counterfeit goods. The business was founded by Rachel Jones, prompted by her first-hand experience of fighting and beating counterfeiting while running a business selling baby products. “Brands work hard to build trust


but counterfeiting can easily destroy it,” said Jones. “The Harris Tweed Orb is one of the most recognisable trademarks in fashion, which makes it a target for fakes. Our team of experts will work to eliminate the sale of Harris Tweed counterfeits online and protect its reputation for the future.” SnapDragon Monitoring works


closely with world-leading ecom- merce platforms including Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba to remove counter- feit products from sale. In 2016 alone it prevented the sale of $10bn worth of counterfeit products.


world How digital innovation can come to the aid of tradition


‘Pass the salt Stefano’


How companies can redefine the relationship between consumers and their products


BY WILLIAM PEAKIN


Matteo Alessi is enjoying the week- end with his family; he has spent the previous two days with the company’s agents in Italy and the week ahead is, he said, a “very intense period”. The company’s budget review will look at how the year has gone and involves “re- projecting the numbers for the whole of 2017”. Alessi is the chief commercial officer, Europe and North America, of the eponymous family firm, founded in 1921 as a cold-working metal manufac- turer of household products. In the 1950s, Alessi moved from hand-manufacturing to mass pro- duction, replacing soft metals with stainless steel. The workshop designed its products in-house until the 1970s, when it began collaborating with leading artists and designers around the world. Then, the business set out to redefine the relationship between


consumers and their products, taking it beyond mere functionality and pioneering the idea of an emotional connection between the two. Browsing Alessi’s 2017 collection,


you can’t help being drawn to its Lil- liput salt and pepper set. Designed by Stefano Giovannoni, a magnet allows the containers to be positioned firmly on the base, but they can also be attached to the steel stem, “creating playful new configurations typical of Giovannoni’s designs”. The descrip- tion adds: “It is directly influenced by the spirit of the F.F.F. (Family Follows Fiction) metaproject, which from the 1990s onwards explored the object creation process followed by children and primitive cultures.”


MATTEO ALESSI joined in 2005, after working outside the company for two years; a pre-condition, along with a master’s degree and the ability to speak a second language, of any family member’s candidature to apply. He started in London, in charge of the company’s UK market. He was a cham- pion of e-commerce and Alessi’s pres- ence online, which he has described as “one of those moments where I was


Q&A with Victor Cobos


M&C Saatchi Sponsorship’s co- founder and chief executive on brand as a ‘win-win-win’


What are you working on? It’s been an intense week, I have been travelling quite a lot as I have been negotiating with some sports teams, mainly focusing on Formula One and football. On the other hand, I have been invited to attend as speaker for the Fundación Paideia (www.paideia. es) in Spain, a foundation created by Rosalía Mera, co-founder Inditex Group, in 1986. It’s an open space, with an interdisciplinary vocation that includes innovation and research,


especially in Human and Social Sci- ences. We’ll discuss how sponsorship can be the most effective way to help brands generate cultural relevance, as they succeed when they break through in culture.


What is the potential for brands in


today’s creative industries? It is huge; brands spend is forecast to reach over £48bn this year, a 1.8 times increase from 2010. There is poten- tial for this growth to increase more than currently projected based on the impact of new inventory from digital media platforms. More platforms equal more sponsorship and branding opportunities. Other factors for future growth include continued economic development in Asia, Latin America and Africa.


How should brands best engage with the creative industries (and vice versa); I believe brands best engage with the creative industries if they not only use digital media platforms, staying culturally relevant is important, but they should be careful not to lose credibility. Traditional creative brand- ing (TV spots, outdoor campaigns, etc) can be a really effective way to reinforce their message if it is deliv- ered properly. On the other side, creative indus- tries should understand more their objectives. Brands seek to build more emotional relationships with their customers; it has become increasingly important to consider how they fit into their target audience’s lifestyles. For many brands, aligning with their


target consumers via entertainment and culture is the most logical choice, but flexibility should be imperative from any rights holder if they want to maximise their sponsorship revenue.


Should creative industries fear being involved with brands? Not at all; there is no reason to fear being involved with brands, they should be considered as partners, like a joint venture where both parts benefit and they should be focusing on how to deliver the best entertainment together to their same audience. A ‘win-win-win’ situation; rights holder- brand-audience.


Victor Cobos on The Growing Impor- tance of Brands in Today’s Creative Industries, 4.15pm, Thursday 8 June.


considered the young nephew rather than the CCO of the company”. Today, change is still an issue: “I guess the next big project for Alessi is to navigate successfully through the generational passage we are facing at the moment. It always is one of the most critical times for a family business and we have to be careful,” he said in an email Q&A. But that does not stop the work, most recently exemplified by its partnership with Delta, the US airline, which commissioned Alessi to “curate a modern, stylish and functional collec- tion of service products and tableware”, part of a multi-billion dollar investment in customer experience. “Delta was thinking about develop-


ing something completely different from what had been done before,” said Matteo. “It was a very long, and very interesting, project for us since it meant learning a lot about the airline industry and how to apply our approach to design to a completely new environ- ment. What we wanted to achieve, together with Delta, was an outcome that would help elevate the customer experience when in flight through all the little details design is made of. I think we definitely achieved that!”


Matteo said that Alessi sees design


“not as a simple marketing tool, but rather as the main element of our mission; we are mediators between the world of applied arts and the market.” Asked about examples of Scottish design, he said: “Apart from all the his- toric landmarks, what comes to mind is the Falkirk Wheel. I visited it with my family in 2014, and I really liked it because it is a very good example of the fact that design is not only about aesthetics but also about other ele- ments, like evolving the performance or functionality of an object.” He will be appearing at XpoNorth


along with Fiona Macaulay, chief executive of the Harris Tweed Author- ity. “I think companies like Alessi and Harris Tweed, though in a different way, can add a lot of value thanks to provenance, because it will help us avoid going down the simpler road of ‘mainstream’ design,” he said. “We should keep leveraging the differences generated by provenance.”


The Power of Provenance: In conversa- tion with Matteo Alessi and Harris Tweed Authority, 2.45pm, Wednesday 7 June - La Scala Cinema, Inverness.


BRANDING XPONORTH


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Alessi was commissioned by Delta to ‘curate a modern, stylish and functional collection of service products and tableware’


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