Firefly Tonics

Bye bye waters

2009-03-31T11:00:00.013Z

It's a sad day. Firefly waters - launched with a flurry of awards and publicity a year ago - will disappear from the shelves tonight.

We love our waters - low calorie, all natural, full of antioxidants, and really rather delicious - but they haven't taken off.

Why didn't they take off, and what can we learn?

The reasons...
1) Rubbish timing. Within a month of launching Firefly Waters, Pepsi bought V Water, and Coke brought out Vitaminwater - so we had to compete against "buy 3 cases get 3 cases free" deals that filled up everyone's fridges and squeezed us out. Vitaminwater's campaign was well-executed: they had vans delivering to all the London newsagents and cafes every day, with good clear "point of sale". And the Vitaminwater name is nice and clear - it makes you think "vitamins plus water" - even when you know it's actually got a fair bit of sugar and other stuff in there, you still get a subliminal feeling of doing yourself some good. We met our match.

2) Dull packaging. Our Firefly drinks are so gorgeous, they practically leap off the shelves. But for our waters, we made lots of compromises: use this bottle because it's available, settle for this design because we have to hit our Spring launch date, etc. The bottles ended up looking bland, and indistinguishable from the other enhanced waters - or as AA Gill put it, like Scandinavian Antifreeze.
And if people don't pick up your bottle, it doesn't matter how engaging the writing is or how delicious the drink is - it's not going to sell.

3) Bottling problems. We had a run that went wrong (a few drinks went mouldy before their shelf life was up). So we had to recall every bottle from the shelves, and re-launch a month later. But after all that shenanigans, we weren't too surprised that the shops that had Firefly water before weren't exactly begging to have it back.

The lessons.
1) Focus on the core brand. We launched a new range because we saw growth slowing on the core Firefly range... So we thought "let's make a new range of antioxidant waters to add some extra sales" - and devoted all our sales and marketing energies to the new range, leaving Firefly to languish, unloved.
It's a classic marketing error. If the core range isn't growing fast enough, work out why, and fix it. Firefly's a fantastic brand with a loyal following - don't give up on it the moment it hits a rocky patch. In this instance, there were two problems with the Firefly brand. First, it was too "cryptic" for a mainstream audience. And second, the herbs weren't delivering enough of a noticeable "boost" - or in marketing-speak, we weren't delivering enough on our brand promise. Watch this space...

2) Don't compromise. When we launched Firefly, we had a clear vision of what we wanted, and we bent over backwards to make it perfect. But when we developed our waters, we were trying too hard to fit within cost constraints, bottling constraints, time constraints - we were acting like a big business rather than an entrepreneurial business. We settled for "good enough" rather than "mind-blowing". Our lives didn't depend on how fabulous this drink was - and it showed.

Still, we'll miss our waters - we're all hooked in the office. Maybe one day we can dust down the recipes, come up with a great name and a radical bottle, and watch them fly. But in the meantime, it's good to be focused on Firefly again: and our first quarter sales are looking really rather encouraging...

Customer Kings

2009-02-19T17:33:00.004Z

Cover your ears - much trumpet-blowing - we won an award.
Firefly are Cisco "Customer Kings".
(I'm still wondering if it's because the entry deadline - 23rd December - meant that most companies were too hungover to enter. More fool them...)

And the resulting interviews on Oprah and Jonathan Ross (Cisco's PR machine is hot) got me thinking about this riveting topic - customer service.
Don't yawn. Yet.

You see, at school we're never taught how to complain - or how to respond to complaints. So when we start our "jobs", and have to deal with a "complaint", we slip into this weird language: "We apologise for any inconvenience you may have suffered"... "As a gesture of goodwill"... "Your statutory rights are unaffected".
Where do we learn this "autoreplyspeak"? I mean, no-one actually talks like that, do they?
I'm wondering if it's because we all sent broken Skittles back to Mars when we were little - and those 50p vouchers that seemed so generous were in fact an evil plot to seed a new language among 10 year old children with not enough pocket-money.

Because, worse still, the autoreplyspeak has spread to the people sending in the complaints. We have wonderful letters and emails here at Firefly - and most people, even when complaining, manage to do so in a friendly, understanding way. But occasionally you get a letter that sounds reads like it's been written by a robot.
And yet, let's think, which are the letters I go out of my way to respond to? Well, the nice ones, of course. I'll do anything I can to patch things up with a friendly, loyal customer who's had a disappointing experience. But if someone's going to just go on a robotic rant, I stop feeling compassion for them, and start thinking like a robot too. Lawsuit-phobia kicks in, and anything I say might be used as evidence that I was once a human-being.

We all need reminding every now and again, don't we, that every little interaction we have with "customers" or "call-centre agents" is still a shared moment with a real person - someone who has the same messy tangle of memories, dreams and worries that we have. And when people treat us as real people - that little gesture, that bit of banter that shows they value this moment with us - it makes life a little richer and happier, and we appreciate it.
That's all really.

I caught myself on this recently with my "customer" hat on. I went to an Intelligence Squared debate a few weeks back, and felt it was spoiled by the new addition of TV cameras for BBC World. And since I love these debates, I was crestfallen. So I wrote to the organisers.

I was about to write a litany of all the things that were wrong with the debate. But then I thought, how would I think if I received that? Demoralised. "Another moaner". Whatever.
No - these are intelligent people, who want to do the right thing, just like me. If I relate to them, thanking them for all the great things they've achieved, and appreciating the tricky decision process they've doubtless been through, they're probably more likely to think about what I say.
I got the nicest reply. Human, respectful, and to-the-point. I was happy. And in some small way, the sum of human karma had been enhanced rather than chipped-away.

It's just common sense and decency.
Autoreplyspeak is bad for humankind. We must fight the Martians.

The Credit Cliche*

2009-01-29T15:59:00.008Z

Talk about herd mentality.
Last year we were all quietly glossing over the impending global meltdown. "Chin up - it's not that bad".
But when I got back from my (inexcusably long) Christmas holiday, panic had set in and the West was doomed.
"Unprecedented". "Carnage". "Depression". "Slump". The pound collapsing. 2 for 1 in every restaurant. Even Obama's twinkle has turned to grey-faced gravity.
My newfound South American "life's pretty great" karma was gone in a jiffy. Sigh.

So how are we feeling it at Firefly?

Well, we're reasonably upbeat - but certainly not immune.
Independent cafes and delis are our core customers - and lots of them are suffering and even going out of business. All that imagination, effort, local lifeblood, snuffed out.
That pushes our wholesalers out of business (we've lost two already).
And fewer places selling Firefly means lower Firefly sales.
Meanwhile, the collapsing pound pushes up our ingredient costs - though we can make up a bit with our exports.

What next?

Firstly, yes, we're leaping on the money-saving wagon. Lower growth means we have to cut budgets. And join in the self-fulfilling merry-go-down. Depressing but unavoidable.

Secondly, we're asking - what do people want in a downturn?
A few thoughts:
1) I'll still spend on small luxuries - but I want more evidence that it's worth it.
So I'll still buy Gu chocolate puds (I can taste the difference). But not £3 mineral water in restaurants (I can't).
Our response: make Firefly's benefits clearer.
So we're strengthening our herbal extracts so you can feel the natural energy hit more immediately.
And we're making the "natural energy" message clearer on the bottle. Whilst making sure "all natural" and "no added sugar" don't get lost in the cheeky chat.

2) I want to reflect on what's really important.
First we turned against consumerism. We all read "No Logo" after the dot-com crash, cursing the big, greedy, polluting corporations.
But that was when the rise of the corporation seemed inevitable. Our privacy, our choices, our public spaces, would gradually be eroded, and we'd all turn into consuming clones.
Now, corporations, governments, capitalism, money itself - they all look shaky.
So now we're asking "what's life all about?". We're reading books about energy, humanity, buddhist philosophy. "The Secret" (ahem). Eckhart Tolle. Auras not egos. More time with our parents. Simplifying our lives - cultivating our gardens. We're searching for a new movement, a new vision. It could be 1968 all over again. A little hippie honeymoon.

Firefly's response?
There's something vaguely hippie about a natural herbal drink. Getting an energy boost from nature rather than chemicals. With Polaroids of the great outdoors.
But it doesn't feel enough. Perhaps we should be trying to answer these questions - giving a little moment of reflection. Living "in the moment". Spreading the love. Buddhism in a bottle.
But it's a bit contradictory, isn't it? Even "enlightened" consumer goods are ultimately consumer goods.

So perhaps we'd better go and sit on a beach and stare at stars.
Until the Chinese usher in the next world order, of course...

*sorry - blogger seems to have a nervous breakdown at the sight of an acute accent.

Youthful promise

2008-12-08T16:22:00.008Z

If there's one thing that really rubs me up the wrong way, it's scare stories about the "youth of today". Since the dawn of time, people have moaned that the young are "less respectful" and "less disciplined" than "when I was little". But of course they're not. We just have rose-tinted memories. We remember the couple of harsh punishments - but forget all those times we were naughty or cheeky and got away with it. Come on, admit it.

Well, this week I've had two wonderful experiences that proved that young people today are doing just fine.
First, Rosendale School - a state primary in Herne Hill.
I was asked by my friend Debbie to speak at assembly on "starting your own business". I was apprehensive - speaking to 350 5-11 year olds for 20 minutes - at best they'll be bored and restless, and at worst they'll laugh me out of there for my posh accent and preppy clothes.
But this is an inspiring school. The classrooms were festooned with children's creations. The children were polite, friendly and inquisitive. And the deputy-head, Kate Atkins, is a marvel. (there's a "super-head" who runs a handful of schools, so Kate acts as head most days I think). Kate has the most amazing energy and warmth about her. You immediately sense that she genuinely respects the children in the school: she listens to their opinions, she cares deeply about each of them. And they, of course, respect her.

My little talk was a joy. The 350 children sat cross-legged, immaculately behaved, throughout. They answered questions intelligently. Their ideas were imaginative. They were eager to learn.
Sure, this is an Ofsted-rated "outstanding" school, in a reasonably affluent borough. But Rosendale knocked the socks off my (private) primary school. Let's hope some of them do start their own businesses - there are future stars in the making here.

My second "inspiring youth" moment was yesterday's "Choir of the Year" final, at the Festival Hall.
Now I'm a choir nut - a choirboy from 7, I recently helped set up a young London choir that's going great guns (plug plug). But it seems I'm not alone - choirs are really flourishing right now. And here we had seven of Britain's finest, old and young, out to impress musical luminaries like Howard Goodall.

Wow these choirs were good. There was "Masquerade", with children as young as 7, every one of them bang in time and on-key. We had Scunthorpe Co-operative junior choir, mostly young teens, following every nuance of Susan, their conductor. And my personal favourite, Voice Squad, doing the most thrilling, technically eye-popping "samba". I just didn't know choirs could do all that.
These weren't posh kids from the home-counties. Just keen young people from Kettering, Scunthorpe and Suffolk, getting together and doing something they love - and doing it to an exceptional standard. You could feel the passion emanating from all of them.

So the future's not so bleak. As Howard said, young people today are amazing. We should be proud of them. Britain's got talent - just wait and see.

P.S., Speaking of talent, the Choir of the year presenter was Josie d'Arby - and we LOVE her. Please tell Mr. BBC controller, it's time to ditch Ross - here's to "Tonight with Josie";-)

Obama and hope

2008-11-05T14:58:00.007Z

Wasn't last night fabulous?

After nearly two years wondering if it could really come true - and panicking that some Kennedy calamity would stop him if McCain didn't - Obama is finally home and dry.
Thank you America - we were starting to doubt if you had it in you. The US was starting to feel like the land of the rich and the religious nut, rather than the land of opportunity and freedom.
The country we grew up grudgingly admiring had become paranoid, aggressive, small-minded - and yet the Americans we knew were so decent, so eager to make a difference. And when America lacks direction, lacks hope, we all get gloomy.

Watching his victory speech this morning, I must admit the tears welled up.
Growing up as a poor black American, it would have been easy for Obama to get angry. Angry at the lack of opportunity, bitter at the rich/poor divide, resigned to being treated, subconsciously perhaps, as a second-class citizen (I have a black American friend who calls America "the most racist country on Earth", and feels sick whenever he goes back there).
But Obama proves that hope can out-gun anger. This calm, considered, intelligent man doesn't fight back when attacked - he finds the common ground. He doesn't bewail his disadvantages - he shows us how much we're all capable of. He makes us want to stop taking sides and seek the common good.

There's a theme that always brings tears to my eyes. Jonathan Sacks' "Thought for the day" the day after the Madrid bombings... Martin Luther King's dream... Bobby Kennedy's words the day after King's assassination (tears every time)... Jefferson's declaration of independence...
It's the message that what unites us is greater than what divides us; that people are essentially decent - we all seek the same things - to find happiness and fulfilment and purpose in our short time here on earth; and that if we remember this, and work together, and love each other, we can make the world a better place.
It sounds a bit trite when cobbled together by amateur me.
But Obama rekindled the same feelings this morning:

Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

After years of Rovian paranoid politics, it's a joy and a relief. (As, to be fair, was McCain's incredibly gracious and touching concession speech.)

OK, if you're wondering what on earth these ramblings have to do with Firefly...

Well, we've been avid Obama fans at Firefly HQ since we put that bad joke on our Redbush drink (changing Redbush to Redobama - "now there's a drink you can vote for") a year ago. Back then, no-one got it. Now it would be a cliche.

Because if we didn't believe that mankind was essentially decent, and that tomorrow could be better than today, we wouldn't bother making drinks to "get the most out of life".

But today isn't really about Firefly.
Barack Obama, you've restored a little hope today.
Thank you.

Now that's good PR...

2008-10-29T13:09:00.005Z

We love innocent. They make good drinks, write excellent copy, support some wonderful projects in the 3rd world, and really know how to run a business.

They also certainly know how to handle the press...

Remember the £2 million campaign for "this water" earlier this year...?

Well the ASA weren't happy.
The ad was "misleading" and breached the code on "truthfulness" by failing to acknowledge that each bottle of this water contained "between 33.6 g and 42 g" of "refined, white, granulated sugar".
So they banned the ad - too late, of course, as the billboards went out in the Spring.

Quite a big story, surely.

But in the Grocer, our beloved trade journal, not a mention.

How strange.

Until someone just sent us this - a screenshot from the Grocer website of the story that was due to go out, but then mysteriously vanished. (You can't trace it on the site now).

So what made the Grocer cancel the story?

Now that's what I call good PR...

Trade show gravy train

2008-10-06T10:37:00.009Z

Just back from "SIAL" - the mega food biennial in Paris.

These giant trade shows are extraordinary.
Acres and acres of Greek olive oil producers.
An entire hall of regional Italian produce - enough mozzarella and parma ham to feed Islington.

I remember at "Anuga" - an even bigger food trade show in Cologne - our little tiny stand was next to the Italian section. Half their stands had nobody on them most of the time.The friendly Italians sat and drank espressos and smoked (you still could), and if anyone had the temerity to come and enquire, they looked up, puzzled, and quickly directed them elsewhere.
They had a big open meeting area just across the corridor from us - probably £10,000 for the space alone, and decked with immaculate black leather arm chairs. And I watched... and waited... and not once did I see anyone using it.
So on the third day, I went and sat in it myself, with a chum. For half an hour or so. Someone came past to get a coffee. Didn't say anything.

And we realised that none of these guys have actually paid for their vastly expensive tradeshow stands. It's probably come out of a Regional development budget, or the Common Agricultural billions. It's just a nice jolly, really.

Ever since then, I've been a bit of a sceptic of these big shows.
SIAL is more modest - like, still bigger than Hyde Park, but only on one floor (Anuga has 3!) - but you have to ask how much useful business is really being done.
How many of these stands would be here if they weren't subsidized?
And it's all so extortionate: you pay 2 grand for a tiny stand; everyone pays 70 euros just to get in for one day; all the hotels jack up their prices for the week. You pay a hundred quid to hire a light. Or an electric socket.
It's a vast gravy-train, being paid for, largely I suspect, by the world's tax-payers.

Sigh.
But the real fun was in the drinks area.
It's incredible that there are still people who wake up one day, and think, "Hey, see those energy drinks. They cost practically nothing to make, yet sell for lots of money. Let's make the same drink, in the same sized can, with a really original name, pay for a vast stand and lots of nice sexy models, and we'll be billionaires like Dietrich Mateschitz."

A few examples...

Yes, that's "Power horse". How did they come up with that?

And this one's "Long Horn". With, is that a red bull's horn, perhaps? Genius.

In Hell, they know where to invest their marketing budget...

This was the one truly original concept of the show.

OK, it tasted awful, but then who ever enjoyed their first cigarette?
I'm just not sure you'll catch James Dean drinking one.

So, trade shows.
Please, governments, stop subsidizing them.
Or, I know - only subsidize the "genuinely original" stuff.
So big food spends their time making great products, rather than fussing about whether the carpet colour is "on-brand".
Much more fun.

City turmoil

2008-09-16T13:34:00.007Z

All was weirdly calm in the Firefly office whilst the city was collapsing a couple of miles East.
So what's the impact on us?

Well, if you look at the photo in Metro (right) you can just make out a bottle of "Sharpen up" on the desk by the oh-so-ironic jacket. Yes, the Lehman canteen was one of our top customers. "Bankers love Firefly" shocker.

Even the bankers admit that something's amiss when 4 people I know (3 of them under 35) earned £8-figures last year, without risking their own money. That's a serious fortune. In one year. And I don't exactly hang out in banking circles. So where's all that cash coming from?

Well, as I see it, there are two things going on.
First, in the same way that a 9-person company like Firefly can sell drinks in 40 countries, a 20-person hedge-fund can now handle billions of dollars of funds. Technology can do all those things like research, settlement, risk-management, who-knows-what, that white-collar armies used to do. So the management fees go straight to the "talent" at the top. And with commodities soaring, shares volatile and insider-trading largely unchallenged, big bets mean plenty of big wins and big pay-outs.

Secondly, all this money was being passed around, with someone taking a little cut here, and a little cut there - so when you try and pay back the money after all those little cuts, you find there's a chunk missing.
Please help me if I'm being stupid here: I take out a mortgage (little cut to the broker or mortgage salesman), that gets packaged up and sold to a merchant bank (little cut), on which they issue "securities" (ha ha),(little cut) which then get traded (little cut) like shares. Now, mortgages aren't a high-margin business. Mine's fixed at Base + 0.18% for 20 years. I'm amazed that's enough to keep my mortgage company in business, let alone all these other clever people earning big bonuses.
Now we all know that half of those mortgages were bogus, sub-prime blah blah. But even if they hadn't been, wouldn't we have found that there was a black hole where the bonuses had all come from? It'd be a bit like if we made our drinks, sold them on to a distributor (little cut), who sold them to a retailer (little cut), who sold them to the public (little cut) - but the public had the right to sell them back to us at our cost price. Um, help, call the Federal Reserve.
It's just bonkers. Surely you have to "add value" to justify adding a margin. How are these people "adding value" to my mortgage?

So what next?
Well, Britain is more "unequal" than at any time since they started measuring Gini coefficients in 1961. And that's mainly the top 1% racing ahead faster than ever.
Is that bad?
It's bad if it makes hard-working people feel there's no point, because they'll always be in a different league from the super-rich. And it's particularly bad if it's seen to be unfair: not talent and hard work - just luck, creative accounting or bordering-on-insider trading.
But the ultimate "bad", surely, would be to see the government - the taxpaying middle-classes - pour more cash into the elite's bulging pockets by propping up their institutions.
I'm no historian, but it all sounds a bit like pre-revolutionary France.

Meanwhile, back at Firefly HQ, better find some new "Sharpen up" fans.

David Ogilvy

2008-07-11T16:01:00.003Z

Advertising is back in vogue.

First, "Mad Men" hit BBC4. Achingly good.
[the "Carousel" scene. My.]

Then, BBC4 also rolled out everything in their advertising archive.
The Saachis getting pregnant.
The crazy eighties.
And an hour devoted to the man himself, David Ogilvy.

Now, it's five years since I read "Ogilvy on Advertising". James Mullen, the marketing brains behind Thomas Pink, told us it was the one book we must read. We were smitten.

Well, inspired by the Ogilvy flashback, I finally read his 1963 classic, "Confessions of an Advertising Man".

He writes beautifully. You must read this. What a salesman.

A few things I picked up for us entrepreneurs:

He didn't even start in advertising till he was 41.
There's still time!
Shameless self-publicity works. Ogilvy sent regular updates to 600 influential people (bet it was better than our newsletter). He charmed the best marketing journalists at lunches. He spoke his mind and got noticed. And his autobiography sold a million copies, promoting his firm from the first page.
His advice on management is rather nice. Hard to summarise, but work hard, inspire others, give praise (seldom) when due, be a gentleman, and so on. All there in Chapter 1.
Even he, a "creative" (a word he despises), was meticulously organised. He always delivered work on time. Like the Duke of Wellington, who wouldn't leave work until his desk was clear. (Looking at my desk. Oh dear.)

And I had to highlight a few copywriting tips from the master:

Sell in the headline - 5 times as many will read the headline as the body
Your first paragraph should be no more than 11 words.
Certain magic words - "new", "free", "how to", "now", "startling" - get you noticed.
(though I wonder if we're better at screening them out these days).
Avoid superlatives: "make the truth fascinating".
Lay-out matters: large initial letters, arrows, columns no more than 40 characters wide (like newsprint) and regular crossheads...

Oh dear, I've just made a riveting book sound like a techie manual.
But the overall impression you get from the book is that all you need to reach the top is good manners, integrity, determination and a touch of flair.
OK, and just a soupcon of arrogance. But we can allow him that.

Water wars

2008-05-23T16:52:00.008Z

It's all suddenly gone a bit crazy in the world of "enhanced water" since we launched our Firefly waters.
First, Coke announced they were launching Vitaminwater in the UK "in the summer". They paid $4.1 billion for the brand last year, so that wasn't a surprise.
Then Pepsi raced out and bought V Water for a whopping £10 million (peanuts for Pepsi, but pretty steep for a brand with £1.2m of sales).

And now this week Vitaminwater have appeared all over London. Free bottles in Victoria station. A brightly coloured van driving down our street. The local newsagent has a whole new Vitaminwater section, surrounded by wobblers, shelf strips and every bit of merchandising you could dream up. Wow, these Coke guys know how to sell.

Of course we rushed out and bought one of each.
And it's intriguing to see how they've adapted the drinks for us Brits...
As you probably know, Vitaminwater is huge in the US: you can't miss the big bright bottles with their genius laugh-out-loud copy.
But Coke have introduced a few changes over here.
They've upped the vitamins a lot (the US versions only had about 25% of RDA - these are mostly 100%+). They've found some spring water (rather than purified - Dasani lesson learned.).

But it looks like they had trouble masking the vitamin tastes, because they've switched from natural "flavors" to artificial flavours; and they've added sugar too.
Odd decision - our friends always tell us that "all natural" and "no added sugar" are pretty key. But I'm sure Coke know their market...

The big disappointment, I'm afraid, is the bottle copy. It reads like it's been written by a marketing intern. If Coke can afford $4.1 billion, surely they can afford a decent copywriter.
(Sorry - I know copywriting is impossibly hard - I want to kill myself whenever I try - but if Glaceau could do it so well, why mess? I mean, the bit about Glastonbury is just desperate.)

My tip to Mr Bickoff: phone Caitlin Moran and offer her $10 million to defect.
(Except then she might stop writing her Times column and I'd have nothing to look forward to on Mondays. Caitlin, don't go.)
Am I allowed to talk about the competition like this? Oh dear.

Firefly Water - the ups and downs

2008-05-01T15:46:00.005Z

We've finally made it. Firefly Waters are not only on the shelves - they've won an award.

But it hasn't been plain sailing. As if.

We started working on them last Spring. The brief was simple: "Like water, just better." i.e., natural, low-calorie, lots of antioxidants.
We put a sketch on the wall and started looking up every ingredient with any antioxidant science behind it.

The development went well: we found some good flavours pretty quickly - in particular, green tea and mint was absolutely spot-on more or less from first mixing, despite the hefty green tea content. We had to search high and low for Yerba Maté - weird as it's all over the shelves in Brazil. The only one we couldn't get right was white tea and pomegranate - we're trying again this summer (don't tell...)

Then there was the designs. The vertical stripes were nice, but they disobey every rule in the Ogilvy book - will people really read vertical text?!
Still, they were simple, distinctive, and seemed to get across the natural message, so we went with them. Thanks to Burocreative for their excellent work.

The real head-ache came when we tried to bottle them. We found five bottlers who could meet our exacting standards (filling into a PET bottle without preservatives) - but one was in Italy, one was in Austria, and the three within 500 miles of London each had their issues, from ugly bottles (we couldn't put our lovely drink in an ugly bottle) to issues with our high tea content.
There was one that ticked every box - and we were all set to bottle with them (better not name names) until they had a massive breakdown weeks before our launch, and put off all new projects for six months. So we had to go into overdrive and find a plan B. Meaning a different bottle, different labels (we couldn't call them organic, because the new bottler didn't have certification. Aaaghh.), and at least six months off our collective lifespans.

But we got there. The first bottles came off the line on 21st March, in time for an Easter launch in Harvey Nichols and a nice reception at the Food & Drink Expo.

We're making a few tweaks - the green tea and mint was a tad dry on the first run, and our lovely eco-friendly paper labels are crinkling a bit in the fridge, so we might have to switch to plastic labels until we can find a crinkle-free paper. And we're still hunting for that organic-friendly bottler

But the nice thing is, people are loving them. Even a few people saying "you know, I'm drinking them more than Firefly", which is, er, good, I guess.
And the awards. Our first big one. I was in Moscow anyway to speak at the Global Soft Drinks congress, but given that every drinks company I'd ever heard of had entered, I never expected to win - I practically leapt onto the stage to collect the trophy. Never need an oscar now...

So Firefly Water - "the antioxidant water". Hope you like.

Handwriting - should it stay or should it go?

2008-03-13T15:13:00.005Z

Our new bottles are hitting the shelves at last.
And we're waiting nervously to hear what people think of what we've done to the back. or rather what we've left out... the nice little scrawls, circles and comments we used to scribble on them.
(Here's the back of a 2003 bottle, in case you missed it.)

We added the handwriting because we hoped it would make the drinks feel a bit more "friendly" and "personal" - we even signed "Harry & Marcus" on the bottles.

So what's not to like?

Firstly, handwriting has become a bit of a cliché - the moment the supermarkets start wading in with own-label drinks covered in handwriting, you begin to think it's time to move on.
Secondly, it feels a bit "false" - clearly, we don't walk round the bottling plant, scribbling on every bottle. So there's something vaguely disingenuous about it - like people who use a GIF signature on their letters. And several people we asked assumed that Harry & Marcus were probably characters invented by a big corporation. (We exist! We breathe, we eat, please believe us!)
And thirdly, whilst the scribbles really stand out and attract attention, we suspect they make the rest of the text harder to read. So is it better for everyone to just read a few scribbles, or hope that a few more people will read a bit more (even if a few then read nothing at all)?
Hmmm.

What do you think?

The new logo saga

2008-03-04T10:13:00.002Z

If there's one thing we've learned over the last year, it's that when you think "perhaps we could just tweak our logo", it's probably time to sit down and have a cup of tea...

Our "old" logo was classic and understated and "cool", in a fashion-label sort of way.
The trouble is, nobody noticed it. Most of the people who knew our drinks used to say "oh yes, the ones in the colourful bottles - what are they called again?" In fact, from my desk I can't even read the logo on the shelf 10 feet away.

So we thought, let's try and make a more distinctive logo that stands out more on the bottle.

Simple.

Except that these things aren't necessarily compatible. You can have standy-outy. Or you can have simple and classy. But you can't really do both. The more that it looks like a "logo", the less it looks classy and cool. The Chanels, Hugo Boss and Space NKs of this world don't really have "logos" - they just use simple text. Because logos, ultimately, aren't cool. Coca-cola, Reebok or Kodak - the logos that if you saw just a corner of them you'd know what they were - they'll never be "cool". Unless they're apple maybe (drat, there goes our theory).

Anyway, we had to do a lot of soul-searching. Ooh, what are we really like? What are our values? What do people think about us? What would we like them to think?

It was exhausting.

But here are a few of the steps along the way.

Hope you like where we ended up.

Artificial Sweeteners - Dr. Evil?

2008-02-13T11:20:00.008Z

I've always been rather sceptical about artificial sweeteners.
There have been the rumbling concerns about safety since the 80s - mostly refuted scientifically, but there's always that nagging suspicion about who's doing the studies.
More importantly, you have to ask, is it really good to "fool" your body into thinking it's eating something rich in calories, when it isn't?

Well, this week two studies came out to fan my scepticism...

A team at Purdue University (Indiana) found that rats fed yoghurts sweetened with saccharine gained more weight than those given yoghurt sweetened with glucose. The experimenters reckon that, by breaking the connection between a sweet sensation and a high-calorie food, artificial sweeteners harm the body's ability to regulate its calorie intake.

And meanwhile, over at the University of Minnesota, scientists have been following 9,500 men and women for nine years, and found that "surprisingly, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome" [obesity, high cholestorol, high blood pressure, diabetes risk] "was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared to those who drank none". In fact, results for Diet soda drinkers were even worse than the bad "Western" diet of lots of refined grains, fried foods and red meats.

So there's a certain irony that drinks like "Diet" Coke could actually be having the opposite effect, and making people put on weight and raising their diabetes risks - just like their sugary predecessors.
Certainly, most of the people I know who have really struggled with their weight are also those who drink the most diet drinks.
With the Minnesota study, there's the chicken/egg question of course - people who struggle with their weight are likely to drink more diet drinks. But the rat study is more compelling - after all, it's not as though the rats knew they were "diet" yoghurts...

Eating and obesity are a minefield, because humans weren't designed to have abundant food available, and we certainly weren't designed to drink lots of sweet liquids. I have no doubt that the world would be a much healthier place if everyone stopped drinking fizzy drinks tomorrow - the correlations between soft-drink consumption per capita and obesity and diabetes rates are so compelling that only a scientific establishment terrified of the sugar and soft drinks industry's power could fail to admit it.

Perhaps one day people will look back at the soft drinks sponsoring "healthy" events like the Olympics with the same irony/ horror that we now look back at those old ads about doctors preferring Camel cigarettes...

P.S. One final prediction. Based on past form, you can expect the sugar/ sweetener industry (it's mostly the same companies) to discredit all the above studies, and their authors, within days. In fact, they're so ruthless in their "quest for truth" about sugar, that few people dare to investigate e.g., the link between sugar and obesity, for fear of having their funding cut and their entire past work trawled for the slightest error. Brave scientists like Lyn Steffen and Susan Swithers are few and far between.
For more on how the Sugar industry works, read this BBC article or track down the brilliant Panorama from a few years back on "The Trouble with sugar".

Sorry for the conspiracist rant - but an industry that could be contributing to millions of diabetes victims, but stifles research about it, deserves more ranters.

Work a four-hour week

2008-02-04T11:26:00.000Z

This amusing book kept my attention for an entire flight back from Egypt.
It's a pretty compelling blurb - 'I used to slave away for 70-hours a week. Now I work four hours a week and earn 10 times what I used to.'

The main thrust is that we spend so much of our time at work doing relatively unimportant things - answering random emails; looking after small, unprofitable customers; dealing with little distractions... And we end up working long hours in the hope of some vague future happiness - one day I'll retire and write songs and travel the globe barefoot.

Tim jostles us to seize the moment now. Create a "virtual" business that only takes a couple of hours a week to run (there's a handbook on how to do this). Focus on the big stuff- the one thing you're going to achieve by 11am, the 5 big customers, the 20% of your friends that give you 80% of your warm, fuzzy feelings. And start your "mini-retirements" now - learn Mandarin, go kitesurfing in Brazil, whatever.

Tim's about my age, and the nice thing about this book is it's an American book that shows that American culture is shifting. People are asking "why"? More and more people are daring to ask the 'American Beauty' / 'Into the Wild' questions. If you spend all your life chasing a dream, what if you don't like the dream when you get there? So try the dream now. Or just stop chasing and opt out.

In the end, Tim's ebullient "join the new rich" sounds a little flat - we beging to sense that the "new rich" are just as angst-ridden as everyone else.
But at least they're not sitting in front of a computer all day.

The Global Warming Debate

2007-06-08T09:49:00.000Z

Last night's debate was on "Growth can be green: the carbon market will allow us to save the planet without sacrificing economic growth".

We've all been round the houses on green debates, but this was nicely specific. And as with any good debate, I found myself torn. James Smith (chairman of Shell) and Eric Bettelheim (sustainable forestry magnate) made convincing cases for markets being the best way to solve the global warming crisis. And as an entrepreneur, surely I should be on their side?

But as Tom Burke demonstrated, for a lot of problems, regulations solve problems more quickly and effectively than markets. And more importantly, I couldn't help thinking, any capitalist "market" solution is always going to allow richer people to pollute more than poorer people. But, as Mark Lynas pointed out, rich people don't own the atmosphere, and everyone on the planet should have a right to clean air. So my question to the panel was, given that we need to cut carbon emissions to around 4 tonnes per person (across the planet), what gives any individual the right to cause emissions greater than that? After all, global warming has the potential to cause the death or displacement of hundreds of millions of poor people. It's generally accepted that rich people don't have any more right to kill or injure people than poor people. Isn't this the same principle? (Don't worry, I didn't waffle that much!)

Eric's response, that such a solution wasn't workable, is probably correct. But I still ended up siding with the "against" camp: we like markets in the West because they fit with our world view - that we're somehow entitled, thanks to our capitalist system, to consume more and emit more... But unless we start radically altering our assumptions about what's a reasonable amount of carbon emissions for us bloated Westerners, we're never going to tackle this problem.
The one thing everyone was agreed on: we can't afford to get this wrong, and in 10 years it could be too late.
(And yes, I cycled there)

HR Lessons

2007-06-08T09:29:00.000Z

When Marcus and I started up Firefly, neither of us had ever managed anyone. (Unless you count the odd choir or football team. A bit different, sadly).
So now that we're ballooning to 10 people, we figured it was time to get some advice.

And two came along at once. Richard Westoby and his team from London Business School wrote a paper on Firefly as an example of the "Entrepreneurial trap"; because entrepreneurs like to "do" stuff, they often end up getting stuck in the detail, and fail to give leadership and proper management - so people feel disempowered and directionless...

Then there was Sue Spencer. She's a bit of a legend. An HR consultant who understands entrepreneurs - so more about people and action, and less about form-filling and regulations.

So what have we changed so far?
1. Clear lines of reporting: we've separated Sales & Marketing (now under Marcus) from New Products, Finance and Operations (now under Harry). Radical.
2. New ways of interviewing people. Out with the nice chatty "tell me about your CV" style. In with "When have you demonstrated your ability to...", probing follow-on questions and embarrassing silences. Clear job descriptions with "essential" and "desirable" skills. Suddenly the "but he's such a nice guy" defence goes out of the window (almost).
3. The Three-year vision. We've always had a "vision" - to be the healthy, effective drinks brand... But that means a lot to us, but perhaps less to everyone else in the business. So we've now had a big think about where we want to be in 3 years time: what products, which shops, what kinds of marketing, finances, the works. And suddenly everyone's walking round with an apparent sense of purpose. Miraculous.

And the book of the month (apparently - haven't read it yet): Hidden value by Jeffrey Pfeffer - "How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with ordinary people." (Not that we've ever hired anyone "ordinary" of course!)

Logo hell

2007-06-08T09:20:00.001Z

What to do when you spend lots of time working on a new logo, then someone else working completely independently comes up with one just like it?

That was our little shocker recently, when a design agency we were working with came up with this rather nice logo concept... More bold, better shape, more "iconic", we loved it.

Then along came innocent's new logo for their juicy water.

Completely different product of course.

But a bit too close for comfort, isn't it?

So back to the drawing board for us, sadly.

22 immutable laws

2007-05-14T13:02:00.000Z

I finished two books this weekend. Being a desperately slow reader, that's quite a feat.

One was David Niven's "the moon's a balloon". Yes, you've probably read it: the charm, the anecdotes, the sex-drive, the ridiculous things he'd accomplished by the time he was 30.
What I loved best were the little Noel Coward moments. A 5-year-old Godson brings a heavy brass tray crashing down on Noel's balding head, and Noel, without flinching, all smiles, without at pause, says:
"You know what I'm going to get dear little Nicholas for Christmas? A chocolate-covered hand-grenade".
(BTW, how do you type an umlaut over Noel?)

Always see the funny side. That also seems to have been Frank Johnson's motif. I was singing at his memorial service on Friday. All the bigwigs were there - Michael Howard, Matthew Parris, David Cameron, who read (I felt tacit approval having cycled there; he arrived in a large Merc..), and countless hacks and hacked. People who come to memorial services can't be all bad.
Anyway, Frank Johnson managed "to see the absurd in everything". As well as appreciating the beauty of music. And enjoying dining alone. And reading prodigiously.

Which brings me to the second book. The 22 immutable laws of Marketing, by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It's uncannily similar to the 22 immutable laws of Branding - which is probably a good thing. Two laws stuck out for me...
The law of Candor says you should admit a negative, and let the customer twist it into a positive. So Listerine, fighting against a new "great-tasting" mouthwash called Scope, didn't reformulate their mouthwash: no, they emphasised their antiseptic taste - "Listerine, the taste you hate twice a day." I hate the taste, so it must be killing germs. Clever.
The second was "The Law of Hype" - the situation is often the opposite of how it appears in the press. Often products that get splashed across the front page actually never make it, whilst the successes creep up slowly with subtle endorsements on the back pages. Obviously, that's nice to know as Firefly hasn't hit many front-pages yet. But is it still true in the Internet age? (The book was published in 1992).
Actually, it does seem to ring true - journalists spot stories, not trends. The iPod worked its way into the consciousness and only became big news when thousands of people had them. The iPhone went straight to the front pages - so here's betting it won't live up to the hype... Red Bull worked its way into the vernacular via students. "Cocaine" hit the front pages and just got withdrawn from sale in the US.
So there you have it - don't believe the hype.

First Post

2007-05-13T14:48:00.000Z

So we're joining the navel-gazing revolution.
We're adding our pearls of biz-dom to the ether.
And doing so on a blogosphere that turns out to be owned by big brother Google.
Bye bye freedom.
Hello, er, anyone.