Welcome to the Escape Blog

We all have aspirations for our businesses and some of them are actually unrealistic.

For instance, many people ask me to create a website for them that gives “The Amazon Experience”, all for under £1,000. Sorry, but it can’t be done.

Also, in terms of branding, these companies aren’t Amazon and logistically they can’t offer the Amazon experience anyway - so why kid themselves? They wouldn’t live up to their ‘brand’ promises.

A Large Glass Of Realism

How a small business owner sees their company and how their customers and the market in general does, is often way off. The owner thinks he’s Armani, his customer think he’s Primark.

Pitching a brand appropriately often feels like lowering standards, but, more often than not, it’s actually a case of reigning in the perception with the realism. You could also argue that there is often more money to be made at the lower end of many markets anyway.

A good example of this was a conversation I had recently with an owner of a chain of Hairdressers in Basingstoke. On one hand he wanted to take his salons upmarket, but would it really work in Basingstoke? Probably not. London maybe, but not Basingstoke.

He would be in danger of alienating his customers by moving out of touch with the local market.

Brand Basingstoke

A town like Basingstoke has the very same problem. It wants to be cool and ‘happening’ but:

1. It’s not big enough to carry it off
2. It’s too close to London

Taking a step back, it’s simply about creating the appropriate brand that people can buy into. It may be lowering some sort of [unrealistic] standard, but like Cuprinol, at least it “does what it says on the tin”.