Inspiration

Cold Turkey Time

A while back, I read a short article in a round-robin e-mail / new service for the leisure & hospitality industry which featured a quote from the head of eating chain, Pret-a-Manger. For context, it is quoted in full below.

“Pret A Manger boss Clive Schlee has reported the beneficial outcome of giving himself 18 days off from reading emails during his August holiday. Writing in his blog, Schlee said: “The encroachment (of emails) is becoming a problem. I wanted to set an example, and so between 14 August and 1 September, I gave myself 18 days off Pret emails. Tell your colleagues, business partners, and teams about your plan. Most of them will congratulate you. Persuade one of your colleagues to look over your emails once a day. It will seem scary but there are many people within Pret to whom I would have entrusted this task. Knowing that there is someone keeping an eye on the business in your absence makes you feel responsible and allows you to let go. If you don’t feel you can do this step, write a carefully crafted out of office message. I am happy to report that the impact of the detox is entirely positive. The relaxation effect of the holiday is increased by at least 100%. This is a wonderful result and needs no explanation. Your team will send each other fewer emails. They know you aren’t reading them and they will make more decisions for themselves. They told me they enjoyed my detox as much as I did. You will find that when you skim through your emails on your return, most of them are trivial or no longer relevant. Who now needs to know the sales in Pret US on Tuesday last week? I have concluded that a great deal of business email is motivated by the need to belong and stay involved and does not generate genuine commercial benefit.”

It was that last sentence, in particular his belief that e-mail’s primary and unstated purpose is to actually nurture a sense of belonging without conveying a commercial benefit that struck a chord.

Turkey I worked in a large corporate business for two decades, and witnessed the launch, roll out and ultimately the drug dependency of e-mail communication. In fact, e-mail is not my beef. It’s a wonderful form of communication that knocks down formal barriers, is convenient and largely, when used with some structure and discipline, highly effective. But, now merely part of a communications weaponry that includes instant messaging, web conferencing, file sharing, and the many personal forms of messaging service (Facebook, Tritter, Instagram, Shapchat) that are used in parallel, the management of e-mail has become the work itself. They used to spoil my holidays and time off, not because I was answering them there and then, but rather because despite my best efforts to empty my inbox before I headed off, I knew that I would get back to what? 1000 e-mails a week. If I only I had had the presence of mind to do what Clive Schlee did – although maybe it’s more effective when you make the rules.

For fearing of sounding nostalgic, there was some powerful about writing memorandum and having them put in a ‘For Signature’ folder. I’m not wistful about this: it was a hideously inefficient way of working. But there was one major benefit: your communications were purposed. They were focused. They had to be. Infrequent and high impact was the mantra for a memo. E-mail is the opposite. A surrogate for speech, it has become the default primary communication method in many businesses. Colleagues located metres away from one another send an e-mail rather than have a conversation. Desk phones hardly ever ringing. And the effectiveness of e-mail reducing and reducing as it becomes a constant buzz of background noise.

There are implications for brands in this environment. Despite the proclamations that traditional media is dead, in a world where attention is salami-sliced over multiple forms of communication with scant attention being paid to any, the job of brands cutting through is in some ways easier. The competitor of a client I am currently working broke with contemporary thinking recently and launched a 40 second TV spot on the ad break in Coronation Street on ITV1 on a Friday night, backing it up with 48 sheet posters and epic poster sites in stations and airports. Has it been noticed? You betcha.

And there are implications for us too. Now I have set my own business up and am freed from the daily tidal flow of (mostly) pointless* e-mails designed solely for political purposes or communicating to the world and their dog something 97% irrelevant to them, my work is focused and effective. When I sit down, progress is made. I regularly complete my daily task list. And it feels, to quote a well-known UK price comparison sight, epic. The time for the communication counter-revolution is here.

* Finding the ones with a point used to be a task in itself.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps discover the direct route to success for brands and businesses. david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670.

Ripple Effect

In The Times a week or so ago, Giles Coren, who is an entertaining restaurant critic but utterly (and possibly justifiably) London centric, or rather, anti-Provincial, asserted that when it comes to eating trends, for every 10 miles you go further from London, you become 1 year ‘behind trend’ (London being the measure of things). With my pro-Provinces hat on, and taking Mr Coren’s claim at face value, it is possible to calculate that being 120 miles from London, round here we are 12 years behind. Let’s examine this further: in south east Staffordshire, it is 2003*, and therefore:

We’re off to see Finding Nemo this weekend
Cheryl Tweedy is about to enjoy 120 hours of community service for assault (I know)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is coming to an end
The cool ‘smart’phone is a Nokia 3200. Get down to Orange and buy one.
It’s the first season of Little Britain
Magners? What’s that? Bottle of Orange Breezer please.
You wouldn’t be able to ‘share’ this on Facebook, and forget Twitter, its sweaty conception was a couple of years away
‘Wireless’ the new hot tech trend!
We’re all groovin’ out to In da club by 50 Cent**

Clearly it’s possible to see the weaknesses in the assertion. I mean, we’re actually getting down to Shake Ya Tailfeather by Nelly, P. Diddy and Murphy Lee; surely you hipster London types have heard of them.

Ah, but there’s the thing. Whilst everyone in Hackney and Bethnal Green is now saying ‘how last year’ to the sort of facial hair growth that creates compost, round here, it’s just kicking off. Plus hairy feet, but there’s probably something else causing that. No, the truth is, as brand builders it’s so, so, easy to fall in behind belief systems which are based on received wisdom, one-off stories and half-truths. Of course, London is an incredible creative hub. It’s also a concentrated population centre, and if you have a couple of spare hours to read Steven Johnson’s ‘Where Good Ideas Come From’, you’ll understand why population concentration is such a critical factor for innovation and advancement.

But whether the ‘ripple effect’ is happening depends more on the audience for your product and where the influence centres are for them. A couple of examples to illustrate the point.

In my old world of beer, it was generally believed that what consumers were drinking in London would set the trend in other areas a few years down the line. So we conducted a study examining this and what we actually found that first of all, it was the trade not the consumers that were important. Generally, it was passionate, entrepreneurial bar owners who were dissatisfied with the standard offer, or had a new take on something else. They would then create a ‘candle bar’. Next, fast follower ‘moth’ bar owners would take the lead from them, either through word of mouth, or via bar shows. The point was though, we found that this was most likely to happen in any (big) city: in fact, we found Manchester, Edinburgh and Bristol were highly individualistic and innovative centres, and in a way better for your brand because you could establish distribution more easily and influence more people more quickly, as there were fewer bars. Not so much ripple effect as whack-a-mole with multiple little heads popping up at once (the blighters).

Café culture (immature in 2003 would you believe) is interesting too. We recently did a study looking at new trends impacting this sector with some interesting findings. The drink trends themselves seemed to start anywhere. Flat White in Australia (in the 1970’s) and New Zealand. Then spreading via west coast US and eventually, picked up by me in Liverpool’s Albert Dock in 2009. Starbucks created the much copied Frappucino; now independent bar owners are experimenting in serve. In terms of food, the light snacks on offer are just as likely to be inspired from Asia as they are from a rural Mediterranean influence.

Kids’ food and kids’ snacks are revealing too: where are the influencers here? Urban centres – not likely; actually the research showed, here is where the brand owner can really influence their target consumer very directly – a lot more push in the mix as it were. First time Mums, protectively nurturing their first born; looking for the strong reassurance of something like organic. Parents with older children toughing it up with the constant nagging negotiation that goes on over snacks.

And charity is a fascinating market too, rife with copycat fundraising (Movember stretches to Octobeard; Dryathlon sparks Dry January sparks a revolt with Drinkuary; ‘Plant a Tree for ‘73’ becomes (via many iterations) ‘Plant a Treet for Groot’ (really)). This isn’t trickle down: this is bandwagoning and it’s not particularly original nor successful. In fact, many of the high impact fundraising ideas seemed to start because of the passions of an individual (Movember for instance, didn’t start as an idea for Prostate Cancer at all, but was later adopted by them).

What does all this mean?

Firstly, challenge conventional wisdom. Look for the critical influencers in your market and their relationship with your target audience. If it’s Mums or Dads of young children, then it’s likely to be other parents, grandparents or even institutions (schools, playgroups). If it’s drinkers, where are the bars that are setting tongues wagging and why? How do you influence them?

Secondly, difference. As consumers of things, we are attracted towards genuinely new ideas that are one step away from what we know. If it’s too radical, we may well leave it for a while, or more likely, not notice it. But if a new product is cleverer, better looking, or solves a problem more effectively then it stands a chance of cutting through. Is our offer really that different?

Thirdly, passion. We are attracted towards people or products that demonstrate unfettered passion towards something: a desire to do it better, differently, more unusually. Do we really care about this (it will show)? Or are we just chasing the money?

Fourthly, concentration. There is no doubt that for many brands (drinks, fashion, music for example) that cities are important because they offer a higher chance of multiple connections, quicker. Great. Use them. But don’t be fixated on one place, one market. Look for multiple influences on your connections.

In short, don’t get in a pickle worrying about ripple
.

*Some would say Tamworth is in 1903, but that would be an unfair and quite insupportable jibe.

** you can make your own conclusions about how much groovin’ out goes on in SE Staffordshire (with apologies to Touch FM)

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh.

Lessons the Tour de France can teach us about innovation

Innovation is often seen as the Holy Grail to business growth or salvation, leading to un co-ordinated approaches that don’t deliver the results that business leaders want or expect. The timing of the Tour de France arriving on these shores is relevant to considering why this is the case and reframing about how we approach innovation. Thinking about innovation as a bike race – and an arduous stage race at that – is one of the most useful metaphors for understanding how you can increase your chances of creative commercial success.

The individual team sport.
The strange conundrum at the heart of cycling is that it is an individual team sport. There will be one winner. But the individual cannot win without a strong team. Think of any of cycling’s greats: Gino Bartali; Fausto Coppi; Jacques Anquetil; Eddy Merckx; Bernard Hainault; Miguel Indurain. All immensely talented and super strong bike racers. But none of them, bearing catastrophic bad luck on behalf of their competitors or lightning-strikes-thrice serendipity for them would be strong enough to win a three week long race by themselves. They would eventually be ground down; ganged up on or tactically caught out. The strong team around them protects, shelters, fights their fights, until they can deliver the coup de grâce.

Too often, businesses look to the innovation team to provide silver bullets to either light the rocket under growth or more typically fill that business plan gap.

This is flawed as innovation requires an individual team sport approach.

It needs direction, a clear leader and a strong team. And that team isn’t just the ‘team on the road’. It needs senior sponsors (say, the CEO and Board) to be committed, supportive and advocating the innovation agenda.
It needs senior leaders to trust the process (timing, decision making) and push to artificially accelerate everything so that the whole breaks down (Lance Armstrong shows us that you can cheat but you get caught).
Then it needs a leader on the road: this may be the Sales Director who will be responsible to make it a success in market;
It needs specialists (in a cycling team, this could be a climber, in innovation this could be dedicated insight or technical resource) who have the specialist skills to overcome blockages and see solutions.
And finally it needs domestiques who do the hardwork: the innovators themselves, spotting the opportunities, snuffing out the blockages, covering false moves, build the pipeline, execute the plan.

It’s a Peloton NOT a breakaway.
A rider seeking exposure for his sponsors or transient glory for himself will sprint off the front within a few miles of the start and attempt to hold off the bunch all day – the ‘breakaway’. When it works, they become moments of folklore: the possibly the most romantic aspect of cycling. But they typically fail. Sandy Casar, a professional cyclist famed for his breakaway ability, only won 3 in 14 years trying.

And yet most innovation mimics ‘breakaway’ behaviour. One good research result and suddenly senior leadership load all their resources against that role of the dice. Put all the resource behind it. Stop other activities. Accelerate timelines. Beat the competitors to market or more likely, catch up fast. The rewards may come but rarely do. The risks are certainly heightened.

The are three reasons why innovation should use the ‘peloton’ to win:

Drafting. The slipstreaming effect uses up to 40% less energy. When embedded in the peloton, a professional rider can treat a 180km race as a ‘rest day’. With innovation it is more efficient to develop innovations in parallel – particularly up front – identifying insights for innovation for example.
More chances of success. Planning for a sprint but two of your riders infiltrate a breakaway? Then you now have three chances of success: the original plan and the two riders in Plan B. With innovation ideas beget ideas. You may be backing one horse, but the peloton effect allows you to identify a better performing new ideas as you go along whilst still keeping your original idea in contention.
A pipeline. In 2012 Bradley Wiggins wins the Tour de France. At the start of the race no one knew that Chris Froome, his domestique could be a potential tour winner. By the end of the race everyone did – a pipeline was created.

The Stage Race.
In cycling, many races are One Day races. But business isn’t like that; if you stop, some else gains. Idea generation should be thought of longitudinally. How often does a one off “brainstorm” lead to break-through ideas – really? Rather, idea generation should be thought of as a stage race where ideas can spring up at any time, cross pollinate, become freshly stimulated, be critiqued, be influenced by new perspectives: an approach that much more closely mimics how entrepreneurs find success.

‘The Move’.
At some point, you have to commit. At some point you have to put everything on the line and risk losing as much as winning. Chris Froome is an exciting racer because he is willing to commit. He – and his team – put everything on the line. With Froome, this is in the mountains. In 2013 on the monstrous Mont Ventoux, which most riders just hope to survive, he went for it and killed the race off. At the right point, you need to do this with innovation. There comes a point where another Quantitative Test result is not going to help; there comes a point where Marketing Pounds, company resources and company time need to be committed in the knowledge that it could still fail. There is no alternative. Stage Racers – and great Innovators – recognise this.

Plan to win.
This is not a chest thumping, Motherhood and Apple pie piece of rhetoric. Typically, there will be just a small number of plans that will win. In Stage Racing, there are two: (a) defend in the mountains and win on the time trials (Miguel Indurain, Bradley Wiggins, Jacques Anquetil) and (b) attack in the mountains and defend on the time trials (Charly Gaul, Fausto Coppi).

In innovation, there is a ‘formula’ to work out where, why and how to innovate:

Innovate the big levers (what brand / format / business / market opportunity will move the needle for you)
Innovate from your purpose (does this take us in the direction we want to head?)
Innovate in line with your values (will this champion our cause?)
Stage Investment (what are we willing to back? What are we willing to lose on?)

And finally…create a purpose then execute the details.
Innovation is not a process that you implement, but a belief embodied in your culture. When Team Sky set out an ambition to ‘Win the Tour de France with a British rider within 5 years’ everyone scoffed. When they set about this ambition with a belief in marginal gains, others mocked. But everyone at Sky believed. They didn’t talk the game but walked it. Extended training at high altitude; innovation in nutrition, tactics, fewer races but racing to win, innovation in rest and recuperation, clothing, bike technology, equipment; innovation in doping transparency, mental support and psychology.

Result? They won it in three.

In innovation, stretching goals are pure wishes unless they walk hand in hand with genuine and resolute belief from top to bottom in the organisation; a stretching and believable innovation purpose to set the agenda for what is innovated upon and what isn’t, and then an unerring focus on delivering that purpose.

As Christian Prudhomme, the organiser of the tour de France might say, “Vive Le Tour de Yorkshire et vive l’innovation!”

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, an innovation, research and strategy company that finds the direct route to success for brands, including company and brand purposing. To learn more, sprint an e mail up the ‘Cote de Buttertubs’ to david@thecrowflies.co.uk ; call on +44 (0) 7885 408367 or send a direct message to @crowflieshigh

The pot of gold at the other end of the rainbow

My eye was recently attracted to a piece in Marketing Week from Waitrose Chairman, Mark Price, reportage from a talk he gave in Swindon on 2nd May. Its essence: we will do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. There was also the pleasing symmetry that a food retailer has the surname ‘Price’, presumably the same phenomenon as dog owners resembling their pets. Waitrose don’t seem on the surface a particularly contrary business. Indeed, you could argue with some strong justification that they reflect middle class aspiration in all its forms. Yet this simple statement, ‘do the opposite of what everyone else is doing’ reveals a maverick streak – and a great marketing lesson. A couple in fact.

The first?

The importance of zagging. This isn’t just ‘do the opposite for the sake of it’; rather, there is a natural human instinctive to follow. It’s the opposite of what people say they will do – as Monty Python beautifully summarised it, “we’re all individuals” – but of course, we’re not. There’s a host of reasons why we want to follow: the need or desire to fit it; a way of building connections with others; to give us a sense of group security. And because brands or companies are the product of human actions, so it follows that companies tend to follow too. ‘Me too’ products are aptly named – indeed, you could argue that (until recently) many Asian markets have built their entire economies on fast following – and done it blummin’ well. Let’s go back to Waitrose. Specifically, Mr Price’s comment was in regard to how the company he stewards is dealing with the threat of the Discounters, Aldi & Lidl in particular. He continued that Waitrose’s aim is to be everything that the discounters aren’t through a focus on service, range and making coming to its stores an experience. Contrast this with the Tesco response – also reported in Marketing Week: launching ‘pound zones’, areas of the supermarket that will offer non-food categories such as health and beauty and pet items for as little as 50p (‘Pound Zone’ presumably being snappier than ‘Half Pound Zone’?*).

Actually, Tesco have got a tougher job: sitting in the middle of the market, being the biggest retailer in the UK, they are a source of business for everyone. So they clearly feel they have to compete. Yet Waitrose are competing by looking not at what their competitor is doing but by what they’re not doing. They are zagging when everyone else is zigging. It’s tough to do; it requires total alignment but it can mark you out as distinctive and therefore, more memorable to you customers.

And they also illustrate the second lesson.

They’re competing on their terms. To half refrain: they’re competing by looking not at what their competitor is doing but at what they can’t do. This is simple brand positioning at it’s best: you take the core thought that you are trying to own in the mind of your target and ruthlessly implement it. Waitrose is not a discounter therefore it responds with enhanced service offer, promotions for its customers and enhanced benefits for MyWaitrose card holders. At the other end of the price:service spectrum you have Aldi & Lidl. Reduced ranges, functional stores, little in the way of customer service add-ons: basic and to the point. Yet just as well positioned.

Which illustrates the issue that Tesco are facing. It’s not that they’re big: there are plenty of significantly bigger companies who continue to grow strongly. No, their issue lies in the notion of every little helps. It seems they are trying to do everything to help. If they’re to return to the path to growth, they need to get back to doing Tesco things that help.

(*Which reminds me of a family friend who when she first went round ‘Poundland’ kept on asking in a slightly astonished voice, ‘How much is it?’. “£1 Jane” came the repetitive response. “That’s why it’s called Poundland”. She’d have been much more comfortable with Tesco’s counter-intuitive Pound pricing strategy.)

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that finds the direct route to success for categories and brands. To find out more about how The Crow Flies could help you, just wing over an e mail to david@thecrowflies.co.uk or call on +44 (0) 7885 408367. You can follow The Crow Flies on Linked In (http://www.linkedin.com/company/the-crow-flies-ltd?trk=company_name), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/thecrowfliesltd). Twitter, you can caw us at @crowflieshigh. Or just send a carrier pigeon and we’ll intercept mid-air.

What big brands can learn from small beers

Craft beer is big news at the moment. It would be difficult to miss the number of small breweries popping up all over these isles of ours. From furthest Fife to deepest Devon, micro breweries, craft breweries, artisan breweries are opening up their doors. And not just here, over in the U.S. there are now more breweries than before Prohibition (the illegalisation of alcohol in 1919). And right across Europe, from traditional beer nations like the Netherlands and Denmark to wine tippling nations like Italy and France, it’s happening too.

Despite this, the U.K and U.S. beer markets remain in overall decline, and the others are in such low single digit growth as to be just as well described as ‘stagnant’ as much as anything. But that of course, isn’t the point. The growth in craft beers is the manifestation of powerful behavioural changes going on amongst consumers. And look deeper into those numbers and a different picture appears. Take the U.S.. Industry commentators have been fairly dismissive of the overall impact of craft beer for almost two decades: but now craft beer is almost 8% of the total market. Whilst the total market is declining by almost 2%, craft beer is growing at 18%, with craft beer exports from the U.S. up close to 90% (witness Fuller, Smith & Turner, brewers of London Pride, taking on the brand rights for Sierra Nevada in the UK in the last 4 weeks). These are no longer market twitches at the edges which can be ignored.

So what can big brands learn from craft beer?

The balance of form and function. Whenever I see ‘New Recipe!” (or rather, “Great Taste, New Recipe!”) on a brand, I shiver. What this typically means is ‘we’ve found a way to reduce our cost of goods sold and need to ‘sell’ it to you, just in case you notice’. The successful craft beers retain their balance – to use the parlance of David Taylor, author of ‘Where’s the Sausage?’* – they balance their sausage and their sizzle. Take Brew Dog, the self-styled agent provocateur of craft brewing: they do engage in some frankly, questionable PR stunts but at the end of the day, their products are robust and exciting. In big companies it’s easy to become disconnected from the product and before long that savvy ‘cost optimisation’ programme is actually undermining your brand equity.

Trend and counter trend. What I love about the craft beers is that so often their contrariness leads to success. Beer getting lighter? Increase bitterness. Alcohol levels falling? Extreme brews. Everyone using cost effective hop oils? Use the whole cone. It’s just a lovely demonstration of trend hunting from the wrong end. If everyone is zigging, we will zag. Big companies often use the excuse that ‘there isn’t a commercial opportunity big enough there’. Well say that to Molson Coors, who persevered with their craft beer Blue Moon for almost a decade before *Boom!*, you’ve suddenly got the leading brand in the segment. Ask yourself: is this decline a result of consumer behaviour or is it more about our lack of attention to what the opportunity could be?

No more Vanilla Values. There’s a great book just out which I’d recommend to anyone in business. It’s a beer book, but the lesson is not about beer. The lesson is about where really, truly, running a company from your values can take you. It’s called ‘Beyond the Pale’ and is the story of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company by their co-founder, Ken Grossman. Ken started his company out of dissatisfaction with U.S. beer at the time: but his response was to build a company where there were clear red lines. We won’t brew with adjuncts (forms of sugar other than malted barley or wheat which are cheaper to brew with). We won’t pasteurise our beer. We won’t leverage ourselves for growth if it compromises our brand. Surely these are just product guidelines? Actually, they summarise an attitude, they define behaviours and a business philosophy that is inspiringly powerful.

Know Your Friendemies. Of course, in big business there are very issues with perceived collusion and cartel behaviour yet what is singularly marked about craft beer is how collaboration is creating value. Real, edgy, collaboration. Collaboration on new products between breweries. Collaboration on new products with beer writers . Note: there’s no ‘Consumer Co Creation’. To say craft brewers are research-light is an over statement, rather they trust in their values and put out a vision of what the future could be that drinkers are attracted towards – or not. And this isn’t to say they don’t do research – it’s rather that everything is research.

Rhythm and pace: in all my dealings with the craft brewers, I haven’t heard the terms ‘Innovation Pipeline’, ‘Stage and Gate’ or ‘Volumetric Test’ once. Yet, these companies are prolific innovators. New ingredients, new processes, fusing traditional and modern, repurposing the past – it’s all there. A whole industry has sprung up around innovation which fundamentally is un-innovative. It’s about eliminating risk, increasing strike rates, extending rather than creating. And yes, there are a lot of failures, but in the main, they learn and move on – quickly.

Follow the Leader vs. Lead Your Followers. The bravery of many craft brewers is remarkable – the bravery to stand for something and project it out to the world to take or leave. One example: Mikkeller: founded by two Danish homebrewers, Mikkel Borg Bjergsø and Kristian Klarup Keller, they don’t even own a brewery. Rather they adopt a magpie or ‘gypsy’ approach and brew where invited or through the network of friendly brewers worldwide. Yet, their brand stands for breaking the rules, in their words, for “challenging beer friends with intense new tastes”. Oh, but they’re a one off, I hear you say. You can’t replicate that in a big business. Why not? Mikkeler turnover over $4m a year and a regularly rated as having some of their best beers on the planet**

At the end of the day you still have to sell – of course, of course. And with scale so it gets easier to deliver a consistent quality product, sure. There are a handful of craft brewers who have made it truly big: take the now publically listed, Boston Beer Company. The largest US craft brewers (at a total portfolio level) yet, still brewing tasty, challenging, interesting beers from good quality ingredients. Will it last? Who knows? But it’s possible. And take Brew Dog: moving crowdfunding to a new level in order to fuel their growth through their Equity For Punks scheme.

It is possible to be a big business and have real values: and craft beer is teaching us how.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that discovers and maps the direct route to success for categories and brands. David is also a beer writer at http://www.beertintedspectacles.com and advises small and start up drinks companies on business strategy. Contact david@thecrowflies.co.uk to find out more or call the Crow Phone on +44 (0) 7885 408367

*David Taylor, ‘Never mind the sizzle…Where’s the Sausage’, Capstone Press, 2007
**Beer Geek Brunch Weasel anyone? See http://mikkeller.dk

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