One of my favorite movies is Local Hero. It is the story of a Texan oil firm that attempts to buy out a small Scottish town and turn it into an oil refinery. From the very beginning, writer and director Bill Forsyth had only one man in mind to play Felix Happer, the head of the oil company, who eventually falls in love with the town and saves it from destruction.
David Jason’s voice wafts into British living rooms as images of everyday life fill the screen. ‘Some things in life just have to be,’ he intones. It’s not meant to be prize-winning creative work. It’s the latest part of Heinz’s increasingly successful strategy to fight private labels. The food giant offers a playbook on how to survive and prosper in an age of own-label brands.
When I was at university, I used to have this terrifically easy-going girlfriend. If I wanted to go out with my college mates for a keg party, she was fine with it. If I wanted to stay in, eat pizza and watch Match of the Day – she’d smile and agree. It got to the stage where she stopped suggesting things and just went along with whatever I wanted to do.
Let’s start with a basic but key criterion. Marketers have to be comfortable spending time with and listening to consumers.
You might have felt a slight rumble under your feet last November, and heard the faint but unmistakable sound of an unstoppable object coming into contact with an immovable force.
