opinion

I’m regularly asked by CEOs, business owners and those in PE as to what the best way to leverage a brand for the highest possible return. Those in PE will often have this as their primary driver for investing and as such I am often surprised that marketing due diligence prior to investment was not more rigorous in this regard.

In short, PE firms purchase companies they see as having great growth potential so that they can improve them and ultimately sell them at a profit – in other words PE firms exist to create value.

We’ve brainstormed to create the ad that people discuss over coffee, the ad that delivers an unimagined vein of new prospects and pondered the alchemy of integrated media that transforms tepid consumer responses into unheard of leads for a hungry sales team.

I have just been forced to watch a 15 second ad for Woolworths Sunday Roast so that I could see grainy footage of a white truck running over a whole legion of innocent people celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on the Channel 9 news app.

When it broke that VW had committed one of the biggest automotive frauds known to man I wondered aloud whether the brand would survive.

Instinctively I felt that it would – there is just too much history and brand equity floating around – the VW beetle is one of the iconic vehicles of all time – cute, reliable, affordable and never took itself too seriously – what’s not to like?

I received a letter from Amex on Friday night, outlining (but not explaining) changes to my card conditions.

Now you can always expect that any changes to any existing arrangement with a financial institution will not be in your favour, otherwise they would trumpet it from on high, and probably spend a lot of money advertising it – such is the rarity of this type of event.

The demise of Dick Smith and the poor performance of Myer since listing have had the nay sayers crowing from on high about the greedy and avaricious nature of that band of modern-day looters – Private Equity. From the outset I need to declare my hand on two levels – the first being that I too had grave doubts about Myer, possibly due to a built in aversion to retail stocks (more fool me…read JB HiFi) and the spruiking of the listing price reaching such a level of cacophony that I just couldn’t bear it any longer.