Coconut Creatives has teamed together with the Fleet Street freelancer, Linda Whitney, to offer press and media training to its clients. Linda, whose franchise columns have appeared in the Daily Mail for over a decade is now offering this unique training opportunity in a response to help combat media nerves, commonly suffered by business owners and managers. Linda will be offering ‘one 2 one’ training to help individuals understand what journalists are looking for.

“We are really excited to be offering these services to our clients and we can not think of a better person to deliver them, other than Linda,” explains Sarah Cook, founder of Coconut Creatives.

Packaged in a compact one-hour telephone conference with Linda Whitney:
·    A ten minute briefing session explaining how to prepare, what journalists want to know and how to relax before starting.
·    Then after a break for preparation, Linda will call again and conduct a ten minute mock interview, focussing on the kind of information journalists want from you.
·    Ten minutes of feedback, highlighting what comes across well and explaining how you can improve any area that needs polishing up.
·    Another ten minute interview allowing you to put into practice what has been learnt, followed by a final ten minute feedback session.

All interviewees receive a summary of the points made in the session by email within an hour of the session ending, which provides useful notes to refer back to in the future. The system has been on trial for a while and the response has been fantastic. The insight it has provided business owners and franchisors into the mysterious world of journalism is valuable.

“Anyone who undertakes this training will gain media communication skills that they can use for the rest of their professional career,” adds Sarah. “For just an hour on invested time, it provides a great result!”

Linda explains further “All business owners, franchisors and key staff will deal with the press at sometime. Getting it right can boost your business. Getting it wrong can have incalculable consequences.”

To find out more about media training with Linda Whitney, visit http://www.coconutcreatives.co.uk/services/press__media_training/ for full details.

Franchise marketing specialists, Coconut Creatives embarked on a special kind of photo shoot recently with a ‘Charlie’s Angels’ theme to celebrate their growth.

The now six strong Coconut team consists of Directors Sarah and Christopher Cook and Marketing Specialists Sally Butters, Victoria Bel Gil and Sharon Kennedy along with Coconut in training, Stephanie Randell.

After an exceptionally busy year, the Coconuts went without a Christmas party. Now that the business has expanded with two new team members, the Directors decided it was time to celebrate and reward everyone’s hard work. “It is always very important to us that dedication and hard work is rewarded. Our team demonstrates exceptional levels of detail and commitment to each and every client account and we wanted to reward this in some small way,” explains Christopher Cook.

“The photo shoot was a lot of fun,” says Sarah who founded Coconut Creatives to offer specialist marketing advice to owner managed businesses and franchisors. “We also organised the shoot to capture images of the six of us together that we can use on our website and in literature in the future,” Sarah adds.

Just hours after Sarah and Stephanie had returned from a client’s book launch event in York, the Coconut party started with the photo shoot, followed by bubbly, nibbles and later a meal at Truffles Restaurant.

Newest Coconut, Sharon Kennedy started in January 2009 and has been working on client accounts with Sarah, Sally and Chris. “This really is a fantastic team of people to work with and I am looking forward to meeting more clients in the coming months,” says Sharon.

Coconut Creatives assist many franchisors with franchise recruitment, overall marketing and PR strategy. “Quite simply we have been very pleased in the work they have carried out for us,” explains Hugh James, Director for Murcia Villas and Resort Morocco.  “There has been an absolute commitment from the start to understand our particular business, establish how we could improve on our brand awareness and assist in completing the objectives of our franchise recruitment plan. All of which was achieved in 2008 and therefore we look forward to continuing our business relationship with Coconut Creatives throughout 2009.”

“We are honoured and delighted to be working with so many excellent and exciting franchise brands,” says Sarah Cook. “It has always been our goal to offer a professional franchise marketing service covering the areas of franchise recruitment, company branding and business development. And because we keep our consultancy fees low, our clients can afford to work with us over the long term, plus we occasionally get to let our hair down and throw a party!”

Coconut Creatives will again be offering free one 2 one consultancy clinics at this years Franchise Marketing Conference on the 17th September 2009. For further information about Coconut Creatives services or to reserve a space on one of the forthcoming free clinics email Sarah Cook at sarah@coconutcreatives.co.uk or visit www.coconutcreatives.co.uk

Online tools
Recently I have undertaken some interesting projects including; a two week press trip to India, the specification of a dynamic blog and website development with a twist for franchisors. So this month I will be discussing the use of certain web tools to promote your franchise.

How do you use your website?
Franchisors websites have many different uses and users. Firstly there are the actual end consumers that visit the site to find information about products and services, secondly you have competitors, suppliers and other stakeholders and of course you have your franchisees. It is vital that the content of your website considers these different users and engages them all.

Franchisee pages
Some franchisors choose to dedicate a page for each franchisee on their website. This gives prospective customers an opportunity to review products or services available in their local area and make contact directly with them giving the site a more personal and relevant feel. Other franchisors operate through a head office call system and then pass enquiries to the local franchisee. Whichever way you do this on your own website it is absolutely vital that your franchise pages are kept consistent and up-to-date with relevant information and links.

News and blogging – how good can it be?
I have recently returned from a two week press trip with one of my client’s Shared Earth. The trip aimed to review the impact that UK Fair Trade sales are having on Indian artisans and producers. As I would be undertaking many interviews and visiting slums, orphanages, schools, workshops and villages we decided that it would be a great idea to report back on what we were doing while we were there. We set up a blog site which can be viewed at www.sharedearthnewsandmedia.co.uk for people back in the UK to keep tabs on progress as the trip unfolded. This turned out to be hugely successful. With some well timed phone calls and emails leading up to the trip, I managed to get a number of national magazines and newspapers to review the blog while we were in India which has resulted in a number of articles and features being published about the trip. This was good for Shared Earth as it generated additional interest in their recently launched franchise package.

Keeping blogging under control
Blogging can easily get out of control and articles can become out of date. If you embark on a blog make sure that the person responsible for the blog sets aside at least an hour or so each week to do the necessary updates. We recommend Wordpress http://wordpress.com which is free and easy to customise and bolt on to your existing website. We also recommend having the live comments section switched off so that you have an opportunity to review any comments that are posted before they become live on the blog.

News and blogs
Blogs can easily form a great outlet for news stories and used properly form a good communication channel between your business and customers, prospects, media and affiliates. They are also currently favoured by search engines and can help with improving your website’s search engine rankings. More recently we have also established a section for press clippings on the Shared Earth blog. This gives your audience the opportunity to review a range of press clippings uploaded as an image or PDF providing them with additional confidence in your franchise operation.

For more information contact sarah@coconutcreatives.co.uk or call 01963 31030 (five digits!)

Every day, on the radio, in newspapers and on television, we’re being extolled to go green, reduce carbon emissions, eat more healthy food and use fair-trade suppliers – in fact, just live a better lifestyle. GreenerLiving magazine is there to help make sense of all the conflicting advice, by giving balanced information on each subject, allowing readers to make the right choices for themselves.

More than 30,000 copies are distributed free every two months through supermarkets and point of sale promotions and readers can subscribe and receive a personal copy delivered to their door.

Working with Dorset-based Coconut Creatives marketing house, Greener Living magazine will soon be launching the GreenerLiving Club, a loyalty scheme giving members access to discounts from a wide range of companies offering ‘greener’ products and services, as well as a regular e-newsletter packed with even more club promotions and information on greener solutions.

“We’re really excited about launching the GreenerLiving Club,” said Sarah, Partner of Coconut Creatives. “We’ve been working with Peter Batt, GreenerLiving’s editor for a few months now and the magazine has been really well received so far. We have big plans to for its continued success over the coming months.”

To coincide with the club launch later this year, GreenerLiving is also launching a special corporate Partners and Affiliates programme. With a number of options, ranging from a simple business listing to a high-profile case study, and coupled with website and e-newsletter banner advertising, the programme will offer businesses the opportunity to promote their ‘green’ products and services to consumers who really want to buy.

For more information about GreenerLiving Magazine or to download a back copy go to www.greenerliving.tv

Use your template franchise to its maximum potential!

It’s always important to ‘lead your pack’ and it is has never been more important to do this than now. Franchisors are operating within a highly competitive market place with new rival businesses (both franchises and independents) popping up to snatch your market share. Due to this, it is vital to use all the tools you have to effectively market your franchise.

Marketing through franchising is often seen as split between marketing the overall franchisor package and providing a good solid national campaign that offers value for your franchisees hard earned royalties. When these approaches are combined, they ensure further interest in your business model when they are brought together within a seamless and integrated approach.

Being a franchisor means that you act and operate as a leader. You always need to have the answers; you always need to know the latest statistics and you must always try to be one step ahead of your competitors. An effective way of achieving a good balance between all these various weights is through utilising your Template Franchise. For many Franchisors, a Template Franchise is simply the area or region where their head office is, whilst also being the area where their head office team provide their own products or services locally. This continual ‘hands on’ approach to keeping in touch with shop floor activity, enables franchisors to interact and relate to their franchisees on many different levels.

There are five main ways to make the most of your template franchise:

1. Use your template as a marketing tool; for example; get testimonials from happy customers and create affiliations with other local businesses (that could work well in other areas for your franchisees)
2. Use your template to create a good stage for prospective franchisees to view; creating first hand experience (the best marketing test!)
3. Use a template to try out new product developments; to stay ahead of the competition and maintain your leadership title within your own franchise family
4. Use a template as a benchmark of quality; set industry standards and stand out from the crowd thus creating a fabulous sustainable competitive advantage.
5. The ‘do as we do’ example; show that you can really walk your own talk

One client that I have worked with since the launch of their franchise has used these techniques to build further value into their franchise package. As well as battling through the thousands of advertising messages that prospective franchisees are exposed to every day, your can help them to understand the theory behind your business through exposing them to it on a first hand basis. This gives prospective franchisees a real feel for how it might be if they bought into your ideas and became one of your franchisees. Surely a priceless marketing sensory experience that many companies just can’t achieve or compete with.

Since graduating from Bournemouth University in 2005, Tariq Ebrahim has had big plans to redefine the online dating market with a brand new concept; theICEBREAKER.

Launched on the 1st December 2006, with national newspaper and radio coverage, the business concept had a great start towards hopeful success.

What makes theICEBREAKER different from other online dating sites is that the real magic doesn’t happen online. Once registered and armed with cards, you could be absolutely anywhere, even stuck in a crowed public place where traditional ‘chat up’ lines just wouldn’t be appropriate.

Tariq explains “You sign up, order your cards and start giving them out. Then, next time you’re at a party, on a train or even at work and you see someone you’d like to get to know better, just give them a card… they go to our website and look at your profile and if they like you, they click to accept the date!”

Tariq also happened to give a card to Sarah Dyer at Coconut Creatives and began a new type of relationship… a professional marketing one.

Since it’s conception, Coconut Creatives has helped www.theicebreaker.co.uk make affiliations with Bournemouth University, Islandoo (owned by the Channel 4) and the BBC to help raise awareness of this unique online dating phenomenon and increase its growing online membership base.

Coconut Creatives seems to be attracting clients with a strong ethical stance. Maybe because they can see we really care about making a difference to their business. The Stocks Inn pub in Furzehill, Dorset was no exception…

However, many recent projects have a very serious undertone and we hope that by helping these companies achieve their goals, we’ll also be supporting and advancing awareness of the issues they are so passionate about.

An identified ’people issue’ today surrounds diet and fitness. This is not just due to lack of physical activity, but the increasing temptation to eat naughty foods! Now, everyone knows how nice chocolate can be, or curry on a Saturday night. But for many people, fast food has become more than an occasional treat, what’s more, its hassle free and cheap.
This in tern has damaged many local producers of good quality, natural foods as many have struggled to stay in business under the shadow of empires like McDonalds and KFC and of course the supermarkets convenience and economies of scale.
Coconut Creatives latest marketing adventure took the shape of turning one down trodden, mass microwave, slash, frozen meal pub into an up market, locally respected establishment providing high quality meals using entirely local produce – supporting all the local little suppliers!

By thinking ‘outside the box’ partnerships and friendships were established with small local producers, to enable a magical transformation for The Stocks Inn to become a classy, caring and sharing type place.

If you want to take advantage of their all day Sunday Carvery you’d better book a fortnight in advance and start queuing at 10am! And I can say for sure that their exotic food night is definitely an eye opener!

Maybe not coconuts but every business owner has an ultimate goal and ours is to escape to a desert island filled with palm trees!

The reason I have started with this analogy is business owners tend to get bogged down in the daily operation of their company and loose sight of what they are actually doing it all for!

Ask yourself; are you suffering from the common things associated with small independent business:

- Keeping up with new technology
- Growing pains as you expand
- HR issues and red tape
- Loosing site of the customer as the market changes (so does customer needs)
- You know what you want to do but just don’t have enough time to do it

The answer can be simpler than you think!

The owners we work with often know what they need to do to generate more profit, many simply need more time! The reason you are doing what you do is because you are good at it. The forward momentum of the operation tends to be left to grow in an ad-hoc way which is not the best way.

We have one core aim which is to offer the small independent businesses a fair and fighting chance at reaching that aim, whether it is a desert island with palm trees or a luxury motor yacht…