Matt Roche | Marketing

Valuing a company like Cadbury is a tricky business. They have been trading as Cadbury for over one hundred years, and in fact, their history can be traced back nearly two hundred years when John Cadbury first opened his tea and coffee shop where he started to experiment with cocoa drinks.

Kraft, the American food and confectionary business, have made an initial offer to buy Cadbury as it feels that the joining together of the two firms would be strategically perfect in its quest to take on Master Foods (Mars) and other big players in the market. If Kraft were to be successful with their bid for the confectionary and drinks business, they would have a global powerhouse with sales of over $31 billion annually.

The question is: how can you value a company like Cadbury? Kraft made an offer of just over £10 billion. However, with over a hundred years of trading, a global mega-brand and millions of loyal consumers, what figure can possibly be appropriate for such a business?

When we think of the dot com boom and the ludicrous numbers that were bandied about when people thought that web companies were the answer to a rich future, it seems bizarre that a company like Cadbury with such a long  history – and a proven track record of profitable success – would be valued at such a relatively low figure. When one considers the potential revenues of such a company over the next hundred years, £10bn seems somehow wrong. Especially when there are tech companies like Facebook and Twitter which both have perceived values far higher, but no clear revenue model for sustainable profit over the next year, let alone one hundred.

Cadbury is very close to the nation’s hearts. No one wants Cadbury to be sold to make a conglomerate organisation that will no doubt be looking to cut costs, and therefore jobs.

Cadbury have redirected all of their web properties to  thier investors site, where they have published a statement suggesting that they are not considering any offers at the moment and that they feel Kraft’s proposal massively undervalues the group. It now remains to be seen whether Cadbury will be more willing to consider an offer at a higher level.

Clients are the most important thing to any business. Without them, you won’t have a business. Dealing with clients can be very difficult though. There is often talk of ‘problem clients’ and ‘clients who don’t understand’. This is especially true in the online environment because so many elements are intangible and also because so much of the work done online is still not really understood by many; especially if they work in a very traditional industry that doesn’t rely on technology as much.

However, it is often the case that a good client evolves into a problem client because they haven’t had something explained to them properly.

I read a very insightful article about this ‘problem client’ business earlier. The post highlighted the importance of clearly explaining things with salient, concise points and required actions.

Transparency really is the key; and constructing clear and salient points so your clients don’t have to decipher your jargon.  As soon as someone doesn’t understand something they will immediately take offence and think that they’re being patronised.

I’m certainly going to consider things from a client’s perspective in the future. If your client thinks that you are being as open and clear as possible, they will undoubtedly come back because they will see it as the easiest option. And after all, everyone wants things to be easy – especially things that they’re not that comfortable with in the first place.

Even today, in these times of fast-paced technology-driven commerce, there are still thousands of businesses who do not have an online presence. They may be small shops on the high street or they may be non-customer facing businesses operating in a space where there is a perception that an online presence is unnecessary.

Many of these businesses may tick along quite nicely and therefore there is never a need to think about any marketing initiatives. However, the internet is not all about marketing. It is a common misconception from many business owners that one would only need to have a website in order to sell products or services, and that if the products and services weren’t the sort that you would buy online, then why bother having the website? Well, the most useful thing about the internet is its ability to provide information. Many people do not want to look at a company’s website to buy from them then and there, nor do they particularly care whether the website is cutting-edge or as sophisticated as many that they’ll be used to. But what they want is information which is going to help them. This information could even be as simple as opening times. If someone can get find a web page displaying key information like a phone number, opening times, and ideally, some information about what the shop/company provides/sells, it then enables them to make an informed decision as to whether they want to visit that shop or business, and indeed what time they want to visit in order to ensure that they don’t waste any of their own time. Time is precious and is worth a lot to people.

The most fascinating thing is that a lot of these shops and businesses do actually have a very small online presence, but it’s entirely unintentional. There a various different websites which offer directories and lists of businesses –  and as it is their business to have as much information as possible for their consumers – they themselves actually provide a fair amount of information online about those shops and companies who have chosen not to focus any of their marketing efforts in the internet.

Small shops and businesses should probably wise-up to the potential that the internet has to offer. They don’t need to spend thousands on fancy websites with online ordering facilities, but they do need to show willing and provide their loyal and new customers with information key to their decision making processes. The small shops and businesses must connect online before the bigger powerhouse companies steal their customers away simply because they can provide an answer to a question faster.

There are now more and more online companies offering TV services over the internet. There is free video available everywhere online. Is it the case that people are soon going to tire of traditional TV viewing and turn to their laptops instead?

Not only is everthing readily available online, but once you have found what you want to watch, it is now possible to connect your laptop to the TV. This almost eliminates the need to have access to TV channels.

The TV companies have people’s ignorance in their favour at the moment. Most wouldn’t even know that it was possible to connect their laptop to their TV, and more importantly, even if they did they wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it. Similarly, very few people know of everything that the internet has to offer. Because the internet is very much diluted with rubbish, it is difficult to see the really good bits sometimes. If more people knew of what was available it could well be that the TV services we have available to us today would decrease very rapidly.

Sky+ and other similar products now mean that users never actually have to watch any adverts. So if the TV companies cannot get viewers for the adverts that they run throughout programming schedules in order to fund the making of those programmes, how can they exist? The BBC obviously has the license fee (although their budgeting hasn’t been shown to be prefect of late), but the other operators have no real way of making very much money without their adverts.

There is now a requirement for the TV companies to be really innovative, really quickly. Time is still on their side, but if they fail to connect with the viewing public the ramifications could be catastrophic for certain media businesses.

I have been watching a lot of the Ashes cricket recently and as I work online I have also been looking at various ashes-related websites throughout the day. On my online travels I discovered that a couple of the Ashes commentators are using the micro-blogging phenomenon – Twitter. I find this quite fascinating on many levels. The first thing which is incredible is that whoever manages these middle-aged ex-cricketers has managed to persuade them to use a silly website to market their commentary service. The other thing is that the commentators seem to embrace the service completely. They constantly update thir accounts and, quite often, their musings and mutterings are quite interesting and informative.

The people that are now starting to use Twitter often seem like quite unlikely candidates for such a service. They haven’t really been seen elsewhere online, but for some reason the requirement of only having to write a couple of sentences has huge appeal. Many would like to think that a service such as Twitter is for one type of person, who works in a certain industry or is part of a certain group. However, if everyone who uses it can get what they want out of it, I think it can only be a good thing that there is much diversity of user and reason for use.

Other high profile figures have now started to adopt Twitter too. Sarah Brown and Michelle Obama are both avid Twitterers, updating their accounts on a very regular basis.

Barack Obama is obviously a very well regarded personality as it is, and his wife, Michelle, is becoming quite an icon in her own right. This will probably help him even more, one would imagine. Gordon Brown, however, is not a very well regarded personality at this time and as such, the raised profile of Sarah could really help him. She can connect with all sorts of people; people who may follow politics and people who may not. Either way, if she can give off a positive impression of herself to a number of demographics, it may well help poor old Gordon.

I think that the fact we are now starting to see people who have previously been very unknown online – and to a great extent unknown in real life – is very good. It’s great from a marketing perspective and it’s good to be able to see a bit of personality from people who have previously only hidden behind, or been known for their link to another person.