Ideashop - Just another WordPress weblog

Brixton Cycles, is a one-off. A workers co-operative at the heart of SW9 that sells and fixes all kinds of bikes from commuter, to racing to mountain bikes.  If you are part of the biking fraternity its a destination in its own right and celebrated its 25th birthday a few years back.

The Problem:

There were several things BC wanted to do

1. Keep their much loved customers up to date with all they were doing

2. Grow their community, be part of their community and introduce more people to cycling

3. Make sure that they were selling, stocking and buying the right kind of kit and bike gear

What we suggested:

Crowd Sourcing

Brixton Cycles has an irreverent, slightly anarchic take on life which is instantly recognisable in their branded clothing. To grow their community and engage with them better, we recommended a bit of crowd sourcing- asking their customers what designs they would like to see fronting next season’s cycling gear. We also suggested that the Brixton Cycles staff wear the merchandise while working on the shop floor or fixing bikes to help identify them to customers, and make it easier for people to know who to ask for advice and help in store.
Know Your Customer

We also suggested that Brixton Cycles establishing a database of customers and create a facebook page in order to send out email/newsletter bulletins and also post status updates letting people know about promos, events, sales and anything else the Brixton Cycles is getting involved with.

Taking it To The People

We wanted people to register that Brixton Cycles is really part of their community and something that is unique.  So we suggested setting up a chalk A board outside and use it as a megaphone/ means of sharing and writing down the staff’s witty, irreverent and politically flavoured thinking.  This was a way of taking the shop’s attitude out on the street and also creating something of a local talking point for the neighbourhood as well as putting a smile on the face of all those commuters cycling past everyday. We also thought it might be nice to make what ever was on the board that day the shop’s facebook status to keep all the Brixton Cycles community- local and virtual- in the loop.

Keeping Track of Sales

With a secret sale coming up for their valued customers, we recommended that Brixton Cycles pay close attention to every item rung up on the till that day- which brands and labels were the most popular and what price points proved to be the most popular with the shops loyal fan base. Gaining this information would help them stock exactly what people wanted to buy and ensure faster through flow of goods and even happier customers.

www.brixtoncycles.co.uk



Over the three days of Idea Shop we spoke to countless small businesses, charities and social enterprises with teeny marketing budgets and a need to reach more people. Where they had interesting stores or an area of expertise that could turn into an agony column in the local press we recommended they get in touch with Lambeth Life, and other local papers – The South London Press, The Wandesworth Guardian, The Mitcham, Morden, Wimbledon Post etc. As our PR guru Kevin say, journalists have space that needs filling with stories, to get in the paper you just need a good story.

Here’s an updated version of our original write up of our Idea Shop session with Lambeth Life. I’ve changed it a bit from the original post which said they had a ‘perception problem’. As Lambeth Life have pointed out, was a bit of an exaggeration.

Lambeth Life is a free paper, published by Lambeth Council. Their challenge is to get local people involved in producing the content of the paper, so they feel more like it’s their paper.

During our brainstorm we came up with the following editorial ideas.

Feature guest editors from the community.

A parenting column from Loughborough Children’s Centre.

Build on the successful letter page by giving the star letter a prize, donated by an advertiser.

Leave comment cards in the local cinema asking cinema goers to write mini reviews for the film they just saw. The reviews are then collected and published in the paper.

Make it easy for people to write to the paper: Get a mobile number for texting in views and photos: Use stickers in key public places to encourage people to text in views when they are out and about.

Offer key local bloggers columns.

Ask reader to pose the questions for the fortnightly councilor interview page.

Create a schools or young Lambeth page with content created by pupils from local schools.

The star letter tends to be something positive about Lambeth. Introduce a Big Moan letter to give the letters page more bite. Councilors can write in the next week to address the issue raised.

The Herne Hill Society is an amenity group for the Herne Hill area. Now, it might just be me, but I had no idea what an amenity group did.  Apparently they do a whole bunch of things including: organise talks on topics of local interest, write books about Herne Hill history, monitor planning applications, encourage improvements in local amenities, etc.

Their problem was that their membership was skewed towards older, white, middle-class residents – and so wasn’t representative of the local area.  They wanted to broaden their membership base and encourage more active involvement from their members.

We suggested that the first thing they might think about doing if they wanted to broaden their membership base was get rid of the word “amenities”.  You’re not going to find many people who, on a sunny day, suggest “exploring the local amenities”. It seemed an old-fashioned way to talk about what they did.  Which was a shame because what they did – bringing people together to learn about and improve the local community – wasn’t old fashioned at all. It was something very relevant to people’s day-to-day lives in the area.

Currently the Herne Hill Society promotes itself and seeks out new members by distributing leaflets.  They also send out a newsletter 4 times a year. Rather than just passively tell people what they did through leaflets and a newsletter we recommended they enter into conversations with people, so people became involved right from the beginning:

We suggested they:

Foster good relationships with local estate agents – who could then tell prospective Herne Hill residents about all the great things the Society was doing for the neighbourhood.

Donate some of the books they’d written to local cafes as coffee-table pieces – in exchange they might be able to leave membership leaflets in the cafes.

Get the community to talk to them about what they’d like to see happening in the area – this could be through postcards left in cafes.

Get local schools involved: get kids to write short pieces on local history and this publish it in the Herne Hill Society newsletter.  Every parent wants their kid published!

Compile a list of case histories of interesting projects they’d done. Pitch some of the best case histories to local papers like Lambeth Life.

www.hernehillsociety.org.uk