THE CAFFEINE KNOWLEDGE BANK
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- Customer Experience
Managing Your Customer Experience: The Seven Deadly Sins
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Brands
John Lewis – the future of brand strategy starts now
- General
Holiday Reading – a tale of the unexpected
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Why you exist is important but what you do is vital – getting brand purpose right
- Customer Experience
AI chatbots have a customer experience problem
- Employee Experience
Retaining Employees In The Era Of Well-Being
- Leadership
Hate presenting? Get over yourself
- Employee Experience
The employee experience starts with recruitment – and it needs a revamp.
- Brands, Customer Experience
Luxury Brands: Combating the ‘Fast Experience’
- Customer Experience
Customer Experience – it’s not worth the effort…is it?
- Employee Experience
Five strategies to enhance the employee experience and accelerate organisational success
- Customer Experience
The Invisible Cost of Spam: Eroding Brand Reputation and Customer Experience
Shaun Smith explores how spam undermines customer experience, highlighting its detrimental impact on brand reputation in today’s digital environment. Spam, in its many forms, from unsolicited emails to intrusive ads, not only disrupts the customer’s digital
- Customer Experience
No room at the inn? A festive look at some hotel horrors
- Employee Experience, In the News
Caffeine/Savanta 2023 Employee Pride Survey: The Key Findings
- Brands, Employee Experience, In the News
Amazon’s Employee Experience: Navigating Tricky Waters
- Customer Experience
New Energy: The rise of the distinctive customer experience
- Employee Experience
The power of a distinctive employee experience: Stand out and stand firm
- Customer Experience
The Magic Ingredient: Harnessing effort to create a Memorable Customer Experience
- Customer Experience
The Transformative Impact of AI on Customer Service
- Inspiration
10 Lessons Learned the Hard Way
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Brands, In the News
The purpose of chocolate: Why laughing at purpose misses the point
- Brands
Your Twitter is not your Brand
- Brands, In the News
John Lewis’ Brand: Back to the future?
- Brands
The myth: branding is just about the logo and advertising
- Customer Experience
The secret to ensuring your customer experience strategy becomes a reality
- Brands, Customer Experience, Employee Experience
The myth: A strong brand can be used to prop up a bad business
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Fourth year in a row: The UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2023 by the FT
- Employee Experience
Purpose, Pay or Perks? What Matters Most to UK Employees
- Brands
Good News in Bad Times
- Customer Experience
How to beat a bear market? Invest in your customers.
- Brands, Customer Experience
What’s in a name?
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Inspiration
This Christmas, be a Muppet
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Customer Experience
Brands Behave or Beware
- Customer Experience
We Need to Talk About the ‘C’ Word
- Employee Experience, Leadership
What Matters Most to UK Employees? Survey Launch
- Customer Experience
Getting the measurement right
- Employee Experience, Leadership
Do you deserve to be followed?
- Brands, Customer Experience, Employee Experience
Being The Brand
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Customer Experience, Employee Experience
Richer Experiences Make Richer Brands
- Employee Experience
The Employer Brand
- Employee Experience
Employee Loyalty = Customer Loyalty
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Good PR for your HR won’t compensate for a poor Customer Experience
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Four questions to ask your agency in the pitch
- Brand-led Business Strategy
What are the Key Components of a Brand?
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Customer Experience
What Matters Most
- Brand-led Business Strategy
The purpose of brands
- Customer Experience, Employee Experience
‘There are no customers in the office’ – the benefits of talking to strangers.
- Brand-led Business Strategy
The time is NOW
- Brand-led Business Strategy
How to act like a start-up and deliver a GREAT! result
Over the past few months, we’ve been working with a group of highly successful entrepreneurs and investors, on the creation of a new channel brand to support the launch of the UK’s most exciting free movie
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Great brand stories have one purpose
This week The Story Museum opened in Oxford. A wonderful and inventive experience for all ages, it especially focuses on young people, encouraging them to explore the joy of storytelling. Oxford is a city of stories.
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Abrdn stands out but will it stand up?
- Customer Experience, Employee Experience
Being human will be at the heart of brand purpose
We are entering a new era, one that will require new approaches to marketing and customer experience, but it will go way beyond that. It will challenge the very way we think about brands and corporations.
- Brand-led Business Strategy, Employee Experience
It pays to be bold – how investing in brand purpose creates rapid returns
We help companies build a brand and customer experience that reflects the scale and ambitions of the business and helps simplify increasing complexity as they grow. These are companies that have a logo and a ‘look’
- Brand-led Business Strategy
“The Biden brand is suited to the moment”: The Power of the Personal Brand
More than any previous political event, the 2020 US Presidential Election was a battle between two brands. Trump and Biden offered very different visions of the future, represented by two distinct personalities making succinct promises. Each
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Congratulations to Rita Clifton CBE
We are delighted that Rita Clifton CBE has been appointed the Deputy Chair of John Lewis Partnership. It’s a perfect match. Rita is a great believer in purpose-led, values-driven brands which empower their people to deliver
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Depp & Dior: A Savage Arrangement
Last weekend, Caffeine’s Managing Partner Simon Bailey contributed to a Sky News piece on Dior’s decision to continue to employ Johnny Depp as celebrity endorser of its Sauvage fragrance, despite a UK court finding it ‘substantially
- Customer Experience
Why COVID is not a valid excuse (and other musings from a crazy year) Part Two
In my last blog I reflected on how customer experience has been impacted by the Covid-19 crisis and which brands are succeeding in spite of it. One of the hardest hit sectors in the is the
- Customer Experience
“We’re just about delivering happiness” Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh, 46, the former CEO of Zappos, died on Friday from head injuries sustained during a house fire whilst he was visiting friends in Connecticut. He was an inspirational thinker who will be sadly missed.
- Customer Experience
Why COVID is not a valid excuse (and other musings from a crazy year) Part One
It has been a crazy year. Smith+Co were honoured by being awarded ‘UK’s Leading Management Consultants 2020’ following independent research by Statista. That was a great start! We followed it up by merging with Caffeine, the
- Brand-led Business Strategy
On Purpose Interactive Assessment Tool
- Employee Experience
The Employee Experience Measurement Survey
- Brand-led Business Strategy
This Christmas, be a Muppet
The Muppet Christmas Carol is one of my favourite films. It’s a wonderful, irreverent, but faithful adaptation, in turns funny, moving and uplifting with some great songs along the way. The special guest star (Michael Caine)
- Brand-led Business Strategy
What’s the purpose of housing?
I recently attended the UK’s biggest conference on housing. Government, local governments, housing associations, developers, construction companies, outsourcing consultancies, mortgagers, homeless charities – they were all there. The Grenfell Tower disaster provided a tragic backdrop to
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Mankind is our business – a lesson not just for Scrooge but for everyone
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and
- Brand-led Business Strategy
If the cap fits – the role of the trusted advisor
We see the year out – and what a year – in a fog of unreason and contrary forces: more rejection this week of the liberal establishment with the defeat by Italian voters of Matteo Renzi’s
- Brand-led Business Strategy
Dinner Party Shame: A story of Brand Pride
This week I’ve been a Dragon. It’s been fun. I’ve been part of a judging panel on a ‘Going Further’ competition where students from the 157 Group of Further Education Colleges pitch to redesign their brand