The success of the film Kingsman: The Secret Service was good news for Giles English, founder of the watch company Bremont Chronometers. After all, the film’s hero Harry Hart, played by Colin Firth, wears one of his watches while busy saving the world. Reserved, elegant and clever, Firth’s character reinforces much of what is British about Bremont’s brand – which should help when the company opens its first US store in New York this month.
Many analysts agree that the American consumer has positive impressions of British goods and services. According to Michael Czinkota, who teaches international business and trade at Georgetown University, Americans definitely have a soft spot for the British. “There is a perceived high level of quality, history, tradition [and] luxury,” he says.
Other qualities Americans associate with the British include creativity and innovation, most often seen in film, music and fashion, says Emma Jones, founder of Enterprise Nation, a UK-based organisation that helps people turn ideas into businesses. Indeed, because of these qualities, “having ‘Made in Britain’ on your products often means you can sell for a higher price,” says Jones.
The UK “culturally punches above its weight,” adds Alasdair Inglis, founder of Grow, a London-based small business marketing consultancy. Combine that with the “emotional pull to history” that Americans feel, and it’s not surprising that British brands appeal to US consumers, he says.
Consultancy Semiovox uses semiotics – the study of meaning and how it is communicated – to understand how brands are perceived. Josh Glenn, a senior analyst, says that branding is all about an emotional connection with a product. He explores “what a brand is communicating within a cultural context … guided by unspoken ideas and assumptions.”
Working with Iris Worldwide, a firm that represents several British companies, Glenn has identified in a study nine British qualities that popular culture and other sources have embedded in the American imagination – from eccentric chic to canny circ*mspection.
Canny circ*mspection is shown by someone who is “wise, but shuns the spotlight”, like the anonymous British graffiti artist Banksy or Lord of the Ring’s Gandalf. Taken apart or together, these positive qualities can be leveraged by UK brands to attract American consumers, Glenn says.
But as Kuldip Singh Sahota, founder of Mr Singh’s sauces and pastes, points out, Britishness comes in many guises. Having cracked Tesco supermarkets in the UK, he has recently persuaded 13 Fairway markets in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to stock his products and believes he has a very British story to tell.
“Americans think of fish and chips, but the most popular dish [in Britain] is curry,” he says. “Our British story is different, we’re first-generation immigrant children and that’s different from someone who’s been here 250 years. But at the same time, we consider ourselves properly British.”
Singh Sahota, who believes his is the only British hot sauce to be sold in America, recognises that Americans warm to stereotypes – pictures of the Queen, tea and biscuits and red phone booths, for example – and so his company features these images on its website and promotional materials. “If that’s the perception,” he says, “let’s play on it.” Eventually, though, he would like to be able to tell his family’s version of the British story in his marketing.
But as Richard Parris, CEO of the cybersecurity company Intercede points out, not all sectors lend themselves to branding Britishness. “I’m not sure we’ve sold [in America] because we’re a British brand, but because we have the best brand,” he says.
Nonetheless, Parris, who travelled with David Cameron to Washington in January as part of a tech trade mission, says British firms are “historically not as well-financed, so we have to achieve more with less. That stimulates innovation. American society is much more rules and procedures-driven, whereas in Britain, rules are made to be broken. So British products can be more contrarian and take a sideways swipe at a problem. The outcome can be interesting, and British products tend to be edgier.”
Regardless of how you market your product, British companies looking to do business in America should first spend time in the parts of the country they think will be most lucrative, and focus on doing business in those particular areas, rather than across the whole country, he says. “You have to spend some time to understand the market, and understand the ecosystem for whatever you want to sell,” he says - including going to trade shows targeted at your sector.
Both English and Singh Sahota say they prefer to be more understated in marketing themselves as British brands. English, for example, is not planning on producing posters or ads that trumpet, “As seen in Kingsman: The Secret Service”. Instead, he says, he’ll get his sales staff at the new store in New York to ask customers if they’ve seen the film.
Singh Sahota is of a similar mind. After all, he says, while the British brand may have positive associations to draw on, “It’s almost embarrassing to brag about it.”
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