Their name is their brand

The Cully Sully name sets a young, fun tone reflected in every aspect of the brand - packaging, website and camper van, writes Caroline Madden

PEOPLE SAID the name "Cully Sully" would never work for the convenience food business set up by childhood friends Cullen Allen (Cully) and Colum O'Sullivan (Sully). But with a raft of awards now under their belts and their products selling well, Cully Sully have proved the naysayers wrong.

"Before we started, everybody told us it was a daft name, that it was whimsical and childish and it wouldn't work," says O'Sullivan on this week's visual case study, which can be viewed on www.eoy.tv. "Sometimes you have to take risks and follow your gut."

The two young entrepreneurs come from pretty serious "foodie" backgrounds. Allen grew up in Ballymaloe, home of Darina Allen's famous cookery school, and O'Sullivan worked in the food business and was inspired by his mother's successful shop, the Granary Food Store. So they felt that the most important thing when building their brand was for people to know who they were and they chose the name accordingly.

Not only has the Cully Sully name proved incredibly catchy, but it sets a young, fun tone that is reflected in every aspect of their brand, from the packaging of their soups and pies, to the design of their camper van (as featured in the case study when they go surfing) and their website.

Siobhán O'Dwyer, branding director at Three Sixty, which specialises in brand development for high innovation companies, recently gave a talk on branding to secondary school students in Kilkenny. One of her key messages was that a brand is about far more than just the packaging of the product - it's about the company's reputation.

"Every single interface that a customer has with your organisation is reflecting in some way on the brand," O'Dwyer explains. "Whether it's the product, whether it's the person who picks up the phone to say hello to you [or] what they read about you in the newspapers.

"Really good brands are completely aligned around a core purpose," she adds. "And every single function within the company is singing from the same hymn sheet."

The best brands have a very strong core idea, and even an ideology, she says. "So the most important thing to do is figure out what exactly is really special about [the product], and then ask yourself, 'why is that important, why is that a good thing?'"

Innocent Drinks is a great example of an ideologically-driven brand. The company decided its unique selling point was the purity of its product, and its entire brand is built around that. "We call them innocent because our drinks are always completely pure, fresh and unadulterated," its website, www.innocentdrinks.co.uk, explains. "Anything you ever find in an Innocent bottle will always be 100 per cent natural."

Innocent also projects a strong image of being ethically-driven. As well as using natural products, it uses sustainable packaging and donates 10 per cent of profits each year to charity. Innocent's latest charitable initiative is The Big Knit 2008. Members of the public were asked to knit little woolly hats which are now being sold on bottles of Innocent smoothies in Sainsbury's in the UK, and also in Topaz stores in Ireland.

The money raised will go towards keeping older people warm this winter by providing them with hot meals and blankets.

If a business brands its product as being ethical or sustainable, they must be able to back up this claim. If it's just a marketing ploy, consumers will figure it out sooner or later. "The more educated your customer is, the more they expect of you," says O'Dwyer. "Innocent's customers would be a pretty discerning lot, and they'd be able to see through it fairly quickly if Innocent were pulling a sustainable fast one."

Businesses may dismiss branding as unnecessary, but there's much more to the process than making the product look and feel attractive. Branding also has a strategic focus, and involves positioning the business correctly in the marketplace. It can deliver a very solid commercial benefit.

Cully Sully

THIS WEEK'S case study ties in with the following areas of the Leaving Certificate business studies curriculum:

Unit 2: Enterprise - This case study focuses on the enterprise team of Cully Sully. Of particular interest is the manner in which the complementary skills of two enterprising individuals have played an important part in their success.

Unit 5: Marketing - The case study looks closely at the development of a successful brand and the elements of the marketing mix.

The Irish Times Business Education Series

THE BUSINESS Education Series provides second-level students with an insight into key business issues and is published every Friday in the Business This Week supplement. The entire series can be viewed on www. irishtimes.com/business/ education/

It is intended to complement a series of 12 visual case studies available on the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year programme's new online business education channel www.eoy.tv. Teacher support notes are also available here. Students can watch the clips at home in their own time or in the classroom with their teacher.

The case studies have been developed in collaboration with the Business Studies Teachers' Association. Each case study is directly related to the Leaving Certificate business course and links to the curriculum are outlined here each week.