10 minutes with Brett Law, Director, The Kanga Group (TKG), Australia

Continuing our series of Q&As with influential individuals involved in various facets of the promotions industry; this month we focus on Brett Law.  Brett is a Director of The Kanga Group (TKG), an award-winning Australian promotional products company that was founded in 2005. The company began operations in the UK in 2008 and Brett has recently been in the London office to appraise the UK arm of TKG and so is perfectly placed to make comparisons between the UK and Australian marketplaces for promotional products. 

But first we’ll find out a little more about Brett and how he came to be involved in the promotions industry: 

Q. How long have you been with TKG? 

A. I am one of the owners and formed the company with my wife. As such, I have been with The Kanga Group since its inception in 2005. 

Q. Do your other Directors have a history in the promotions industry? 

A. Our management team has over 50 years of combined experience in the promotional products industry in the United States, United Kingdom and Australasia. 

Q. How did you become involved in this sector? 

A. We set up the business in response to a niche in the market that we had seen appear.  My background in corporate/brand strategy and business management dovetailed well with my wife’s, and my business partner’s, substantial experience in promotional products to enable us to offer a unique value proposition to the market.  Our offering is focussed on core, below-the-line marketing strategy (i.e. customised products to support a targeted marketing campaign developed to reach a targeted market cohort) with promotional products enabling that strategy.  

Q. What has changed about the industry in Australia since you became involved? 

A. There has been significant change in the industry over the years. I think the most marked change has been the disintermediation of the traditional value chain. This disintermediation is categorised in two ways: firstly, distributors are increasingly going direct to factories, bypassing traditional domestic aggregators and secondly, informed clients are going direct to factories in the Far East.  These trends are interesting as they do change the shape of the landscape.  As with all changes in an industry, some have been successful and will last, others are unlikely to continue.  

With over 15 years experience sourcing from the Far East, we have become the trusted sourcing partner for our clients and not just a standard promotional products supplier. 

The other major change is that where even five years ago, America used to be the land of innovation and China the land of replication; China has very quickly turned that around to be even more innovative and work in a much faster time frame than that which American factories and suppliers can achieve. 

Q. What do you see as the main difference between the UK and Australian industries and the similarities?  

A. Our business has exposure to the consumer promotion / promotional products industries in the UK, USA and Australia.  Through this awareness we have noticed that the markets in Australia and the UK are the most similar. The American market is categorised by more trinketisation and supported by a different value chain. UK and Australia are more focussed on value and achieving a one-on-one discussion with their customers through the medium of promotional products that have longevity. 

Q. Can one side of the globe learn from the other? 

A. Absolutely. This is one of our sources of competitive differentiation in the market.  There are two benefits: firstly, by having offices in London and Australia we can offer our clients 24 hour service – when London sleeps, Australia is awake and vice versa.  Further, we can transplant learnings from one country to the other.  For instance, innovative campaigns that have worked in Asia can be transplanted to the UK and vice versa. 

Q. I know TKG’s particular interest is in sustainability and integrating green products into the promotional marketplace. That is also happening in the UK. Is the take-up of green products more prevalent in Australia or UK and what other difference do you see on the green front? 

A. Unfortunately, take-up of green products as a viable part of the product mix within the promotional products industry has been slow globally.  This was probably due to four factors – limited product availability, relative expense compared to non-green products, non-green packaging, inability to effectively offset carbon dioxide emissions from the production and shipping of the products. 

The industry and technology have evolved to the extent that we have been able to address all four of these factors and as a result see this as a burgeoning category for our business. 

Interestingly, the form of take-up has differed between Australia and the UK.  From our experience, the UK market is more advanced in its take-up of promotional products created from diverted waste streams (i.e. plastic into pens, paper waste into notepads) while Australia is more advanced in its push to make its supply chains carbon neutral.  This probably has a lot to do with the relative size of each marketplace. 

Q. What do you like most about the industry? 

A. I am a passionate believer in the effectiveness of a below-the-line marketing strategy to enable a conversation between a brand and its target market. The right promotional products can affect this conversation in a way no other advertising medium can. It also allows a measurability beyond any other BTL medium. 

Q. Any particular dislikes? 

A. I dislike the ‘trinketisation’ of the industry.  This has been driven by proliferation of low cost, low value, disposable products that don’t do any good for client’s brands, let alone the environment, as they have a low productive life and end up in landfill quickly. 

Q. How do you see the promotional products marketplace moving forward in Australia and do you think the way forward will differ in the UK? 

A. I think the promotional products market will evolve in three directions. 

Firstly, there will be a segmentation between catalogue-based stock items and customised, campaign-specific items. 

Secondly, I think that as corporates feel the twin pressure of reduced budgets and associated increased ROI thresholds coupled with board-driven requirements for environmental footprint management, that there will be an evolution away from low-cost trinketisation towards campaigns that will really enable a one-to-one conversation with a target customer. 

In other words a trend away from high volume/low cost trinketisation to lower volume/higher value items. 

I see these trends occurring contemporaneously in the UK and Australia as the key buyers (large businesses) are faced with the same pressures. 

Q. Promo e-News is a website devoted to promotional-merchandise, so tell us what’s the favourite piece of merchandise you have on your desk/or that you have recently seen? 

A. Great question! In January we visited the PPAI show in Las Vegas and were blown away by the plethora of new and innovative products (note – all of which were made in China).  I have three favourites: the first is a full four colour printed keyboard and mouse that sit on my desk with a picture of my kids on them; the second is a set of fully branded and customised collapsible speakers that go everywhere with me and lastly, a very innovative anti-microbial pen. 

Q. What’s the worst example of promotional merchandise you’ve seen? 

A. As you can probably tell, I’m not a big believer in mass produced, low value trinkets.  The worst I’ve seen were products that supported a FMCG campaign that broke after the first use. They were a giveaway and at the point of the consumer promotion, you saw more of the products on the ground and in the rubbish bin than you saw in the hands of the consumers! 

Q. If you weren’t in the SP industry, what would like to be doing? 

A. Trying to think of a way to get into it. I am so passionate about the power of below-the-line marketing that if I wasn’t enabling my clients to reach and have a discussion with their customers through the medium of promotional products, I would probably be doing it through experiential marketing or the like. 

Q. Who do you admire/respect most in the public eye in the UK and in Australia? … and why? 

Ok, let’s start with the UK. I think the London Mayor is doing a great job as a champion for London at present.  Whilst, as an itinerant visitor to London, I’m sure I don’t have all the facts, I was VERY impressed by Boris’ bicycle initiative. Interestingly this has now come to Melbourne in Australia! 

I also recently had the privilege of attending a breakfast with Richard Branson and have always been impressed with Virgin’s business philosophy of shaking things up in established industries. 

In Australia .... I don’t have a simple answer to that one.  As a bit of a cricket tragic, I am very much looking forward to the upcoming ashes series which will very much be in the public eye! 

Q. If you were to have a dinner party, who would you invite to chew over the facts and put the world to rights or simply to amuse you? 

A. I have always been fascinated by human psychology – not in a clinical sense but in a ‘how do people interact’ sense.  One of the other areas that the UK and Australia have in common at present is that we both have an unproven coalition government in place that has brought together unlikely bed-fellows. I have often thought that it would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall of those cabinet meetings.  So a dinner party with some pointed questions would be very interesting. 

Failing that I would enjoy a dinner party with the ‘elders’ – i.e. the group of individuals including Nelson Mandella, Jimmy Carter, etc., who are trying to address substantive human rights issues around the world. 

Q. What’s your typical office day? 

A. I am usually in the office by 8am and then leave at 4pm to collect my kids from day care. Then it’s back onto the computer from about 8pm until I’m finished.  Probably too much work, but we are growing fast and loving it. 

Q. What do you like to do to relax? 

A. I’m writing this submission from a beach in Fiji so that is a fair indication. Otherwise, it is the golf course or the beach for a surf or scuba dive. 

Q. Tell me something about you that nobody in the industry knows? 

A. Two things – I have written a theses on the effects of eutrophication on microzooplankton and I collect African tribal antiques. 

Q. When are you coming back to the UK? 

A. I get to the UK about once a quarter.  I was last there in September and expect to be back in March 2011. 

Brett Law,

Director,

The Kanga Group (TKG),

Australia

 

Share this page