Last Friday night the winners for the 2010 Melbourne Advertising and Design Club (MADC) Awards were announced. The annual MADC Awards celebrate excellence across a range of advertising and design categories, encompassing print, radio, television and ambient media.
We were excited to see that Gelati Sky took out the Silver for The MADC Award for Best Packaging Design (Label Only) and was a finalist for The MADC Award for Best Corporate Identity Design. While our own brand Truly Deeply took out a bronze for The MADC Award for Best Self Promotion Design.
In brand, your customers view of the world and how your offer adds value to them is all important. Sometimes if you’re fortunate enough, your customers will actually even communicate their impressions of your brand, what it’s doing well and where it’s falling short for them. Social media provides brands with a sound-track of customer conversation which is a ready source of rich insight. But customer conversations are only valuable to a business when they have the mind-set to listen, interpret and act.
In what can only be described as an online experience, Chris Milk, Arcade Fire and Google have created an experimental interactive music video. The Wilderness Downtown, as it’s called, is a marvel well worth watching all the way through. You’ll need Google Chrome (or maybe Safari 5) for it to work, as it’s all created in HTML5. It’s a wonderful way to get people to download Google’s new browser, demonstrate the abilities of it, promote the band, their song and show the possibilities of an emerging web standard. All in all a stand out multi brand experience.
In Brand communication, as in life you get one chance to make a first impression. Reminder to businesses of all sizes – best price does not necessarily = best offer (At least it’s spelled correctly).
Celebrating 20 years of AGIdeas
I always say you can judge the quality of a design book by how heavy it is (oh, and whether it features us and our work too). ‘Design is Difference’ is a retrospective of the 20 year history of agIdeas, it showcases more than 2,000 works of over 400 design and creative leaders who have presented at agIdeas International Design Week throughout its 20 year history. Including creative luminaries such as Stefan Sagmiester, Paula Scher, Massimo Vignelli, Alan Fletcher, Shigeo Fukuda and representatives from global design studios like Pixar, Dreamworks, Frog Design, Pentagram and of course little old us – Truly Deeply the brand strategy and communications design agency. This book is the epitome of ‘design is difference’, the differences within design and that design can make – sounds pretty serious – looks seriously impressive.
The success of the Greens in last weeks Federal election in Australia is a great reminder that markets are not homogenous, that there are different segments with different needs. The Greens have ended up with a National Senate Vote of almost 13% and surprise, surprise, a controlling influence on matters that come before that House of Parliament. Throw in the independents who have also convincingly won seats and you get further insight into the diverse market needs of an electorate. But segmentation is not the purpose of this blog, rather the degree to which the Greens have been ever present in Australia in recent weeks is a great reminder of nature and the Greens quest for ecological sustainability – more specifically the lessons on offer for business, from nature.
A great reminder that often when it comes to brand communication – the simple ideas are often the best. In a wonderful brand gesture, the owners of this bike shop north of Berlin attached around 120 bicycles to the facade of their store to draw attention to their business. Simple.
When I was a kid my mother used to buy the cheapest private label cornflakes she could find and serve them up as the real ‘Kellogg’ thing by putting them in nondescript plastic cereal containers. Even as a kid I knew I was being served an inferior product – and if I had any doubt, breaking a tooth on the gritty, overcooked grain confirmed the switch. I swore when I grew up that I would never betray my favourite brands for a few cents, my family would never eat inferior brands.
It’s a promise I kept for many years. Then the GFC hit and I fell under the spell of the private label. Guess what, no gritty bits. In fact acceptable quality and lower cost – the perfect partners. Very quickly saving money became a weekly goal and its achievement delivered huge satisfaction in its own right.
A Big, Bold Brand Experience by Design
Powergig.com recently hired a plane to fly over the active volcano in Reykjavic, Iceland so that could drop a bundle of fake guitars into it. They filmed the act and posted it to the net in a graphic piece of brand storytelling. A bold gesture indeed given that they’re brand is all about ‘rockin’ it real’.
The video’s shot by the guys at Droga5. Not sure this rings with the rock authenticity the brand demands, but kind of a cool thing to do all the same.
