Following on from David Ansett’s post 25 Killer Custom Typefaces – A Brand Design Asset, who better than a font-house to lead the way with custom typefaces. Veer Ideas devotees have been making their own versions of the Veer logo. There are over 500 custom typefaces! From cheese carvings, to balloon sculptures in the sky, you name it, they’ve made it. Here are some of my favourites:
Finally it’s Here.
After much anticipation fueled by rumors, half press releases, leaks and on-line buzz, the Apple iPad was released overnight our time. To update this blog which was written last year looking at predictions of what the new Apple Tablet would look like, we’ve added some pics of the real thing. Interesting to compare the real deal with the guess-work of the images below:
The Difference Between Message and Value
In the past week I’ve had several conversations with clients, colleagues and our creative staff about the difference between brand messages and brand value. Brand is still a relatively young business concept and continues to evolve, mature and become more valuable to companies with each passing year. When I think back even just five years ago to the types of brand briefs we were working with, they were mostly Brand Message Centric – ‘what can we tell the market about our products or services that will compel them to choose us over our competitors?’ Typically these days our brand projects have a very different philosophy, our clients are rightly more focused on “What must we be delivering through our products and services so that our market can’t wait to include us in their lives?”. This is the compelling and critical difference between brand Value and brand message.
Apple, a brand obsessed with building customer value from the inside-out. Read the rest of this entry »
Word on the Web
As the rumor-mill turns into a tidal wave of anticipation for Apple’s new tablet, we take a snapshot of what’s being discussed, tweeted and mentioned on the social networks and blog sites. A glance at the Social Sentiment word cloud below shows the on-line universe abuzz with the rumored product name of ‘iSlate’ following a leak onto the net of URL and trademark registrations by Apple for that name. As always, it’s the interesting reading is between the lines (literally) – the smaller words often tell the story of current sentiment – and the further you look, the more intriguing the narrative. Click on the wordcloud pic to see a larger version.
David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
The Australian Food News newsletter recently reported on research in the UK (by food and grocery experts IGD) that had shown British consumers have little confidence that their shopping choices can make a sustained difference on some of the major social, economic and environmental issues of our day. Of course the UK consumer may be different to the Australian, but I wonder by how much?
Coming from an agency that devotes itself to developing brand strategy driven by insight I couldn’t help wondering what these results say about the brands that are on the supermarket shelves and that are at the heart of how these consumers responded.
We love where our office is located in South Melbourne. Interesting cafés, pubs, restaurants, shopping and a great market. We share the district with a lot of other creative businesses and a lot of brothels. Someone on the team mentioned that they heard a discussion on the radio recently that said South Melbourne had something like 39 brothels. They are dotted every where and to most of us we simply ‘see no evil, do no evil’. They are present on the one hand and invisible on the other.
So in this taxing (from an imaginative and financial perspective) gift giving season we thought it was a touch of genius by a near by brothel, the Melbourne Colosseum, to take some of the mystique out of their value proposition. In every market price is an important variable in the value equation, so why not put out a board with prices clearly communicating the price of sex. I mean there are many in the advertising game who say that sex sells, but not many actually know what sex sells for! But then again what are those long lunches all about?
Now I must say we could not find any promotional material from the Melbourne Colosseum touting Gift Vouchers, but we thought it may be of assistance to those shopping for the person who is hard to buy for to know what it would cost to give them something very different. It is a scary thought, certainly not politically correct, but it would give you bragging rights over Christmas lunch. And we all know when it comes to brand experiences bragging rights are important.
Peter Singline
Brand Scientist
Band Image
What Indie band The White Stripes have done with their brand image is simply impressive. In an industry better known for rock star image than brand image, the example set by The Stripes would put many mainstream brands to shame. Quite simply, in the colourful world Rock, The White Stripes have gone after, and now own the colour red. All of their band/brand material has one common element – it’s overwhelmingly red.
The combination of red, black and white is a common palette for alternative rock bands and can be traced back as far as The Stooges (if not before). But The White Stripes have taken the colour pallet, leveraged the red, embraced it and made it their own. There’s a great rock-irony to the fact that a band with the name ‘The White Stripes‘ should choose the colour red to align themselves.
Word on the Web
I couldn’t help but have a look to see how Accenture was faring with cutting their ties to Tiger. As a Tiger sponsor, none were connected more closely to his image than Accenture, and as was to be expected, the split was always going to be messy. Certainly in the sentiment of social media as of today, Accenture has yet to shake the Tiger connection. As always, it’s worth reading between the lines (literally) – the smaller words tell the story of current sentiment – and the further you look, the more intriguing the narrative.
David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
When it comes to updating a brand finding the right look and feel for the brand is, naturally, vital. But finding the key expressions for the brand is just as important. Whether it’s for your customers, staff or the general public knowing what the highest value expressions your brand will make will go a long way to ensure the new brand is both well received and a success. Here’s the tail of a brand evolution we did for SAGE Automation:
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A Magical Execution of Retail Brand Design
Occasionally we’re reminded that whilst not all brand expressions are born equal, all brand gestures have the potential to be sublime. Recently I came across a retail window display for fashion brand Hermes in their Maison Hermès store in Tokyo. This beautiful example of visual merchandising designed by Tokujin Yoshioka will be on show until 19 January 2010. See the stunning clip of the retail display after the jump…
