Truly Deeply/Madly

Some­times, dif­fer­ent is the Only Answer
In our lives as brand strate­gists and design­ers we spend alot of time and energy help­ing our clients gain clar­ity about what their brand propo­si­tion should be in the mar­ket and how it should look and behave from every per­spec­tive to estab­lish the rep­u­ta­tion and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion their busi­nesses deserve. Occa­sion­ally we come across a sit­u­a­tion that by neces­sity demands of us to think out­side the box. Whether the project comes with some curly restric­tions, an unusu­ally small bud­get, or a strange but irre­sistible com­mu­ni­ca­tion oppor­tu­nity, it’s often those very demands that set us look­ing in new direc­tions for answers to the project’s brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion challenges.

There is noth­ing quite so refresh­ing as a designer of brands and brand expe­ri­ences to set-out on a cre­ative project from a new and dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. Like­wise, we are drawn to the many clever brand ges­tures we come across that lever­age a dif­fer­ent solu­tion to cre­ate truly unique brand expe­ri­ences that cre­ate emo­tional and long-lasting con­nec­tions with the audiences.

One of my favorites is the illy ship­ping con­tainer cafe.
We’re unsure if this was the first exam­ple of a re-configured ship­ping con­tainer, and we’ve cer­tainly seen a bunch of great exam­ples over the years (includ­ing the very cool Sec­tion 8: Con­tainer Bar in Mel­bourne). A mild man­nered ship­ping con­tainer by night, the illy cafe turns into a very slick cof­fee house at the touch of a remote con­trolled but­ton. As brand ges­tures go, this one is as rich in on-brand-ness as they come, very buz­z­able, and portable enough to turn heads and get tongues wag­ging where-ever they wish to make and impact.

Brand Idea Exten­sion
Not con­tent to sit on their very clever lau­rels, illy col­lab­o­rated with artist/architect Adam Kalkin to cre­ate the illy Push But­ton House, a five-room home with a kitchen, din­ing room, bed­room, liv­ing room and library con­structed again within a stan­dard indus­trial ship­ping con­tainer.  The home, which trans­forms at the push of a but­ton, is cre­ated from recy­cled and recy­clable mate­ri­als and is the phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of illy’s ded­i­ca­tion to sus­tain­abil­ity, art and inno­va­tion, not to men­tion styl­ish cafe lifestyle.

Push But­ton House debuted at the esteemed Venice Bien­nale in June 2007.  In Decem­ber 2007, Push But­ton House was exhib­ited in New York City where it wel­comed hol­i­day shop­pers at the Time Warner Cen­ter.  As part of the New York Wine & Food Fes­ti­val, Push But­ton House again took cen­ter stage in the Meat­pack­ing Dis­trict in Octo­ber 2008. Guests to Push But­ton House had the oppor­tu­nity to sam­ple the world’s finest cof­fee using illy’s new iperE­spresso sys­tem, par­tic­i­pate in cof­fee classes, view dance and per­for­mance art and lis­ten to cafe conversations.

And More Brand Inspired Spaces
Often zag­ging to come-up with a fresh brand idea can start with an exist­ing inno­va­tion. In the case of the Sleep Box, they’re a larger, more styl­ish and more pri­vate ver­sion of Japan’s (in)famous Cap­sule Hotels. Sleep boxes are also aimed at the trav­eler who needs a quick bit of shut eye, Dubai Air­port looks to be one of the first to offer Sleep Boxes. “Sleep Boxes are small cubi­cle spaces that are avail­able at pub­lic places like Air­ports and train sta­tions where peo­ple can book a ‘box’ for short time period to catch some sleep. It offers a small rest­ing space while you wait for that con­nec­tion in few hours.

A Zag Brand Idea inspired by Lego
This Lego kitchen is the cre­ation of Parisian design duo Simon Pil­lard and Philippe Rosetti Mun­chausen. Pil­lard and Rosetti took a bold approach when design­ing their own kitchen by ven­tur­ing to IKEA for the basic kitchen island and then spend­ing the next week cov­er­ing it with more than 20,000 pieces of Lego. The result is a one-of-a-kind cre­ation that serves as an artis­tic cen­ter­piece for the space, in addi­tion to func­tion­ing as a kitchen counter.

And what could be more inspir­ing than a kitchen made from Lego? How about an entire house?
Top Gear pre­sen­ter James May built a full sized Lego house on the Den­bies Wine Estate in the UK. Lego house is the lat­est toy chal­lenge that May has under­taken as part of his BBC series James May’s Toy Sto­ries. Other projects included the world’s first plas­ticine gar­den, which won the people’s choice award at the Chelsea Flower Show, and the world’s largest model plane. The life-size house uses over three mil­lion bricks and fea­tures a stair­case, toi­let and shower.

Retail is the Per­fect Zag Brand Design Canvas

Vic­tor Churchill is a supremely cool butcher shop estab­lished as a retail out­let by Vic and Anthony Puharich, the father and son duo behind Vic’s Pre­mium Qual­ity Meat, the lead­ing meat sup­plier to some of the finest restau­rants in Aus­tralia, China and Sin­ga­pore. A butcher shop — Churchill’s Butch­ery –has oper­ated in the space since 1876, so it was an appro­pri­ate loca­tion for what the Puharichs envi­sioned as a European-inspired designer shop of car­niv­o­rous inspi­ra­tion. This amaz­ing piece of retail the­atre was designed by Sydney-based Dream­time Aus­tralia Design who are well known for their restau­rant and bar work. This was Dreamtime’s first retail project and they took to the medium like the prover­bial duck to water, cre­at­ing a unique, rich and mem­o­rable brand experience.

The Three Golden Rules of Zag Brand Design
Whilst none of these brand design ideas were sim­ple to imple­ment or carried-out on a shoe string bud­get, they each deliv­ered much greater than their fair share of return on invest­ment. The prin­ci­ples of cre­at­ing stand-out brand expres­sions are equally rel­e­vant across all busi­nesses and all mar­kets. Our three golden rules for cre­at­ing unique and mem­o­rable expres­sions for your brand are:
01. Gain absolute clar­ity around your brand propo­si­tion.
Using Vic­tor Churchil has a colour­ful exam­ple, as a brand they clearly under­stand that they are sim­ply the most pre­mium sup­plier of fine meats in the mar­ket. Their unique retail design is a tes­ta­ment to that propo­si­tion.
02. Look Out­side the Box.
Explore other, unre­lated indus­tries for ideas. A pack­ag­ing solu­tion from an Ital­ian shoe brand might pro­vide the per­fect inspi­ra­tion for the design of a new cafe for a cof­fee com­pany.
03. Don’t Squib on the Design.
Even the best ideas rely on exe­cu­tion to take them to mar­ket — design is and always will be the best friend of brand expres­sion. Once you have your big idea, make sure you find and engage great design­ers to turn your inspi­ra­tion into a mem­o­rable and unique brand expression.

If you’d like to make your busi­ness stand-out in its mar­ket with a unique brand expres­sion, why not give us a call.

David Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
For daily updates of our brand think­ing, fol­low me on Twit­ter
Brand Designer

Tags: Adam Kalkin, Brand Agency, brand canvas, Brand Design, brand designers, Brand Experience, brand proposition, Brand Strategy, brand-designers-Melbourne, brandamentalist, Chelsea Flower Show, container cafe, Corporate Image, Dave Ansett, David Ansett, Denbies Wine Estate, Graphic Design Melbourne, illy, James May, Lego, Lego House, Lego kitchen, Melbourne Brand Strategy, New York Food & Wine Festival, Push Button House, Section 8: Container Bar, Sleep Box, Time Warner Centre, Top Gear, Venice Biennale, Victor Churchill, Visual Language, zag

This entry was posted on Monday, May 3rd, 2010 at 8:33 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Creative, Experiences, Graphic Design Melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.