Archive for July, 2010

07.19.10

Wasara — Beautiful Brand Differentiation by Design

We spend much of our lives work­ing with brands of all shapes and sizes across almost every con­ceiv­able cat­e­gory to define their dif­fer­en­ti­ated brand propo­si­tion and design a rich and unique visual lan­guage to posi­tion their busi­nesses for suc­cess. Occa­sion­ally we come across brands who have their dif­fer­en­ti­ated propo­si­tion ‘baked-in’ to their prod­ucts or ser­vices (think iPhone’s touch screen and use­abil­ity / think Webflix DVDs through the mail) — what it is that is unique about them is inher­ent in what they do or sell. With­out doubt, these brands have a dis­tinct advan­tage over their competitors.

For busi­nesses look­ing for a han­dle on how to build a brand with the dif­fer­en­ti­ated propo­si­tion baked-in, an often over­looked start­ing point is design.

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07.16.10

Discovery, the new advertising for brands!

More and more brands are fore­go­ing the big chest beat­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns that attempt to broad­cast their pres­ence to the world. This is par­tic­u­larly the case for those wish­ing to posi­tion them­selves in the  cool end of the mar­ket. The onus is on savvy shop­pers to find them, par­tic­u­larly when it we are talk­ing fash­ion and bars. Cer­tainly this was our expe­ri­ence on a recent visit to Berlin.

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07.14.10

Fashion Brand Armani Reaching for the Skies – Dubai Style

Gior­gio Armani is one of the world’s most recog­nis­able and sought after fash­ion brands with end of year sales banded around at $1.69 bil­lion. From haute coutre, ready-to-wear, leather goods, shoes, watches, jew­elry, eye­wear, cos­met­ics and home inte­ri­ors Armani has become syn­ony­mous with high-fashion and cou­ture worldwide.

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07.12.10

Brand Gestures for the fun-of-it — Volkswagen’s funtheory.com

Just for the fun-of-it
There has been plenty of debate over the years (some of it with read­ers com­ment­ing on this site) about the valid­ity and value of brand ges­tures that do not have an imme­di­ate and spe­cific sell­ing propo­si­tion. In many ways this rep­re­sents the dif­fer­ence between the crafts of adver­tis­ing and branding.

YouTube Preview Image

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07.09.10

Packaging the NYC experience

Justin Gignac, a New York City based artist and entre­pre­neur, col­lects rubbish…pieces of New York City’s cul­ture, doc­u­ment­ing instances in time as arche­ol­o­gists have done for thou­sands of years. Gignac began
sell­ing garbage in 2001 after co-workers chal­lenged the impor­tance of pack­ag­ing design. To prove them
wrong, he set out to find some­thing that no one in their right mind would ever buy, and demon­strate the
value of pack­ag­ing by mak­ing what he found desir­able. Look­ing around the dirty streets of Times Square, garbage was the per­fect answer. Nine years later, over 1,300 NYC Garbage cubes have been sold and now
reside in 29 coun­tries around the world.

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07.08.10

The Take Away Shows — Guerilla Musical Performances

Every week, The Take Away Shows invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an ele­va­tor, and we film the whole ses­sion. What makes the beauty of it is all the lit­tle inci­dents, hes­i­ta­tions, and crazy stuff hap­pen­ing unexpectingly.T he videos are unedited and look unusu­ally flaw­less, com­plete with raw sound of the sur­round­ings. The Take Away Shows cap­ture instants, film the music just like it hap­pens, with­out prepa­ra­tion, with­out tricks. Spon­tane­ity is the keyword.

Founders Chryde, who wanted to shake things up and find another way to share music, and Vin­cent Moon, who wanted to film music dif­fer­ently began The Take Away Shows in April 2006. Since then, other direc­tors across the world have joined the project.

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07.07.10

Celebrating Random Acts of Creative Obsession

Here at Truly Deeply we cel­e­brate cre­ative obses­sion in what ever form it takes, from brand design through
to instal­la­tion art. The other day I came across ‘Sta­ple Art – The mak­ing of Ephemi­crop­o­lis’ by artist
Peter Root. With patience, vision and a very steady hand, Peter Root arranged over 100.000 sta­ples in a
period of 40 hours. What can I say, some peo­ple are obsessed about what they do.

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07.06.10

Let Imagination take Over – Creative, Imaginative Brand Communication from Play-Doh

So often we find a great brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion thought that is let down by poor cre­ative exe­cu­tion, or a piece of beau­ti­ful brand design that lacks a pow­er­ful thought. Obvi­ously the best solu­tions are those that com­bine a strate­gi­cally sharp piece of brand think­ing with brand design that truly and deeply con­nects that thought with an emo­tion­ally evoca­tive visual.

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07.05.10

Nike’s Bowery Stadium — A Fresh Creative Brand Space

Last month the lat­est Nike Sta­dium loca­tion opened its doors – the Bow­ery Sta­dium in New York City.
Nike Sta­di­ums reflect the trend of many brands (espe­cially those in retail) towards what we call soft brand mes­sag­ing. Unlike tra­di­tional adver­tis­ing whose func­tion is to deliver a sharp propo­si­tion that com­mu­ni­cates a spe­cific offer, soft brand mes­sag­ing is all about giv­ing peo­ple a brand expe­ri­ence to cre­ate a pos­i­tive emo­tional bond with a brand. Brands we care about, brands we believe are a reflec­tion of the way we wish our­selves to be seen own a dis­tinctly unfair advan­tage when it com­ers to mak­ing con­scious and uncon­sid­ered buy­ing deci­sions. Whether buy­ing a $5 burger to a $500k sports car, when it comes to the heart rul­ing the head, those brands we love hold the whip hand.

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07.02.10

Brand Authenticity – Real or Fake

Recently on a trip to Europe I had the plea­sure of hear­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion by Amer­i­can author and strat­egy con­sul­tant Joseph Pine on authen­tic­ity in brand­ing. Pine has co-authored sev­eral books in the brand space. Namely the ‘Expe­ri­ence Econ­omy’ and his more recent offer­ing sim­ply titled ‘Authen­tic­ity’.

Luigi Zuckermann sign

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