A video featuring tennis star Roger Federer that plays on our collective fascination with “real or fake” hit the web earlier this week and has quickly gone viral, accumulating more than 700,000 views as of this morning.
Archive for August, 2010
Brand Theatre of the Highest Order
Passengers on a recent Lufthansa flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt experienced the type of brand gesture most businesses can only dream of.
The Critical Role of Authenticity in Brand Sponsored Content
Just the other day LA advertising gun Miry Whitehill and I were swapping thoughts on a new content-based social media campaign for Levis.
What a huge project, with a nice, soft brand ownership from Levis, but something just wasn’t quite striking the right note for me.
Read the rest of this entry »
08.17.10
I Feel Out of Place
A photo I snapped early one Saturday morning in our local park.
I was wondering what came first the chair or the message.
And then fell-in love with the meaning.
I hope you enjoy this sight as much as I did.
Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter
Enjoyer of Unlikely Messages
Ripe is a testament to a richly talented generation of new Australian designers.
Heroes. Influences. Dreams. This book does not look back. Instead, it is a celebration of the potential of those who will be the heroes of tomorrow’s generation of designers. The book is about today’s young talent. Be inspired by their work. Rest in the comfort that Australia’s design future is in the right hands. The designers featured have much in common. All aspire to reach a level of unsurpassed quality, all have established themselves as some of the future leaders within their given discipline and all of them provide us with inspirational work. This vibrant and innovative book charts exciting new directions in Australian design.
Nice Book, Nice Rap, Nice Company.
08.16.10
Unlikely Type, a Brand Design Hero
The Typographic Hero of every Brand Identity
An interesting fact I was reading somewhere recently– did you know the most common typeface in brand identity design across the world and across every market is Helvetica (or it’s ugly step brother Arial)? Not only is Helvetica the most common typeface, but it is-so by a country mile. That alone should be cause enough for every self respecting brand identity designer to shy away from the font like a vampire from daylight.
When designing the visual language of brand identities we always pay particular attention to the typefaces we select to represent our clients. Imagine a world where every piece of type design was carefully considered, craftily engineered, and uniquely beautiful. “Preposterous! There aren’t enough typefaces in the world” I hear you shout. Perhaps, but perhaps it is more a case of there not being enough fonts on your designer’s hard drive, or enough hours in the day for the world’s designers to spend crafting unique typoheavenly concoctions. Spurred-on by this thought I raided my personal photo library for examples of unique type design from the most unlikely of sources. I’ve long been aware of my design infliction which is likely to see me on my family holiday zooming in on a piece of retro signage typography, whilst the rest of the world is facing the other way and shooting picture postcard shots of the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, or Trafalgar Square. Sad but true, just ask my wife.
Store Type_Barcelona_2009
So here is this rogues gallery of unlikely type design. Each image an uncompromised, unhelveticast, uncommonly curious, sideshow of type design.
08.13.10
A very Heineken Brand Experience
What better way to claim your authenticity than to share your heritage with customers in an interactive and engaging manner. Let them play with your brand in a way that is both fun and informative. Claim your place in the category by sharing the highs and lows of your journey. And if you happen to do it from the ‘place’ of your origins you add significantly to the authenticity of who you are and what you are about.
Have you ever asked the question “why is there no Ferrari motorbike?” well one designer certainly has. Israeli industrial designer Amir Glinik has come up and conceptualised an incredible Ferrari superbike using a modified engine from the Ferrari Enzo supercar. Amir’s design is influenced by the vintage and modern Ferrari projects and his idea is to produce a practical machine – not in any way a “sci-fi” future ride.
Following the trend of pop-up brand experiences, a whole bunch of New York City residents spent the weekend, cavorting in three unused dumpsters converted into micro swimming pools as a way of taking the third annual Summer Streets festival to the streets. The pop-up pools were set-up on Park Avenue this weekend for eager swimmers to enjoy and to get tongues wagging with some a-grade brand storytelling.
It all Starts with Brand Clarity
Like all of the hardest working brand communication campaigns, this little gem for Mitchum from the US has at its core a clear brand proposition hard-wired with with customer benefit. Mitchum is an antiperspirant brand with a well defined proposition — America’s Hardest Working Antiperspirant. As with all brands — having absolute clarity around their brand strategy — what you stand for and your differentiated proposition provide the basis for creative communication campaigns that work harder and smarter than the rest. Mitcham took their ‘Hardest Working’ proposition and leveraged it into an integrated brand marketing campaign to find America’s hardest workers. However, not happy to sit on the strength of the idea, it is the quality of the execution of the Mitchum campaign that have delivered on the promise of the brand.
