Recently, I discovered an inspiring short animated film – A Cautionary Tail. It is a 14 minutes film about a girl born with a tail that expresses her emotions. As a child, her parents celebrate their daughter’s eloquent, athletic appendage, and her tail inspires magical make-believe adventures with her friends. As she grows up, however, the young woman faces pressure to fit in, and must choose between conformity and self-expression. Read the rest of this entry »
Stand Back, its the Multi Proposition Super Brand
The first thing I have to admit is we didn’t create this brand – it’s not one of ours, but what the hell – something this cool should be celebrated all the same. And a truly clever bit of brand building it is too. Who Gives A Crap is a new entrant into the established toilet paper category, a category typically viewed as a commodity with undifferentiated product offerings. And-yet against this less than inspiring backdrop we have an inspiring challenger brand with the DNA to make a significant splash in the market.
Evolving and taking brand ownership of being the best country bakery is a big call, but doing it in not just one town but across multiple locations is quite a feat.
Beechworth Bakery has done just that. Leveraging their provenance and heritage from the small picturesque gold-rush town in North East Victoria, Beechworth is now the quintessential country bakery that is a welcome addition to many towns.
If you have been following the recent media coverage of the pending release of the new book by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook, titled Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead – you will have been witnessing the core ingredients to a very good social cause marketing case study.
Proving the Digital Experts Wrong
Much has been written over the last few years about the role of digital marketing and social media for business, yet the subject remains one viewed by most executives with skepticism bordering on derision. Like any other new channel to market, there are plenty of myths and equal measures of hype surround the subject, with an as-yet poorly defined roadmap for how companies might navigate the medium for commercial benefit. This conundrum becomes less clear again when applied to the B2B categories and professional services firms in particular. Our own experience four years ago was consistently sage advice from the experts that social media simply wouldn’t work as a driver of new business inquiries for a professional services firm in our field of brand strategy and design. There was a firm view expressed to us that the nature of the projects we worked-on, and the investment required which is typically in the tens of thousands of dollars meant that there was little benefit in investigation the resources and budget required to implement an ongoing social media strategy. Thankfully we had a firm belief that this commonly held view was incorrect, and our experience with social media as a business acquisition tool has proven to be a positive one in every sense of the word.
At Truly Deeply, we work across a wide range of industries from food and beverage to real estate and everything in between. As a result, we are constantly looking for ways for our clients to differentiate themselves, and to help them add value to their customers. For many clients, we look outside the box to come up with brand gestures that help them stand apart while still remaining true to their brand’s essence and broader beliefs and values. In our search for inspiration, we came across a little brand called Corkers which struck a cord.
There has been a little bit of talk recently online with respect to Google+ after it was revealed last week that a third of all Google employees haven’t updated their Google+ account in the last month.
Valentines day, a day of worldwide polarisation, singles vs couples. A day when my Facebook newsfeed is hijacked by proud photos from those who have cleaned up in the V-Day stakes, and bitter statuses from those who haven’t. Come on guys, you aren’t fooling anyone with your ‘so glad I’m not in a relationship today’ and ‘I hate roses anyway’ posts. But regardless of whether this day brings you blissful reminders of your loved-up happiness or seems to be spitefully rubbing your face in the fact that you’re going solo, you have to admit it can definitely be a little cringe-worthy at times. So, in a refreshing move to bring Valentines Day back from the brink of being nothing more than a tacky cliché, some brands are breaking the mould and trying to capitalize on this commercial extravaganza in new and unconventional ways.
Last year we had our first experience using accommodation sourcing site Airbnb when we rented a studio apartment in New York for two weeks. Airbnb is an online portal https://www.airbnb.com.au/ that matches travellers with individuals who wish to rent out their spaces. Everything from houses, to apartments to a bedroom. It was a great experience, a very stylish studio in West Village, rented from a very helpful and friendly young woman who travels a lot for work, and therefore has a vacant apartment to rent.
Upcycling is an artisanal approach to textile waste that sees the design mind truly at work. What is being thrown away into landfill is often beautiful and usable for designers who can approach such materials in a creative and transformational manner.
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