A great reminder that often when it comes to brand communication – the simple ideas are often the best. In a wonderful brand gesture, the owners of this bike shop north of Berlin attached around 120 bicycles to the facade of their store to draw attention to their business. Simple.
Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
Following on from our post ‘Coffee Avenue – A Great Brand Experience on Wheels’, Kelvin Natural Slush Co., the brainchild of yet another corporate refugee turned foodie entrepreneur, just recently hit the streets
in NYC, offering a more sophisticated version of a childhood favorite — the slushie.
In an effort to adultify the slushie experience, this premium, all natural brand offers “more sophisticated,
less sweet” flavours like Spicy Ginger, Tangy Citrus, and Green & Black Tea, to which you add any number of fresh-fruit purées…and to really take it to a dessert-worthy beverage add a scoop of ice cream for a slushie float.
They also apparently make good mixers, but you’ll have to supply your own booze.
Improv Everywhere is a New York based collective that organise and execute awesome acts of street theatre. There brand tag line really describes it best, ‘We Cause Scenes’. Whether it’s a complex set up like the Starwars Subway Car above or the Ghostbusters homage, Who You Gonna Call? or something altogether simpler like High Five Escalator.
A new brand of coffee experience is warming the chilly city Brussels. Coffee Avenue is a beautifully restored VW that braves the chilly Belgium weather bringing hot drinks on wheels to warm the hearts. What better metaphor can there be for a brand with it’s proposition ‘baked-in’ – or should that be ‘roasted-in’. A great example of how small brands can be big on personality – creating a compelling reason for customers to flock to them, enjoy the experience and form deep, loyal connections. Check the pics below, all-in-all a wonderfully compelling little brand experience.
Small Brands, Big Personality.
We regularly bang-on about the advantage that small brands have over big brands when it comes to personality. Small businesses often come with a natural sense of personality driven by the founder and their personal style. As businesses get larger and layers of management and staff are required, often brand personality is the first casualty. The problem is that for many brands, personality is what makes them so attractive to customers, it provides an immediate emotional connection, which can be enough to over-ride event the strongest of functional messages. Recently I came across this solid-gold example of a small business leveraging it’s authentic personality to stand-out from the pack.
The big wait is over. In September 2009 Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean announced the call for tenders from creative agencies to assist with the task of enhancing Australia’s brand overseas. In the last week we have seen the launch of a new visual identity for Brand Australia, created by Re, a small group of designers working out of M&C Saatchi’s Sydney office.
Mr Crean said, “We want a clear vision of how Australia should be seen by the rest of the world in the 21st century. We will be looking for agencies to build a contemporary national brand – one which captures the essence of Australia – not just a great place to visit but a great place to live, work, and invest – a trusted trading partner and a great place to pursue an education. This is not just about a slogan and it goes beyond the on-going promotion of Australia as a global tourist destination – a reputation that is well established. Building Brand Australiais about promoting Australia as a nation producing quality products and services across a diverse field of activities. We need to get the message out that we are an innovative nation and a quality supplier to the world of key products such as clean energy and clean food.”
So with Mr Crean’s aspiration in mind what do you think of Australia’s new brand mark?
A Truly Deeply Brand Identity Case Study
A few years back Deakin University came to us for help to re-launch their student union association. New legislation was changing the landscape of student unions and DUSA understood they needed to create a new relevance to the student body on their multiple campuses. DUSA is a student organisation which is run by students of Deakin University, for students of Deakin University. DUSA members study off campus and on, and include undergraduates, postgraduates and international students. What DUSA needed was a brand identity that would help position the organisation in a way that connected with the students. As student union membership became optional for the first time, DUSA found themselves competing against brands and other interests for the students loyalty.
Heritage is great thing for a brand to have, it endows the brand with a believability and reality that’s nearly impossible to fake. When creating a brand we always try to create a brand story, it’s the first step in generating a heritage. A good brand story doesn’t have to be real, but it does have to be authentic, what’s the difference you may ask?
Working in the creative industry (in fact any industry for that matter) the one question that always seems to crop up at the start of any project is “what’s your budget?” Just once we’d love the client to say “hell, I don’t know – whatever it takes” but those clients and those budgets are few and far between. The ‘budget’ question is not without merit. If we know how much we have to spend (or don’t have to spend) then we can direct our creative juices towards the appropriate solutions. However, sometimes I wonder whether an awareness of budget restricts the creative brainstorm activity.
