Archive for the ‘Thinking’ Category

12.02.11

The Manual is dead. Long live the Brand.

brand developers
A Guest Brand Expert Post by Czech designer and founder of OpenBrand.com, Lumir Kaj­nar.
Have you ever tried to count how many peo­ple have an impact on the cor­po­rate iden­tity of your com­pany? By their work, by mak­ing small deci­sions, but also by their unaware­ness of the con­text? Each mem­ber of the “brand­ing team” brings their own per­spec­tive to every project. Behind every piece of mar­ket­ing or expres­sion of the brand — whether it’s a busi­ness card, a shop assis­tant, or an adver­tis­ing cam­paign — I see hun­dreds of peo­ple work­ing together in the name of the brand.
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11.02.11

Brand Management: Billabong controlling its destiny

Surf­ing brand Bill­abong Inter­na­tional is mov­ing down stream into retail to bet­ter con­trol how its prod­ucts are sold. An increas­ing trend amongst the large retail chains is to increase the pro­por­tion of mer­chan­dise they sell under their own brands. Brands like Bill­abong can either cop it sweet and sit back and let their share of floor space and sales decline or they can take steps to con­trol their own des­tiny. It is pleas­ing to see that Bill­abong has opted for the lat­ter. Bill­abong is increas­ingly seek­ing to make retail acqui­si­tions as a way of gain­ing greater con­trol to their route to mar­ket. Last year they acquired the Cal­i­for­nia based RVCA brand,  the West 49 retail chain in Canada, Surf Dive’n’ Ski  and Jetty Surf in Aus­tralia. Like­wise Bill­abong is invest­ing to build its online sales, which cur­rently makes up 3% of their revenue.

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10.19.11

Retailers join in the Sustainability Forum

The 21st Cen­tury has brought with it dras­tic changes in the busi­ness envi­ron­ment with con­sumers and busi­nesses alike becom­ing increas­ingly con­cerned with the sus­tain­abil­ity of nature’s resources. Many argue that this shift has been the result of an increased aware­ness of global cli­mate change, largely due to Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning film ‘An Incon­ve­nient Truth’, and the intro­duc­tion of polit­i­cal poli­cies sur­round­ing sus­tain­abil­ity. These ini­tia­tives have impacted the way in which con­sumers view their pur­chases and influ­ence their end deci­sions and have inevitably influ­enced the way in which mar­keters must operate.

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10.10.11

Silverwater Resort and Emaar: brand plagiarism or coincidence?

I just expe­ri­enced a strange case of brand deja-vu on a mini break at Sil­ver­wa­ter Resort. I was struck by the sim­i­lar­ity of the Sil­ver­wa­ter Resort brand to that of Emaar Prop­er­ties.

The resort is in an idyl­lic spot over­look­ing Phillip Island. It has a lot going for it, espe­cially if you have kids. But the sim­i­lar­ity of the brand iden­tity made me feel like the whole expe­ri­ence was not authentic.

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10.03.11

Re-think of Retail Paradigm Required

The world of retail­ing is chang­ing and the bricks & mor­tar ‘only’ strat­egy is truly under threat. What is required from retail­ers is a new par­a­digm based on inte­grated retail­ing. That is where phys­i­cal shops are sim­ply part of the offer to cus­tomers – a new men­tal model that actively pur­sues online as well as off-line sales envi­ron­ments. An approach that seeks to use tech­nol­ogy to enhance shop­per expe­ri­ences, that gives con­sumers the choice as to where and how they research and con­sum­mate their purchases.

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09.27.11

Going nude; a clever brand gesture

For gen­er­a­tions, par­ents have been try­ing to get their kids to eat health­ier food. Is it pos­si­ble that one brand has finally found a way to make it hap­pen, at least at school?

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09.15.11

Coles, clever brand stretch or caught red-handed diluting their brand?

The famous and annoy­ing catch cry, “down, down” and the big red fin­ger might actu­ally carry far greater sym­bol­ism for Coles and their rep­u­ta­tion than they realise. As the brand becomes more elas­tic and focuses on ‘stretch, stretch how far can we stretch’, could this strat­egy actu­ally bring the brand down or is Coles set­ting a new bench­mark for Aus­tralian brands?

Com­pa­nies are always seek­ing new ways to grow and expand but when brands start to develop a big­ger range of prod­ucts, there is a dan­ger of stretch­ing the brand too far. Exten­sions can have a knock on effect that con­fuses the brand’s iden­tity, its cus­tomers and can poten­tially leave the brand open to attack from more focussed competitors.

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09.02.11

What Brands & the World can learn from Children

brand agency Melbourne

A great TED talk from Child prodigy Adora Svi­tak. Adora says the world needs “child­ish” think­ing: bold ideas, wild cre­ativ­ity and espe­cially opti­mism. Kids’ big dreams deserve high expec­ta­tions, she says, start­ing with grownups’ will­ing­ness to learn from chil­dren as much as to teach. There are some great, big ideas in this clip - check it after the jump…

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