Musings on brands and branding
02.17.10
Over the holidays I indulged in a little self expression. The Town Hall Gallery in Hawthorn accepted my proposal to stage my first solo exhibition. I wanted to explore convention and human interaction within an art space. The installation was to cover the gallery floor with canvas and then use pigment to write words and draw pictures directly onto the canvas. As people came into the space they would spread the pigment across the floor.
02.16.10
What Makes a Compelling Brand Story?
In a recent spot created for MercedesBenzTV the German luxury car brand designed a wonderful piece of brand story-telling. As neatly defined by Chip & Dan Heath in their book Made to Stick, the most appealing (’stickiest’) stories are those that are: • Simple; • Unexpected; • Concrete; • Credible; and • Emotional. When you apply these five principles to stories that align with your key messages, you deepen the emotional bond between your customers and your company.
02.15.10
London’s aBuzz About ‘Unpackaged‘
London has long been one of the worlds greatest retail cities – a place where new concepts are launched and sunk every day with barely a ripple to mark their passing. As they say in the classics – ‘If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere…’. Into this buzzing retail landscape, old school food store ‘Unpackaged‘ was quietly launched four years ago as a market stall and over the ensuing years has grown to become a much loved and powerful little retail brand in a charming shop at 42 Amwell Street, London.
02.12.10
What a shocker of a time Toyota has been having! Over 8 million vehicle recalls world wide, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it gets a lot lot worse. Toyota has now moved from an acceleration problem to a braking problem. The number of new recalls may be a lot less, but we are now dealing with the model that they have been backing their future on, the hybrid Prius. Add the Lexus HS 250h to the recall list and we are also playing at the prestigious end of their brand portfolio. The big question is will it put the brakes on the brand?
02.11.10
Your Shoe will be the game Controller
adidas Originals is launching the first Augmented Reality experience in footwear. The adidas Originals AR Game Pack is a set of 5 shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue. When you hold the code in front of your webcam, you’ll gain access to a virtual version of the adidas Originals Neighborhood. Each month between February and April, they’ll launch a new interactive game within the Neighborhood and your shoe will be the game controller. The experience launches next week on February 10th at http://www.adidas.com/originals
02.10.10
Like bumping into an old friend
Currently I’m in the market for a new TV, so last week whilst I was shopping at Victoria Gardens, I popped into Dick Smith to see what they had on offer. On the way in I was greeted by a familiar face, Dick himself. See they’ve yet to rebrand this store with the new identity. As you may know, last year Dick Smith rebranded (some stores anyway). Now much has been said about the design of the new brandmark and I don’t mean to get into the issues it may have or lecture the designers who created it – what I do want to talk about is the brand personality and what I see as a missed opportunity. Seeing the old identity in all its glory reminded me of what has been lost.
02.09.10
The Demise of Unique Brand Design
Sadly these days unique and fresh brand identity design is the exception rather than the rule. As more brands seek to become global, the trend has been for the visual language of their brand images to become more and more similar. Global branding firm Landor’s recent 2010 Trend Forecast agrees that ‘A global homogenization of design is taking place, with design blogs and online portfolios as the major culprits.’ They say ‘Companies need to rely less heavily on testing and research, which tend to nullify originality. Brands can’t just follow the herd and hope to succeed.’ And they predict ‘We’ll find larger companies willing to take risks, break the rules, and appear imperfect. Shaking up the status quo will be considered far better than disappearing into oblivion.’
02.08.10
All Brands Have Meaning
Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to both differentiate themselves from their competitors and to connect with their audience. These brand reinforce their meaning through all of their actions or brand touch points. As a brand agency we help brands to define their meaning and create the brand design for all their communications in order to create a consistent association with these layers of meaning in the minds of their customers.
Apple Vs Microsoft
Today we compare the brand associations of consumer technology icons Apple & Microsoft.
02.05.10
Working for a creative brand agency I’ve always valued remarkable advertising and marketing. One particular stand-out for me was Veet’s “Goodbye Bush” ad that ran as a quarter page in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald Sun in January 2009. The ad was forwarded in a viral frenzy to family, friends (myself being one of them) and colleagues around the globe, by 3pm the same day had made it’s way back in the in-boxes of staff where the campaign had started – Euro RSCG’s Sydney office.
So what was it that made this ad so remarkable it created a life of its own?
02.04.10
Creating Brand Identity for Local Government
Since 1995 we have been continually engaged with defining, designing and communicating brands in the local government space. We’ve worked with more than a dozen different Local Government organisations on hundreds of projects of all sizes and all manner of description. Not-so-long ago we were invited to share that experience with a group of Victorian Marketers who all work within Local Government organisations. We put together a presentation outlining our philosophy to building brands for these unique organisations, it was titled; ‘Br@#nd is not a Four Letter Word. The title was coined as a response to the approach many Local Government organisations take to the branding process – almost too afraid to publicly discuss the project. We worked with one client over many years who implored us to “never use the ‘B’ word in front of the Councillors or Senior Execs.”
