Creating Relevant, Cutting Edge Retail Branding Doesn’t Mean Reinventing the Wheel
In 2012 fashion retail brand Burberry launched their remodeled store at 121 Regent St London. But what at first glance looks like a traditional retail re-fit is -on closer inspection – a blueprint for reinventing a brand experience inspiring for retailers across every category.
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.
Wine critic Huon Hooke in The Age 3/5 suggests that Penfolds Grange may be regarded as Australia’s greatest wine by some, and that the 2008 vintage is one of the best, alongside 2006, 1996 and 1990. In wine terms he says impressive things about Grange – its ability to build great complexity of flavour over many years of cellaring. The top vintages age well for 50 years, and the ’08 will be one of those. According to Huon the full payoff is the wonderful aroma and flavour nuances that build over time, and the 2008 needs 15 to 20 years, minimum. Personally I do not have the time, but this is not about me.
Call it a team sport, but cricket needs big individual brands amongst its players if it wishes to maximise its appeal with the Australian public. Unfortunately, the Australian Cricket Board is inadvertently doing every thing in its power to diminish the impact of individual personal brands. The strategy adopted over the last summer whereby the selectors insisted on a rotation policy, which had players, particularly bowlers, being rested despite strong performances. Regardless of whether it had merit from an injury perspective, it meant that supporters of cricket never really got to establish a connection with the players. This particularly a problem when you have a crop of new players attempting to establish themselves with the team and the public. Read the rest of this entry »
Ever fancied a work place exchange, or a working holiday with all the comforts and conveniences of your studio at home? Or maybe you were wondering when the next airbnb/couch surfing, peer-to-peer consumer brand would focus on studio space rentals… If you have, the “Open Studio Club” is the brand for you. It consists of a free listing website to help you find affordable studio spaces all over the world. Each studio listing specifies whether the space has such things as: internet access, power supply, parking availability, music policy and computer support. The spaces advertised are always affordable and suitable for all types of creative professionals.
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I attended the ANZAC Day dawn service this year. I stood there with 45,000 other people at the shrine of remembrance, as I looked around I realised what a diverse crowd was in attendance. I started to think about the challenge ANZAC Day faces in engaging with a whole nation of people of all ages and ensuring content is relevant to past, present and future. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the few brands who never cease to impress me with their creativity and truly out of the box thinking is Heineken. The team Heineken seem to thrive on doing things differently, breaking convention and it would appear, have a wonderful time doing so. Their latest venture is certainly no exception with the team recently announcing their next Open Design Exploration with a focus on creating a new vision for lounging set to premiere at next year’s Milan Design Week. Read the rest of this entry »
There is much written about the challenging future of department stores in Australia. Both David Jones and Myer are household names with a rich heritage in retailing, but for many years their relevance in an ever-changing retail landscape is being questioned. In more recent years, the impact of the GFC, combined with enhanced competition from online players and strong international fashion retailers opening stores in Australia, means Myer and David Jones are facing significant head winds.
But it is a phenomenon that is not limited to Australia. Around the world the department store concept is being challenged. In March the Financial Review quoted the chief executive of Paris based department store Galeries Lafayette as saying that he was convinced that the department store format faces extinction. What is instead being proclaimed as the future for Galeries Lafayette is to position itself as a ‘multi-specialist lifestyle retailer’. Their aim is to build a house of brands under one roof that offers the best of French and international premium and luxury goods.
Boasting a variety of talent across multiple mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, music and video, Bruno Levy‘s work has been exhibited in some of the America’s most influential museums, from the Guggenheim to the SFMOMA. The Paris-born, NYC-based artist—newly fascinated by cross-cultural differences—spent five months living and working in Kathmandu, Nepal in an effort to bring beauty to a stark landscape foreign to Western influence. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a workshop with management consultant and trainer John Spence for a day. It was stimulating on a number of levels from a business strategy perspective, but it is in the context of personal branding that I wish to share. In personal branding one needs to understand and be committed to owning something by way of expertise. Like business brands, individuals need to have a value proposition that is compelling. Spence suggests that there are 4 P’s to being an expert. They are:
Passion – a need to love what you are doing
Persistence – being prepared to the hard work (a decade or 10,000 hours type thinking)
Practice – deliberate and systematic
Pattern recognition – see data and information insights others don’t see
