2012 will continue to be a tough environment for retailers. Consumers have no reason to throw off their new found sense of caution and propensity to put saving ahead of spending. If anything 2012 may produce even more reasons for them to retreat with some recent news of the financial services sector spruiking the need to lay off workers, and a sense that flat retail sales is placing huge pressure on retailers to reduce costs.
Deck the Halls with Branded Beach Towels
Australian newspaper ‘The Age’ recently published an article on Corporate Gift Giving in their Executive Style lift-out in time for Christmas. For most companies, this gesture of Christmas giving for staff and for clients tends to follow an age-old path of logos on golf towels. As an expensive exercise, the opportunity to create indelible brand gestures at this time of year is often missed. The Age asked Truly Deeply Founder David Ansett for his perspective on this seasonal sticky question.
You can check the article written by Sylvia Pennington on-line here: Merry Christmas here’s an iPad.
A Tantalizing Brand Challenge
Melbourne is one of the great food cities of the world. Big statement I know – but having traveled through more than two dozen cities in different countries, through Europe and Asia over the last couple of years, I feel I’m well positioned to make the call. What a challenge then to create a brand each year for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.
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.
Leveraging the Brand Magic of Art.
For many brands, especially those who are business to consumer/customer brands, the great challenge is to creatively engage with your audience.
Retail Branding in Living Colour
McDonald’s in the US is set to launch an in-store TV channel featuring; local school sports, movie previews and heartwarming human interest stories
Two Bronze Awards and Two Highly Commended Awards.
On Friday October 14th the winners for the 2011 Melbourne Advertising and Design Club (MADC) Awards were announced. The annual MADC Awards celebrate excellence across a range of advertising and design categories, encompassing print, radio, television and ambient media.
Street art of Continental Europe.
On my recent trip to Europe the rich quality and diversity of the street art caught my eye. In my mind there’s no doubt that stencil, spray and paste-up art has matured to become it’s own credible art form. The visual language of the art I saw was hugely varied in form, style and message. I snapped a stack of what I came across and hope you enjoy it.
Happy Birthday kikki.k
One of my all-time, absolute favorite retail brands; kikki.k celebrated their tenth birthday this week. For those unlucky enough to not have a kikki.k store in your city, the brand create truly beautiful stationery with the promise of making the world a well organized and elegant place to live. I got along to the tenth birthday bash on Wednesday night, and as always Kristina and the kikki gang pulled-it-off with typical style and grace.
Online provides yet another shift in the Competitive Paradigm for Fashion Retailers
Online fashion retail offers are nothing new, traditional bricks and mortar fashion retailers have been contending with this online competition for years now, and on the whole are continuing to refine their own online brand strategies to manage this competitive business risk. But my experience has been that the traditional fashion retailershave always done-so from a perspective of holding the advantage. But that advantage is disappearing right from under their noses.
