In 2011, Twitter’s influence in shaping brand reputations continued but most content was driven by the public. This year, Twitter’s new Facebook-style brand pages promise to provide more opportunities for brands to customise and highlight content.
This also creates opportunities for brands to take Twitter parties to whole new level as HP and Intel showed us this week.
We always love to share a great brand gesture, especially when it adds to the brand experience for the audience and creates a mutually beneficial brand partnership.
Harrods of London and Hermès have developed a great brand gesture that unites two brands beautifully as well as the online and retail experience worlds.
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.
Remember Nokia?
The brand that was on the brink of extinction is back in the spotlight with a new way to deliver on their brand promise of ‘connecting people’. This week, Nokia launched a clever brand gesture to provide free Wi-Fi to Londoners and visitors to the British capital. Is this just what the brand needs or is it too little, too late?
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
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.
