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.

Twitter parties are like virtual gatherings that have become another popular tool within the marketing mix. With the use of a specific hashtag (#) fans are encouraged to join in on the conversation around a particular topic or event. Now, with live streaming, the party takes the virtual reality one step closer.

To show us the future of Twitter, HP and Intel teamed up with Tiësto, one of the world’s biggest DJs, to host the first live Twitter concert.

The concert was streamed simultaneously on the HP and Intel twitter brand pages from an exclusive party for the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Fans were encouraged to interact with each other and share the experience – as if they were there.

Video streaming by Ustream

If you missed it, you can see the concert on HP and Intel’s Twitter pages for the next day or so, or watch it on Ustream.

Rob Pietsch, Twitter’s director of West Coast sales, told Mashable, “HP came to us with the idea and we couldn’t be more excited to hear how the company and Intel will be using their Twitter brand pages to reach out to the public and become destination sites. It’s a first for us, and we expect in the future that more companies will integrate streaming video into their pages.”

Tiësto added: “I am always connecting with my fans directly through Twitter and other social media, so this was an exciting way to help launch the ‘In the Booth’ series and do something special for my fans. One of the key reasons to collaborate with technology giants such as HP and Intel on my new show is the chance to try new things and go after big ideas.”

The concert is also part of a series on YouTube called “In the Booth” that looks at Tiësto’s life and his impact on the electronic dance movement.

For HP and Intel, this is a great way for them to interact with techno savvy Tiësto fans across the world. It is also a good example of brand partnerships that work with technology and dance music a natural fit. The result is a nice brand gesture with a boost to brand recognition in a very short period.

HP and Intel will no doubt be hoping they can harness this opportunity by growing their brand ‘likes’ so they can continue dialogue and build an ongoing connection with fans.

HP and Intel are among the first of 21 brands including Dell, Disney, JetBlue, Nike and Paramount Pictures have access to the new Twitter brand pages. However, Twitter has promised to make it more widely available in the next few months.

You may not have the budget of HP or Intel, but there are still plenty of smart brand opportunities to use Twitter and other social media to ‘punch above your weight’, build deeper connections with your audience and strengthen your brand.

If you’d like to chat about ideas to grow your brand in 2012, we’d love to hear from you.
Michael Hughes
Director of Brand Strategy

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.

Throughout December, Harrods is hosting an exclusive Hermès in-store experience in their ‘Room of Luxury 2′ to celebrate 20 years of brand partnership and renew a bit of interest in Hermès’ scarfs.

In a new take on the department store makeover, Harrods have created a pop-up Hermès scarf shop where customers are encouraged to come and experience the magic of the Hermès scarf and brand.

Specialist stylists are in store to offer expert advice and demonstrate the many different ways a Hermès’ silk scarf can be worn. Once the fabulous new scarf look is created, customers can then be capture the moment in the ‘Paris Mon Ami’ photo studio.

The brand gesture is a clever sales tactic that not only highlights the positive impact a Hermès scarf can make to a woman’s appearance but it also reinvigorates the interest in scarfs as a fashion accessory, as we are all desperately looking for Christmas gift ideas. It also helps Harrods attract people into the store and showcase a their unique retail experience.

The in store promotion also links beautifully to the Hermès online campaign and their interactive online game ‘Scarf in the city’. The website encourages participants to upload photos of their favourite Hermes scarf and showcase unique and interesting ways they like to wear it, in the city.

Although inspired by Carrie and the ‘sex’ girls in Paris, the site promises to showcase scarfs and cities from all around the world. To see more click here.

While the northern hemisphere is using their scarfs to keep warm, the challenge is out there for now our Aussie girls to showcase the benefits of summer scarfs in our cities!

If you’ve seen some great brand gestures and partnerships or you’d like some help in building them for your brand, we’d love to hear from you!

Michael Hughes
Director of Brand Strategy

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.

Having worked with a few of both over the years, in my experience Chefs are every bit as creative as designers – so developing a brand communications campaign for the Festival would be a brand brief with great expectations.

The 2012 Melbourne Food & Wine Festival which will run from the 2nd to the 21st of March is celebrating their 20th anniversary next year. So how to recognize and thank the food leaders who have driven the success of the event over the years whilst also creating a buzz for the upcoming festival?

The answer is Love.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With this ‘Love Ambush’, the Festival have created a viral brand property they can leverage into a strong, engaging broader campaign. A tasty piece of branding.

Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
Retail Brand Designer & TV aficionado
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter

Visit the Festival site here: 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?

After struggling to stay on the consideration radar, this seems like a smart move by Nokia. It adds value to the brand experience and is generating significant attention for the company. In the UK, almost every major channel as well as specialist technology and marketing publication is talking about Nokia again.

‘The Telegraph’ reports that the service works on any device including laptops and tablets. It does not give preferential treatment to any network, operating platform or brand.

While other companies run similar services in London, the appeal of Nokia’s service is that it is free and for everyone. No subscription is required. You can simply search and select it within coverage areas and then surf without giving any personal information. Nokia is hoping that this grand gesture will re-ignite interest in how Nokia ‘connects people’, address their ailing market share and in particular, promote their first Windows-based phone, the ‘Lumia 800’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ironically, most people using the service are probably using the very devices (including the iPhone and BlackBerry) that have helped diminish the Nokia brand.

But Nokia is not giving up. Craig Hepburn, Director of Social and Digital Marketing at Nokia, told ‘Marketing Magazine’, “The service is also intended to get consumers to share moments.” If this works, it might succeed in getting people to engage with the Nokia brand again (and a whole new generation who have never heard of Nokia).

However, the real benefit for Nokia might be in the data they collect. Nokia confirmed to ‘The Inquirer’, “no personal information will be collected, only information about which devices are being used to access the internet, how long the service is used and the type of web sites are being accessed”.

For a company that has struggled to keep up with the likes of Apple, maybe this live consumer insight is just what they need to help get their brand back into a leadership position.

As more of us become addicted to our smart phones, spending significant time using them to do everything from emailing to watching television, the data costs are becoming significant (especially when roaming). This is a genuine brand gesture that may endear Nokia to smart phone users again.

Unfortunately, like many previous Nokia loyalists, I’ve move on, several years ago. Attracting iPhone users like me back, is a big ask. But if you’re an Android user or looking for a windows mobile phone – maybe it will appeal to you.

Nokia will probably never regain its handset leadership position, but its future could still be about ‘connecting people’. It might just require a shift from ‘providing the handset’ to ‘enabling the connection’.

The London service is provided in conjunction with Wi-Fi provider Spectrum Interactive. The trial phase will finish at the end of December. However, if successful, Nokia plans to add 1,000 hotspots around London, and may eventually roll out in other major cities around the world, reports ‘wired’.

I wait with anticipation for them to ‘connect’ us here in Oz.

Michael Hughes
Brand Strategy Director, Truly Deeply

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.

Billabong is not alone in needing to re-think its strategic direction in terms of its consumer interface. For a long time brands have been sensitive of creating channel conflict and ever so respectful to the large retailers. But the respect is increasingly not being returned , brands need to seize the initiative back. Brand management needs to in fact be just that, brand management. Online represents the most obvious space to be managing more intensively. Why wouldn’t a big brand like Billabong not wish to offer the most compelling, engaging and intuitive online offering in its market category?

In terms of a retail footprint the investment required is significant, and for many manufacturing and wholesaling brands beyond their financial means or scale to create their own retail chain. For those retailers there is a need to be a little more creative. Why not seek to joint venture in a retail business? Seek out a number of complimentary brands and underwrite a shared dedicated retailing arm. Yes, it is difficult finding partners of the right size and same motivation, but they are there in many categories. When there is so much focus on co-creating with your customers, why not co-create with your peer band owners.

If your key major retailers are losing the spirit of collaboration and pursuing a more intense self interest position, reinvent your market interface, at the very least creatively explore the options.

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist

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.

Specialist branding agencies like us at Truly Deeply provide this very skill set of creating memorable and engaging brand expressions for businesses, but not every organization has the budget, imagination in-house, or  a talented bunch of brand folk like us at the end of the phone. For those brands, it’s worth considering whether there are opportunities already in the market just waiting to be leveraged.

‘Unwanted Visitor: Portrait of Wildfire‘ is an art installation created by the very talented Herb Williams.

The notable thing about Herb’s work from a brand communications perspective is that it is made-of hundreds of thousands of crayons. Herb apparently has an account with Crayola (kinda makes alot of sense), his crayon brand of choice.

When creating a piece like this one, Herb orders each colour of crayon necessary from the range, and they come individually packaged, 3,000 crayons to a case. Herb Williams says hes “is interested in identifying objects that society perceives to associate with one role, and reintroduces them into different subtexts”. His most recent work is ‘Unwanted Visitor: Portrait of Wildfire‘, an outdoor installation on display at the National Ranching Heritage Centre in Lubbock, Texas represents five free standing sculptures which emulate fires and flames – reminiscent of a wildfire. Each of the pieces is composed of crayola crayons. because of their wax content, they begin to melt and change shape in the unpredictable outdoor conditions in which they stand. Their transformation is affected by blowing wind and dry conditions, much like those that affect the intensity and duration of real wildfire.

Being someone who sees the world through brand coloured glasses, I don’t see Herb as a great customer for the Crayola company, I see him as a great ambassador for the Crayola brand, providing a great canvas for brand story telling.

Art has always been a great engager. When brands associate with art in a manner that is authentic to the artist and the art form, they can discover a wonderful connector to their target market – unlike anything they are able to achieve in a traditional, commercial brand communication context. Enjoying these wonderful images of Herb and his team at work creating the art piece, I’m left pondering the opportunity here for Crayola to become Herb’s patron, and for Herb to become a wonderful, artistic director of Crayola’s brand expressions. Imagine the media attraction, not to mention social mediability of a National Crayola Sculpture Contest, with Herb as the figurehead, recognized as the for-father of the art form.

Then step back and wonder, is there an artist somewhere in the world, creating magical imagery with your product? This approach holds equal potential for small brands as well as big. Artists by nature are experimental, a quick Google turned-up artists creating in chocolate, butter, cheese, vegetables, fruit, coffee, even toast with Marmite – and that was just some of the food options. What creative gestures may already exist in the world, just waiting for you to connect your products and your brand to their art form?

Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
Brand Designer, Artist & Huge fan of toast & Marmite art
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter

Images courtesy of and ©Ashton Thornhill
Spotted on designboom.com

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

In the world of entertainment, niche programming is a concept with growing popularity – but when it comes to branding, niche focus is nothing new. What’s fresh here is the combination of the two concepts to create a digital network of exclusive, original content targeted at customers eating in McDonalds’ restaurants.

The real smarts is in the customization of content programming to the specific communities located around the individual store, and will include ‘local news and entertainment features, such as spotlights on upcoming films, albums and TV shows’.

McDonald’s TV is a reflection of brands developing more sophisticated and broader digital strategies Creating one’s own content platform to speak directly with your customers in an environment uncluttered by other media is a real opportunity for brands to forge another level of connection with customers. “People today are using our restaurants differently than they have in the past,” said Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s USA. “They’ve become more of a destination. With McDonald’s restaurants offering Wi-Fi, we’ve become more relevant and contemporary.”

For retailers like McDonald’s, apart of their challenge is to create

McDonalds TV programming will be approached with genuine intent. Word is the brand has signed-up reality TV guru Mark Burnett (Survivor & The Apprentice), BBC America and KABC-TV Eyewitness News are reportedly also on-board to provide content for the new network. The content will be shown in one-hour cycles consisting of installments or “pods” lasting around 20 minutes. Pods will include content such as ‘The McDonald’s Achievers’, profiling local high school and college athletes; ‘Mighty Moms’, focusing on local moms juggling home life with careers; ‘McDonald’s Channel Music News’ featuring content on musical acts, tours and new releases; and a fashion, art, music, night life, lifestyle and culture news program called ‘Vimby’.

Dining areas in each store are to be fitted with high-definition 42- to 46-inch screens visible from 70 percent of eating areas. Audio will be broadcast through the screen and ceiling speakers with quiet zones for those who do not want to see or hear the channel.

Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
Retail Brand Designer & TV aficionado
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter

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.

The first pic (above) was shot in the canals district of Amsterdam, as were many of the pics below.

These two were in a park on a hill above Prague…

The following beauty was snapped in Italy on the streets of Florence.

Pretty sure this one was from Florence as well…

Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
Brand Designer & Part Time Street Art Junkie
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter

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.

As brands go, Kristina and Paul have intuitively built a multi-layered retail offer with wonderful retail spaces creating memorable customer experiences, all delivered by elegant on-brand staff. The creativity of their brand expression is all pervasive, including brilliant brand gestures such as the elegant, stationery dress constructed from the pages of the kikki.k 365 planner.

You can check the making of this magnificent piece of visual brand design in the clip below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enjoy the pics of the bash.

kikki.k founders Kristina Karlsson and Paul Lacey inspiring with Swedish style.

A highlight of the shindig was this visual merchandising feature made entirely from cake, biscuit and prailine – the work of culinary artiste ‘Just Call me Martha‘.

Dave Ansett, Brandamentalist
Retail Brand Designer & Stationery Lover
For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter