MUJI is a highly successful Japanese retail company that sells a wide variety of household and consumer goods. What is interesting is their ‘non brand’ market positioning. They decree for themselves the status of not being a brand, but paradoxically it is the great clarity they have around who they are and who they are not that makes them such a distinctive and compelling brand.

MUJI works very hard at claiming its non brand positioning. It’s name was derived from the first part of Mujirushi Ryohin, which translates into ‘No Brand Quality Goods’. It’s website declares in the very first sentence ‘… MUJI is not a brand.’ Instead it claims that MUJI creates products with a view toward global consumption of the future. That it does not create products that lure customers into believing that ‘this is the best’ or ‘I must have this’. Instead they like their customers to feel the rational sense of satisfaction that comes not with this is the best, but this is enough. Best becomes enough.

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Branding for Local Government
We’ve been recently working with a regional Victorian Council, over the years we’ve worked with Local governments all over Victoria, from the City of Melbourne to the Moira Shire Council. We’re working developing their brand, evolving the brand mark, creating a visual language. and creating a brand system, they can use to easily communicate on brand. It reminded me of the key steps we’ve taken over the years, with our Local Government clients, that have delivered a successful branding project. I thought it’d be good to share them.

Working with Local Government has it’s challenges, but so does working with any organisation. They have no market, no competitors, you can’t pick another council to empty your bins or maintain your park. But they have a vital need to successfully communicate their brand to all their constituents. They need to clearly communicate where every dollar of rates has been spent. These are my 5 keys for successfully branding a Local Government, but they could apply to any organisation.

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A Game of Tennis and More.
I’ve been lucky enough over the past year to have had several truly once in a lifetime experiences, the most recent of which was a hit of tennis with the Super Brat, John McEnroe. For the sake of my reputation as a man of the world I’ll continue to pretend playing it cool but did I mention I had a hit of tennis with John McEnroe? Now I’m not much of a tennis player – I’ve maybe dusted-off the racquet once over the last decade – but fortunately I wasn’t there to provide a demonstration. In-fact the hit-up and eight games took just 40 minutes and seemed to be over as quickly as they’d begun. It was only the next day as my adrenaline eventually subsided that it occurred to me I’d not only been given a lesson in tennis, but also in branding.

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We all love a unique brand expression and I can’t help but acknowledge one of the most remarkable brand expressions I’ve seen in recent times (albeit dating back to the late 1970s) from one of the most iconic and well know fashion brands in the world – Gucci.

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The Point of Point-of-sale
Recently we wrote about adidas’ augmented reality campaign for their Originals product line. Augmented reality is fast becoming a ‘must-have’ for any brand designing an integrated campaign – especially those with a customer interface such as retail. Lego has recently launched an augmented reality point-of-sale system that blows traditional POS out of the water. We’ve coined the term ‘Brandticipation’ – which describes a sense of heightened anticipation created by a great brand experience or a brand’s reputation. If the role of point-of-sale is to engage the customer at the point of purchase and create brandticipation to positively influence their decision to buy, Lego’s new augmented reality POS must be one of the snappiest examples anywhere in the world.

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Standing-out In-store
With Brand Design for retail it’s so much about the customer experience in-store. Creating unique and compelling brand theater in your stores is as much about the merchandising as it is about the actors (your staff) and the environment. As retailers continuously look for a new edge in store design, technology continues to inspire  fresh and potentially rich opportunities to create remarkable in-store customer experiences.

Two remarkable examples we’ve found are the interactive mirror by Alpay Kasal of Lit Studios and Sam Ewen of Interference Inc and the digital ship window from Russian designers Supreme.su.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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

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