While there are many awards that recognise individual accomplishments in design, the World Design Capital (WDC) is unique as it aims to focus on the broader essence of design’s impact on urban spaces, economies and citizens. The award or designation provides a distinctive opportunity for cities to feature their accomplishments in attracting and promoting innovative design as well as highlight their successes in urban revitalisation strategies.
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.
The day of just having beautifully attired mannequins is over. The digital world is opening up a whole new frontier for retailers. New and wonderful ways to engage customers and showcase products. The possibilities are immensely exciting, but the resource requirements challenging. The digital world is a two edged sword. A window to an imaginative and captivating domain, but equally leaving you looking like yesterday’s brand if you do not creatively unlock the magic of what is available.
The 21st Century has brought with it drastic changes in the business environment with consumers and businesses alike becoming increasingly concerned with the sustainability of nature’s resources. Many argue that this shift has been the result of an increased awareness of global climate change, largely due to Al Gore’s Nobel Prize-winning film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and the introduction of political policies surrounding sustainability. These initiatives have impacted the way in which consumers view their purchases and influence their end decisions and have inevitably influenced the way in which marketers must operate.
Grazin’, the USA’s first Animal Welfare-approved restaurant recently opened in a ’50s diner in Hudson, NY. Everything served in the restaurant comes from family farms that raise livestock humanely outdoors and pasture feed the animals, and nearly everything comes from farms within an 11-mile radius. The restaurant opened on the first of this month in a shuttered 1950s diner in Hudson, NY, a town known for its farms and antique shops that draws regular crowds of NYC-based weekenders.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about retail brand loyalty and what it means to brand owners, employees and retailers. Brand loyalty is a strange thing, you can’t hold it or visibly see it, but the value that should be placed on it, for any brand, is paramount.
Brand Loyalty. Have you got it?
The 2011 Oracle World Retail Awards taking place this week in Berlin marks a very special moment for one of Australia’s hardest working retailers, The Salvation Army.
Business literature keeps advocating the need for businesses to pursue best practice. To aspire to achieve against a set of metrics that are considered optimum performance in a given category. However, the extent to which brands seek to identify best practice performers amongst their competitors, and then match them or better them on those measures, ultimately produces sameness and lack of differentiation in the market.
Truly Deeply Brand continued Social Responsibility
Last Wednesday night saw us at Truly Deeply kick off of our Tenth Annual Art with Heart charity art show. This year we had 40 artists who generously donated a whopping 90 paintings/artworks to raise money for Swags For Homeless. Swags For Homeless are a Melbourne based not-for-profit organisation that provides Backpack Beds to the homeless – an interim crisis measure (emergency relief) for those turned away from shelters.
Over the past couple of years we have been witnessing the demise of the Qantas brand, with its business strategy dictating the brand’s terms of engagement. Every public gesture that the business has made, has reflected an unwavering commitment to taking cost out of its operations. There has been scant regard for the brand or the customer.
