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.

Created by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design, the World Design Capital biennial recognizes various cities around the globe for their successful efforts in urban revitalization, primarily accomplished through innovative design.  The 2012 distinction goes to Helsinki—a city Monocle magazine dubbed “most liveable” in 2011—for its continued ability to tap the creative sector as a way of stimulating economic growth. The yearlong celebration will be themed ‘Embedding design into Life’ and will include more than 300 events and programs both in the capital and surrounding cities, including Espoo, Vantaa, Lahti and Kauniainen.

Numerous designers and leaders from Finland’s creative community will take part in the activities, which officially begins on New Year’s Eve with a celebration in Helsinki’s Senate Square before traveling to Milan, Berlin, London, Taipei, Tokyo and St. Petersburg. Offering a glimpse of what’s to come, NYC’s Museum of Arts and Design and Fab will each host a pop-up shop beginning today, stocking a fresh supply of classics and newly-developed Finnish designs. MAD shoppers will only have one week to pick up their favorite items, while the Fab sale will run through to 21 November 2011.

One of the bright young minds that WDC Helsinki will highlight is that of Tuomas Toivonen, an architect and musician known for conceptual writings and spatial installations. Toivonen, along with his Now Office co-founder Nene Tsuboi, will build a public sauna to champion Alvar Aalto’s 1925 manifesto on the need to revive sauna culture in Finland. Launching May 2012, the sauna is actually a self-initiated project they will not only design, but also construct, finance and run. On the blog chronicling its development, the duo explains that they imagine Kultuurisauna “as special social and architectural space, a combination of baths with a public space enabling cultural activity, production and exchange.”

For those who won’t be able to make it to Finland to take part in the public sauna, Toivonen has also designed a limited edition T-shirt for the Fab pop-up ($36), which references Le Corbusier’s polemic take on modernist architecture and the importance for his contemporaries to see what surrounds them in order to truly solve a design problem. The simplified graphic was created specifically for the WDC, and perfectly sums up this year’s theme of “embedding design in life.”

If you would like to find out more about embedding design into your life, or that of your customers, why not give us a call?

Nikki Williams
Client Account Manager

Originally spotted on Coolhunting.com 

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

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.

One fashion retailer that is stepping up to the mark is Gucci. It is encouraging consumer interaction in its retail stores with the launch of a new immersive experience using groundbreaking technologies developed by experience design company OOOii. Unveiled at its newly-renovated Milan via Montenapoleone flagship recently, the initiative includes 50 LCD video wall displays from Planar Systems tiled throughout the store that from 2012 will enable natural human-computer interaction.

The immersive display installation at the flagship includes almost fifty 45″ and 50″ Clarity Matrix LCD video wall displays from Planar Systems, tiled throughout the store. These ultra-thin, energy efficient, near-seamless LCD displays, together with OOOii’s graphics engine create life-size interactive images – forming one of the most technologically-advanced retail environments in the world.

For the first phase, three “zones“ have been developed: the Immersive Window Display, the Immersive Entrance Display and the Immersive Women’s and Men’s Fashion Show Displays. Each zone showcasing a range of specially curated digital content. The highlight being the Immersive Women’s Fashion Show Display, where customers will experience Frida Giannini’s Autumn Winter 2012 Milan women’s fashion show as though it was happening right in front of them, thanks to 5k resolution film shot by a team from Hollywood on one of the world’s few RED Epic cameras.

Pause, rewind and search for specific content by making simple hand gestures in front of the displays. Then, if a customer likes a certain product they will be able to receive an image on their mobile device allowing them to consult with friends and later send a notification to their usual sales assistant in order for an item to be reserved.

Not for one minute do I pretend to have any understanding of the technology driving this immersive and dynamic customer experience. But I do understand that the face of retailing is changing, that retailers need to start making conscious decisions about how they are going to use digital technology to inspire deeper customer connection. The Gucci initiative is also a greater reminder of whether it be virtual or real, shoppers are going to more and more expect to be entertained and thrilled in their shopping excursions – simply because that is what the best retailers will be offering. If you are a retailer, without the deep pockets to fund a Gucci type brand gesture, then you must look for other creative ways to engage. Make it personal, make it intimate, make it real, make it funny, make it outlandish, make irreverent, make it a social cause ……make it something! In the words of legendary Australian Rules Football coach John Kennedy ‘……don’t think, do something!’. Well almost, think first always! What is the most effective way you can evolve your retail experience to touch the lives of your customers in a more meaningful and inspiring way. But after the thinking, if you don’t act, you will be yesterday’s player.

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist

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.

This shift towards protecting these finite resources is not only a result of new government policies and regulations, but also internal business efforts from forward-thinking ethical companies. This market is set to grow as companies recognise the financial size of this market, and the backlash threat of non-compliance. Several large Australian retailers already ahead of the pace, will join together next week to educate and inspire other companies to implement environmentally sustainable workplace practices at the National Retail Association’s (NRA) annual Sustainability Forum.

The forum, to be held at South Bank, Brisbane, on October 27, will profile key retailers, such as Target and The Good Guys, and give them an opportunity to outline their initiatives in environmental sustainability, and illustrate ways retailers can implement sustainable practices to have a positive environmental impact and reduce costs.

NRA executive director Gary Black said retailers comparing notes on their workplace sustainable practices was fantastic for both the greater good of the community and for business growth. “Retailers realise that while they work in completely different sectors that have very different demands, they share the same consumers and have to respond to the same changing behaviour needs,” said Black. “The corporate social responsibility demonstrated by the organisations at our upcoming forum, reinforces the important leadership role retailers can play in driving the shift to sustainability. Exploring ways to introduce sustainable and efficient business practices offers new opportunities for cost reduction which should not be ignored,” he said.

The retail sector is one of the largest users of resources and producers of waste, yet awareness of environmental sustainability remains relatively low across the sector. “Retailers must work together to foster the implementation of cost-effective actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Black. “We are committed to educating retailers on the environmental and economic benefits of improved environmental performance.”

To be successful in marketing their product or service in an environmentally friendly way, an organisation must overcome consumer concerns that the organisation is simply acting in their own best interests and convince them that they are committed to sustaining society’s long-term interests at the same time. To do so, the organisation must look at all aspects of its business and seek ways to introduce environmentally friendly practices into their every day operations. Despite the risks, if it does successfully implement green policies there is potential for huge benefits, both from a consumer and sales point of view, as well as through a boost in its internal capabilities. Not only will a green approach offer positive benefits, but also as nature’s finite resources become more and more at risk, it will become a necessity to ensure their survival. Organisations who do not look for green solutions today, may find themselves out in the cold in the future.

Lachlann McDougall
Design Creative

Originally spotted in Inside Retail.

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.

Grazin’ is living their organic brand messaging in every way possible with every detail carefully considered.  The diner’s centerpiece are the burgers from the owners’ own 2,000-acre, environmentally-friendly Black Angus cattle farm a few miles away. Grazin’ Angus Acres farm relies primarily on wind power, and Dan Gibson and his crew keep their entire process completely natural, beginning with the way they raise their livestock.

The cows, chickens and pigs roaming the farm graze on a natural pasture diet. Grazin’ abides by the scientific evidence that pasture-fed animals are healthier than those who eat corn, and the belief that grass-fed and finished meat tastes better, too. When it’s time to slaughter the animals, Grazin’ eschews industrial slaughterhouses, working instead with a local butcher.

Piled on buns baked by the team at Hawthorne Valley, a neighboring biodynamic farm, and topped with cheese from Hawthorne Valley and Consider Bardwell Farm, a century-old grass-fed dairy nearby, these are locavore burgers through and through. The burgers can then be washed down with a milkshake made with homemade ice cream and organic milk from Grazin’s neighbors at Milk Thistle Farm, or homemade organic soda pulled from their old-fashioned fountain.

The Grazin’ Angus Acres farm is located in Ghent, NY and welcomes visitors.  Due to their sustainable focus, they don’t ship any products instead people in the NYC area can find the meats at several greenmarkets.

In today’s eco-conscious society, it is wonderful to see a brand carefully considering how it does business and reviewing each detail to ensure it is organic and on-brand.  Grazin’ has not only created sustainable products, but they have gone the extra mile, sourcing a ready made diner in which to operate, finding sustainable distribution solutions and partnering with other like-minded companies for any products they don’t produce themselves. This is a true example of an organic brand.

If you would like more information how you too can live your brand, why not give us a call?

Nikki Williams
Client Account Manager

Originally spotted in coolhunting.com

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?

Brand loyalty is a emotional response and attachment to the value of a product or service. Most successful brand owners realise if you can create an environment where brand loyalty creates brand tribes or trends, brand loyalty can be that powerful it can even influence cultural change.

Brand loyalty begins within
People are the most important retail brand asset any business can have. By creating a family or community environment that is mentoring, empowering and most importantly rewarding, it fosters the relevant elements that provide brands with excellent, experienced and most importantly happy, brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors champion a brand, and by actions of their own, show proof that who they work is worth investing in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brand loyalty must be earned
You earn what you keep. Retail brand loyalty must be earned and reinforced continually by any brand or businesses. Satisfying a consumer need, and satisfying it well – is all well and good, but doing it over and over again, working honestly in the good times and bad with a customer, that’s where the real value comes from. Brand loyalty has potential to be change, it has potential to touch the heart, but in the end, any brand needs to earn their stripes.

Does your brand provide brand stiction?
Stiction is a delicate dance that brand and consumer do when they interact. It is an important to get this balance right. To much forced interaction and engagement can seriously put the consumer on the back foot, not enough engagement and the emotional connection with the consumer is lost, and participation in the brand is minimal.

In such trying times for retail, with online shopping on the increase, can I ask you, what is your retail brand doing to create an environment that nurtures and rewards brand loyalty?

The best kind of loyalty is when both parties are benefiting. — Scott Brooks, Gantz Wiley Research

Tim Wood
Design Creative

In memory of a true visionary Steve Jobs.

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.

Transforming trash into treasure has become big business for the Salvation Army, with the Salvos in the running to become the Responsible Retailer of the Year. The stores will be competing against Marks & Spencer, Kingfisher PLC, Coop Cooperative, The Co-operative Food and Grupo Po de Aucar.

This award honours the retailer who the judges feel demonstrate that they are outstanding corporate citizens. Those retailers highlighted by this award will be setting world class standards of best practice in corporate responsibility but above all can demonstrate how they have significantly impacted their key stakeholders including employees, suppliers, customers and the community in which it operates.

Salvos Stores general manager Neville Barrett said the nomination showed how the stores had been transformed from simple charity outlets in the 1880s to having millions of customers.  ”They (the stores) started… to help people in crisis, they were focused on helping poor people with clothing and assisting their children,” Barrett said in a statement on Saturday.

“Today in the Eastern Territory (covering NSW, Qld and the ACT) there are 106 stores. We serve over 4 million people a year. We get customers from all walks of life.”

As most Australians know, the stores are not only dedicated to helping less fortunate Australians with clothing, but it is also a strong advocate for recycling.  Over the past five years the Salvation Army said it had reduced the amount of waste it was sending to landfill by 75 per cent, or about 4000 tonnes, through improved recycling.  At least 12,000 mattresses had been saved from landfill and a volunteer men’s program in Queensland breaks down whitegoods and electrical appliances to enable steel and copper to be recycled.  Any unsold products are also sent to underdeveloped countries to avoid any unnecessary waste.

The nomination alone is a wonderful achievement for the company, and we will be crossing our fingers for the winner announcement later this week.

If you would like helping revamping your retail space, why not give us a call?

Nikki Williams
Client Account Manager

Originally spotted on Inside Retailing

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.

Youngme Moon, a Harvard academic, in her recent book Different (a great read) shares the following pertinent thoughts;

‘….the minute we choose to measure something, we are essentially choosing to aspire to it. A metric, in other words, creates a pointer in a particular direction. And once the pointer is created, it is only a matter of time before competitors herd in the direction of that pointer.

….the more entrenched a system of measurement, the more difficult it is for a deviant, an outlier, or even an experimenter to emerge. Another way to say this is to say that a competitive metric, any competitive metric, tends to bring out the herd in us. 

…..a funny thing happens the minute you begin to capture comparative differences on paper: There is a natural inclination for folks in the comparative set to focus on eliminating those differences, rather than accentuating them.’

We see it all the time in Australian markets. In so many of categories, we are faced with a small number of players, all mimicking each other. We have four major banks, who are a mirror of each other. The fact that we recently had one bank, nab, running a major campaign about ‘breaking up’ from the other banks suggests how entrenched the sameness is.

In Australia in the airline sector we are also currently witnessing some serious copy cat plays. Virgin entered the Australian market with a low cost, cheeky, differentiated strategy, relative to Qantas. Today, Virgin seems hell bent on morphing into a Qantas, and Qantas morphing into a Virgin. This is evident with Virgin now building club lounges and chasing the business traveller. For full flexi fares they are now offering a on-board catering. And their prices are regularly aligned with Qantas, for domestic travel.

Qantas on the other hand is now wearing a Virgin low cost operator hat. Doing everything possible to take costs out of its operation, and investing in the establishment of alternative low cost brands (Jetstar).

In many categories, particularly for those served by companies listed on the stock exchange, there is a strong tendency for all players to pursue the same metrics, because that is how the financial analysts assess their performance. In addition, most organisations do not have a strong appetite for being different. To do that, requires investment and risk. It requires a paradigm shift to reinvent the offering of a category, but the rewards are big.

At the very least, we encourage you to lift your level of consciousness about how you are different to your competitors. If you are into a game of mimicking then over time don’t expect to create enduring esteem in the hearts and minds of your target market.

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist

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.

We transformed the studio into a gallery where we welcomed more than 150 clients, friends and artists who enjoyed soaking up the creative atmosphere. The bidding for the paintings was extremely enthusiastic, with favorites amongst the crowd being highly sought after. With 53 items being sold on the night, and the mystery envelopes and silent auction items being snapped up, the success of the night is surely to be a positive one.

We have already received kind words from several parties in relation to the night, but the best one was from Swags for Homeless’ Lisa Clark. This is why year after year we do Art with Heart;

Hi Emma & the whole Truly Deeply Team,

Thank you again for all your efforts on Wednesday – we are very grateful to be part of your 10th Art Auction. There was a great community spirit amongst all those that attended and it was great to have another opportunity to highlight the plight of those on our streets.

Well done – you should all be very satisfied with your efforts to help the community.

Kind Regards
Lisa Clark

(Lachlan, Jenna and David)

(Simon & Gina McNamara)

Art with Heart started out as a way for us at Truly Deeply to combine our creative talents as brand designers with our belief that we should each play a part in making the world a better place. As a brand strategy and design agency the one resource we have at our disposal is our creativity and that of the broader creative community we belong to. Art With Heart was launched in 2002 as a way for us to leverage our creative talents for social benefit. We fleshed-out a concept that would be at the same time a great event for our clients and community and a way to raise money for a worthy local cause.

Each year we select a new cause to raise money for. Now in its tenth year, Art With Heart has raised more than $150,000 for charities including The Lighthouse Foundation, OVCA, Brainwave, The Australian Childhood Foundation, Whitelion, Mercycare, St Vinnie’s Soup Kitchen, Melbourne Citymission’s Breakfast Club and Worawa Aboriginal Girls College.

(The Gang from Artisan)

Art with Heart Past Three Years
In the past three years we have had huge success thanks to the generosity of artists, friends and sponsors.

In 2008 we raised just over $26,000 for St Vinnie’s Soup Kitchen, enough to pay for an additional Soup van to provide food, drink and comfort to Melbourne’s homeless 365 days-a-year;

In 2009 we raised over $24,000 for Melbourne Citymission’s Breakfast Club, this funding would allow the Breakfast Club to provide breakfast for another 60 primary school children in need for the entire 2010 school year;

In 2010 we raised over $28,000 for Worawa Aboriginal Girls College – Worawa caters for Indigenous girls in the middle years of schooling (Years 7-10). Worawa was established as a response to the needs of Aboriginal students and difficulties these students experience within the mainstream educational system.

We look forward to selling the remaining pieces of art over the next month so please keep an eye out here if you are interested. We’d also like to say a big thank you to our generous sponsors who donate good and services in support of the event year after year – we couldn’t work our magic without them.

(David Ansett, Lisa Clark, Peter Singline and Emma Ferris)

Our Sponsors
Dr Print
Corporate Express

Our Supporters
Sally Ferris Catering
Port Melbourne Bowling Club
Swinburne University of Technology TAFE
Marilyn Spenser
Bonnie Eichelberger
Caitlin Mills
Lauren Nixon
John Wooley
Flynn Dunton
Tim Austin
Scott Austin
All our artists
Family & friends

Auction Items
Addicted To Quilts
Identity Matters
Mance Design

Mystery Envelopes
Aesop
At Your Service Home Hardware
Carman’s
Chandon
Chimmy’s
Dan Murphy’s
Gelati Sky
Heidi Museum of Modern Art
kikki.K
Little Bertha
Luna Park
Maggie Beer
Meredith Dairy
Michi Girl
Penguin Group
Peninsular Hot Springs
Puffing Billy
Railway Club Hotel
sixfootsix
Third Draw Down
Vodafone
VRC

Thanks to all involved for making the tenth Art with Heart such a huge success. The total for this years Art with Heart is still being calculated (and will be announced shortly), but it will surely follow the trend of the past years successes. If you are interested in being a part of our Art with Heart community through either donating a piece of your artwork, sponsorship or attending our event, please feel free to contact us at weare@trulydeeply.com.au

The Team at Truly Deeply
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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.

The Qantas world has been one of automating, offshoring and outsourcing. And when it suited them straight our brand transferring by substituting Qantas routes with their low cost operator, Jetstar. This has manifested itself in a recent downsizing of Australian employees by 1,000, a new international carrier brand being established in Asia and then this week a win over the union as a result of Fair Work Australia approving the employment of lower paid pilots through Qantas overseas subsidiary Jetconnect.

To counter the potential fall out of all this, Qantas has also been running a campaign in the media to spin a yarn along line of ‘the spirit of Australia, getting into fighting condition to take on the world.’ Unfortunately, for many customers, its focus for so long has been about the business and not brand relationships. Worse it seems that with the on going pursuit of cost cutting it is also cutting the guts out of the culture of Qantas. When you are positioned as the ‘Spirit of Australia’ you need an organisation with people who feel passionate and dare I say ‘spirited’ about the brand. Certainly having a fully engaged Australian pilot at the front of the plane, was a good starting point – perhaps now a brand attribute of the past.

From a branding perspective the move by brands to increasingly automate customer contacts is also an interesting one. Qantas desire to essentially have no personal contact with passengers until they board their flight has some obvious advantages. It shifts steps of the  value chain directly to the customer and thereby reduces costs. Some customers enjoy being directly in control and in many instances it removes queuing for them. But it also means that the brand is walking away from an opportunity to engage passengers at a personal level. The experience simply becomes a transaction (albeit efficient) and not as relationship charged as a face to face exchange has the potential of delivering.

The lesson for all service brands is that if you keep taking out steps that have some form of personal engagement, you lower the emotional connection that customers have with the brand.  Brand’s need to continue to consciously ask themselves, how are they fueling an emotional and more personal relationship with customers? What are they doing to substitute for automation steps that make them more remote? The more you make it like a functional transaction the easier you make it for customers to leave, if a competitor does it better functionally.

Qantas as a brand has always drawn heavily on emotional cues – unfortunately these are fast being eroded.

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist

For monthly updates of our thinking, click here to receive our free Brand Newsletter