I attended the ANZAC Day dawn service this year. I stood there with 45,000 other people at the shrine of remembrance, as I looked around I realised what a diverse crowd was in attendance. I started to think about the challenge ANZAC Day faces in engaging with a whole nation of people of all ages and ensuring content is relevant to past, present and future. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the few brands who never cease to impress me with their creativity and truly out of the box thinking is Heineken. The team Heineken seem to thrive on doing things differently, breaking convention and it would appear, have a wonderful time doing so. Their latest venture is certainly no exception with the team recently announcing their next Open Design Exploration with a focus on creating a new vision for lounging set to premiere at next year’s Milan Design Week. Read the rest of this entry »
Boasting a variety of talent across multiple mediums including painting, sculpture, photography, music and video, Bruno Levy‘s work has been exhibited in some of the America’s most influential museums, from the Guggenheim to the SFMOMA. The Paris-born, NYC-based artist—newly fascinated by cross-cultural differences—spent five months living and working in Kathmandu, Nepal in an effort to bring beauty to a stark landscape foreign to Western influence. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a workshop with management consultant and trainer John Spence for a day. It was stimulating on a number of levels from a business strategy perspective, but it is in the context of personal branding that I wish to share. In personal branding one needs to understand and be committed to owning something by way of expertise. Like business brands, individuals need to have a value proposition that is compelling. Spence suggests that there are 4 P’s to being an expert. They are:
Passion – a need to love what you are doing
Persistence – being prepared to the hard work (a decade or 10,000 hours type thinking)
Practice – deliberate and systematic
Pattern recognition – see data and information insights others don’t see
La Wine Agency is the brainchild of Brad Ball, a creative entrepreneur, restaurateur and sommelier. While completing his MBA in Bordeaux, Brad was assigned to create a business plan. As it turned out, this was the opportunity Brad needed to combine his love of wine and business ambition. Using his contacts in South America (former classmates while studying in Bordeaux) Brad turned his business plan for La Wine Agency into reality with the help of Fuzzco and Grassroots Distribution. Read the rest of this entry »
We always stress the importance of protecting your brand by trademarking the name, identity and its associated positioning but what if that is not enough.
This week, an interesting case of brand security is in the Australian courts. It is a David and Golliath fight between CUB and Thunder Road Brewing Company to restore shelved beer brands and for once, I am on the side of the giant.
There is evidence to suggest that when brand managers are steering their social media activities they need to operate in the shoes of their customers, with the view to satisfying their self interest. The motivation for a lot of consumers connecting to brands on social media is not ‘social’, rather it is what is in it for me.
These are the findings from New York based strategy consulting firm Vivaldi Partners, who towards the end of 2012 conducted research with 1,004 adults from Ipsos’ U.S. online panel. Participants were interviewed to understand the drivers that have them connect and disconnect from brands on social media.
Amidst a fitness craze, many Melbournians are looking for ways to get into shape – and with the number of gyms operating across the city, they aren’t short on options. But it all looks a bit monotonous, from a brand standpoint. There really isn’t much imagination in this industry. The wildly successful Fitness First have left behind a glossy, pearly-white smiles blueprint that has been appropriated to the point of genericness. One notable exception however, has taken its own approach in differentiating itself from the rest of its industry – and for that it has enjoyed quite a bit of success since its humble beginnings. Read the rest of this entry »
Before the invention of the vinyl plotter in the 1980s, the vast majority of signs, from shopfronts to billboards and even street signs, were painted or created by hand. Imagine the richness and variety of our high streets back in the day! Sadly, with its cheaper and faster production, the vinyl plotter turned the sign painting industry on its head. Artists were usurped by machinery and unskilled workers, and the craft was all but lost.
Today I’ve got a simple example of how two of the corner stones of good branding: Emotion & Authenticity can inspire a great brand. The Brooklyn Brew Shop is based on a simple idea: nano brewing kits. That is brewing kits designed to work in small kitchens with standard kitchen equipment. But it’s when the two owners Erica & Stephen explain the idea that it really comes to life. Read the rest of this entry »
