Blog

There’s a new Barbie in town – and she comes in many shapes and sizes. A more genuine and realistic representation of the modern girl is now available. The new campaign #TheDollEvolves is said to be a brand evolution for the makers of Barbie, Mattel. 

Uber has just announced a brand re-fresh to align with their current brand strategy and philosophy but more than that they have engaged their audience by communicating their brand story and the reason for change. On their website Uber said “We’ve always felt there was a cognitive…

Calvin Klein has launched its latest Spring 2016 collection with another viral social media campaign. This time there was no need for large scale advertisements; but simply the profile of some big name celebrities and the hashtag #MyCalvins to capture the worlds attention. This digital…

Hot sauce brand Sriracha has made the remarkable move of licensing it’s brand to internet startup Sriracha2Go. While licensing food brands and production isn’t anything new (think beer brands) this seems like a risky move for a growing and thriving brand. 

Iconic Aussie surf brand gets $US600m refinancing approval from US Court and makes big brand plans. With its finances now under control, Quicksilver is planning to turn around fledgling brand with ‘boardrider’ stores that showcase the true brand experience.

Disruptive Brand Building – Simple and Effective A recent newspaper article caught my eye with the headline; ‘Melbourne woman gives birth in the back of Uber car in New York’. From a brand perspective there’s plenty to find fascinating here; Would this article have been written if…

Creating an ad to capture the spirit of a place is one hell of a task. Only slightly easier than creating the overarching place brand. Having worked on more than a few place branding projects, I fully comprehend the challenge of competing attributes and stakeholders.…

Do you have a Single Customer Engagement Mindset? We were talking brand engagement with a client recently and I was reminded of this You Tube clip from the Sasquatch Music festival back in 2009. The clip starts with a single guy entranced by the music…

This Australia Day Meat and Livestock Australia has outdone themselves in their ‘Operation Boomerang’ campaign, with some help from their biggest critics. While many brands have tried to milk national pride and celebration for brand benefit, it’s hard to go past the dedication of Meat…

A brand bringing you eco-friendly cleaning products – and award winning packaging design. Ecostore are offering substitute products to those other harsh chemical household products we all see in our major retailers. We all know these cleaning products contain many nasties, but sometimes we don’t…

  (Brand) names have baggage When creating a new name or identity for something there’s always the challenge of seconding guessing due to current associations. But by knowing you’re following a plan, backing yourself and a little patience it can all work out. Names are an…

NYC design pair Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman combine to create this ripping side project. They describe what they’ve created as: “We all use so much shit. We collect shit, buy shit, steal shit, trade shit and then throw shit away. So what happens with…

Memorex is a consumer electronics brand that was best known for it’s recordable media for DVD and CD drives, and who can forget those classic cassette tapes! The story of this brand began in 1961 in Silicon Valley and by the early 80’s they were a…

D&G engages the valuable Muslim market You can count on a single finger the number of audiences with a US$300 billion annual spend ignored by major brands globally… that is up until now. With few exceptions the world’s major fashion brands have largely ignored the…

It’s that time of year again, Aussie Day is just around the corner and the annual eat lamb on Australia Day campaign has kicked off for the 10th year in a row. This year Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) have teamed up with The Monkeys…

As we blow the remnants of Christmas cobwebs from our brains and prepare to launch into 2016, we thought we’d indulge in a last little taste of the festive season. With retailers around the world looking to squeeze every last drop of Christmas cheer from…

  Global colour brand; Pantone announces the color(s) of the year for 2016, combining two shades for the first time – Rose Quartz (Pantone 13-1520) and Serenity (Pantone 15-3919). The choice of these two, softer colours is a response to what has been taking place…

WWF Visual Identity Re-Design Adds to the Brand Messaging In a clever piece of brand identity design extension, designer; Yana Makarevich uses the existing shapes of the iconic WWF panda into three other endangered species animal silhouettes. Whilst none of the new three animals has…

  The Top Marketing Trends for 2016 and what they mean in particular for small business Much is written each year on the key marketing trends we see playing out, usually most relevant for our larger clients. So when this week I came across a…

Creating Breakfast Cereal Brand Buzz In a gesture designed to celebrate the real honey in their Honey Nut Cheerios, the cereal brand built a living billboard complete with working bee hives, home to 100,000 honey bees. As the bees produced their honey (around 100 liters…

  When should I change my brand strategy and/or brand identity? Brand is a sensitive beast, misread the signs or fail to understand the subtleties and you can find yourself out of touch and with a disengaged market. Like much of the branding process, there…

  The Lexington Parking Authority in Kentucky, USA has launched a brilliant ‘Food for Fines’ program It’s not often the concept of a parking ticket and inspiring brand engagement appear in the same line of thought, but that’s exactly what this innovative thinking parking authority…

An Inspiring TED Talk on how Marketing can be a Powerful Tool for Change Colombia is a country of exceptional beauty and promise, and it’s also a country where the F.A.R.C. guerrilla movement has incited violence for 50 years. The human cost of the war…

Ode to the creative truck/bus/taxi ad As a branding agency we spend most of our lives living, breathing and dreaming of ways to communicate brands in ways that have relevance and value to the lives of our client’s consumers. As the world changes, we surf…

Not all brand activities are born equal. This is a brand principle that Nike know better than most brands as the recent release of the ‘Nike sole’. The Nike sole has been developed to fit onto the ‘flex-run’ prosthetic running blade, designed for by Nike…

Evolving file formats In a post last year I explained ‘Why the designer needs an EPS‘. A post to clarify the differences between Vector and Bitmap files and why one might be preferable to the other. Near the end of the post I mentioned that…

A High Class Brand Problem So what do you do when you’re the global market leader? When your brand and packaging is recognized in almost every corner of the world? When your product and brand already command a premium price? What on earth do you…

Welcome to the New Retail Era The world of retail is changing more rapidly than ever. On-line stores compete with off-line stores, fashion boutiques feature new ranges every month, and it seems almost everything can be made in China for next to nothing, creating undifferentiated…

All Brands Have Meaning Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the minds of the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to both differentiate themselves from their…

All Brands Have Meaning Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to both differentiate themselves from their competitors and to…

Building Your Brand’s Visual Properties When creating a corporate image for our clients brands, we focus on building unique brand properties that can be leveraged to become brand assets. A brand’s typeface is one of the visual properties we incorporate into the brand design process,…

The hidden code All brands project an image through the visual language of their brand identity. Customers and markets use the code contained within their visual language to make logical and emotional associations that drive their responses to trust, lust, aspire and desire the brand……

We recently sold our house through Marshall White, hiring an off-site self-storage unit in the process. We not only invested a reasonable sum in doing that, but also hours of weekend time carting our much loved (if little needed) household junk over to the storage…

Like all new frontiers, social media is a lawless place where anything goes, especially when it comes to brand. Everyone seems to have moved into these boom towns with a population of more than 12 million people projected for Twitterville alone this year. It’s a on-line,…

Beers aint beers Everything about the Coopers brand oozes authenticity. Coopers in South Australia is a family owned brewery with a long history of making fine ale (as opposed to making beer). Coopers is a brand with high beer cred for taste and quality. But…