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  Everyone in the design industry is aware of the Pantone name and most probably even have a Pantone swatch mug gifted to them one xmas. The perfect gift for their “designery” friend or partner. Pantone is the universal language of colour which steers the…

Fontstand front page. What is Fontstand? Fontstand is a Mac app that lets you try fonts for free and rent them by the month for desktop use for a fraction of their regular price. Typotheque developed this app in collaboration with Andrej Krátky. Conceived by independent…

Today’s post is a thought piece written by Zander Nethercutt, a really interesting brand thinker from Chicago Il. with a brilliant grasp on how brands work and the role they’ve come to play in our lives. What Apple, Samsung and Starbucks learned from Pepsi The…

  Maker Park is a proposed adaptive reuse park that will revitalize an unused industrial site on the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Conceived by a group of community activists, the initiative will transform the seven-acre site formerly known as the Bayside Fuel Terminal into a hub for…

The UltraBoost sneaker from Adidas’ Parley ocean plastic collection   After the recent controversy with Coles supermarkets back flipping twice on providing single use plastic bags for free, here’s some good news stories on brands getting it right when it comes to the issue of sustainability.…

A recent study for Adobe shows that investing in experience transformation across people, process and technology delivers superior business performance. Experience-driven businesses (EDBs), as defined by Forrester Consulting, consistently deliver on metrics that align to their revenue growth, customer acquisition, and customer retention goals. The…

More than just luck. The coffee unicorn brand that’s the talk of China. China’s thirst for their own ‘new retail’ brands continues to fuel investor and consumer frenzy and coffee is the latest battleground. Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi now dominate over Apple in…

The future of shopping centre retail – A disruptive view. Global entertainment brand Cirque du Soleil announced their plans recently to launch a family entertainment concept inside a Canadian shopping centre. The move reflects the shift in retail thinking as consumer continue to evolve the…

Beer + artisanal craftsmanship + great design. What’s not to love about craft beer? Show me an consumer category dominated by large corporations, and I’ll show you a craft revolution waiting to happen. After decades of the world beer market being owned by the big,…

A glance into the future of retail. Global Retail real estate business CBRE has produced a forward-looking market research, perspectives and industry insights piece called The Future of Retail 2030, an interesting piece of futurist thinking with some well considered suppositions. The retail industry is…

The power of AI in helping brands promote, sell and enhance their products As artificial intelligence (AI) gathers momentum in our lives, our friends at 16best.net have compiled an interesting infographic to look at its impact on brands and how we engage with them. Many…

More than a rebrand. There’s been something interesting going on at Choice. More than a logo refresh, it seems the stalwart reviewer is starting to develop its activist side. While Choice is known for its product reviews and buying guides more than it’s disruptive activist…

Today’s guest article has been penned by the very smart people at eatbigfish. eatbigfish is a strategic brand consultancy with a single focus: challenger thinking and behavior. Founded by Adam Morgan after he wrote Eating the Big Fish – the book that popularised the term ‘challenger…

Now more than ever consumers are turning their everyday purchases into a form of protest or demonstration of ideology to create change, sending strong signals to brands by using their purchasing choices as votes. How a brand produces and delivers its goods and who they…

The Ultra-Convenience Consumer Trend Disrupting… Everything. So much has been written about Amazon’s launch into the Australian retail market (we wrote about it ourselves recently) that it has created its own ecosystem of disruptive buzz. There’s no doubt a business the size of Amazon with…

Did retail set itself-up for disruption? In Australia we’ve heard alot of talk over recent years of how tough life is for retail brands. There’s no doubt the category is under pressure as competition increases and consumer behavior and expectations shift. In a recent interview,…

Are banking brands finally getting ahead of the consumer curve? Reading an article this week about Chase Bank in the US, I noted for the second time in a week a services brand seeking to be “the apple genius bar” for their category. Not surprisingly,…

Is Gen Z the toughest consumer group to market to yet? The answer to that question depends on the brand, it’s product and mindset. With each new generation of consumers, established brands find themselves challenged to connect with a new collective mindset. However, there are…

Creating a viral campaign with moments of nonsense and fun. If you’ve come across the “Dilly Dilly” movement on social media recently, you can thank Bud Light for turning the phrase into a catch-cry for the end of 2017. In a recent interview with Business…

Brands find innovative ways to merge entertainment and technology with traditional shopping to survive. ‘Experiential Retail’ or ‘Retailtainment’ is one of the biggest growth areas in retail at the moment. Just like Google’s pop up store in Manhattan, brands are constantly seeking innovative ways to…

Westfield acts to level the playing field in this increasingly Amazon dominated marketplace. The world of retail has been shaken by the emergence of Amazon as the world’s leading platform like no other development in my 25 years of branding. If retailers aren’t kept awake…

The end of the digital offline divide is in sight or it should be. FSFK’s Future of Retail 2018 outlines how companies can transform their stores into experience centres that extend their supply chain and digital commerce platforms, creating mutual value with a focus on…

Why social media customer care is an integral part of every business’s success. Our friends at Website Builder have put together this nifty infographic that highlights the benefits and the importance of social media customer care. For just about any consumer brand, customer service is…

The world of retail has changed. Online shopping, online product and brand comparison, and the new shopping habits of consumers have significantly changed the retail landscape. Retailers, shopping strips and shopping centres have had to get agile in evolving the way they connect with and…

Many people have very negative feelings towards brands. They’re associated with conformity, mediocrity and the suppression of individuality. They are seen as money making machines who would say anything to get customer to purchase from them to increase profits. But is that is because we…

When a high end fashion designer decided what he was doing was no longer meaningful he decided to create garments from factory scraps to create affordable, comfortable and on trend fashion.  He wanted to tackle the wasteful fashion industry and create a zero waste product…

  After a conversation with my nurse friend over the weekend, I was suddenly reflecting on the significance of my role as a designer. We talked about the differences between our daily routines in the workplace and I concluded that running out of coffee beans…

Key insights from Adobe’s third annual consumer email survey, essential reading for brand marketers. The survey shows that email significantly trumps direct mail, mobile apps and social media as the best way to deliver offers to consumers. However, there is still a great degree of…

A growing tourism market with rich potential. There’s never been a better time to dust off your Mandarin textbook and shake the dust off of your Chinese New Year Dragon, because the number of Chinese visitors to Australia continues to grow rapidly and opportunities abound.…

The Wall Street Journal compared Apple’s iPhone to other iconic consumer brands and the results are staggering. The iPhone has eclipsed the sales of Barbie, Zippo, Rubik’s Cube, Nintento Game Boy, Sony Playstation and Walkman. What’s even more mind blowing is how quickly it’s done…

Recently we wrote about the healthiest brands in Australia and Pay Pal came in at number two on the list. This infographic by Play and Pay illustrates their  journey to becoming one of the worlds largest brands. PayPal is a Revolutionary platform transformed the world…

Introducing a brand called Brandless™ (yes, trademark is noted). A start-up riding the unbranded trend and set to shake-up everyday retail in the USA and they’ve raised $50 million to get going. Way back when, our ancestors bought basics supplies from their local store. They…

Head of Salmat eCommerce, Ben Popplestone recently attended the Magento Imagine 2017 event in Las Vegas which brought together 2500 eCommerce experts from 45 countries to discuss the latest in online retail.  A hot topic at the event was the expansion of Amazon into new…

From the same crew who brought us Wheely’s bike cafes, comes Moby Mart. A few years back we wrote about Wheely’s an organisation looking to disrupt the cafe market with their new model of pedal powered, solar powered, low on carbon footprint, high on smarts…

It was interesting last week to see Coca-Cola get some local blowback from Woolworths on their new No Sugar Coke. Coke, a cornerstone in most supermarkets has been attacked over the years from many angles: constantly by perennial #2 Pepsi with the taste challenge; for…

All Beer Brands Are Not Born Equal. Researching this new craft beer brand from the UK I came across an interesting stat. The fresh bread consumer trend that has swept the globe has led to more than 40% of the bread baked daily around the…

It doesn’t matter how much you spend on strategy, branding, creative, media or reputation if there’s something wrong with your culture. As Uber is currently proving. It’s impossible in today’s society to mask an internal culture with brand. Sooner or later the truth will out…

Swedish home furniture brand Ikea continues to be at the heart of affordable stylish urban living. We always solute brands who continually look for interesting ways to engage and add value for the lives of their customers. That’s why we love this clever idea from…

Have you ever questioned how big the internet is? Like, we know its big, but HOW big? Similar to the stars that dot our universe, the exact number of websites seem to be forever multiplying, with no one really knowing the exact total. Here are…

Creating easy escapism for hipsters, Unyoked is all about easy disconnection in the wilderness. Unyoked is a simple yet smart brand story, built on some solid brand beliefs and brought to life with beautiful styled eco-cabins set in stunning semi-remote locations. The Unyoked brand philosophy…

Feel like staying home this weekend? curling-up on the couch under a cozy rug in your PJs with candles burning, a glass of red from Vino Mofo, dinner from UberEats and a movie on Netflix?  Turns-out you’re not alone, but part of the global consumer…

What if we could start from scratch and re-design everything in our lives so that they were good for people, for the planet and for business? What if every product and service had an overhaul and it was developed not only with this thought but…

A brand narrative that’s built around Orchard Thieves’ simple worldview that if you start bold, you’ll end bold. Heineken’s cider brand, Orchard Thieves keeps true to the brand’s mantra of ‘Be bold’ with it’s latest ad. The story follows a group of friends on their…

The way customers buy has changed I recently read a great article on Curalate by Jarred Shelley, Head of Content Strategy that captured one of the great challenges fro retail brands in today’s ever-changed marketplace. The article talks through a shopping experience that is reflective…

Grids, rules, order, harmony — qualities that typically define ‘good design.’ What happens when all of this is thrown out? When chaos is embraced and celebrated? It’s called brutalist web design and it’s taking the design world by a storm. In this post we will take…

We live in disruptive times for brands and business. You might have missed the news coming out of the US on Monday this week that saw the share value of Elon Musk’s Tesla brand continue to rise strongly. If there’s been a noteworthy trend in…

YouGov’s ‘Inside the Mindset of a Brand Boycotter report’ gives us some insight into consumers who boycott brands and why they can’t be ignored. Just about every week a major brand is under attack from consumers. Last week it was Pepsi, the other week it…

As a marketeer I have recently started to notice the increase in meaningful marketing and the extent to which brands are seeking to create meaningful experiences that consumers can connect with and move people emotionally. Thank goodness, a change has been in the air for…

How should a brand react when a campaign gets this kind of backlash? Budweiser’s 2017 Superbowl commercial features the story of the beer company founder’s ambitious journey from Germany to America in pursuit of his dream: to brew the ‘King of Beers’. The story combines…

Has artificial intelligence come of age? Tech firm Vinclu has created the ultimate companion for a new generation of overworked Japanese. Her name is Azuma Hikari, and she’s the AI persona at the heart of Gatebox, a $2,500 product that acts as a home assistant…

Linx brand connects with the 21st Century Man One of the most significant trends for any brand marketing to males under 30 is the blurring and fragmentation of what it means to be a man in the 21st Century. Long held stereotypes of muscular, masculine,…