Trends, Ideas and Inspiration

The Future of Branding

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Co-operatives are the way forward

Our new venture I'm An Ideas Company is set up on the basic principles of a co-operative, so I was really interested to hear about a new type of co-operative in my favourite city, NY.

New York has to two new-ish fashion co-ops on the Lower East Side that are attracting a lot of press and praise lately. For clothing designers, opening a store themselves can be prohibitively expensive, and finding a large-scale retailer to stock their work is no easy task, either. So design co-ops Hillary Flowers (above) and The Dressing Room are a welcome alternative.

These two new fashion collectives - which we suspect are part of a larger, and growing, trend - provide both a sustainable retail model and an enjoyable shopping experience. Filling their racks with work by a carefully curated roster of designers, their stock is always interesting, unique, and unpredictable. And like most types of co-op, fashion collectives require their designers to work every so often at the store, so when you stop in to shop you might very well run into the guy or gal who designed the shirt you’re trying on.

By Fashion Geek

'Yes We Can' by Will.I.Am

• This viral video was produced for DipDive by Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas.
• It didn't cost Barack Obama a penny.
• Will.I.Am just believes in what Obama is about - he just took a speech in New Hampshire, added music and threw it out there to inspire others. No hidden agenda.
• I was viewed 6 million times in the first week.
• 12 million 'real' people have since seen this video.
• It may turn out to be the video that decided the next US President.
• It was produced and designed by Bob Dylan's son, Jesse.
•  Who says that design and viral videos can't change the world?

Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?

The fox (or coyotee for the sake of our picture) is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty—the fox looks like the sure winner. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, looking like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. He waddles along, going about his simple day, searching for lunch and taking care of his home.

The fox waits in cunning silence at the juncture in the trail. The hedgehog, minding his own business, wanders right into the path of the fox. “Aha, I’ve got you now!” thinks the fox. He leaps out, bounding across the ground, lightning fast. The little hedgehog, sensing danger, looks up and thinks, “Here we go again. Will he ever learn?” Rolling up into a perfect little ball, the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. The fox, bounding toward his prey, sees the hedgehog defense and calls off the attack. Retreating back to the forest, the fox begins to calculate a new line of attack. Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.

Berlin extrapolated from this little parable to divide people into two basic groups: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels,” says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn’t matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple—indeed almost simplistic—hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.

Princeton professor Marvin Bressler pointed out the power of the hedgehog during one of our long conversations: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’ ”3

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego, and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand?” No, the hedgehogs aren’t simpletons; they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest. Copyright (c)2002 Jim Collins : Good to Great.

Or more simply, if you want to be remembered - become a superstar by doing just ONE thing outstandingly well.

Mass Advertising is DEAD

Mass advertising is dying. Just think in a 30 second slot of any prime time television programme, you try to showcase your product in the best possible way. But there is a small problem. Nowadays educated and experienced customer care less about commercials, ads, banners or any form of fancy wording which is forced upon them.
So companies are trying to find new and innovative ways to woo the customers. As of now all the promotional measures didn’t do one thing i.e. they don’t necessarily introduce the product/brand to the customer. Though it is evidential that archaic means of advertising has given way to search based advertising or even word-of-mouth still something is missing in the whole picture.

So I thought of adding a new concept where customer/consumer will have a first hand experience of the product by trying them out. Now its not that companies have not used this concept before but the efficacy is debatable. If we delve deep into the ineffectiveness of the type of advertising then we see one very distinct similarity i.e. companies just do it for the heck of doing it i.e. they take it as just another form of cheap promotion. Whereas it induces two-fold effect i.e. word-of-mouth as well as brand intimacy.

For example, observe this when you visit a mall; you may see some sales guy showing a product in a jazzy way with free samples. Now how many of us recall the name of the brand with which we blissfully attached sometime back. Not many I guess!! So that’s where companies are missing it altogether. Companies should try to make a wholesome experience or more interactive for a customer when he is with the product. In that way brand recall won’t be a problem.

Are Design & Advertising A Waste of Money

By Jeremy Waite for NW Business Insider Magazine

YES! It is if you don’t do it properly. That’s probably why Duncan Bannatyne,  the entrepreneur and ‘dragon’, famously said “I’d rather have an impressive looking balance sheet than an impressive image ”. The thing is, most people know that they need to make their company stand out in an over-crowded market place,  but they make the mistake of thinking that simply having a marketing strategy and a prestigious advertising agency behind them will guarantee success. (It won’t).

What you should be doing is looking at design as an investment  and what the likely return on that investment will be. The Unilevers’ of the world measure their design and advertising spend and monitor the results. They regularly show a return of 400:1. That’s £400 of additional profit for every £1 that they spend on design and advertising.

Every company regardless of its size, should look at design in these terms. Design is, after all, an investment and not an expense. Only one company can ever be the cheapest, therefore everyone else must use design and their identity to stand out - across every form of communication. It is no surprise that 70% of the fastest growing companies in the UK claim that design is an integral part of their business’ success (www.designcouncil.org.uk).

So where do you start? Should you print beautiful brochures,  do a direct mail campaign,  advertise on billboards or buy some print advertising?  The response rates of all these forms or marketing are so incredibly low, that they are all a waste of time for most companies (especially SME’s). Advertising is great for building brand awareness for larger organisations, but most smaller companies need to make sales – not build brands.

Did you know that it costs on average 10 times more to find a new customer, than it does to keep an existing one? Think about it, you are lucky to get a 1% response rate from an e-marketing campaign or 3% from a direct mail campaign. Maybe even 17% if you personalise every leaflet, but we recently got a 47% return on a brochure we printed for every customer who had ever ordered from us – so we know this works! Success almost always comes from existing customers, rather than new ones.

So basically, spending money on pretty design and a new brand identity for the sake of it IS a waste of money, as is most advertising. The key is approaching creative services in the same way as you would invest in any other professional service. Be careful not to get too carried away by emotional pitches. Spend your money wisely and be careful to monitor the results. Many design companies will give you a very strange look if you ask them to qualify the money you spend on design, in terms of ROI, but the ones that can are usually the ones that will make a big difference to your company.

FACT FILE

THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COMPANIES IN 2008 WILL BE DOING THE FOLLOWING…..

• 1. KEEPING IT REAL – Communicate with real people (eg. Dove’s campaign for real women). Make genuine promises and sell with integrity.
• 2. TELLING STORIES – Case studies and testimonials from happy clients will be the driving force behind the fastest growing companies, not products and prices.
• 3. MAKING THINGS SIMPLER – Don’t try to be all things to all people. ‘Niche’ is good and simple advertising messages are much more memorable.
• 4. FEELING THE DIFFERENCE – Web advertising isn’t everything, it’s just one element of a great campaign. Customers will spend up to 35% more online, if they’ve also got a printed brochure in their hands. 
• 5. CARING FOR OUR COMMUNITIES – CSR matters. Giving a percentage of your profits to a charity related to your business really will make a difference to your clients.
• 6. DARING TO DREAM – People buy with their hearts, not with their heads. Emotions are everything, so make sure all your marketing aims to get your customers excited.
• 7. CUSTOMERS DON’T JUST WANT A GOOD DEAL ANYMORE - THEY WANT TO BE INSPIRED.

The Kryptonite Factor

This "thriving in markets" cartoon above is one of my favorites. Sure, the line sounds good in a meeting. And yes, the client will invariably ask, "Can you give me a good example of what you mean, exactly?"

Luckily we all now have such an example: I call it "The Kryptonite Factor." Robert Scoble mentioned it only a day or two ago [from time of writing]. I first came across it reading it here.

Here's how the drama unfolded:

DAY ONE:
KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are the best.

DAY TWO:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Yes, your bike locks are still the best.

DAY THREE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Ummm... yeah I'm sure they are, but what's all this about some recent video on the net that's supposed to show how you can crack your locks in 10 seconds using a simple Bic ballpoint pen?

DAY FOUR:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just saw that video on a friend's website. And I'm kinda ticked off because I just paid $60 for one of your new locks 3 weeks ago, and I'm wondering if a Bic pen can crack my lock or not... does the pen crack all Kryptonite locks or just one or two models?

DAY FIVE:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: Hey, I just visited your website and saw no mention of the Bic pens. What the hell are you doing about it? Are you going to fix the locks? Are you going to give me a refund?

DAY SIX:

KRYPTONITE: Our bike locks are the best.
THE MARKET: No, they're not. You guys are assholes.

So what was the final outcome? How did Kryptonite address the problem? Did they fix the lock in the end? I have no idea. I'm just assuming their locks continue to suck. I suppose I could go visit the company website for more info, but... Eh. I can't be bothered. I'm just assuming it'll have the usual bullshit PR when I get there. Life is short.
One decent, smart, young, credible part-time blogger on $500 a month, writing from the front lines on their behalf could have saved Kryptonite millions of dollars. Not to mention decades of slowly-and-painfully built brand equity.

Without warning, Kyptonite's market got smarter and faster than they did. And it only took a couple of days to unleash the full wrath. Boom!

You have been warned.

TREND FORECAST FOR BRANDS IN 2008

It's a lot of reading, but this email could seriously change the life of your company. Even if you have to set aside sometime and a cup of tea (with a Cadbury's creme egg obviously), then you really should.  This isn't a salesy thing from Juicy, just a trend report from Interbrand on what the biggest movers and shakers will be doing in 2008 to see explosive growth within their brands.

CoolBrands Report 2008

1. Cool Brands Will Be KEEPING IT COOL

The balance of power between brands and consumers is shifting in our favour and with the ride – spread rise and mobilisation of consumer groups, along with the increasing popularity of T.V and press consumer ‘watchdogs’, we now have more ability than ever before to ‘investigate’ the attitudes, activities and actions that brands take behind-the-scenes in keeping these promises

As a result brands will be looking to develop much stronger values-driven cultures to define, maintain and protect their integrity, which in turn will become an increasing important dimension of their external dialogue with consumers as they strive to earn our trust and engender loyalty by stronger communication and demonstration of their wider beliefs, values and commitments.

This ‘reality–check’ for branding is also likely to fuel the rise of more ‘authentic’ brands with increasing focus on the quality, origins and traceability of real ingredients, the skill of the real designers and craftsman, more tangible demonstration and proof of reliable, consistent product/service delivery as well as more focus on the warm, genuine nature of the real people who sell, deliver and service them for us.

2. Cool Brands Will Be TELLING US STORIES

With the ‘communicating’ no longer any guarantee that a brand message has been received or understood, it’s the age-old art of storytelling that is becoming a driving force in the way brands will engage with us.

The focus being on the powerful articulation of brand stories – often built around real consumer and corporate characters and situations – that will draw us in to create brand content we will want to read and, like all the best stories, want to recount and pass on to others.

An approach were captivating characters, plot and narrative become more important than the traditional obsession with audiences, messages and media.

Furthermore, where brands increasingly see themselves less as the editors, producers and broadcasters of one-way, pre-determined communication and more the seekers and source of captivating brand stories that are more openly shared with their internal and external brand communities.

3. Cool Brands Will Be MAKING THINGS SIMPLER

We live in a ‘surplus’ society. Were spoilt for choice in the terms of products and services available to us, bombarded by thousands of messages daily and have attention spans that are diminishing as we demand more instant gratification from the things we buy and the wider world around us.

We also recognise that time is one of our most precious resources and are increasingly looking for brands to make things simpler for us.

The pursuit of brand simplicity will not will not only relate to the creation of products that are easier and more intuitive to use and understand but will also become a wider organisational ‘ethos’ that extents across the brand value-chain to simplify the total relationships we have with brands.

From the development of products that are simpler to compare, find, buy, and use through to plain-speaking contracts, terms and conditions, advertising, packaging and labelling.

Indeed the simplification of the total brand-customer relationship is set to become one of the most highly valued and differentiating points-of-difference amongst brands we highly appreciate and admire.

4. Cool Brands Will Be CHANGING OUR LIVES

Our traditional pillars of society – state, religion, politics, community and the family – are all increasingly been questioned, tested and redefined.

At the same time, with most of our basic, human needs for food, shelter etc, now satisfied we will increasingly turn to brands to help us fulfil our  more complex human needs to belong , feel connected, transform ourselves and experience true happiness and fulfilment in our lives.

In doing so brands will increasingly look to position themselves as the providers of transformational products, services and experiences that are no longer only ‘consumed’ but that also empower and inspire us with new knowledge, tools and skills to help us improve the quality of our lives, whilst changing and improving ourselves in the progress.

Whether this be helping us to become stronger, ,ore intelligent, healthier, more fashionable, more informed, more attractive, more confidante or simply believe were now ready to put up those shelves.

5. Cool Brands Will Be FEELING The Difference

For decades brand owners have wrestled with the desire to ‘humanise’ the things we buy by giving them ‘names’, ‘personalities’, ‘attitudes’ and ‘images’ but often at the expense of conveying any true sense of emotion around the brand.

As brands increasingly recognise that it is emotions that drive most, if not all of our decisions they will begin to focus ,ore effort on ‘emotionalising’ their entire approach to branding to help change our attitudes and behaviours and in turn build deeper relationships and engender our loyalty.

An approach that will increasingly bring the passion of a organisation and particularly its people centre – stage, that will relish the opportunity to harness the power of design in its widest sense to increase our aesthetic and multi-sensory appreciation of the total brand experience, and that will not only communicate with consumers but also ‘collude’ with us to co – create and customise the brand encounters we want.

The holy grail of this more emotional focus on branding becoming the creation of brands that ‘fans’ can literally desire, fall in love with, cannot live without and cannot wait to evangelise about.

6. Cool Brands Will Be CARING FOR OUR COMMUNITIES

Our ambivalence towards conventional marketing ‘hype’ and our increasing distrust of big institutions and political ‘spin’ is fuelling our insistence for brands to operate within a much higher set of corporate, social and environmental ethics.

As a result brands will look to invest much more of their time and resources in activities and initiatives that enable, mobilise and nurture our communities of interest. These activities working at many levels from brands targeting global issues such as climate change and sweatshop labour, through to more local and social challenges such as obesity, responsible drinking and improving school facilities.

This renewed focus on community also helping transform the future marketing of brands from an instructive model of communication largely un-wanted messages to a more participative genre of marketing focused on engaging consumers with activities and communications that we actively want to seek out.

7. Cool Brands Will Be Getting More EXPERIENCED

Our service economy has recently started to become commoditised by a more evolved experience economy where brands are going far beyond the basic provision of products and services to develop and ‘stage’ much more immersive, entertaining, enjoyable, memorable and higher value experiences for consumers.

Starbucks’ transition of the humble coffee bean from a raw commodity bean into a cult coffee empire probably being one of the most impressive demonstrations of the business and branding possibilities that can be explored in the experience economy.

Going towards brands will increasingly look to create more powerful experiential products, services, places, communications and occasions that encourage consumers to want to spend more time and money with them.

This will also challenge brands to ‘produce’ these experiences whether they be in-store, outdoors, online or in-home in a much more holistic and multi-channel fashion to ensure that all operational, product service and, perhaps most importantly, the human dimensions of these higher experiential promises are carefully orchestrated and consistently delivered.

8. Cool Brands Will Be DARING TO DREAM

Finally, as technology relentlessly drives our digital lives and as our personal information, knowledge, entertainment and communications increasingly become stored in ‘cyberspace’ and managed by computers, society – and in turn brands – will place new value on those human abilities and characteristics that cannot be digitised or automated.

Our myths, legends, stories, rituals, emotions, feelings, desires and dreams.

All will provide new inspirations as brands look to weave themselves into the fabric of our lives by capturing our imaginations, suspending our disbelief and providing new generations of products, services, experiences and spectacle that allow us to escape from the day – to – day and to explore our inner fantasies.

Products that move and memorise us, services that astonish and transform us, stories that fascinate and inspire us and experiences that immerse us in real or virtual worlds of possibility will all become an important part of how brands will evolve.

An evolution where it is imagination not information that becomes the driving force as brands help us satisfy our highest human needs to belong and become all we can be whilst at the same time re-kindling our timeless appetite for adventure, exploration and the great beyond.

Brands Misbehaving

So there you have it some thoughts, observations and predictions for the kinds of behaviour that the CoolBrands of today and tomorrow will be exhibiting.

That’s not to say that all CoolBrands exhibit all of these behaviours, or even that when they do so it’s a conscious effort. Far from it and indeed it’s the effortless ease with each CoolBrands achieve such engagement that fascinates us.

But going the pursuit of such behaviour is not only going to be the domain of CoolBrands and I believe all modern business will be increasingly challenged to come to terms with these ideas and behaviours, not so much in the interest  of becoming a CoolBrand but to address the more fundamental questions of sustaining their ongoing survival, growth and prosperity.

Then again, as with many things in life, isn’t it only a matter of time before the maverick misbehaviour of a minority becomes the mainstream behaviour of the masses?

So maybe Its time for all mainstream brands and not just their CoolBrand counterparts to loosen-up and to start misbehaving a bit more.

The Finest Ambient Advertising Ever?

Human beings become a human joysticks in the latest MSNBC.com invention to entertain spectators waiting for a movie to begin. Adage today has an article on what is called crowd gaming and looks like a group Wii experience. Motion sensors throughout the theater track the audience's collective movement and use them as human joysticks to play an arcade game on the wide screen.

Crowd gaming could be an interesting (but expensive) new option to refresh advertising in movie theatres, but personally I would appreciate it (maybe) only as a one-shot experience. Also, it could fit only a certain kind of movies, blockbusters such as Spiderman or the Fantastic 4. I can't imagine playing such a game before watching for example, The Lives of Others... In the end, kudos to MSNBC for creating a PR story (yes, I'm also writing about it) but I definitely hope "crowd gaming" in theatres becomes a trend!

Ambient Media definition: "

Ambient advertisements are effective means at pushing a brand message in front of consumers and can develop even better top of mind recall within target audiences. This provides the ability to advertisers to maintain brand awareness created by other advertising efforts. Ambient media can produce mass attention in centralized locations, or directly interact with consumers during normal every day activities (2).

Examples are messages on the backs of car park receipts, on hanging straps in railway carriages and on the handles of supermarket trolleys. It also includes such techniques as projecting huge images on the sides of buildings, or slogans on the gas bags of hot air balloons.

Is the Latest Wonderbra Ad too Clever?

I keep being confronted with great Wonderbra ads. Remember this one, and this one, and what to think of the print ads? All from 2007. Last week we had a nice spoof on Cadbury's drumming gorilla. And now the latest one rolled in. Is it just the product or is it the creativity of the agencies behind? You tell me!