I learned about Robin of Shoreditch a few weeks back at Faris’ blog and fell in love with it immediately. The 100 Brands Project is a wonderful idea and truly inspirational. Even though I’m not the first to talk about this, I simply feel duty bound to put it out there and try to generate even more support.

I don’t think there needs to be much else said, other than to watch the intro video, then spend a little bit of time checking out some of the amazing ideas for big brands contained within. If you do any work for any of these clients, make sure they see this and then encourage them to participate. For what is essentially pocket change to any of the world’s top 100 brands they could get immense publicity from supporting a cause like this. Go Robin! (and Little John too).

We have a lot of runners at Egg. A couple of us have experimented with the “freerunning” movement. In short, minimalist footwear to produce close-to-natural footstrike. While still within the minority, this freerunning movement is gaining traction (sorry, had to do it) and is proving to be a cost-of-entry innovation for most mainstream footwear companies. New Balance, Adidas and Nike have joined the race (there we go again).

These races against similar products inevitably produce a battle of differentiation (messaging, colorways, sponsors). Ultimately, the winner will harness an element of distinction its competition can’t match. I’ll propose Nike’s getting there with the below video. Always attentive to its ownership of the convergence between athletics and pop culture, Nike produced a video with the help of a couple Japanese DJ’s (not going to pretend I have the street cred to elaborate) that while absurd, highlighted the core attribute of its Nike Free shoe (next-to-natural flexibility) in a way that resonates with runners and peaks the interest of those profitable fashion-forward sneakerfreaks.

This is a challenge to rethink the way we communicate our most important attributes. Re-imagine how our targets experience the benefits we shout from the rooftops. Turn a simple function into art and in one down-beat, beat down the competition.

For many of the world’s men, the airtight equation for camaraderie consists of one or both of these addends: beer and sport. The summation quite often includes both in the case of a big game. THE big game. Such as the UEFA Champions League game between AC Milan and Real Madrid football teams.

In a brilliant activation strategy,  Heineken Italy proposes that the “most sacred time men have left” is at risk, then devised a stunt to call out the increasing influence external factors have in pulling a fan away from his set (and his buddies, and, well, a profitable beer occasion). More narration will only act as a spoiler, so spend a few minutes with this excellent case study to see how, ultimately, Heineken went viral, celebrated the sanctity of male bonding and created authentic engagement with its brand.
Cheers to the weekend.

When I used to work in the agency world, clients would often refer to some of their advertising as “branding spots” vs. work that had a more concrete, rational claim or “sales” approach. This distinction always bothered me, because it implies that communication that centers on creating a feeling or stirring an emotion is less persuasive in making a sale than messaging that presents more rational evidence of uniqueness. Ideally, the most effective work does both (like Volvo, Cadbury Gorilla), but sometimes a beautifully filmed idea can simply work by creating a positive feeling of goodwill around a brand.

In the case of this wonderfully shot ad for Pedigree dog treats, I not only starting thinking about the brand in a different way, but also about dogs in a new way (elegant, emotional, so expressive). Such a great ad and no need to mention the “nutritional goodness” or other nonsense to make the spot “more believable.” The sheer vitality of the dogs says everything. This great work is from TBWA in Toronto.

My friend Mark was recently interviewed by a business magazine in Vancouver. The subject was about different ways of using visual branding in outdoor advertising. Mark asked me about some of my favorite outdoor campaigns and the one I kept on coming back to just for its sheer longevity of brilliance is The Economist. Even though outdoor is the anchor for the campaign, they’ve done fabulous TV/cinema spots and blindingly great print. At the heart of all of it is the beautifully simple branding device of the red color which is sometime dominant (as in outdoor) or a subtle accent. Most of all, I love the fact that the advertising isn’t designed for everyone to get or enjoy. If you do get it, you should probably be reading The Economist, if you don’t you probably shouldn’t even be reading this blog. Here’s the most recent stuff, courtesy of Ben Kay in London and here’s a historical perspective of all the greatest work. I challenge anyone to come up with a better example of outdoor campaign brilliance.

I thought this week’s Brand Camp cartoon was pretty spot-on  and thought provoking.  It talks about how excited we are about social media as marketers, and yet how little respect we give it as permanent and public representation of our brand.  In many ways the rules and tonality with social media are much more complex than those of more traditional outlets, and should probably be managed as carefully as we fuss over the typeface in our advertising copy.   

The internet as we know it is 40 years old next week. October 29th 1969 was when the first two computers (one at Stanford, the other at UCLA) connected to each other. They were the first two “hosts”. At the end of the following year, there were 13 computers talking to each other and so it goes. The Guardian has a brilliant internet timeline, with milestones of each of the last 40 years. Glancing through it, it struck me how significant the pace of change has been in the last 10 or so years. Each year, something arguably massive emerges (1997 blogging, 1999 Napster, 2001, Wikipedia, 2004, Facebook, 2005, You Tube, 2006 Twitter).  This brings us up to today and a story in AdAge announcing VW’s launch of the new Golf GTI - a car I once owned and absolutely loved.  When the last version of the GTI was launched in 2006, VW spend $60 million on TV advertising.  In 2009, they are launching the new GTI with an app only available on the iPhone, costing them about $500,000 to do it. I love this for a couple of reasons:

1. I’m guessing the correlation between iPhone ownership and VW brand love is pretty strong…so a decent partnership

2. Driving a GTI is like driving a toy car on steroids…a neat creative spin to promote the launch with a driving game

I also just want to see how it works out…what a brilliant case study if it does and a ballsy move by VW.

Ok this is really cool.

I always thought Dyson would be one of those one-hit-wonder kind of guys who had a great revolutionary idea that changed a category that no one had thought about in a long time.  I figured he would have this splash and retreat to count his millions on the tropical island of his choice.  But he has done it again folks, this time re-inventing the humble fan.

So for the twist on this one…no blades…sublime.  He now goes on the list of people I want to have a drink with before I die.  To be able to re-think the mundane and turn it into inspired innovation (which sells at a premium, mind you) is truly a gift.

Kanye West’s brand took a big hit when he misbehaved at the MTV VMAs a few weeks back and he’s been keeping his head down since, even going so far as to cancel a proposed tour with Lady Gaga. But perhaps in a surprisingly frank move today, he released a copy of a short film made by director Spike Jonze, which got a ton of online coverage. The film, called “We Were Once a Fairytale”, is about 7 minutes of Kanye acting like a drunken moron in a club (thereby reinforcing all the things we’re coming to associate with him), then a bizarre bathroom scene where he cuts open his stomach and removes a little troll/goblin/demon mouse character, which promptly kills itself and Kanye sobers up sharpish. It’s definitely a self indulgent piece, but its frank depiction of a drunk and unattractive Kanye must have been some kind of catharsis for the man and surely the exorcism of “his demon” has to be taken at face value. By way of an apology (even if the film was made prior to his MTV shenanigans), it’s a pretty interesting new layer to his brand.

Interestingly enough, as I went to find the video to post, I discovered that it has been removed from the web from all the sites that were hosting it. At Kanye’s blog, he says “sorry I had to take it down:(”.

Any good brand has layers for its consumers to discover - I wonder this most recent one of Kanye’s was a little too much to bear. It’s a shame he didn’t leave that one out there for longer…but perhaps that was the point.

UPDATE: Here it is…back online this morning:

The consistently good Brand Mix pointed me in the direction of a great article in the New Yorker about the psychology of delayed gratification.  Experiments were conducted with 4 & 5 year old kids where they were given the choice to eat a marshmallow immediately or if they could wait 15 minutes, they could have two.  See this hilarious video example of it in action.  Psychologists stumbled on the theory that those kids who were better at delaying gratification became more successful in later life (as measured by academic and career success, wealth etc..).

It made me consider whether there are brands today that could be considered to be delayed gratification brands? By this I mean brands that increase in value because we have to wait before we get to use them. I found it really hard to generate a list, mainly because we can pretty much have what we want when we want it today. Even a brand like Starbucks with its new VIA coffee ensures that you can have a great cup of coffee even when you’re nowhere near a cafe.

Apart from serious luxury goods, the only things we typically crave but can’t immediately have are either distributed on a limited basis OR have not yet launched (like a new movie not yet in theaters, a new iPhone not yet on the market). Even big ticket items like cars and vacations are easily accessible to anyone with a decent credit rating. What brands these days have created greater value by making their customers delay gratification?

I love the Evian couture bottle program. With the proliferation of bottled water brands that span the market from packaged tap water to luxury designer water, there is a natural comparison between bottled water and fashion.

Fashion sells textiles at extreme markup through design. Doesn’t Voss, Bling2O, Antipodes and other ‘Fine Waters’ do the same thing? Evian is clearly keeping a foot in this trend.

Here are some of the Evian designs so far. The latest one by Paul Smith is definitely my favorite.

The myth of the Kennedy Camelot was perhaps one of the most artfully crafted and executed examples of branding of all time.  With Ted Kennedy’s passing today, we have lost the last thread to the old, whimsical, romanticized vision of the Kennedy name.

And, while Teddy almost single handedly dismantled the brand in his youth, he matured into a steady patriarch who quietly upheld the brand equities throughout his long and lauded career.

It was the Kennedy’s who paved the way for a campaign like Obama’s; hung on symbolism and a vision of idealism, simplified and packaged for popular consumption.

Sadly, it seems that the Kennedy brand has been left to wallow in the inexpert hands of the next generation, as have so many carefully composed luxury brands of the past.

Goodbye Camelot, you were a lovely, sweet dream.