Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Coffee Break, Cool & Online | Tags: insight, animation, Car, Light, Let it shine, This little light of mine, Lightshow, Honda, Desert Light, Desert, Energy saving, Honda Insight, The best traffic jam you've ever been stuck in?
I’m sure most of you in UK are familiar with the “Let it shine” Honda advert currently being aired on TV. However Honda and Vimeo obviously thought they could go that one better.
Smiles all round?
Watch the video – Let it shine
If anything this is an amazing spectacle that makes you smile. Alongside this though, Honda have chosen to do this with Vimeo over YouTube. The quality of the experience is something that I would definitely like to see more of, I know I’m hoping that raising the bar will set the standard.
The extra content that you get from going online really shows here, and here at Neoco we always like to see creativity, especially within the digital space!
Thanks to Averblog
We attended a really interesting presentation a couple of weeks ago by Paul Austin of multi-disciplinary design consultancy Madethought. It may have been a while back, but is worth mentioning nonetheless since there was some really inspiring work shown here which went hand in hand with some (naturally) amazing typography. The eclectic mix included some really lovely packaging design for the likes of Stella McCartney and Yauatcha, branding and interior design for fashion brand Reiss, and even branding for Neoco’s favourite haunt: private karaoke bar, Lucky Voice! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I urge you to check out their website. You may even be converted – I was!
But in addition to looking at the aforementioned eye-candy, it was really fascinating and refreshing to hear about the design process as well as the final product – the former of which is the best part of the job, according to Paul.
He had some frank admissions too; ‘we hire freelancers who spend two hours just fiddling around getting the baseline grid right…I don’t even know what that is!’ claims Paul. He goes on to describe how likes to just get stuck in with a blank page, creating layouts text out by eye and instinct rather than by grid: queue visible cringes from the typo circle members in the front row. But the results speak for themselves. Despite their unusual approach, these are no David Carson wanabes. There is no free flowing text plastered across the page, their work is clean, well structured, and sometimes truly beautiful.
To take their Design Miami work as an example, its great to see how they turn something as simple as a backlash into such a diverse branding identity. With some clever thinking and paper engineering it works across everything, from brochures to architecture. It’s a case of taking one good idea, but then really pushing it to the limit.
Another one of my favourites was the exhibition space design for high-end furniture company Established and Sons. This was built entirely from printed cardboard boxes, which may sound slightly cheap but really helped to create a unique environment with the company’s signature stamp (see below). It also involved putting hundreds of boxes together from individual nets, then piecing the pattern together jigsaw style. Talk about suffering for your art!
All in all it was a really informative and enjoyable event put on by the typographic circle, and we’ll definitely be checking out the next one in May. For more info visit www.typographiccircle.com, and be sure to check back soon for the launch of their brand spanking new site!
Filed under: Coffee Break, New Technology, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: 101 dalmations, Australia, dog collar, dog walking, dogs, Dogtree, neoco, niche, Pedigree Chum, Petsmart, platform, quark, social networking, Springwise, walkies, Winalot, XPress
Dogs can wear a tag to help their owners make new friends; now pet owners can return the favour by using Dogtree, a social networking site designed especially for dogs.
Australian Dogtree is a free service that aims to help dog owners find playmates and walking friends for their canine companions. To search for doggie friends, human users can simply enter their postal code; more advanced search options are also available, such as breed and size. Either way, the result is a list of other suitable canine members in their area. Once they find some that seem like a good match, dog owners can invite them through the site for a playdate or meeting. There are currently almost 600 members on Dogtree, and most elect to use their dog’s photo and name as their username on the site.
Need we say more? Now that social networking has covered most of the developed world’s human population, niche applications are coming fast and furious—and even extending to some of mankind’s best friends. Cats may be less amenable to the social networking experience, we suspect, but how long before this comes to other sociable species? Advertisers of related products: get ready, or get involved!
So what do Neoco think of it… This is a great way of showing the power of niche social networks and how people cluster around particular activities or interests. There can also be real power for brands to build strong relationships with relevant audiences through these channels – imagine if this was set up by Pedigree Chum or Petsmart, what a great initiative. It’s this thinking that Neoco work with clients to deliver – just look at our successful I Love Design platform for Quark XPress.
Credit to Springwise for original story
Filed under: Brands & Marketing, Cool & Online, Social Networking/ Word Of Mouth | Tags: Ikea, advocacy, WOM, adverblog, Netherlands, kitchens, UGC, user generated content, Dutch, virtual, customer aquisitions, would it of helped MFI?
In The Netherlands, IKEA has launched a nice online campaign to promote its kitchens and drive loyalty as well as new customer acquisitions.
Those who bought an IKEA kitchen are invited to share their setup and help building a “virtual” but “real” kitchens gallery. But you don’t contribute just for the sake of or, better, to show off your home (which might be already a strong reason to participate for Dutch people who are usually very proud of their interior designs). If you decide to share your kitchen in the gallery you can actually win the chance to get your money back on your purchase
On the other side, customers who are still undecided about their new kitchens can instead get inspired and vote the setups in the gallery and win their own kitchen for free.
On the other side, customers who are still undecided about their new kitchens can instead get inspired and vote the setups in the gallery and win their own kitchen for free.
Thanks to Adverblog for flagging up.
Filed under: Brands & Marketing | Tags: advertising, Coca-Cola, Innocent, marketing, McDonalds, News
Not so long ago, I was still a grubby student studying Advertising and Marketing Comms at Bournemouth University. Innocent was a brand we’d all use to demonstrate our conceptual understanding time and time again. The only explanation for this I can think of is that, as a bunch of lively late-teens, we had a close affinity and understanding of the brand already (well, we wouldn’t have picked anything hard now, would we?!). This is more pertinent given that I’ve been to the Innocent Summer Fete two years on the trot, and am planning to go back this year.
It all begs the question: what is it about the Innocent brand that builds such subconscious salience amongst my demographic? I’d put money on it being the very ‘Innocence’ of the brand – the fact that it brings out the kid in everyone by building such an idealistic experience around what is essentially still, just a drink. But unusually, I don’t mind feeling duped by the powers of Innocent’s marketing comms – having spent so many years studying it, I appreciate that I’m harder than most to be sold a product, let alone a brand’s ideology. So when I buy into something enough to let my guard down, I’m really quite impressed.
The thing about Innocent is that there’s a fair trade – you hand over your otherwise cynical, sarcastic and close-minded attitude to sales messages, and in return they offer a unique and truly engaging brand experience that is as real at their Summer Fete as the images they paint in your mind. I’d put it down to their marketing strategy being as synergetic as any depicted in a textbook, which I think owes as much to the unified vision of the founders as good marketing practice. The wonderful thing about Innocent has been the consistency of it’s touchpoints with consumers – from the summery nature of the product, to it’s links with live music, to the bunting, knitting and welly wanging – it’s a return to the quintessential English traditions that time has otherwise forgotten about.
So it was with horror that I found out that Innocent has now sold a minority stake worth £30m to Coca-Cola. If anything could be further from Innocent’s links to all things traditionally quaint and British, it’s one of the biggest corporate bloodsuckers on the planet. And this is on top of Innocent’s flirtation with McDonald’s a while back, trialling Innocent smoothies with kids’ Happy Meals.
Honestly, I feel pretty confused. I feel cheated by an otherwise loyal and trustworthy friend. It just goes to show what can happen when you build such a close relationship with your consumers – they expect you to stay true to the brand vision they bought into, even if macro-economic factors make it hard to achieve.
Everyone’s feeling the pinch of recession, but Innocent’s decision to ally with an American multinational could prove far more damaging in the long term than the short term cash flow problems it will address. I really hope not – but in the meantime, I’ll be sticking to my fizzy water.
Coxy.
