Brand Design Blog, News and Ideas

I’d just like to wish all the readers a Very Happy, Safe and Successful New Year.

It looks like many businesses will be hitting some more tough times over the next year, but if you can hang in there and continue to drive sales you have an opportunity to reach even greater heights in 2009.

I’m certainly looking forward to the challenge and will be aiming to make 2009 our best year yet.

The creator of the world famous ‘Pringles’ chip can system, Fredric J. Baur, of Cincinnati, was buried last week in the township of Springfield, U.S.A.

His children honoured their father’s request by burying some of his cremated remains in the pringles can for which he was famous.

Strange, but true… read the full story here.

SXSW is a yearly conference in Austin Texas that says it covers, music, film and interactive topics.

In reality, it covers a whole lot more.

Literally hundreds of speakers getting together to speak about all things creative, innovative and ground breaking.

Unfortunately, like many people, I find myself on the other side of the world and over committed to my work to take a trip over to the U.S. and soak up 10 days of thoughts and ideas from brilliant speakers. There is also the issue of it being finished for this year (March 7-16).

So what’s an information junkie to do…?

There is a solution. Many of the panels have been recorded as audio podcasts which you can download for free.

So far I’ve listen to panels on time management, web design, branding, digital effects on a budget, industrial design, business start-ups and game theory.

There are more to come, so make sure you subscribe to the rss feeds which can be found here at feedburner or by doing a search for SXSW in the podcast section of itunes.

I hope you find them as useful and thought provoking as I have.

Make sure to subscribe to the podcasts before they take them down otherwise you may miss the chance to download them.

Don’t be afraid to post your comments on this blog, I’d be interested to read your thoughts.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design and a is conference that brings together great speakers from around the world.

The TED web site houses a gold mine of presentations given on topics ranging from Business to the Environment, from Culture to Innovation.

With talks by guests such as Jane Goodall, Al Gore and Brian Greene each FREE video presentation is packed with insightful and interesting information.

Each speaker is given (approx) 18 minutes to give the talk of a life time on their chosen subject.

There is some really great stuff on the site and I would highly recommend that you take some time to check it out.

I’ve also selected a category on design which I think you’ll interesting – “Design like you give a Damn” features a range of great speakers talking about all aspects of design.

If you found this interesting, leave me a comment and let me know.

You’ve probably already seen this in a million different places on the web, but I thought I’d make a comment anyway.

For the last year or so, there has been a format war over which High Definition video format will be the future.

Our combatants – HD DVD Vs. Blu-ray

Much like the older video formats – VHS Vs. Beta

There was simply no place for both. Double the cost for consumers, more importantly double the cost for producers. Having to produce multiple format versions of a film would add millions to the cost of distribution.

So, after a year of back an forth from one film studio or another, backing one format or another – then after a lot of money changing hands – All major film studios are now supporting Blu-ray as there format of choice.

So what does this mean for the consumer?

When there are going to be positives and negatives.

Firstly, having one format is going to make it much easier for the consumer to purchase a single hi-definition player and be able to stick to it.

On the other hand, because we only have one format, we’re unlikely to see any competition on price. So, for the mean time the Blu-ray players are in no real hurry to come down in price.

Personally, the convenience of only having to buy one player to get films from all studios has won me over. I could see nothing worse than having to buy one player to play one movie and then another player to play a movie from a different studio.

Either way, this is an interesting story and one worth paying attention to.

To read more information on this weeks events visit: www.engadget.com

I can’t finish the week without making reference to the biggest advertising event on the calendar.

The American Superbowl has become the most highly contested advertising spot worldwide.

With over 3 Million US dollars being shelled out for a single run during the game.

You then add the cost of producing each commercial, including A list entertainment talent. You are looking at a cool 5-6 million dollars for a single advertising spot.

While those figures sound insane from a return on investment point of view. Studies have shown that many products advertised during the Superbowl have received in excess of a 10% increase in yearly sales, directly attributed to Superbowl ads.

For high profile products this can mean an increase in revenue of tens of millions of dollars. Certainly worth the initial expense.

To see some of this years Superbowl commericals click here.

In my opinion, some Superbowl commercials are brilliant. Delivering a message that calls customers to action, while delivering just the right about of entertainment value to make the message stick.

While other ads have missed the mark by placing too much emphasis on the entertainment and not enough on the message.

Check them out and let me know which ones worked for you.

Just been announced at Mac World 2008.

The New Apple Laptop. Macbook Air. The worlds thinnest notebook.

Everyone had been wondering what Steve Jobs might announce at this years conference after the press that the iphone got last year.

This new laptop is ultra thin. At it’s thickest point you are looking at 22mm which then tapers down to a 4mm ‘blade like’ edge.

Even if you’re not a Mac fan, this one is definitely worth a look.

You can view the commercial here.

Or, have a closer look with the guided tour here.

I’ll be interested to read your feedback on this one.

I’d like to just say a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to Everyone. 

I hope you all have time to enjoy the day with friends and family.

Have Fun! 

This week Australia elected a new Prime Minister. Kevin Rudd has now replaced John Howard after an 11 year elect as the head of Australian politics.

I’m not going to comment on who should lead Australia or whether Australia’s election decision was right or wrong. But what I am going to talk about is how big a part, ‘BRAND’ played in this 2007 election.

Both political camps, Howard’s Liberal and Rudd’s Labor parties, made use of the media as the front line in their campaigns. But it clearly showed that Labor had the upper hand with their media strategy.

Labor looked at their campaign from a branding point of view. They promoted to sell their product. The product in this case being Kevin Rudd himself.

While the Liberals seemed to apply a ‘don’t vote for them’ mentality, Labor applied a ‘What we are going to do for you’ style solution.

The Liberal messages were negative. Labor’s were positive. People are attached to the positive and repelled by negative. People also want to hear the ‘What’s in it for me?’ statements.

There were also a few notable advertising slip ups based on this principle. One Liberal ad tried to convince us to vote Liberal to avoid the return of unions. But the methods used fell well short. Let me point out a few errors.

• ‘We’re coming back’ was the message repeated throughout the advertisement. The comment was voiced by a jovial unionist happy about the idea of ‘Coming Back’. This put a positive spin to the statement, which in turn, effected negatively on the Liberals.
• The ad then used the original backing sound which included unionist cheers. Again, this added more positive spin to the ‘We’re coming back’ statement. The sound was later changed to jeers in the last week of the campaign but was too little, too late, to repair the damage.

The Labor party then came up with a slogan. Slogans can often appear cheesy or cliché, but they do work. Why would huge brands like Coke, MacDonalds and Nike use them if they didn’t.

Good slogans stick in the mind. Millions of voters often don’t know who they are going to vote for until they have pencil and voting form in hand. A slogan running through their thoughts can often push them to vote for the person who just came to mind.

Of course, both parties had various sub slogans. But it was the ‘KEVIN 07′ slogan, seen across the nation, on tshirts and television, that really stuck in the minds of voters.

But is doesn’t say anything about the candidate?

True, but it is a call to action. That’s the true trigger in this situation. Relating the name to the action to vote. It’s the trigger you want released with those undecided voters standing at a polling booth scratching their heads.

Were there real issues involved in this campaign? Sure there were.

Couldn’t they, combined with candidate history, be the real reason for the victory? Of course, and it probably is.

But what we saw last weekend was a landslide. Not only that, but Kevin Rudd has only been leader of the Labor party for little over 12 months. Without a brand style campaign, the country would never have had the chance to learn who Kevin Rudd was and what he stood for.

We can safely say that the advertising, brand development and positive media saturation played a major part in the Labor victory. Brand Design has now changed the landscape of Australian Politics.

This is only a brief discussion on how ‘brand’ played a major part in recent Australian politics. The issue could be reviewed in far greater detail.

So if you’d like to hear more or if you have a different point of view, drop me a comment on the blog or contact me via email. I’d be interested to hear your point of view.

While the design of this new airport is very impressive from an aesthetic point of view.

You have to ask yourself…Is the return on investment going to pay off on this one.

Every 4 years a country spends millions if not billions of dollars on impressing the world when holding the Olympic games.

I wonder if the return in tourism based on impressive visual effects would not be higher if the money was put towards service and staffing.

Let’s relate it back to business. Does great service or an impressive premise provide more referrals and increase your return on investment?

Check out more about China’s new airport here.