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Interesting trend piece highlight by PSFK about media hybrids (magazines that do podcasts for example). The gist of it is that smart media owners don’t see themselves as TV station, newspaper or magazine they see themselves as creators of content first – the platforms are adaptable and in the long run disposable. Pretty sure if you’re in media and you don’t get this your publication is totally doomed. This applies to websites as much as newspapers – what’s happening papers today could certainly happen to web mags tomorrow.
A great example I personally love is Monocle which is primarily a magazine but also a weekly podcast and a shop.
As a marketer I also think this is equally relevant to brands. In fact maybe more so as consumers deliberately seek out media because they find it interesting while as brands need to be much more pragmatic about attracting attention. Who cares if a consumer visits your website, Youtube or Facebook – as long as they receive the message the platform is almost irrelevant (I say almost as I guess putting your brand message on a porn site is going to make you look a bit grubby). Brands definitely need to let go of the obsession of driving people only to their official web (or mobile site) – they’re missing opportunities elsewhere that a smarter competitor is going to exploit.
Certainly this is something i’m looking at for clients. ghd in particular springs to mind as well as running a local microsite linked to a number of events the same content is being spread via mobile, facebook, twitter, web video and several media partnerships (due to launch in the next month or so). We’re not creating new content for most of these platforms – we’re making our brand content work harder.
Love Adidas (ever since Adicolor) and also big fan of designer Jeremy Scot and i’ve already mentioned the Adidas Original campaigns great house party ad/video. But something bothers me about this clip. Its something I see from brands all the time, particularly brands involved in youth marketing. It’s the shoe horning of a theme from the advertising into all communications – in this case Adidas is original. Really guys you don’t need to spell it out so bluntly i feel like i’m being marketed to now. Don’t tell us, show us. Prove it. Now what is an otherwise cool campaign feels slightly like brand brainwashing.
I think it comes from guilt on the part of the brand manager/agency that they’re having too much fun – so they feel the need to inject it with a bit of “brand messaging”.
Stoned Cherrie recently made global headlines as part of an African fashion showcase at New York Fashion Week. Sadly I couldn’t make the New York show but I did go to Cape Town’s Design Indaba and caught the collection there. This is my first online video – in hindsight maybe I could have used the zoom more…
See also Emma Jordan’s post on The Frock Report
and The New York Times article on the show.
UK Designer Henry Holland has added a bit of colour back into fashion this season with his Pantone collection (does exactly what it says on the tin). He’s mastered the art of creating collections that look good but have a simple idea that gives them innate talkability.
Amazing ad from Adidas Originals. Just plain fun and feels pretty authentic (everyone genuinely looks like they’re having the time of their lives). Who wouldn’t want to be part of the Adidas posse after this?
This is a selection of products that I liked from the Design Expo. Most of these were shot with my phone’s camera (in case you can’t tell)
Forgotten Wood Coffee Table made from recycled driftwood by Gorden Rattey. Improvised and found objects being another major Design Indaba trend.
Light shade by Fundi.
Pebble Cushion by Ronel Jordaan.
Another product made from found materials The Peg Light
Afro Dutch Chest (made from recycled materials) from Liv Design. More on this later.
Just like spaces now have virtual layers of narrative added to them so to are objects. When I finally made it to Design Indaba (for the final day of the conference) this was one of the trends that leapt out at me. In particular as I did a post on location-based story telling earlier in the week. Of course this isn’t so new – objects often have stories attached (think Chinese vases or tables with carved scenes).
The best example perhaps was the work of Canadian graduate of Eindhoven, Jon Stam. His Curiosity Cabinet contains a mixture of physical objects and virtual ones via his use of RFID chips to store digital information. He also showed a rug with cut outs of Canadian lakes on it; tiny audio devices playing clips of his family reading out letters/memories related to the places mapped on it – you need to put your ear right up against it to activate and hear them.
Also a graduate (this time from the RCA in London), Revital Cohen has created a dark-humoured biological clock for women. The conceptual object spits out a white ball every so often based on data gathered from the owners analyst, banker and boss.
