They say a picture paints a thousand words, here’s one that paints just 15 but speaks volumes about what Tiger said when he apologised to the mass media, his mother and Nike Tour Manager Amy Reynolds.
It’s based on a word count from a transcript and you can make your own Word Clouds using this free online service; Wordle.
It may be news to people who’ve never been there and have outdated clichéd ideas about it, but China is cool.
I bought a Hi Panda top when I was in Shanghai in 2007 and wore it recently on a trip to the UK – I got so many comments from people who loved it and wanted to know where on earth it was from.
Hip labels like this, however small, herald the emergence of all sorts of Chinese brands that are on their way headed for the world market.
Perhaps you have to have your Hello Kitty before you get your Sony Walkman …
A clever little film for the Typofile Film Festival 5 that is a great example of old school stop motion animation.
Time-lapse shot entirely on a stills camera with no video camera shots making this final edit at all. Creative concept and executive production by Sedgwick Richardson Singapore with Sash Alexander as DP for our client Commerz Real.
We wanted to make something short and sweet that worked well with other more detailed collateral such as the property brochures and agents presentation kits.
It’s the first video I’ve worked on for a while and it was great fun working with Sash Alexander to bring our storyboard to life.
The following interview with Wolff and Olins is interesting in that both men speak in plain and simple English about brand. I came across them in a recent edition of a Creative Review newsletter.
There is far too much jargon dealt out in branding, especially by the large branding corporations, that’s probably as much about client expectation as it is about the size of the consultancies.
Brands and symbols need to be simple, this does take process but there’s really no need to dress it up with pseudoscience – keep it simple.
Wolff and Olins no longer work at the company that bears their name. Wolff consults and Olins has his own company.
This video is about what it was like to work with each other, but is actually more about what it was like to work with Michael Wolff.
This one is about what they think of the company that still bears their name.
Michael Wolff should take a look at the “power distance” in some Asian corporations. What Olins says about the large corporate branding companies is very true. Although they do produce great creative work a lot of what they do is very cookie cutter and unimaginative like its come off a factory conveyor belt.
Shame they didn’t speak specifically about the 2012 Olympic Games brand that was designed by Wolff and Olins – albeit not by Wolff or Olins.
Meet Shanzhai the copy poodle.
A friend of a friend in China recently bought a poodle from a pet shop for a premium price. However after a few days she noticed there was something wrong with his ears and a trip to the vet discovered that the pet shop had glued fake ears onto the poor pooch.
The pet shop was being creative, although infringing Poodle IP didn’t turn out to be a sustainable strategy as they had to return the money to the customer.
As Chinese business increasingly sees the value of brand and turns towards the more profitable and long term root of developing and owning their own rather than ripping off established ones the branding sector will really take off in China.
We re-branded TANGS in the summer of 2007. The original and most famous department store in Singapore TANGS established Orchard Road as the premier shopping district in Singapore when they moved their shop there in the 1950s.
A few years ago the brand had become a little out of step with what was happening in retail with the new retail destinations in Singapore and new offers like Zara. The culture of the organisation had was too backward looking with an emphasis on heritage rather than relevance to fashionable consumers more interested in the next season.
TANGS got a fresh new look and comprehensive new identity system. Just as importantly we helped them with practical ideas on how to galvanise people in the business to be more modern in their approach to the brand.
What they’ve done with the launch of a new website is a testament to how they’ve taken the new brand on board and done something really quite progressive compared to other local retailers. Amongst other things the new site contains:
- video talking heads, mini fashion interviews
- a Second Life store
- online loyalty card points
It a great job and I suspect it also has some decent CRM under the bonnet and I look forward to getting some well targeted offers in the near future via my Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as through direct mail.
Shanzhai is a name from Guangzhou that referred to hill bandits who operated outside the law, and sometime took on the Robin Hood role.
Today’s it’s a popular term to describe copy or rip-off products. Although it can be applied Barely Davidson belt buckles or KFG outlets its most commonly applied to mobile phone clone manufacturers.
These iClone companies make quick bucks but also often provide consumers great technology and good user experience based on knocked off ideas like HiPhone instead of iPhone at significantly cheaper prices. Chinese consumers love them and rather than see it as stealing intellectual property view the higher prices from established brands as the real act of theft. This coupled with a sense of humour means many younger Chinese consumers see Shanzhie as fashionable.
To look a little further into the future its possible to see a world where the Shanzhie phone makers start to innovate and develop their own brands. Mobile phones are already highly personalised by the way we apply ringtones, cases and the content we store on them. Ultimately this will probably lead to even greater personalisation especially with the rise of the Android operating system.
Android is championed by some big players including Google, it means greater freedom of choice for what we run on our pocket computers and what they do besides make voice calls. China loves Linux and will take like a duck to water with Android.
Today in my office there are only two handsets; one group of people are iPhone and the other group all carry the Nokia E71 (okay one or two people inexplicably have both). In the not too distant future it could be closer to the wristwatch market with a lot more diversity both in terms of hardware and software leading to more personalised branding. The Chinese iclone manufacturers could be well placed to make the leap from Poacher to Gamekeeper once they start to get the real value out of brand equity by building their own rather than copying someone else’s.
