From the category archives:

brand

Designer Water Anyone?

by thenakedpheasant on 28 September 2009


Sure Tom won’t be pleased to see this, but like him I’m not a huge fan of “bottled water”. Do we really need it?

Anyway, despite this I wanted to share another bit of good PR/Online marketing from Evian. A company that’s really doing some cool marketing at the moment – remember this. Clearly a company with its backs against the wall today – bottled water isn’t in vogue – so they’ve really thought long and hard about its marketing approach. With many people questioning the real value of the bottle not to them but to the environment, it has a challenge.

So Evian has looked to bring a fresh look at the question of the value of the bottle and has partnered with Paul Smith to design a limited edition range for the brand. He’s a lifelong drinker of Evian (well so he says, but I’m sure the money he was paid had something to do with this) and put together a rather nicely designed bottle for them. The focus of the campaign, much like the Evian babies video, is about “feeling young” – a message that works, but I also think it could rub some people up the wrong way (i.e. it’s notion of live your life when you’re young and sod the rest of world when you die, they can deal with the problems you’ve caused). Anyway, skirting around this messaging issue – some nice work from the brand.

The PR’s have been smart and put together a nice (but probably low cost) video interview with Paul. This enables them to go further than a press release, or advertising campaign allowing the designer to speak in his own words, and create content that people will want to view/pass on. The agency did well, as Adverblog point out, by seeding the video on HypeBeast (really popular design/early adopter/opinion former new media and community site) which will ensure the right people see it and then pass it on.

I would quite like one of these bottles. Does that make me a bad person?

The Unbearable Smugness of Early Adoption

by thenakedpheasant on 24 September 2009


I’ve heard it argued that the only real reason for visiting the gym is the feeling of smugness afterwards.

So it goes with early adoption, I think. I can hardly be accused of being a technological cool hunter – I resolutely refuse to buy an iPhone until every other handset vendor has gone bust, for instance – but every dog must have his occasional day.

Indeed, it feels like only yesterday that workmates were crowded around my PC at Edelman’s old Haymarket House offices, wondering what the strange site I was looking at was all about. It was called Facebook – you may have heard of it.

Today I am basking in a similarly fleeting moment of smugness, having just received my beta invite for Thing Labs’ Brizzly service (www.brizzly.com). All courtesy of a tip-off from Rick Klau (@rklau), product manager for Blogger over at Google. Smart guy, whose presence we were blessed with at Edelman’s recent Leadership Academy pow-wow in Chicago, and well worth following for exactly this kind of reason.

In a few days, of course, Brizzly will be everywhere, even my mother will have an account and I’ll be afflicated by the same pangs of possessive jealousy as when the world and his wife discovered Sebastian Tellier’s ‘La Ritournelle’.

In the meantime, for a brief moment at least, I feel like an early adopter. I am keeping up with the technological Joneses. I am gatecrashing a whole different marketing demographic. And, in spite of myself, it feels sweet.

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the little things in life

September 22, 2009

Yesterday, Noor had a little bit of a rant, and rightly so, on the importance of detail – specifically, in her rant, about people getting your name right. Now, Noor will be the first to acknowledge that her name is perhaps unusual but this doesn’t forgive people beginning emails to her with ‘Dear Kheir’ when [...]

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No Such Thing As A Local (part deux)

September 21, 2009

I have had a rethink on the idea that there is no such thing as local any more?
It began when contemplating, from a hotel room to the south of Paris, the specific kind of Gallic urban decay that is somehow depressing, artistic and monumental at the same time. This rediscovery of local nuance was exacerbated [...]

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No Such Thing As Local?

September 14, 2009

The difference between local and global Marketing is a question that often raises it’s head when certain kinds of marketers gather and has perhaps launched a thousand dissertations.  But it seems that the question is becoming increasingly redundant in the connected age.  Well at least the kind of locally created controversial campaign that exploits icons [...]

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