Archive for April 2006

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PSFK Newsletter (trends)
IF! Newsletter (ideas)
FASHION Newsletter

Reebok has announced it is to move away from the lifestyle focus it became known for - 2005 saw the most controversial ads coming from the leading sports brand. It’s new owner, Adidas, have pointed Reebok’s strategy back towards the athletic market which is apparently where Reebok started.

PSFK: Reebok Drops Hip Hop Like it’s Hot

Rob Jama over on PSFK reports that the continuing controversy surrounding the Ray Fong character, on the Adidas x Huf x Barry McGee sneaker has finally come to an end.

PSFK: adidas Pulls Controversial Sneaker

To follow up on Fred Rawski’s recent post on PSFK called ‘Human Rights Meets Virtual Gaming‘, the winner of MTV’s Darfur Digital Activist was www.darfurisdying.com - which Fred Fred wrote about last time.

The British House Of Commons is debating the idea of taxing individuals who use computers at work for their own personal use. Think tax on company cars and you see the angle - if you use the computer for your personal use, then it will be a form of pay!! The Times reports:

Under the rules that replace the scheme, office computers used in part for non-business purposes are treated as a benefit in kind, meaning that employees will have to pay income tax on them, and employers will have to pay national insurance contributions for them as well. On a computer bought for £2,000, an employee paying higher-rate tax would face a £160 bill each year and an employer would have to pay an extra £51.20.

Times Online

A new exhibition at New York’s Met looks at creativity in British fashion over the last 30 years:

AngloMania focuses on British fashion from 1976 to 2006, a period of astounding creativity and experimentation. Over the past 30 years, British fashion has been defined by a knowing and self-conscious historicism. In their search for novelty, designers have looked to past styles with an appetite that is as audacious as it is rapacious. Focusing on their postmodern, historicizing tendencies, this exhibition presents a series of tableaux based on Britain’s rich artistic traditions. The irony of satirical prints, the romance of landscape paintings, and the glamour and bravado of grand manner portraits are evoked through a wide spectrum of British designers. The exhibition is set in the Metropolitan Museum’s English period rooms—the Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries—to create a potent dialogue between the past and the present

From May 3 2006.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

We’ve interviewed some fantastic interesting people over the last few weeks. Did you catch ‘em all? Here’s a list of them, just in case.

• Interview With Kevin Dulsky, Paypal Text To Buy - about the launch of the new service
• Interview With Philip Rosedale, Second Life - about opportunities for brands in the virtual world
• Interview With Richard Winkler, Curious Pictures - about the video game collaboration
• Interview with Jon Paley, DCODE - about a new structure for ad agencies
• Interview With George Murphy, Modo Group - about the importance of brand experience and his learnings from Coke/Starbucks
• Interview With Ze Frank - on creativity
• Interview With Sascha Lewis, Flavorpill - on the rise of the creative class
• Interview With Edwin Wong, Yahoo! Inc. - on a new approach to search engine marketing
• Interview With Eli Friedman, Xbox - on youth marketing
• Interview With Graham Hill, Treehugger - on green trends
• Interview With Josh Rubin, Cool Hunting - on trend spotting

The continuing controversy surrounding the Ray Fong
character, on the Adidas x Huf x Barry McGee sneaker has finally come to
an end. Adidas has decided to pull the remaining pairs of this shoe after
countless complaints and calls for boycott from the Asian community. "Out
of respect to those offended and to demonstrate our deep commitment to
inclusiveness and diversity, we have chosen to pull the remaining shoes from
the marketplace” read a statement issued by the company.

An apology was
also issued for the offense that was caused by the art work. The limited
edition sneaker that contained an Asian caricature that some considered to be
racist was a part of Yellow Series in the Adicolor campaign.

Reebok has announced that it is moving away from the lifestyle focus that has seen some of 2005’s most controversial ads. It’s new owner, Adidas, have pointed Reebok’s strategy back towards the athletic market which is apparently where Reebok started.

Reebok President & CEO, Paul Harrington, stated:

"We’ve been a little bit too lifestyle-focused maybe over the past couple years, and we want to shift actually more toward the performance side of our business."

This brings an end to what some see as an unimaginative marketing strategies a major sportswear brand has had. The focus on urban culture was guilty of giving the appearance of trying far too hard for consumers attention and appeared at least two years too late to have real credibility. The campaign sought salience through celebrity and gained notoriety as its 50cent executions [no pun intended] appeared to glamorize gun culture.

Metro West Daily News