We’ve heard a lot of brands wishing to ‘own’ music recently, and we always get a bit, well, annoyed about it, because music belongs to people and persons, not brands. And the only thing brands should be trying to do in terms of music are those bandied-brand words, ‘facilitating’ and ‘enabling’. Ruby Pseudo’s team in the UK did a focus group recently where – in six minutes – the kids named 44 brands they saw as being part of the whole music “thing”, either in a good or an appropriate way.
Our results? The same brands kept coming up. As an [...]

Last night, we attended Microsoft’s soft launch party for Softwear, the company’s new line of graphic tees designed by hip-hop artist Common and “inspired by the 1980s when both Microsoft and hip-hop really came of age.” The software giant’s foray into fashion is intended to conjure a sense of nostalgic hipness around the brand, while reacting to the “I’m a PC” stereotype made popular by Apple. The shirts, which will hit select stores in the US on Dec 15, incorporate old DOS iconography, geek vernacular, and a retro-futuristic aesthetic into some surprisingly stylish designs. Softwear’s two lines, Classic and Common’s [...]

At our Good Ideas in 2009: Digital salon yesterday, much of the conversation surrounded how our online identities are created, both actively – through our own decisions of what we share about ourselves – and passively – through the actions and perceptions of others. Given that we only have control over half of that equation, how do we ensure that the best and brightest portrait of ourselves is seen by the wider community?
Piers posited his “Red Coat, Black Coat” theory back in 2006, which proved to be a harbinger of conversations to come about approaches to online privacy [...]

Screens are everywhere—in bars, taxis, movie theaters, living rooms, city streets, in your hand, in front of you right now—and it’s making media increasingly fragmented. Yesterday we talked about how the ad business is being affected by this proliferation of media channels. “We have a story we want to tell, and we use different media channels and different touch points to tell it. We have to rely on the consumer to pull the story together,” said Robert Rasmussen.
However, the mark of a good campaign is not just narrative cohesion between these channels, but truly connecting them in an [...]

Taking a page from their customer friendly food service model, Burger King recently took “Have It Your Way” into the realms of D.I.Y. fashion.  A collaboration between 5 designers and artists tasked with reinterpreting elements of Burger King’s icons and logos culminated at an event held in Chicago on October 24th.  The gathering invited participants to take part in the studio creation process by silk-screening the final designs onto their own clothing in any combination they chose.  Essentially, a clever form of marketing that allowed Burger King to subvert their own image, while at the same time maintaining recognizable aspects [...]

MySpace and Viacom’s MTV Networks announced a deal that will partner them with Auditude, a technology firm that has developed a means of identifying whether uploaded video clips belong to a particular TV Network by recognizing unique electronic signatures.  Auditude approached these two companies with this technology, marketing it as a means of incorporating advertising.  Essentially, any content appearing on MySpace belonging to MTV Networks will be tagged, allowing either business the option of inserting ads.
This represents a significant change in attitude for both companies.  In the past, MySpace TV, the second largest video site behind YouTube, might have blocked [...]

As pop-culture and celebrity gossip blogs continue to see increased traffic, particularly with the youth demographic, advertisers’ views on what counts as acceptable have started to change.  Given the uneasy economic climate and tightening budgets, it’s become increasingly important for mainstream brands to be mindful of where their ad dollars are going.  As a result, following the crowds, even if that means entering non-traditional venues on the web with less respectable material, makes a good deal of sense.  Despite the inherent logic of this move, some in the media still question whether this issue has more to do with negligent [...]

The dairy lobby has always been a powerful force in America, but recently they saw their classic ad campaigns overtaken by cartoon characters that children more readily relate to.  These new school cultural icons easily sway children in purchasing choices.  The proliferation of SpongeBob snacks or Spiderman cereals drove Big Milk to form a modern marketing group known as “Milk Media.”  In the venture’s first deal, school milk consumption increased 34% after the implementation of Disney’s Doug into the milk campaign.  While milk has enemies, they certainly have fans in the federal government who wish to promote the milk alternative [...]

Volkswagen has teamed up with the much buzzed about Brazilian band Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) to offer its latest release, Donkey, for free. Everyone (in Brazil only, unfortunately) can download the internationally famous band’s newest album on this official site, thanks to full sponsorship by VW.
This new distribution format is very innovative for Brazil and could potentially be a successful way to combat piracy in the country.
Official CSS/Volkwagen Download Site

In an attempt to reduce excessive packaging and create an unwrapping experiences that was best suited for their demographic, Mattel conducted a little market research to observe how girls were attempting to open the painstakingly complicated packaging, and then spent some time with their designers and engineers to come up with a solution that both saved them money and increased the overall unwrapping experience – all while ensuring that Barbie safely made her trip over from China.
After observing that most girls attempted to just “pull and tear” Barbie from her package, the design team decided they needed to streamline the [...]

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about skateboarders newfound preference for blank, un-branded skateboards. When kids first start skating, the allure of name brand boards is strong, but as skaters become more advanced with their tricks, they break more boards. Thus, paying the high prices that “cool” boards command can get pretty lame if you’re snapping a board a month.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the 12 million American teenagers who skateboard:
They are the industry’s prime customers, both devoted to the sport and savvy. And when they started out, most of them invested in premium boards [...]

There’s something pretty wonderful about the little puberty characters that MTV have made over at immaturity.tv. Each character has its own film, sometimes an intro para – brings it all back to you with a bump. We think there’s some way of putting all this on your mobile phone but we’re probably too old to work that out.
http://www.immaturity.tv/

An article in Philly.com examines the new drive Nike has taken to make its products relevant for today’s market:
Parker, 51, who became CEO in January 2006, is promoting new products such as basketball uniforms that are tailored rather than baggy… Under Parker’s new marketing structure, teams focus on six main categories: running, soccer, basketball, men’s training, women’s fitness, and sports culture, which the company defines as products for casual wear rather than athletic performance.
The shift came as Nike lost market share to Baltimore-based Under Armour, which sells tight-fitting, sweat-wicking athletic clothes.
Under Armour gained ground by targeting high-school football players year-round, [...]

In 2002 a group of Buenos Aires art students from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) created their own clothes brand.
SUBA as it’s named has become the brand to be seen in on the streets of Buenos Aires. According to PSFK’s Argentine correspondent Hernando Gomez Salinas SUBA has become “the ‘official clothes’ of all people who try to look ‘Street’ in Buenos Aires”.
Hernando goes onto say that SUBA have become so successful by collaborating with worldwide artists but also in the way that they have spread their name through guerrilla and viral marketing. The brand has been adopted by its [...]

Making its way from the west coast, methamphetamine is reaching epidemic levels, hitting rural communities particularly hard. The Meth Project is an anti-meth campaign that’s attempting to graphically communicate the risks of methamphetamine to the youth of Montana with a unique and sensible approach:
We approach Methamphetamine as a consumer products marketing problem. Meth is a consumer product. It is readily available. It is affordably priced. It is distributed statewide through a very effective distribution channel. It has many product attributes that are perceived as attractive.
The Meth Project is the largest advertiser in Montana, reaching 70-90 percent of teens three [...]