Flamingo Sands Bikinis

Posted: December 5th, 2009 | Author: Mother | Filed under: Brand | No Comments »

Check out Flamingo Sands here.

Adaptive Brand Marketing

Posted: December 3rd, 2009 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Brand | No Comments »

We’ve been preaching concepts of Adaptive Brand Marketing for years now. Forrester researcher Lisa Bradner has finally formalised this new way of thinking about brands in a report titled “Adaptive Brand Marketing — Rethinking Your Approach To Brands In The Digital Age”. It’s really highly recommended reading.

To quote the executive summary, “Today’s brand marketing organizations are ill equipped to handle the world of “always on” marketing in the digital age. To remain relevant, marketing leaders will embrace Adaptive Brand Marketing — an approach encouraging rapid response to align consumer and brand needs and maximize return on brand equity. Core elements include: embracing an expanded role for consumer intelligence, focusing on strategic brand platforms, and empowering a federated organization. Over the next five years, Adaptive Brand Marketing will shift the discussion from the classic four P’s — now table stakes rather than differentiators — to permission, proximity, perception, and participation.”

Check out the Forrester report here.

Also BBH Labs offer some of their thoughts on adaptive brand marketing here. Also worth a look.

Social Media Not The Answer For Weak Brands

Posted: November 15th, 2009 | Author: Bruce | Filed under: Brand | No Comments »

Al Ries puts forward a great argument for the need to develop a strong core brand, as no matter what the impact of social media, it’s not going to fix a weak brand. Check out the Al Ries post on Brand Strategy Insider here before you go and get Twitface!

The Customer Experience Journey

Posted: November 1st, 2009 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Brand, Ideas | No Comments »

Why is customer experience such a hot topic? Because it’s important, complex, and broken. That’s why firms should head toward Experience-Based Differentiation (EBD), a blueprint for customer experience excellence.

The Customer Experience Journey is an excellent paper by Forrester analyst Bruce Temkin on the customer experience journey. It looks at customer-centric DNA propelling firms through five levels of maturity and lays out a multiyear journey through these levels of EBD maturity: 1) interested; 2) invested; 3) committed; 4) engaged; and 5) embedded.

You can get the Forrester Research paper — The Customer Experience Journey here.

Another interesting paper by Bruce Temkin entitled The 6 Laws of Customer Experience can be downloaded here for free. This paper is also well worth reading.

What if Apple was in the jewellery business?

Posted: October 9th, 2009 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Brand | No Comments »

Or perhaps, just how not to be like everyone else.

Interesting article by Martin Lindstrom on Brand Strategy Insider looking at brand personality. You can check it out here Brand Personality Inspiration.

It contains pretty much all the core elements of brand development. Quite simple really!

We’ve had a brilliant idea!

Posted: September 26th, 2009 | Author: Mother | Filed under: Brand | No Comments »

We’re going to rename our company “iBikini 2.0″. It’s kinda so hip, cool, modern and, er, ridiculous. It reminds us of that Dudley Moore film (bless him), but without the idiot savant insight.

Then we looked and realised, you could nearly make iBikini work. Just look at all the “i”s. It’s like a little person standing either side of each consonant. Oh, bugger!

Culture is brand

Posted: September 14th, 2009 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: Brand, Business | 2 Comments »

There has been a lot of talk this year about online retailer Zappos.com, especially since Amazon recently paid $US928 million for the company.

Zappos has developed a reputation for their extraordinary customer service and company culture. This post by CEO Tony Hsieh describes the Zappos approach, and should be of interest to pretty much anyone who’s involved with brand management or brand development, or in fact anyone involved in building and managing a business today.

Check out Tony Hsieh’s blog post “Your Culture Is Your Brand”.

Also check out Zappos’ core values as they give a great insight into the the whole Zappos culture, brand and business.

Zappos is also rather good at using storytelling to deliver their brand message through almost exclusively word of mouth marketing. Oh, and we’re definitely nicking “be humble” as a core value for Bikini too. Inspiring stuff!

Are you neglecting your other brand?

Posted: September 8th, 2009 | Author: Mother | Filed under: Brand | No Comments »

To attract and retain great talent, companies need to develop their “employer brand,” Stefan Stern writes. The best candidates learn quickly to avoid companies with reputations of mistreating their workers, he argues, just as consumers learn not to frequent businesses with a history of poor service. “If, as an employer, you want to bring in the best new recruits you need to offer them something attractive — and not just in terms of the financial package.”

Read the full Financial Times article.

Super Inspiring

Posted: August 13th, 2009 | Author: Mother | Filed under: Advertising, Brand, Business, Design, Insight, Technology, Trends | No Comments »

Super inspiration! From a decade that just keeps giving.