1. Lego brand meets Wired

    The latest issue of Wired magazine sports a Lego army and talks about Lego’s obsessed fans.

    How Lego fans were alternately ignored and then embraced is duly reported in the book Primal Branding, but it doesn’t hurt to emphasize the switch from manufacturing-minded to customer-minded.

    While most companies strive their entire lives to obtain, build, and nurture a fan base, some companies with established customer communities—even raving fans, sometimes take that customer zeal too much for granted. Or ignore it completely.

    Such was the case with Lego, whose ravenous customers spent hours and thousands of dollars envisioning, building and displaying elaborate Lego fortresses, cities, towns, spaceships, Darth Vader replicas and whatever else their imagination could render.

    For decades, confirms Lego community development manager Jake McKee, Lego ignored this shadow culture. “Lego is striving to develop its market of people who are outside the official target markets, but are active LEGO enthusiasts nonetheless,” says McKee. That means they’re selling beyond the traditional ages 4-12 market usually suited by Lego. For years, Lego screamed about Legomaniacs as it tried to extend its market beyond the 12-year kid ceiling, not realizing they had Legomaniacs all along.

    As the Wired article points out, it took a $238 million dollar kick in the bricks to snap the Lego brand into paying attention to this customer base.

    Today, the Wired magazine speculates they have broken through the 12-year old kid ceiling with robotics. Legobots (my word, not theirs) have that bold equation common to all great toys: imagination + entertainment.

    The question is not one of ingenuity, but how can Lego give this dynamic new enterprise as robust a sense of community as its 50-year old predecessor. The answer of course, lies in the primal code. Now that would be a toy story worth telling.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments (1) | February 7, 2006 by THINKTOPIA®

  2. Abercrombie & Fitch, the primal purveyor

    The new Abercrombie & Fitch flagship on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York City is one more example of the incredible brandsmanship practiced by this company.

    The four story 36,000-square foot is the perfect blend of Abercrombie & Fitch past and A+F future.
    On one wall, canoes are stacked. On another wall, there is a gun case stocked with broken double-barrel shotguns (presumably English), percussion rifles and other hunting sticks. And, of course, a stuffed moose.
    All of this speaks to Abercrombie’s origin as a purveyor of expedition equipment.

    Today A+F is a bit different. Kelly Clarkson screams lyrics between a bass beat more suited to clubbing at 2AM than shopping at 2PM. No worries. We are accustomed to stores that want to scream attitude. Staff stand as much as pose throughout the store, draped in branded A+F wear (employees are given a discount). Today, staff outfits include flipflops, despite 30-degree outside temperatures.

    Jean pairs line cases in subtly different blue hues. T-shirts that suggest heavy dating and parallel activities rest on tables. Mannequins stand sentinel inside curved glass cases of the kind usually reserved for ornithology.

    A mural, heavily inspired by painters Reginald Marsh and Paul Cadmus, ascends floor to ceiling (from basement menswear to third floor women’s wear). The iconic A+F models, so boldly sexual, are poised for…whatever, in various nooks and crannies.

    While so many other brands prefer to leave their past behind, the A+F flagship store is a wonderfully expressed melding of Abercrombie’s past, present and future. There is no doubt what the brand is about. Sales staff are living icons at the brand focal point, leading their peers toward a destiny filled with sun, sand, and $120 blue jeans.

    The company expects over $40 million in annual sales from the flag carrier, and this prime location doesn’t lead one to suggest otherwise. Although they might think about a suggestion box (in roughed-up leather). When one upscale mother/daughter couple was asked what they thought as they walked out, the mother simply looked stunned. The daughter beamed, “Too dark and too loud!” she screamed. “But I love the brand!”

    The original Mr. Abercrombie and Mr. Fitch probably never envisioned their stores carrying products for perky girls and boys instead of fly fishing tackle and elephant guns. But we can’t help imagine that knowing this would make them smile. And perhaps requisition a pair of flipflops.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | by THINKTOPIA®

  3. California real estate updates old ritual into new sale

    Anyone who has sold a house knows the trick of baking cookies or boiling apple juice before the prospective buyers show up, to give them that cozy at-home feeling. But the competitive California market has taken the walk-through ritual to the next level.

    Called homestaging, real estate brokers and homeowners are hiring decorating experts to size-up their home to get it ready for resale. Staged homes have been prepped and propped to help get buyers the highest possible price. They might pack the homeowner’s possessions in storage and rent furniture if need be, to be more in keeping with the home style.

    Although realtors don’t want to go on record, they do admit that sizing up a home’s potential these days involves more than curb appeal.

    “What the house looks like on the outside is still extremely important,” says one broker. “That’s the snapshot. The next snapshot is when they walk through the front door.” If the prospects feel they could plop on the couch and feel right at home, it’s a short trip to the bargaining table.

    Most homeowners don’t have decorating sense, so realtors bring in the real thing to create that picture book fantasy.

    Home glamour mags have been upstyling homes to be photographed for decades. There’s no accounting for taste, and magazine art directors have been hauling out movie star and celebrity homeowners’ prized possessions all along, redressing the home with designer ware.

    The fact that this rite has moved to selling the home is a natural progression, thanks to a competitive housing market.

    When prospects enter the home and see the iconic trappings of prosperous living, it differentiates the house and improves the chance of a sale.

    If nothing else, it gives the new homeowner a picture book fantasy to live up to.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | by THINKTOPIA®

  4. EQ Life brand leaves consumers Extremely Quizzical

    Even companies with the best intentions sometimes toss things into the world to let consumers figure it out for themselves. And, just as often, they find themselves facing the Dover Cliffs of retailing, the confused do not buy.

    Enter EQ Life, a test concept from consumer electronics giant Best Buy. Entering the store, you are accosted as much as greeted by a staff member asking if we want a complimentary bottle of water. No thanks, the coffee we’re carrying in our hands will do just fine. Staff prepares a back room with inlaid wood flooring for a pilates class. We wander past a rack filled with vitamins and Advil, much like you would find at Walgreen’s. Another rack is filled knee to shoulder with other supplements. Moving on, shampoo is priced at $32 a bottle. I’m looking around for the Kiehl’s until I pick up a bar of soap and check the price. Sixty five cents.

    If the pricing doesn’t help define the store, what’s on the shelves doesn’t either.

    Turn the corner and you find a heart defibrillator, a fancy ball for exercising your back, a nanosock for your iPod, some Bose speakers, a concession selling coffee and muffins, blood pressure kits and hydrating aha skin peels. Oh yes, and scented candles.

    This new retail concept seems to be drafting off the popularity of wellness, personal fulfillment and the brand called you. (We can expect such things now that even Dr. Andrew Weil has a weekly column in Time magazine.)

    The question that is left hanging in the air at EQ is a big W: Why?

    “I’m just confused,” says one puzzled shopper standing next to a $250 computer bag.

    While “Health. Wellness. Technology.” are the conceptual guideposts at EQ stores and there’s something about “solutions for well-balanced living”, the consumer is still left wondering why an anxious bride is getting her make-up applied just around the aisle from a Geek Squad counter (also owned by Best Buy).

    Even the advertising don’t explain this undifferentiated scope of product. The ads could be for Target.

    While finding a reason for being is usually a marketing fundamental, the leaders leapfrogged that crucial (in primal terms, the creed) element. Perhaps they have been so steeped in EQ Life themselves, they assumed it would be self-evident to everyone else. Not so. The result is a merchandising mishmash.

    “It doesn’t seem very well thought out,” shrugs a shopper hefting a Pottery Barn bag.

    I walked into a shop with a similar eclectic esthetic near The Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy. I stepped off the cobblestones and into a perfumed shop where I was gracefully led through a succession of products that lured me deeper and deeper into the store. Far in the back, beyond the glasswork, fabric and scented candles, was a pit filled with tapestries and furniture. A hair stylist glanced at us over his shoulder as he snipped away at a patron’s hair. Somewhere, someone was serving herbal tea. None of it made sense, yet it all made sense. We bought chocolates and a book.

    EQ Life violates one of the primary rules of retail. Tell me why you’re here and why I should be there too.

    I give the EQ Life concept an A. It’s right for the times and could become a smash. This particular execution needs to find its creed and let it be known the first moment people step into the store.

    Category: New Ideas Blog Comments Off | February 6, 2006 by THINKTOPIA®