1. New Ideas Blog:

    A posting of thinking we like.

  2. Flavoristas beat the heat

    It’s an epic hot summer and new drink flavors are spreading across the wet planet. If you thought that with all the javas, teas, sodas, juices, flavored waters, (did we forget milk?) infused with everything from acai to zinc, that we would be completely saturated, think again.

    Whereas there used to be just two or three root beer brands within recent memory, there is now a proliferation of smaller labels that make bottles of Henry Weinhard’s Root Beer, Boylan, IBC, and Sprecher, seem standard issue. And in the playing field dominated by Coke and Pepsi, today you’ll spot micro-colas like Curiosity Cola and plain old Mexican Coca-Cola (they use cane sugar rather than the less expensive beet sugar). Both are worth a try.

    But what’s putting the wow factor into new drinks this season is the proliferation of new flavors.

    Flavoristas have been busy. Try tasty Strawberry infused lemonade and mint at 92YCafe in Tribeca. Ginger and mint plus special ingredients at Moose & Sadie’s in Minneapolis. Mint, lime, agave and fruit nectars at Bond in Manhattan. Violet (yes, the flower). Lavender, Hibiscus, Dandelion (yes, the weed) and burdock. Also seen and noted have been ginger and pineapple, mango and lime. New drink vendor DRY (shown) offers Juniper Berry, Lemongrass and Lavender sodas. Fresh ginger unfiltered Ginger Ale by Bruce Cost is a bottled stunner.

    (We would be remiss if we did not also mention that ice cream flavoristas have conjured up creamy delights like wildberry lavender, Ugandan vanilla bean, golden ale and apricot, sweet corn with black raspberry, and molasses ice creams.)

    No matter how you plan to chill this season, these new flavors will take you to the next levels of awesomeness.


  3. World Map of Useless Stereotypes by Christoph Niemann


  4. The Private Brand Movement

    A few decades ago, so-called generic products were viewed quizzically and with suspicion. Today, retail chains design and carry their own private brands and consumers hardly think twice about tossing them into shopping carts. Whole Foods has 365. Target has created Archer Farms and its Up And Up store brands. Walmart and Costco even have their own branded gasoline.

    Which makes the Private Brand Movement conference in Chicago September 19-21 not just trend-right but trend smart. Attendees will be greeted by various retailers already in the game, as well as the vendors who supply them. Just how far can private brands go, and what purpose can they serve?

    One way that Private Brands can help make things better is to create brands whose profits are earmarked to do more than make company owners rich. Rather, those profits can be targeted to enrich society.

    Enter The Utopia Project. A curated brand of household products including paper products, cleaning supplies, and everyday food items, the profits from Utopia branded products provide sustainable funding for local and national schools. Started in California (where legislators budget more for prisons than school systems), The Utopia Project has started as a citizen-powered effort that is asking students, parents, and school administrators which products to create and where the money should go.

    Still in its fledgling stages, The Utopia Project is gaining both attention and altitude.

    For more information, come to the Private Brand Movement conference. Who knows, you may get ideas how to start your own brand.

    Use code PBM11THINKTOPIA to get a 20% discount.


  5. 3 key pieces in Lady Gaga’s brand narrative

    Jamie Anderson and Jorg Rechhenrich and Antwerp Management School and Martin Kupp of the European School of Management and Technology have put together a treatise that suggests the leadership skills of Mother Teresa and Lady Gaga. The pairing of these two leading women is the clichéd polar opposites that we have seen in advertising for a few decades now. However, we always like Lady Gaga for her dramatic use of icon and ritual and the way she flaunts her beliefs as she flogs her nonbelievers as she praises her “little monsters”.

    What the three Europeans suggest from an objective distance, is how Lady G has strategically devised a brand narrative that tells “three universal stories”.

    1. The first is her personal story: Who am I?

    2. The second is the community narrative: Who are we?

    3. And the third, is the community mission: Where are we going?

    This is a vibrant, resonant combination that projects leadership, say Anderson/Rechhenrich/Kuppand, and attracts an emotional commitment from her fans. Lady Gaga defines the community spirit as she creates it. Which, like Madonna, Prince, The Rolling Stones and music brands who have come before her have demonstrated, creating the brand and persona is a lot more complex than creating just the music.


  6. Australia proposes removing branding from cigarette packs in anti-smoking effort

    by Wes Towers – Melbourne, Australia /

    Australia’s federal government and anti-smoking groups are pushing proposed legislation that is the boldest anti-smoking movement yet seen worldwide. The idea is to force cigarette manufacturers to remove all branding from packaging and sell all cigarettes in matte olive green packets covered with large, graphic images of the damage caused by smoking, such as sickly children and cancer victims. The idea behind this is that smoking will become less appealing and, as a result, people will kick the cigarette habit. But will it work?

    Proponents argue that the new laws, which will take effect next January if passed, will reduce the appeal of smoking to young people, thus saving Australian lives and money. Currently, cigarette smoking claims 15,000 lives in Australia each year and smoking-related health care consumes $40.6 billion dollars of taxpayer money. Those who oppose the laws counter that these new measures will not decrease the amount of smokers but will instead cause prices to be lowered, making cigarettes even more accessible to a larger number of people. Supporters of the laws promise that a minimum price limit will be imposed to prevent this from happening.

    British American Tobacco Australia, currently the largest cigarette manufacturer in the country, states that the uniform packaging will make it infinitely easier to counterfeit cigarettes and that the market will be flooded with cheap counterfeits, forcing producers to cut prices by as much as half. The illegal cigarette trade grew by 150% last year alone and has been definitively tied to organized crime in the country. Government officials deny this possibility, stating that new anti-counterfeiting design features will protect the legal cigarette market and prevent the market from being flooded by counterfeits.

    People involved in the tobacco industry fear that this is a dangerous step toward violating international trademark and intellectual property laws. By removing a company’s ability to rely on corporate image marketing, the government is taking away customer loyalty based on branding. Opponents of the laws fear that the passing of this legislation will open the door to similar laws that will strip brand recognition from many companies.

    Retailers have weighed in on the issue as well, arguing that they will be hit with high costs of compliance. They also worry that there will be increased transaction times due to the changes that will impact their business and cause retail rage in customers who have increased wait times.

    This legislation will surely have an impact on the way cigarette companies market themselves. Selling cigarettes in uniform packets will eliminate the use of logos and other branding devices that they invested so much in over the years. With all packs the same colour, and small, uniform text stating brand name and large, government approved graphics, the only thing manufacturers seem to be able to compete on is price.

    Which means all those million manufacturers invested in branding efforts over the years may all go up in smoke.

    Wes Towers is located in Melbourne, Australia and has many years experience working in branding. His company, Omnific Design has successfully worked with a number of large and small businesses.


  7. The long tail of poverty

    In his book Out of Poverty, Paul Polak recounts a day he spent wandering the streets with a homeless man named Joe. During the course of the day, Polak realized that despite the fact that Joe was homeless and jobless, the man had an income of about $500 a month. That income, multiplied by the number of homeless persons in the city Joe lives in, represents a buying power of $1.5 million a month, or $18 million a year. Everyone designs for Gucci and Mercedes because that’s where the money is, but there are more poor people in the world to design for than wealthy. Paul Polak’s “homeless Joe” is just one example of the long tail of the poor economy, and one of the subjects of the new design revolution.


  8. Infographics are us.

    Three years ago, we were explaining to researchers what an infographic was. These days, everyone thinks they’re Edward Tufte. Thing is, nobody has time to read any more. We want to see big brashy words and pictures leaping at us with instantaneous information. We love them. We’d tell you exactly how much we love them, and which ones we love most, but that’s another chart.)  


  9. Mad about MAD architects.

    Winner of the Absolute Towers project in Toronto (pictured), the first major international competition win for a Chinese architect, MAD is Ma Yansong’s architectural firm. Established in 2003, Ma’s studio has created stunning new designs like the Fake Hills apartment complex, China Wood Sculpture Museum, and more. We like.


  10. Black Kites and For The Love Of God: Separated at birth?

    Gabriel Orozoco’s retrospective at Tate Modern in London may not eclipse the Royal Wedding, but who can say “no” to the idea that his iconic Black Kites (shown, 1997) possibly inspired Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted “For The Love Of God”?


  11. Spontaneous City by London Fieldworks

    Spontaneous City In The Tree of Heaven is the work of collective London Fieldworks. These bug and bird boxes cloak trees throughout London.