Classic is new again: With Jay Z doing the music, The Great Gatsby is a look-to for elegance during tough times in the eurozone. (The movie is also set to open Cannes 2013.)
When Baz Luhrmann’s remake of The Great Gatsby takes the prestigious opening slot at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival in May, style-watchers are predicting a visual feast that will turn many back on to the 1920s.
Start with Why: a TED talk on drivers of success (with a great riff on Samuel Pierpont Langley vs. the Wright Brothers) from Simon Sinek.
Trendwatching makes a compelling case for how Servile Brands are engaging and delivering: “consumers will never again revere brands the way they used to”.
Serving, assisting, and lubricating is the new selling.
…consumers are more demanding, time-starved, informed, and choice-saturated than ever-before… For brands to prosper, the solution is simple though: turn SERVILE. This goes far beyond offering great customer service. SERVILE means turning your brand into a lifestyle servant focused on catering to the needs, desires and whims of your customers, wherever and whenever they are.
In today’s New York Times:
A 2010 study by Cone Communications, an agency that focuses on cause-related marketing, found that 41 percent of consumers had purchased a product within the last year because it was associated with a good cause, up from 20 percent in 1993. Cone also found that 80 percent of Americans were likely to switch to brands that supported a good cause.
Craig Bida, an executive vice president at Cone, said clients contemplating a cause-related marketing campaign often mention the Buckets for the Cure campaign with trepidation.
The Komen campaign “has become a teaching moment for cause marketers and for the corporate social responsibility space in general,” Mr. Bida said.
“The critique that was leveled was that eating fried chicken can make people obese, and that obesity has been linked to cancer,” he continued. “And it is an absolute delight for your critics if they can say you’re helping to create the problem you’re helping to solve.”
But Mr. Bida said the antihunger campaign reflected far more positively on the company. “This is a lasting commitment, and the United Nations World Food Program is a blue-chip partner in the space,” he said.
It also may better align the business and philanthropic interests of the company. “This is a company whose business mission it is to feed people, and here they’ve taken on a social mission to feed people, too,” Mr. Bida said.
Just came across this write-up of a NYC ‘street photography in the 1950’s’ exhibit that I wish I’d seen in Hamburg this past spring: great photos, stunning aesthetic, & cool accompanying write-up/riff on this photographer, the medium, and the era.
Fueled by rich mobile technologies, there are a new breed of pop-up shopping and browsing experiences that bridge the divide between traditional and online retail: enabling brands/retailers/etailers to reach new customers…
Net-a-Porter built five pop-up “window shops” in Paris, London, New York, Berlin and Sydney, which let consumers shop the collection by scanning products with iPads or iPhones, in addition to a 650-square-foot temporary store in New York’s West Village featuring mannequins and iPad kiosks where customers could view and purchase items via the site. “We were aiming for a thoroughly modern, cross-platform initiative and were delighted with the results,” continued Loehnis, citing strong traffic and sell-throughs.
Compelling data from Boston Consulting Group via BoF on geographical elements of China’s economic growth over the next ten years, and how businesses will have to innovate beyond stand-alone brick & mortar to succeed in China’s unique envoironment.
…in the coming years, a significant percentage of wealth creation in China is expected to come from literally hundreds of second, third and fourth-tier cities. Indeed, a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) projects that in the next 10 years, consumption in these cities will surpass first-tier cities.
By 2020, lower-tier cities will account for 60 percent of economic growth and in order to reach 80 percent of the country’s market for mid- to high-priced fashion, brands will need to have a presence in a staggering 460 cities.
The sheer scale of this reality, coupled to the high cost of real estate investment, makes a strategy based solely on brick-and-mortar expansion a significant challenge…
One of many mid-range American retailers set to debut or expand in Hong Kong or mainland China this year, J. Crew has announced a new partnership with the Hong Kong-based high-end department store Lane Crawford that will make J. Crew’s collections available in the region this October.
Not surprisingly, J Crew is—-temporarily at least—-side-stepping the economic fun in Europe to launch in China.
Angela Ahrendts turns Burberry into a social enterprise.
From Fortune: compelling discussion of the company’s ongoing transformation.
Burberry’s real tech cred (it has attracted employees from Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox division) comes from its organically digital approach to virtually everything it now does, from fashion shows to employee communications. “It should never be on a list: ‘Have we remembered to do the digital thing?’” says Bailey.
Food Trucks in Paris? mon Dieu!
Scarf-wearing hipsters, vintage clothing shops, street musicians, avant-garde galleries, the smell of caramelizing onions wafting out over the cobblestones… ah Paris…I mean Brooklyn…I mean Paris…:-).
Among young Parisians, there is currently no greater praise for cuisine than “très Brooklyn,” a term that signifies a particularly cool combination of informality, creativity and quality.
Kleiner partner, and Zen Mistress of digital/internet analysis, Mary Meeker has just published her 2012 state of the internet report.
112-must-read-(twice)-slides offer further context on Mass Customization (slides 63-65), among multiple other elements of our rapidly evolving, digitally-fueled society.
Uniqlo is stepping up its US presence as part of its global growth strategy, and this NYT article offers up additional insight into what’s next.
Zara and H&M have built their low-price, fashion-forward consumer equity around launching copies of ‘the latest’ into their stores just weeks after trends are first seen on runways. Uniqluo has built its success quite differently (think early GAP but based on functionality and not fashion), around solid and striped basics: T-shirts, shorts, sweaters, etc.
Now with Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Talbots and others struggling in the US (from over-saturation and otherwise), Uniqluo sees an opportunity.
From VentureBeat: insights into Fab’s latest and greatest iteration.
Fab.com relaunches, and it buries other social shopping experiences.
Today, Fab.com is launching its third and most ambitious version of the site, and CEO Jason Goldberg said it’s going to remind you of window-shopping with your best friends.
“Imagine you’re shopping with your friends, and one of them picks up a shirt and says, ‘Oh, that’s cute!’ We think we can replicate that online,” the founder told VentureBeat in a recent phone call.
Fab is accomplishing this not just with a few dinky plug-ins or add-ons, but with a wholesale redesign that will “really get the experience of shopping with friends — not just what they bought, but what they’re tweeting, what their pinning, what they’re liking,” Goldberg said.
Thanks! to Renate Nyborg (one the UK’s leading digital innovators), for calling this out: Building an end-to-end social enterprise at Burberry.
