In Brands We Trust

This “transparency” thing has got me thinking.
If you’re not bogged down in the delightful world of marketing, here’s a quick catch-up. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. The metaphorical extension of the physical property of allowing light to pass through a material… that is: openness, communication and accountability. It’s all the buzz in the [...]

Digital Burlesque

Products have life cycles, just like people. Not the individual products you buy in the shops and take home, although of course they have life cycles too (mine all tend to die the day after the warranty expires). Think bigger… entire categories, genres, industries. Some spread over generations, others are almost superseded by the time [...]

Blink Branding

There’s a whole section in the July Marketing Singapore magazine called  No Guts, No Glory, asking “As budgets shrink in an ever competitive market, are more marketers moving away from tried and true costly methods and going by their instincts?”
The magazine reports that a lot of companies are bypassing the months of market testing and [...]

Build Things People Want

I love getting Josh Spear’s blog in my feeds. It’s full of cool hipster stuff I can’t be bothered ordering online, but it’s always on-the-pulse, interesting and great to look at. I feel like I’m getting reflected cred just by reading it.
I’m not so sure I love Josh Spear. At 24 he’s busy flying around [...]

Buyers and Sellers

I was having a sunset drink on the balcony with my pup Yang last week and we were deep into a conversation. He’s in the real estate research business, and he’s fond of saying how it’s shifted from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market.
I’m in business for myself. Perhaps you are too. What was [...]

Ah Wahnt One O’Those Widget Thangs Fur Mah Website

I’ve just plowed my way though the March issue of Marketing Singapore. This month all the stories seem to have been brewed from the same template. They all start off with a variation of:
“For most of us in marketing, 2009 is going to be a tough year. Our budgets have been slashed, our consumers are [...]

Death of a Concept – The Big Idea

When he was researching for an online game, Kevin McLeod turned to Stanley Kubrick’s visual language in The Shining. Kevin noticed:

“As a blank tool, Kubrick employs symmetry as the doorway to signed, symbolic layers.  Using practically every surface each setting allows, he hides deeper unconscious meanings as each film accrues imagery and behavior into unmistakable [...]

The Importance Of Critical Mass

Around sunset yesterday I was walking through the centre of Siem Reap and a place called World Bar was overflowing with travellers enjoying an Angkor beer and the softening light on the theatre of the street.
Today I was walking down the same road around the same time. Another bar, a couple of doors up, was [...]

I Own, Therefore I Am

For years now, there has been trend of inverse relationship between branding prominence and prestige. That’s a fancy way of saying that the more the logo covers the item, the less cache it’s likely to offer.
Take European brands like LV or Armani as examples. With LV, a bag covered in initials is likely to cost [...]

Intrinsic Rewards

When I’m in Malaysia my local supermarket and department store is Jusco and through a series of circumstances that I think involved someone’s auntie, I have a Jusco store card. I keep it in a little bag with my local currency and whenever they ask for it in the store I hand it over.
I’m not [...]