Climate Cars
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Climate Cars, originally uploaded by JonnyMoss.
Climate Cars has struck me as a great company for 3 reasons. Number one - great concept of environmentally friendly, well-branded cars, focusing on great service and value. Number two - nicely designed website giving you all the information you could possibly want and online account registration. Thirdly, they are making great us eof technology with GPS tracking, GPS-enabled fares so mileage is accurately calculated.
It is nice to see, that something as “mundane” as a taxi service, can be well branded, bringing innovative service and design to their offering.
I am sure there are similar offerings in London, but this is the one that I have seen first (actually from a tweet from Melalicious). If anyone else know of companies who are doing something similar, perhaps in different cities, please let me know in the comments.
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Make Your Packaging Count
Brash, in your face, arrogant and “can’t miss me” attitude.
On the flip side, beautifully designed, whisper smooth, confident and “I look super stylish”.
Two very different approaches to packaging. The Dieline has noticed this and has a great post about a trend which seems to be gaining traction about toning down the branding and colour in favour of better design and more brand affinity.
Consumers are far more sophisticated now, and they are looking for something they can relate to. That something is packaging that is so well-designed that consumers want to interact with the brand it represents over and over again. Rather than containing mundane products consumers need to use, consumer packaging can deliver something so extraordinary that it adds enjoyment and pleasure. In this scenario, the package becomes a value-added perception for everyday items—so much so that it never gets tucked away.
I am so bought into good packaging, and that can be what contains the product, but also the product itself. This also applies to a brand. If I get a a beautifully designed brochure (the latest piece from Carrier has some superb design and font work), it tends to stay out. If a business card has had some thought… it gets kept and not binned. If someone’s website looks great, gives me a good experience and what I need, it gets bookmarked.
As a person, brand, company or service you cannot afford to be poorly packaged. It all counts.
New Adobe Photoshop CS4 Branding
Adobe have just announced their new Creative Suite Products and have significantly changed the branding / design, and I think it looks superb - really clean and modern.
I’m a firm believer that packaging can make a huge difference to the experience you can have and of course people’s perception. If you are a packaging lover, then do check out The Dieline, a superb blog with great photos of cool packaging.
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www.helpineedhelp.com
What a great brand, great products and a nice (very) clean website. Do have a look at their T shirt maker - just placed an order 
I love the colours for this brand and the packaging on the pills and bandages is some of the best I’ve seen this year.
Selling NY Tap Water!
Now this is an impressive bit of marketing.
We all know that some people hate the fact that bottled water is sold, branded, positioned as a better choice than plan old tap water. Well, this is plain old tap water, from NY!
The DieLine has a good write up on it here, and makes interesting reading:
Tap’dNY is a bottled water for the new age: an honest and local alternative for all New Yorkers. We purify and bottle New York City’s famous tap water, leaving out the malarkey and far journey included in other bottled waters.
I love the packaging, and the brand, but the proof will be in the sales. I would imagine it may be a bit of a fad, but you never know!
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Better and Better
So, The Do Lectures are coming closer (next week) and my list of essentials is pretty much ticked off. I felt VERY out of my depth purchasing a sleeping bag as requested by howies, but it seems like a good one and is very comfortable with some great features (funny that, techy features).
It gets better and better though - one of the blogs I read is Church of the Customer - all about customer evangelism, and the latest post featured Tom Fishburne, who draws some superb, marketing-orientated cartoons, and is also Senior Marketing Director Europe for Method Cleaning Products.
As some of you may know, I have a thing for cleaning 
and have used Method Products for many years, initially getting friends in the US to send them over, or bring them when they visited.(I even have them on the stuff we love page here).
Well, after looking at Tom’s blog today, he is going to be at The Do Lectures, so another great person to meet and chat with. All from a very hurriedly posted application post card - super smashing great
Talking of blogs, Dan Germain, who is Head of Creative at Innocent, has a great blog here, and Innocent’s own blog is looking good too. Subscribed to both. Dan attended The Little Big Voice Lectures by howies last year. On a brand note, Innocent have recently launched their own Orange Juice, which makes sense really. They put OJ in their smoothies, so why not sell it on their own to the hordes of raving fans? Nicely branded too.
Misc Tuesday
Stretching the brand?
Innocent Smoothies have been a HUGE success over the last few years and have an enviable market share. I noticed last week that they have just launched their own OJ. I guess it makes sense, people know, like and trust Innocent, and hence will choose their new offering, but will it worry brand’s like Tropicana? We will have to wait and see…. They have a strong name and reputation and advertising that has been now copied to death.
One of my Fave Hotel Brands
Malmaison is a great chain of hotels (they also own Hotel Du Vin). I have consistently had a good experience with them. Stylish hotesl, great service, and great food. A big thanks to James for lunch The burger, as you can see was particularly impressive and the presentation makes all the difference. Their advertising is always distinctive and innovative and their use of rich colours lends itself well to their brand image.
One hotel brand that has really impressed me recently is Premier Inn - not my first choice of hotels if going somewhere nice with my fiancee, but for business when on my own, they provide a spotlessly clean room, great prices (how about £49 per night!) and useful locations. Hats off to them for delivering exactly what their brand promises - a great night’s sleep at low prices.
Bad Apple?
Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch has an interesting post about his Apple woes, and it seems like he has struck a chord. Being one of the most widely read blogs on the web, I hope he has Cupertino taking note. I have not had too many problems with my Apple gear, but there have been some (certainly not perfect by any stretch of the imagination):
- Unable to login on the MacPro last week
- GPS not working on my iPhone 3G
- Shockingly bad battery life on my MBP
Apple need to wake up and realise that they cannot rely on their reputation any more, they also need to deliver quality and reliable products.
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The 2008 UK Superbrands
As always, it is interesting to see what people in the know feel are the UK’s top brands, and the latest results have just been announced. The BBC cover it here and the official Superbrands website can be found here.
The results
Ok, Google have put in an impressive performance here, moving up two places from the 2007 poll. What is unsurprising is that the supermarkets, Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons, have all plummeted, probably due to the fact that food is more and more expensive, and that people are wising up to the fact that these corporate behemoths rip off their suppliers and make way too much profit. Asda dropped 253 places - Tesco 230 - Sainsburys 194. That is a serious fall from grace.
So how is this thing judged?
This to me is always essential to know, and this year, the Superbrands council state that:
” A Superbrand is one that offers customers significant emotional and tangible advantages over other brands”
As well as being judged on 3 other factors:
” Quality, Reliability and Distinction”
A nationally represented group as well as the Superbrands council do the voting and come out with the top 500.
Do I agree with the top 10?
8 out of ten I do. However, I’m not sure Microsoft can be called reliable with the Vistaster or offer emotional advantages! As to Royal Doulton, I really don’t give a giraffe’s breakfast whether I eat off a paper plate or fine china as long as the food is good!
Of course, the big brand missing for me, is my beloved Apple, and that folks is at number 11.
Google is the only web-based brand in the top 50 - Yahoo! coming in at 75 and Amazon UK coming at 285. it is interesting to compare the UK list to a global brand list based on value for 2008:
So, only the big G and Microsoft appear in both top ten. One of the big factors for me at least, is not how well known a brand is but how it behaves, looks and “feels”. A small brand can get a huge following by being, well, small. The unknown, the sort of secret factor of these smaller brands can be a very powerful way of attracting people. Combine that with the power of the web, where the word of mouth marketing can spread virally, the community which can be created, and the two way communication that should be encouraged, and you get a brand which will always be successful, not because of being big and all-powerful, but for being small, and well, cool.
A couple of brands that I feel fall in this category are teapigs tea, Howies clothes, Able and Cole food and IC Berlin specs. These are the brands that impress me, although I am a BIG fan of Google too.
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Dulux jumping on the iPod band wagon
Paintpod? Hmmm, not that original guys.
I snapped this at the local DIY store a few days ago on the iPhone and just remembered I had when I was looking through my gallery. The actual idea seems a bit of a winner, and to be fair to Dulux, is probably due to some serious customer research.The Dulux website explains all about it and looks like a winner. Apart from the brand name. Are they trying to connect with the youth market for trendy painting? Or are they positioning it to be used when listening to you iPod at the same time?
Hey, at least the colours are nice (I’m a big fan of blue), but the font is a tad Mickey Mouse!
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BBC News- You may like to read this...
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