brand-e

By Steve Mullins. Brand demands. Millward Brown has come up with a new brand metric – the TrustR Score – which sets out to measure how effectively brands meet the more demanding expectations of the post-recession consumer.
More demanding expectations?
Well, Millward Brown believes the world is now populated with more sceptical and less acquisitive consumers and that, for brands to succeed in this environment, they need to understand and respond to consumers in a new ways.

Says Natasha Kizzie*. If I were to suggest that pop-up stores were getting fashionable, you might retort I’d missed the curve on this trend. Indeed, brands as diverse as HMV, Marmite, Nissan and Orange have already indulged in opening temporary mini-me shops with no sign of any slowdown in uptake.
Yet, for me, one fascinating aspect is how designer fashion brands are getting in on the act. This month we’ve seen a plethora of up-and-coming and established fashion brands embrace the pop-up concept – such as those designed to coincide with the biannual media frenzy that is London Fashion Week.

Good doers. Brands seem rather keen to do good right now. Take Virgin Atlantic, for one. The airline recently launched its first iPhone app in the US and, rather than do something tiresome like track flight arrivals and departures, the little gizmo has been developed to help fearful travellers.
The Flying Without Fear app boasts an in-flight explanation video, relaxation and course therapy, breathing exercises and quick tips. There’s also a personal video introduction from Richard Branson – but hey, no one’s perfect.

By Simon Fuller. Creative fame. What happens when brands offer crowdsourcing initiatives which focus on the ad itself? Well, you get something a bit like TV channel Current’s online VCAM group.
The VCAM – or Viewer Created Ad Message – group works like this: brands post their ad assignments through the Current website, where prospective ad designers can flick through a number of work briefs. For each brief, the creatives have a month to give it their best shot before all submissions are handed to the brand, with the best four ads being aired on Current TV – that’s Sky channel 183.

Ad fest. Digital content outfit Mofilm has teamed up with five brands to develop a Make An Ad competition for the Tribeca Film Festival. Filmmakers need to grab a brief from Voltaren, Nokia, Lamisal, Nature Valley or Chex Mix, and then come up with a video. Winners get flown to New York for the Tribeca Fest red carpet premier event.
Each brand will rate films according to their originality and execution of the brief. The winning entrant for each brand will win cash and prizes up to $10,000. Second through fifth place will also be awarded cash and prizes, and runner-ups will win Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Cameras.

Air art. Money’s tight in the ads business. And all those billboards are standing there empty of marketing comms. What to do? Well, if you’re the MAK Center for Art & Architecture in Los Angeles you commission a score of artists to fill those big, beautiful spaces in the sky with… big, beautiful art in the sky.
So, we’re pleased to bring you How Many Billboards? Art In Stead, which proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment.

By Simon Fuller. BEing BEcause. Experiential marketing’s on the menu at many agencies, but few can claim a sector specialisation in quite the same way as London’s Because. With a small army of brand ambassadors, some of whom work exclusively for BEcause, the company has picked up big name clients, among them Heineken, adidas, Superdrug and the RAF.

Movie here. Absolut last week began promo-ing I’m Here – the film it commissioned from Spike Jonze – in the UK ahead of the short movie’s global premiere 7th March.
The brand has been deploying billboard and graffiti messages to build intrigue around the launch, offering consumers the opportunity to go to exclusive preview screenings of I’m Here ‘in no ordinary places’.