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As 2018 draws to a close, I’m sure many of you are as amazed as I am to find yourself already on the brink of a new year.
Throughout this year, we have seen more brands than ever rise to the challenges of disruptive competitors by behaving like them. I hope this newsletter has been successful in bringing many such cases to your attention, and that a few might have informed your thinking about your own brand and potential audience.
Looking ahead, we can only speculate on how the demand landscape will continue to evolve. Maybe 2019 will see consumers become more indifferent to remarkable product stories. Certainly, as less progressive brands and retailers rush to catch up with the new norms of product discovery and shopping, neophiles are bound to become less impressed by offers that seem cynical or formulaic.
But as modes of engagement like collaboration, licensing and brand extension become normalised, it is equally likely that the large majority of consumers will become more proficient at taking notice of them and incorporating them into their shopping decisions. Brands and retailers need to keep working in this direction and diverting energy into truly special offers beyond the realm of Black Friday campaigns. If you didn’t see my article from May on the art of edited retail, may I humbly recommend it as holiday reading.
In the meantime, I want to thank you for your readership in 2018 and wish you and your families the very best for the holiday season.
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Transformers x Tomy x Casio G-Shock
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Ask anyone to name a couple of examples of Japanese futurism, and the chances are good that they might come up with Transformers toys and Casio G-Shock watches. Back when the G-Shock first appeared on my radar, I remember how its muscular profile and complex controls made it seem like a digital watch on steroids. Transformers seemed an obvious influence. But it was certainly a surprise to me to discover that these mega-successful franchises both originated in 1984.
Right on time for both brands’ 35th birthday, Tomy and Casio have issued a limited edition hybrid piece sure to cause tension between fathers and sons everywhere. Part robot, part watch and completely badass, the DW600TF-SET features a Casio watch as the pulsing heart of Optimus Prime, or a Tomy toy as an elaborate watch stand…it’s all a question of perspective. It boggles the mind to imagine how many different iterations this marriage of brands will generate over the coming years.
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Hardly a week goes by without news about eSports spilling into the general domain. Over the last three years, the rise of tournament gaming as a sports, entertainment and cultural force has been meteoric, and the willingness of conventional sports teams and leagues to engage with it has been a big driver of legitimacy and awareness – certainly for those of us outside the gaming audience.
This embrace of eSports by establishment names extends to brands like adidas, which views games like EA Sports’ FIFA19 as important as any other medium with a captive audience in the tens of millions. Last month, the German brand took a huge step towards merging the real with the virtual, by releasing replica versions of in-game fantasy kits to the general market. The other-worldly designs for Real Madrid, Manchester United, Juventus, and Bayern Munich represent official fourth kits, and can be earned either in-game by completing weekly challenges, or in-store, by standing in a queue.
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It’s not common for me to dwell on Disney, but when the world’s biggest licensing organisation is mobilising behind pop culture’s number one icon, you have to take notice.
Following the launch of Mickey Mouse’s 90th birthday celebrations in March, the market has seen a steady stream of noteworthy releases, turning into a small flood in the weeks leading up to his official birthday on November 18. In total, 2018 has seen close to eighty different brands join Mickey’s party.
Disney’s latest big push has a rather different profile to the last time it threw its weight behind one of its franchises. That was in 2015, when the reboot of Star Wars appeared to suffer from a very high concentration of low to medium-tier products. Perhaps that experience – combined with Mickey’s broader appeal – have helped its 2018 programme take on a more exclusive guise.
Of course, there’s nothing exclusive about having the same messaging as eighty other brands. This crowding, as well as growing indifference to big, mainstream properties in recent years, has surely been a factor in the decision of many participants to rely on more than Mickey’s charms to excite their audiences. Here are some examples...
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Uniqlo activated Mickey through at least two separate, artist-led campaigns: the first “Mickey Art” programme used art from six contemporary illustrators including James Jarvis and Kevin Lyons. Two months later it returned with an exclusive selection of prints from the archive of Andy Warhol. Vans used a similar two-pronged approach, creating experimental summer capsules with four different artists, before returning with a separate, more inclusive in-house collection. Swatch, meanwhile, worked with Damien Hirst on two designs, with the first 1,999-piece limited edition available only on Mickey’s birthday (a Sunday). The unleashed creativity of Nixon’s work with Steven Harrington also stood out.
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The Italian fast fashion chain OVS collaborated with Vogue to invite designers from four, high-genre labels like Arthur Arbesser and Au Jour Le Jour to contribute to a birthday tribute collection. Naturally the art toy market was a logical activation space for the world’s favourite mouse, where Japan’s Medicom Toy responded with several limited edition edits from the likes of fragment design and Undefeated. Meanwhile Leblon-Delienne’s special anniversary editions involved names like Marcel Wanders. Disney also attempted to refresh Mickey’s interior design credentials with a series of home living partnerships based around a collaboration with British designer, Kelly Hoppen.
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“Mickey: The True Original” is the slogan Disney is using to frame its celebratory year – and the premise for a major pop-up art exhibition in New York curated by the prominent product creative, Darren Romanelli. A focus on Mickey’s role as a cultural catalyst was a premise that offered considerable appeal to brands with similar claims to be originals in their respective fields – such as Levi’s, Lacoste, Polaroid and Campbell’s Soup.
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Secrid wallets are one of those products that make perfect sense to the mind, but don’t quite measure up when it comes to the emotions. Ingenious, well-designed, perhaps even necessary (see RFID security), the problem I have with the Secrid is that the idea of owning one seems a bit like wearing a phone-holster. I’ve often thought about approaching them to share thoughts on brand innovation, but figured that they were doing well enough on their own.
Suddenly the Dutch brand’s launch of a new collaboration with the Swiss upcycling pioneers, Freitag, reveals a synergy that is both exciting and baffling. Both brands are known as reluctant collaborators and each sells wallets at similar price points – often through the same stores. What makes this appear a perfect marriage is that each has a DNA so singular and well established, each brand would sacrifice its own originality by attempting to imitate the other’s functionality. It’s as if Converse collaborated with MBT, but good.
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It’s often overlooked that banks are the secret pioneers of co-branding. As agents for investment services, insurance products and credit cards, banks have been using co-branding to earn attention, trust and distribution much longer than Vans and Nike. Yet while banks are old hands at service innovation, it’s not often that you see one taking a progressive approach to hardware.
But the Australian bank Westpac has done just that by launching a range of tap-and-pay accessories designed by local surfboard shaper, Hayden Cox. “Centsitive Objects” is a range of fashionable wearable tech designed to make payment easy wherever users find themselves without a wallet or a phone – like at the beach. Even if its campaign succeeds only in elevating Westpac’s PayWear service above rival banks, it again shows the extraordinary power of lifestyle accessories as a medium for communication and positioning.
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THANKS FOR READING AND SHARING!
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