Sex and smokes used to work

Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere

This copy line for Tipalet cigarettes marketed to men, will give you a laugh! How bold we once were.

As a follow up to the last post, I came across some interesting work showcased on Lovely Package, a comprehensive and good looking packaging blog worth visiting. Check out the student designs for Nomad Self Lighting cigarettes by Matthew Smiraldo, Norway’s Andreas Fossheim’s packaging for cannabis cigarettes (if they were legal), and Derek Hunt’s packaging for X Tobacco. Cool stuff.

http://lovelypackage.com/category/tobacco/

Brand-less cigarettes: tobacco companies not happy

Smoking Kids

Australia is about to become the first country in the world to ban tobacco companies from branding their products. As of July 1, 2012, no brand images or colors will be permitted in cigarette packaging design. Additionally, there are to be restrictions introduced online plus a 25 percent hike in excise tax bringing a pack of smokes to about $A16.70 or $US15.40.

In Australia where tobacco advertising is outlawed, the government described cigarette packaging as, “one of the last remaining frontiers for cigarette advertising.” And so it looks like Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd is about to take the big boys down. Only brand and product names will be allowed using a standard color, position, font and size making cigarette packs look similar to a prescription medication.

Of course this is a serious deal for tobacco companies going forward and let’s not forget the design companies that do their work who are paid extremely well but never publicize such relationships for fear that it would affect their own corporate brands. (I know because I worked for one of them).

Health warning on Australian cigarette packs: mouth cancer

The New York Times spoke to Imperial Tobacco who ludicrously responded by saying that there’s no evidence to support this action as effective in reducing consumption. Well, er, no…it hasn’t been done before so no, there isn’t evidence yet, but you just wait. And interestingly publicly trading tobacco giants Philip Morris (PMI) and British American Tobacco (BAT), Australia steered clear of stating the legal action that the industry could pursue but both wanted to put the possible case forward of there being constitutional issues relating to intellectual property and international trade obligations.

Clearly they’ll fight the ethical position and discard their social responsibilities, whatever it takes to get rich on the addicted and lure the young. Gotta love their passion. But as Susan Mercado, the World Health Organization’s regional advisor said in an emailed statement to the New York Times today, “Australia has taken a stand against all forms of advertising of a product that kills half of the people who use it.”

Currently Australian cigarette packaging carries health warnings as well as graphic photographic images showing the possible results of long-term smoking such as gangrenous limbs, cancerous mouths and blindness. (See above image).

So, what does the government intend to do with the $5 billion generated over four years that it forecasts to make out of this initiative? It will be reinvested in the national health care system. Take note America!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/business/global/30tobacco.html

Anyone remember chocolate cigarettes? Well, you can still get them, frighteningly enough. In my opinion, these should be banned too. At least the ones below have health warnings about chocolate consumption!

Chocolate cigarettes with warnings

Leo Burnett, Sydney and Ben Lee create Space Monkey

Ben Lee - Australian singer, environmentalist

It’s a fact that creative people make the world go round. Or that’s what Dezomo reckons anyway. They make us laugh, they make us inquire, they inspire and they make life worth living by making us experience the world through our emotions and focused thinking. It is music, art, design, literature, poetry and even, yes, advertising in its fundamental form where ideas are king.

Creative expression in any form allows the human race room to think. It is where politics and real life collide peacefully. Artistic expression of contemporary culture now and before  has an inherent right to be left untouched. Once created it remains a statement of a time, a feeling, an experience. It can’t be amended, overturned, re-instated or re-done. It is how change is affected.

There are many examples but I liked the relevance of this message that this clip was pushing. Hear and see for yourself in the following link where Australian musician Ben Lee states his point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E9nrcY5IIE

For more information visit Australian Creative on http://www.australiancreative.com.au/yaf-news/ben-lee-music-video-call-to-action

Armani Hotel brand debuts in Dubai

Armani’s first hotel launches tomorrow, April 27, in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower. The project was scheduled to launch on March 18 last month but was moved with no explanation by hotel management.

The Armani Hotel Dubai occupies ten floors of the tower (floors 1-8, 38 and 39) and offers 160 guest rooms and suites. Room prices start at $US462.90.

According to a hotel management site, www.hotelmanagement-network.com/projects/Armani/specs.html, the joint venture between Giorgio Armani and EMAAR Properties, EMAAR Hotels and Resorts Inc cost $US8billion! An extraordinary amount of money to be invested in anyone’s name and, in this case, Armani’s empire. However, the opulence will no doubt be jaw dropping to experience. The good news is that Pentagram New York created the naming, identity, visual brand positioning and marketing collateral which guarantees an aesthetic of grace and a degree of visual subtlety –  www.pentagram.com/en/.

Milan is the next city in line for an Armani hotel followed by London then New York.

Boy Scouts of America shamed

Paul Theroux was right when he said today in the Opinion pages of The New York Times, in his article titled, ‘Troop therapy’, “SOME pizza deliverymen are safe drivers, and though it seems incredible given the recent news to the contrary, some clergymen are pious, some politicians monogamous and some car dealers honest. There are ethical Boy Scout masters, too. Yet nothing is so satisfying to the lazy mind as news that reinforces a negative stereotype.”

Boy Scouts of America, FlagBoy

However this week’s landmark case awarding sexually abused boy scout Kerry Lewis, a further $18.5 million on top of the compensatory damages of $1.4 million awarded on April 13, has serious ethical implications for the organization, and hence to its brand.

Can the Boy Scouts of America withstand the hit? How markedly will this case affect brand perceptions going forward? Is this the end of another American institution?

Here are some facts:
(1) In the period between 1984 and 1992, the BSA was sued no less than 60 times for alleged sex abuse to the tune of more than $16m.
(2) The convicted former assistant scout master was permitted to associate with the scouts after having admitted to a BSA official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys
(3) The BSA kept documents they jokingly called the “perversion files” that outlined almost 100 years of suspected incidents that were kept under lock and key at the organization’s headquarters in Irving, Texas.

Doesn’t this reek of the superficial demise of the Catholic Church? The problem is that like all products and services, institutions are brands yet they are not governed by the same rules. Society’s ability to survive through hope and trust, somehow exempts community-based brands from extinction. How else can their continued existence be explained?  Ongoing discussion about this would be interesting. Please send your comments!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/opinion/25Theroux.html

Google shows that brand is a dirty word

Google graph showing key word search using 'brand' & 'design' in the US over the last 30 days.

Google is the most used search engine on the web, so referring to Google Trends is an interesting exercise to gauge interest in your business, regardless of industry. As Dezomo is a brand and design related Blog, it was interesting to see Google’s search results for the key words -  ‘brand’ and ‘design’. US results are above.

Searches for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States all reflect surprisingly less searches using the word ‘brand’ than they do using the word ‘design’. And possibly even more surprising is that the US graph reflects less internet searches using the word ‘design’ than both the UK and Australia.

Google graph for 'design' & 'brand' as keywords in the UK.

Google graph showing key word search using 'brand' & 'design' in Australia over the last 30 days.

Questions worth asking are – (1) What is the correlation for design buyers between brand and design? (2) What and how effectively are design companies and agencies which offer design services doing to communicate the role of design to clients? and (3) What is the graphic design and corporate communications sector doing to remain relevant to clients and are these business strategies working?

Macy Gray sells out

Macy Gray could dilute her brand to the point of no return by stretching her talents to fashion. But what’s new in the celebrity world? The singer songwriter is planning to pick up her career in fashion next year with the relaunch of her women’s plus-size line, Humps.

Her renewed involvement in the fashion game no doubt reflects a genuine interest and it is certainly a clever strategy to leverage her appeal to a mainstream audience. It’s all about charts and radio play afterall! Similarly, Gray’s March 23 appearance to open Esprit’s new flagship store on 34th Street, in New York City, shows us Gray’s commercial fashion venture just might be a serious one, although some might say that Esprit seems like an odd fit for such a cool hipster like Macy. Phew - Esprit’s slightly more funky ‘edc’ collection aligns more closely with her musical vibe.

So, should we be surprised that soul and high street fashion decide to marry? Absolutely not. Gray has every right to use what means are available to her to reach and capture an audience. It’s called marketing and if you don’t play, you’re out of the game. Why should she be exempt from doing what ultimately converts to sales? She’s trying to make a living just like us all.

If Macy can change the face of pop culture with her incredible musical sensibility and ability to communicate to the masses, bring it on. Let’s hope she doesn’t have a contract stipulating exclusivity with Esprit. I’d love to see her around more.

Her fifth album titled The Sellout’ is set for launch on June 22. Yeh! I was lucky enough to hear a couple of the new tracks from ‘Sellout’ when she sang at Origin cosmetic’s World Earth Month promotion on Monday April 19 at Webster Hall in New York City. Wonderful stuff! She says of ‘Sellout’ , “It’s all about the mountains I’ve been climbing to be where I want to be in my personal and professional life.”

The new marketing strategy for the Macy Gray brand is a commercial necessity. Thankfully Gray’s brand personality and the brand’s core values appear to have been retained, and simply ripened with maturity. Now only time will tell if it’s strong enough to maintain this credibility and withstand selling out to ordinariness.

Lost in space

Any of you heard of Alt Group? Or would they prefer ‘the’ Alt Group?  You know, the guys that have just won the design category in Australian Creative’s Hotshop Awards.

Alt Group’s Ben Corban & Dean Poole

Since Google seems to be clever enough to know what country we’re in as we tap and click away, my search using key words ‘Alt’ and ‘design’ to find the website proved disappointing here in the US, but I did find another business based in LA by the same name doing not such bad work either.

Interestingly, an image search for Alt Group turns up more visual information than there is written available. Finally reaching their website my sign of relief turned into a chuckle. These guys are clearly too busy doing sensational work to have to be bothered with an online presence, but I sure wish they had one.

It’s Corban and Pool’s intelligence that grabs me and how beautifully they express what design is. The importance of ideas, the acknowlegement that thinking is a journey that uncovers ways of seeing and conveying the world creatively and commercially.

In a 2009 interview with ProDesign, Dean Poole said: ‘”I still believe in what Greer Twiss said: “You fail as an educator if a student doesn’t leave the system with their own inquiry.” They don’t have to make great stuff; you don’t have to have good ideas. You just have to be able to change the world, which means that you’ve got to have a way of viewing, or having an inquiry, that is personal to you. I don’t care if you’re pumping coffee as long as you’ve got an inquiry.”

2009 was a year of 57 design awards for Alt Group that included a Red Dot Grand Prix, ADC Cold Cube, Cannes Silver Lion, One Show Silver and Bronze Pencils, a Webby Award and a Stringer Award at the DINZ Best Awards.

I reckon you should all beware! Please visit ProDesign to see the full transcript of the interview and more examples of Alt Group’s work.
http://prodesign.co.nz/interview-alt-group/2009/10/15/

MoMA? No, it’s Moomah

Retail concepts for kids tend to be either kitsch and over the top, a good example being Rainforest Cafe in London, or lacking in substance & personality altogether. Or it could just be that what personality there was has faded…the passion and belief in the brand in the first instance was never really there.

Experiencing approximately-12-month-old café Moomah for the first time today, I seriously felt I’d been left out of TriBeca’s best kept secret. It’s specific interest in kids strangely didn’t seem to discourage the light stream of business lunchers which was no doubt assisted by its decent menu and on-the-ball-staff.

Serving an unexpectedly full bodied latté will always be a good mom-magnet, so of course I’ll be back, but in all seriousnesss this fantastically creative and inspiring, whimsical space has been put together so well and therefore manages to dodge clichés. It so cleverly uses a combination of something old/something new that it becomes impossible not to feel wholely satisfied.

It doesn’t matter that it’s Tracey Stewart who owns the business (wife of political satirist, host of the Daily Show Jon Stewart), but just that it’s done so well: with a design sensibility that only a particular eye can deliver, with a true understanding of its market and their needs and with thorough consideration of the small details that make a difference to a customer’s retail experience. All this is solidly driven by a clear idea and a firm belief in that idea. We need one in Sydney please Tracey!

Moomah’s Funky Forest room provides the interactive sensory component of the experience. (See the Theo Watson link below). As for the rest? You’ll have to see, taste and feel for yourself.

Retail experience-Moomah.Café-Funky.Forest.Installation

http://www.moomah.com/

http://www.theowatson.com/site_docs/work.php?id=41

God Bless America: Barbie wins Whopper.

retail brand design/Burger King-Whopper Bar

Burger King’s claim yesterday to the Retail Store of the Year 2009 competition awarded by US publication Chain Store Age, certainly made me curious. It so turns out that Burger King won the ‘Casual Dining’ category, making their announcement an exaggeration of convenient proportions.

More frustrating is that Chain Store Age runs the program as an open award to the industry globally, and while it kindly includes an international category, (although it is not clear if this refers to non-American clients or projects executed outside of the US), of the 19 first place winners (pardon?) and 7 ‘Honorable Mentions’, 21 are from the US.

Is it unsurprising, therefore, that Barbie… yes, Barbie in Shanghai won the ‘Best Overall Entry’ award trumping Burger King, Walmart, Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Barney’s, American Eagle Outfitters and the rest, with a 36,000 square foot, multi-level emporium launched March 9, 2009. Gotta love it! In all honesty it is pretty fabulous and no doubt still looks brand new.

Barbie Shanghai store

But why did Walmart win two awards? I’m not doubting the judging process but believe it or not great retail exists in both Asia and Europe too. Come on Chain Store Age, it’s dangerous to be parochial in consumer-land which, let’s remind ourselves, is a global concern. Hopefully next year you’ll look a bit further afield and honor a better mix. The three Canadian, two South American and one Thai project you bothered to include reeks of tokenism.