CapsuleBlog

Collaboration is king

It's time to start thinking abut business, and branding, differently.

We're tumultuously finding ourselves in a new era, which began with the invention of the Internet* and is continuing in interesting twists and turns with the scary 'collapse' of the economy. This means that our methods of communicating with audiences and each other, and indeed even how we do business itself, must adapt in order to survive and thrive.

While competition will always exist, we at Capsule are finding it increasingly important for brands to build collaborative relationships with each other. It's vital to think creatively about who else markets to similar audiences as you, and how you can leverage this stake in your success. Those organizations that have similar brand attributes to yours usually form the most harmonious partnerships.

So ask yourself - who else serves our audience? How do they sell themselves, and how can we work together in a mutually beneficial relationship?

Capsule has teamed up with Blue Earth Interactive, a firm of extremely talented web geeks also based in Minneapolis, in order to perform some of the more, well, geeky, aspects of our projects. They do some amazing stuff - in fact, a game of theirs was just featured on WallStreetJournal.com.

Capsule has also joined Magnet 360 which is a collaboration between a number of firms that each see the benefit in sharing our individual expertise with each other, effectively providing both comprehensive and specialized services to our clients.

We're surrounded by many examples of highly successful partnerships. Take Starbucks for instance - providing customers with free co-branded iTunes cards to unlock new songs is a pretty smart idea. Music and coffee seem to come together in a natural way. The Starbucks brand instantly becomes associated itself with the cool attributes of the Apple iTunes brand. Clever!

Want more? Take Target's relationships with hip designers who produce low-cost, limited edition ranges that typically sell out in mere weeks. It began in 2003 with Isaac Mizrahi, and was followed with others such as Proenza Schouler and Richard Chai. Macy's has Martha, H+M had Stella, and Payless had Alice+Olivia.

Who will you team up with?

*Internet: only, like, the greatest invention EVER.

Tough times; pass me the crushed diamond face lotion

Yesterday the biggest headline in all the news media was the steadily climbing number of jobs axed across the country. We keep hearing about plummeting share prices, home foreclosures, banks gone bust. It's pretty much gloom and doom everywhere you turn regardless of your industry, regardless of your socioeconomic status. How many times have you heard someone joke that their 401k is now a 201k?

Despite all this, many of the luxury brands seem to be doing ok: Fine jewelery, designer purses and premium cosmetics products are still being snapped up in droves. The person that decides to go from organic, sunshine-infused milk to the store brand is still choosing her $45 Chanel lipstick over the $5 Maybelline variety.

So what's happening here?

Those luxury brands are surviving because they are identity brands - they've cleverly become an essential part of the lives and identity-building processes of their consumers.

Regardless of the state of the economy, a die hard Chanel fan will still fork out the extra bucks to carry that purse. To that consumer, the purse is so much more than buttery-soft leather and traditional craftsmanship. For contained within its folds are myriad statements about who she is, who she wants to be and perhaps most importantly, who she wants others to see her as. By carrying the purse she's attempting to endow herself with the attributes she believes the Chanel brand possesses.

This might be mysterious to some. How has the Chanel brand been so successful in cultivating its own mythology, its own legend, one of opulence, class, sophistication and the je ne sais quois that only the French possess? So successful that someone would spend $10k on a bag instead of $20 at Target?

Much of Chanel's status rests on the laurels of Coco Chanel herself, born into poverty and taught to sew at an orphanage. She rose through the ranks of society to become the only fasion designer to be named on TIME's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Since Coco Chanel's death in the sixties, the brand has continued to play on her aristocratic connections and her pioneering attitude. The alluring romance of Paris also plays a huge part in the story of the brand. Chanel has continued to build on its story though continued exclusivity (limited distribution), premium pricing, and trend-setting celebrity advertising campaigns featuring the likes of Nicole Kidman and Keira Knightley.

Something to think about the next time you're acosted by the Chanel No.5 perfume spritzer in Macy's

John + Kate plus... sponsorship megabucks?

I have several confessions. I like television. I also like reality television. Reality television about families? Yep, that too.

Little People, Big World, the occasional Supernanny, documentaries about conjoined twin babies that survived against the odds: check.

I have caught a few episodes of TLC's John and Kate Plus Eight too, and while those kids are pretty cute, I have to admit that Kate Gosselin is a little, well, how do I put this delicately... Bossy? Feisty? Angry?

I suspect I may not be alone in this observation. So she seemed an interesting choice as spokesmom for Proctor and Gamble's BrandSaver coupon book. Companies have been hiring spokespeople for eons, choosing individuals in the public eye that they want consumers to associate with the brand. Creating the connection between brand and celeb can seem like an easy shortcut, with the aim of endowing the brand with the desirable attributes the individual seems to possess.

Kate Moss brings her British sass and style to Rimmel Cosmetics. Tina Fey lends some funny smarts to American Express.

I can understand why a Proctor and Gamble marketing exec may have thought Kate Gosselin seemed to be a good idea at first. She's the ultimate gatekeeper mom, running a household of six two-year-olds and two six-year-olds with an iron fist. But if you google her, you'll also see that her Stalin-esque tactics aren't that popular with much of the TLC audience.

Anyway, I'd never own up to writing this blog post, because if P+G sent her on a national tour, I'm pretty sure she'd hunt me down.

Make every scent count

Come join Capsule's Aaron Keller and Stephen Baird of Winthrop & Weinstine at the W Minneapolis to hear all about how to make sense of the five senses:

The customer experience is defined by a powerful blend of sensory input. It's crucial to get these factors right so that you can maximize the connection your customers feel with your brand.

Aaron and Stephen will be discussing the importance of conducting a sensory audit of your brand's customer experience, effectively helping you to design a cohesive sensory experience which is protectable through intellectual property law.

And, there'll be some swanky hors d'oeuvres too.

February 24th @ 3pm...

Give us a call at 612 341 4525 to reserve your spot.

---

Presenting... Mimosa

Pantone's hot color of the year is a warm, golden shade of yellow it named Mimosa.

"The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance," explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. "Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation."

Wouldn't it be a cool job if your main role was figuring out color trends of the future?

Maclife.com interviewed Eiseman to find out how she does it:

Eiseman doesn’t spend her working days locked up in a room crunching data or aiming darts at a brilliantly hued board to see where they land. Rather, she identifies color trends by synthesizing history, current events, psychology, marketing principles, fine art, pop art, and street fashion, along with all the information culled from her own color surveys.

“Right now, I’m researching the color preferences prevalent during previous recessions,” Eiseman says. “What I’m finding is that neutrals are preferred during economic downturns, especially for big-ticket items. People don’t want to invest in trendy-colored items when times are tough. They’re looking for stability and longevity.”

Nevertheless, Eiseman says that flooding the market with beige items isn’t necessarily the right approach right now. Instead, manufacturers should focus on coming up with new ways of combining neutrals with livelier colors to “tweak the consumer’s eye and spark interest.

Yellow was very prevalent in the fashion and interior design feel of 2008, particularly when teamed with gray, but I was a little surprised that Pantone didn't move away from it in a new direction for 2009.

Anyway, it's kind of a bad color for blondes.

Thoughts?

Frank Gehry gets around

Brad Pitt worships him. Tiffany carries a gorgeous range of jewelry designed by him.

Now, legendary po-mo architect Frank Gehry has turned his talents to the vodka bottle for Wyborowa's single malt.

His elegant design is sleek and simple - two of the best ingredients for beauty, we think.

The lines of the bottle are very consistent with Gehry's body of work. Compare the bold angles of the bottle with some of the pieces he created for Tiffany:

Apparently he's very inspired by fish. "It was by accident I got into the fish image," claimed Gehry. While his colleagues were recreating Greek temples, he said, "Three hundred million years before man was fish....if you gotta go back, and you're insecure about going forward...go back three hundred million years ago. Why are you stopping at the Greeks? So I started drawing fish in my sketchbook, and then I started to realize that there was something in it." (Source)

Gehry designed Minneapolis' own Weisman Art Museum as well as the Guggenheim Museum in Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA.

Perhaps he was inspired by the Capsule design team's award winning Double Cross?

Burger King goes all 'Mean Girls'

Everyone has differing opinions on Facebook - is it a waste of time, is it a valuable networking tool, or is it just a way to spy on all the kids from high school to see who married the prom queen after all?

Burger King has teamed up with Crispin Porter + Bogusky to capitalize on Facebook's high-school-drama style for a new campaign in the spirit of Mean Girls, bitchy anonymous notes left in lockers, and the kid that smelled a bit funny eating alone in the cafeteria.

Delete ten of your "friends" on Facebook and you'll be sent a coupon for a free Whopper. Not only that, but your ex-friends will be notified that you'd prefer a free Whopper over their Facebook "friendship."

Nice!

Now to begin the cull...

Genius

Admittedly, it is winter in the northern hemisphere right now and so you may not be thinking about the importance of solar energy at the moment, especially if you're anywhere near Capsule's home city of Minneapolis.

However, spring is only a few months away and before you know it most of us will be complaining about the heat all over again. Yours truly is blogging from Down Under at the moment and so in this blazing, sweltering place they call Australia, it's not difficult to see just how brilliant this idea is.

Yanko Design has come up with some sleek sunglasses that harness the power of the sun so that all you gadget geeks can charge your iPhones, iPods and other small electronic devices. How sweet is that?

Another year, another crop of awards to win!

Happy 2009 everyone!

With the new year comes a whole slew of design awards out there just waiting to be rewarded to the cream of the crop.

One of the first to commence acceptance of entries is the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, 2009. You can begin entering projects online as of 29 January. Last year was the first that awards for the best of design were handed out, and in 2009 the design award ceremony is scheduled for June 24.

Last year saw many seminars held in Cannes and you can now watch the full-length versions online at the official Cannes site.