“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., American Civil Rights Leader, in Strength To Love
“Is maith an scáthán súil charad.” | “A friend’s eye is a good mirror.”
Irish Proverb
Lakers’ owner Jerry Buss on brand experience:
“Right after I bought the team, I used to go into this little lounge in Santa Monica. The owner was also musical director for MGM, and they used to perform musicals there late at night, it was just fantastic,” he says. “Just before they would start, everyone would start shouting, ‘Showtime! Showtime!’ I remember thinking, this is how I wanted people to feel about their team.”
Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Turney feels her lingerie brand has become “too sexy” for its own good:
“We have moved off of our brand heritage,” she said in a conference call with analysts. “We use the word ’sexy’ a lot and really have forgotten the ultra-feminine.”
Turney said the brand’s original storyline was of a to-the-manor-born Londoner named Victoria whose lacey underthings, we assume, were her little secret. But in recent years, Victoria became known as simply “Vicky,” and she had no qualms about flaunting her sex appeal.
George Lucas reminds us of the importance of a backstory:
Lucas has been described as a frustrated architect, but to draft his dream academy he needed more than blueprints. “He created a story for the ranch,” Bay says. “He created a history. It belonged to a cattle rancher. Each building was added at a certain time and built in a certain style. There was a winery, for instance, but then it burned down at a certain point in time and was rebuilt in an Art Deco style. This room we’re in, it belonged to the rancher’s daughter She had brown hair and green eyes and went to the University of Arizona and she couldn’t get horses out of her blood.”
Branding turns out to be older than we thought:
In “Prehistories of Commodity Branding,” author David Wengrow challenges the widespread assumption that branding did not become an important force in social and economic life until the Industrial Revolution. Wengrow presents compelling evidence that labels on ancient containers, which have long been assumed to be simple identifiers, as well as practices surrounding the production and distribution of commodities, actually functioned as branding strategies. Furthermore, these strategies have deep cultural origins and cognitive foundations, beginning in the civilizations of Egypt and Iraq thousands of years ago.
Sonny Astani reimagines outdoor advertising:
Sonny Astani walked into a Westwood movie theater in 1985 and saw the film that changed his life: “Blade Runner,” the science-fiction tale that imagined a dystopian Los Angeles where jet-powered cars zoom past skyscrapers covered with enormous, cinematic advertisements.
Decades later, the Iranian-born businessman is determined to bring some of those futuristic images to life. His plan? Attach an animated sign 14-stories tall on the 33-story condominium project he is building in downtown L.A.
“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963
Clorox thinks green:
Today, the couple’s quirky enterprise is owned by the Clorox Company, a consumer products giant best known for making bleach, which bought it for $913 million in November. Clorox plans to turn Burt’s Bees into a mainstream American brand sold in big-box stores like Wal-Mart. Along the way, Clorox executives say, they plan to learn from unusual business practices at Burt’s Bees — many centered on environmental sustainability. Clorox, the company promises, is going green.
The newest Orient-Express property is due to open in Southern Peru on April 15th, 2008:
Located in the heart of the Colca Canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the world, Las Casitas Del Colca is a haven of peace and tranquillity.
The property is nestled on the left bank of the Colca River and boasts twenty luxurious Casitas offering supreme privacy and exclusivity in simple, unpretentious surroundings.
This all inclusive property offers the opportunity to relax and spend time in harmony with nature, the canyon and the community.