McD's Getting all Clever

Love it when Brands have a strong understanding of who they are at the core and the strength to be that brand. Simple idea that is more than the sum of its parts. Heye & Partner, Munich, Germany

Dockers Be A Man

Never really thought of Dockers as a real mans brand, but props to them for being aware of the environment and cutting a niche for themselves.

Camera in a Gift Card?!

From Target. The description from their site: "This 1.2 MP Digital Camera GiftCard takes pictures and comes with 40 free prints." That's fun. 

Target has really changed the face of their store shopping experience and brand, obviously. I can hardly remember what it used to be like 20 years ago, except that it seemed so uncool. 

6 Beers of Separation

Tooheys Extra Dry, a beer from Australia, is embarking on a pretty cool branding project. Find the person in the world you want to meet the most and share a beer with them. The process is based on the theory of 6 degrees of separation. Seems to me that promoting participation in a brand through a social experiment is a pretty powerful technique, providing the experiment gets enough exposure. That's the key, I guess.

Check the link here. Pretty cool interactive site, as well, though the typography on the About page kind of annoys me. Anyhoo, enjoy. Sorry, no visual for this one. You'll have to click, click, click.

Bullseye Bodega: Target Hits Manhattan

Target opened several New York City style corner stores for four days only. I think that's pretty cool of Target, though I do love the independent stores. From the photos I've seen, I prefer the outside to the inside, which looks like it got mixed up with McDonalds. 

The Gap does something similar in a rotating theme store next to their flagship NYC store (sounds like rotating art in a cafe...). The latest rendition featured Parisian boutique colette. Check out their website — kind of fun.

Kashi Vitality Package Stands Out

Maybe I'm a sucker for anything printed on what looks like a brown paper bag. I've always loved the tactile quality and the interplay between the ink and the everyday-ness of the brown paper. When I went to pick up some cereal on my way to work this morning, this box stood out from the rest easily. It stood out from Kashi's other stuff, as well. It doesn't seem to break from the brand, but rather, seems like a special edition. It doesn't hit a different price point which a special edition might tend to do, though. I like that they included a photo element on the bottom where some companies might not have in this application. 

I wonder what the plan is for the other Kashi products. They do have a community/forum aspect to their brand on their website that focusses on healthy living and such and it would seem like the natural thing to do to extend this packaging aesthetic there, if a brand shift is underway. 

Photographer Rankin featured in Special Coke Bottles

UK Coke released these bottles as a celebration of Beijing handing off the summer Olympics to London. Kind of cool, but who's going to frame a Coke bottle?

Brand tags

This is Brilliant, and will go into a permanent link on the side. Brain Child of Noah Brier. Best described in his words:

Brand Tags: A collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner or anyone else he knows. Have fun.

See what people think a brand is. If you'd rather, you can try guessing the brand from what people have tagged it or see what tags are most popular from different referring sites.

Brand Tags