MELISSA SHOES This sexy Brazilian footwear company has been taking the fashion world by storm for nearly 30 years. Melissa has challenged the conventions of the industry by manufacturing its entire range using eco-friendly mono materials that can be disassembled and recycled. The brand has already collaborated with the likes of Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano to design unique ranges but also remained true to its Brazilian roots, including this Amazon rainforest themed range.
It’s also not just the shoes that turn heads - the brand’s vibrant and artistic in-store displays are now as just as iconic, with Melissa placing great importance on creating a unique in-store experience. As the brand continues to expand across the world, partnering with designers and growing its loyal fanbase (including the likes of Katy Perry and Dita von Teese), Melissa’s future certainly looks bright.
PETROBRAS Petrobras may be the largest organization in Latin America and one of the world’s largest energy companies, but it’s also one of the most collaborative, placing great importance in Brazil’s cultural production, helping to fund films, theatre plays and scholarly works - making Petrobras the largest sponsor of culture in Brazil since the 1990s.
Petrobras’ most recent collaboration with magazine and image site Lomography sees the brand inviting people from all over the world to submit images of what energy means to them, creating a huge user-generated images around the concept of energy. This isn’t glossy greenwash but real photography from all corners of the world. Have a look at some of the shots.
What could be easier than picking up the phone and ordering a pizza? Ordering it online, apparently.
Last year, Domino’s reportedly took in one third of its delivery orders digitally, and is showing buoyant market growth for the first time since being hit by the recession.
Online shopping is a hardly a new trend, but that doesn’t mean most brands aren’t taking their time in making the most of the opportunities it offers.
Waitrose would no doubt shudder to be classed as the Dominos of supermarkets, but it is also an established player getting in on the online act. After years of channeling the bulk of its online delivery service through Ocado, Waitrose revealed this month that it will be using it’s (recently revamped to the tune of £10m) website to compete directly with its partner.
So, what’s the secret to success for brands online? We recently carried out an e-commerce benchmarking study, reviewing 35 retailers and e-tailers from the online customer’s perspective.
The companies that scored high were the ones that got the details right:
-simple process to pay
-sending items efficiently
-fixing problems with minimal fuss
Obvious things, you’d think. But only two were nailing it consistently – Amazon and Net-a-porter (no surprises there, then). The rest are still playing catch up.
A more detailed report of the results of the Wolff Olins e-commerce study will be published on 22 May 2011.
It was with great interest that I read the current issue of BusinessWeek, and in particular their article on Amazon entitled “Marketing is for Dummies”.
In it, they claim that Amazon refused to contribute to the article because executives there “don’t spend much time on branding.” An interesting statement, yes, but in reality I’d say that Amazon actually spend a tremendous amount of time on branding, just not in the traditional way.
To quote the article: “By investing back in the user experience, you get high loyalty and repeat usage.” To me, this is branding.
As our world changes, the idea of branding is also changing. In an open-source environment where Google, YouTube and indeed Amazon are the first places where people go to check out what brands really offer, then the traditional idea of ‘branding’ through image making (logo’s, identities, advertising campaigns etc) will continue to deliver lower value relative to investments in innovation, platforms and increasing the overall utility offered to the consumer.
In case we needed any more evidence, Amazon demonstrates that this truly is a world where what you do matters much more than what you say.
Travelling is a natural hazard of doing business, so it was a nice surprise yesterday when my wife presented me with a shiny new Kindle as an early birthday present.
It really is much better than I expected, and Amazon are clearly taking a page out of Apple’s book in terms of both the industrial design and the packaging (although shipping through USPS, with “Kindle” emblazoned across the box doesn’t make much sense - the first one they sent was stolen)
Anyway, I immediately proceeded to download the Economist, and what a nice surprise at how readable and how easy the whole process is.
Clearly this is an innovation that makes sense for the Amazon brand - taking their core of books and moving them firmly into the 21st century.
Is the Kindle perfect? No, absolutely not. I couldn’t help wanting to get online with it, and when reading articles on the New York Times, I really wanted to be able to Tweet the one’s I liked straight from the page.
Ah well, perhaps in the next firmware update.
Until then, I’ll be getting on a plane to Japan tomorrow about 20lb’s lighter than I otherwise would be.
Wow, so Amazon are buying Zappos. Raises lots of questions, but this might also be an incredibly smart move.
Questions first – Jeff Bezos engages in the YouTube video (above) to announce the move, Tony Hsieh an email to his company. Funny, a bit of table turning there.
One wonders whether this is really what Tony Hsieh wanted, and for how much longer he’ll stay - even as both sides claim that everything Zappos will remain as it was. From everything I’ve read, I’m pretty certain his ambition wasn’t to grow the business and then sell it.
The possibilities however are fascinating. Combine Zappos customer service ethos and social media nous with the Amazon infrastructure and customer base, and you have possibly the most innovative large retail group in the world.
It also begs the question of whether Amazon will choose to make more acquisitions, building a series of powerful retail brands that all draw from the same core technology, data and warehousing infrastructure.
For the competitors, this could be frightening, but for customers we just might be seeing some fascinating new experiences ahead. I watch with great interest.
