What can the business and branding world gain from Eddie Izzard? Aside from any obvious answers, there lies an intriguing connection in the back-story of the comedian’s success. First, Eddie Izzard (Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story) does not perceive himself as being naturally funny. Being a comedian for him is a lot of work. He plans out his ideas, practices his delivery and prototypes skits with small audiences. Only after working on the content, refining the delivery, and sharpening timing is the new comedy recipe tried again on other audiences. Elicited responses again are evaluated, fine-tuned, and re-delivered. The end result is that he has mastered his delivery, the crowd walks away happy, the cable networks get their viewers, and the brand that is Eddie Izzard grows.
Lots of failure + Lots of iteration = Strong brand
Now think about traditional development process. Planning, design, and launch. Launch? Here’s an age-old concept that is being re-shaped in the era of the proto-brand. As social media and technology open up development, co-creation will become the normative process for many brands.
As the speed and quantity of new offers being thrown at us increases, our attention spans become shorter and we’re more easily distracted. In this 21st century business environment, brands cannot rely on the one-liner. People’s considerations are changing faster than ever, in some cases disrupting the validity of our traditional segmentation practices. So, in a world where the only constant is change, how will you evolve your products, services, and experiences? How are you structuring your existing customers and yet-to-be-discovered clients to allow for Eddie’s approach to testing and iteration?
In the world of open, brand is more valuable than ever. More than what you can offer is the outcome of the way you act: trust, equity, and loyalty. Open up to people, and you gain empathy, support, and forgiveness. Close the door to them, tell the same jokes over and over, and soon you’ll be looking at a theater of empty seats.
We plotted GDP against the average GDP growth rate over the last five years to find economies that combine scale with growth, and then combined our analysis with the perspectives of regional experts from each country. From all of this, we think four countries will emerge in the next wave following the BRICs: Mexico, Korea, Turkey and Indonesia. They are strong flourishing economies that have exhibited extraordinary growth in GDP as well as capital markets and consumer demand.
We think these countries’ rising stars and most exciting brands – still unknown to non-locals but with the potential to excite the world in the next few years – are:
From Mexico
Grupo Bimbo is the biggest Mexican food corporation and the largest bakery in the world with brands in Latin America, Europe, China, the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Grupo Bimbo is growing rapidly making significant acquisitions and expanding its distribution across the globe. As Mexican food continues to gain in popularity worldwide and Mexican brands realise the need to target beyond Mexican consumers, giant companies like Bimbo will move from silent conglomerates to big global consumer brands.
From Korea
E-mart is the oldest and largest discount store chain in Korea with total sales volume exceeding US$ 9.4 billion in 2009. With aggressive new store openings and the acquisition of Wal-Mart Korea in 2006, E-Mart is also the first Korean retailer to advance into China, with the aim of becoming one of the top leading global retailers. As of January 2010, E-mart 127 stores across South Korea and 24 stores in China. Its brand power has always been within the top 3 in the entire country and it now has the ambition to go beyond its retail category.
From Turkey
Vestel has an impressive market share (20%) in Europe’s television-set market and decided to move from OEM to its standalone brand in 2010. It leads the European market in terms of unit sales followed by Philips and BEKO (another Turkish brand), experiencing very rapid growth. It also operates in television components, personal computers, PC monitors and white goods, and has R&D centres in Turkey, UK and Silicon Valley. Vestel is Turkey’s largest exporter, with customers in 103 countries. Vestel belongs to Zorlu Holding, a Turkish conglomerate.
From Indonesia
Extrajoss is a powder type energy drink sold in Indonesia, an Indonesian version of Red Bull. However, it is cheaper and promotes its healthy ingredients (vitamin C, ginseng, etc). It is well established in the domestic market and has appointed Cristiano Ronaldo as the brand’s spokesperson. It started to export to adjacent countries including Singapore and Malaysia.
(Hester Song) Originally posted August 5, 2010 in ‘Views’
The Hundreds has an interesting interview with the founder of the brand formerly known as Freshjive, Rick Klotz regarding his recent de-branding of his label Freshjive. Read the whole article here. Klotz has decided to forego using any logos and branding starting spring 2010. According to Klotz:
“Within the streetwear culture, the promotion of a company’s brand has become downright silly to me. What’s amusing is I still really enjoy designing gear, graphics, and even logos. But when I see kids wearing company logos it reminds of people who are trying to be a part of a “tribe” or “gang”, as if they need to be part of something, which seems to go against the idea of individualism in style.”
While this may come as a surprise to some, the de-emphasis of logo identity has been around for some time. Rob Walker wrote about invisible badges in Buying In and high-end luxury brands like Christian Louboutin and Bottega Veneta have made a name for themselves by focusing on distinct patterns and materials to build brand affinity for years.
At the high-end of the market, brands have always been intended for small affinity groups rather than mass markets. These companies have created brand undergrounds where consumers need to be fully indoctrinated in the brand cultures to fully understand their subtle signalling.
Streetwear brands are similar in this sense, but until now have primarily been dominated by big logos and brand names. Just as Klotz realized, brand preferences are becoming more individual marks of style, tied to personal expression rather than logo size. The true mark of style is the fit, cut and ability of the wearer to give life to what is being worn.
This is important because we will begin to see brands like Rick Klotz’s begin to standout by reducing their visability. He will also begin to co-op existing brand marks into his nameless identity much the same way hip-hop borrowed from other music genres to tell more authentic stories.
