Brand Noise

Designers Revive Legwear

According to WWD: The legwear industry has a heartbeat again.

Given up for almost dead just a few seasons ago, when the trend was for women to go bare-legged even in the freezing cold, the industry is enjoying a major revival, thanks to the popularity of leggings and tights.

Only last week, Karl Lagerfeld's couture show for Chanel was dominated by black tights under colorful dresses. And further evidence of the renaissance came at the Sundance Film Festival in snowy Park City, Utah, where young actresses ditched the traditional uniform of jeans and Ugg boots in favor of tights, chic dresses and high heels.

Meanwhile, legwear enthusiasts are gaining steam.

Not Your Mother's Dentistry

The recently launched Canadian service, The inciDENTAL Tourist, has expanded its operations. In addition to its Canadian clients, the company now serves clients in the United States who can enjoy the vacation of a lifetime touring the historic Nanjing region of China while enjoying substantial savings on major dental procedures.

The inciDENTAL Tourist package includes a guided two-week vacation visiting the historic city of Nanjing, Suzhou - known for its enchanting canals and beautiful gardens - a cruise on the Yangtze River and shopping in Shanghai. Dental treatments, provided at a state-of-the-art clinic in Nanjing, are scheduled to maximize time for sight-seeing and visiting.

Also, on the dental front, is talk about Sedation Dentistry. You pop a pill, mellow out and it's all over.

Marital Bliss for Martha

Waterford Wedgwood USA and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will collaborate to develop a new bridal and tabletop line. The line will be available in early 2008 exclusively at Macy's in the United States, and through macys.com, as part of the Martha Stewart Collection assortment of products. Things get curiouser and curiouser...During a recent class lecture at Parson's there was a discussion on laggard brands: do they fade away or do they hold their ground and find a niche? This is a timely example.

Got Beef? Save pots.

Propelled by a desire for back-to-basics foods and the hearty flavor of ingredients gradually intermingled in a lengthy cooking process, slow cooking is booming, especially at this time of year as the bone-chilling temperatures of late winter increase interest in homier, heart-warming fare.

As evidence of the trend, Rival, the nation's leading manufacturer of crock-pots, reports that sales increased a record-breaking 20% over the past four years, hardly surprising, considering that this cookware has literally come to define what slow cooking is all about.

But while slow cooked foods certainly make one feel good, it's only recently that home chefs have begun to look to make these dishes healthy for you, too. With beef stews a mainstay of slow cooking, consumers are starting to marry the technique with another important food trend -- grass-fed Angus beef.

Rimmel Undergound Unveiled

While Rimmel London continues to experience success with Kate Moss, Coty Beauty recently unveiled a new color cosmetics line, Rimmel Underground. Specifically developed for a Generation Y audience, Rimmel Underground exudes fun and sexiness using new color effects in cosmetics never seen before in the broad distribution market....believing an extension of the British brand's  rebellious Rimmel  will attract a relatively untapped 15-to-21-year-old demographic much more keen on buying makeup than their parents were at that age.

"There is a huge body of disenfranchised young consumers that nobody is speaking to,'' said Stephen Mormoris, Coty senior VP-global marketing, in an AdAge article in October 2006.

You Go Girl

Music With A Twist/Columbia Records will release Twist Revolutions, the inaugural collection of new music and emerging artists from Music With A Twist, the music industry's pioneering first major LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender) record label. Revolutions will be available Tuesday, April 17.

Music With A Twist, launched in 2006, is the first major record label dedicated to identifying and developing lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) artists along with creating innovative music compilations with a distinctly gay "twist". A joint venture between Sony Music Label Group/Columbia Records and Logo network Founder Matt Farber's Wilderness Media & Entertainment, TWIST is a home for gay artists of all genres to experience mainstream success without having to compromise any part of their identity.

This coincides with the launch of the OurChart social network, born out of The L Word drama. OurChart's premise is inspired by one of the central story lines in "The L Word": a wall-sized, handwritten white-board "chart" designed to keep track of the various connections, especially the myriad hookups and heartbreaks among the show's many characters. OurChart.com will build a network of women into a real "Chart" in a unique and useful manner to allow users to connect their interests, hobbies, and communities and, if they choose, their love lives.

Gaywired.com reports, No longer considered a narrow niche, corporate America is waking up to the enormous opportunity of marketing to gays and lesbians, whose buying power is set to exceed $835 billion by 2011, according to The Gay and Lesbian Market in the U.S., a new report from market research firm Packaged Facts, in collaboration with gay and lesbian PR and marketing firm Witeck-Combs Communications Inc.  

The report pegs the 2006 buying power of gays and lesbians at $660 billion, an amount that will increase significantly as the gay and lesbian population, estimated at 15.3 million, grows to a projected 16.3 million in 2011.

 

Such phenomenal growth and consumer power has not gone unnoticed by major national marketers. LOGO, the gay and lesbian cable TV outlet, has more than 80 major brands as sponsors, and advertisers are increasingly targeting gays in mainstream media, particularly on line, as gays tend to have a higher proclivity towards digital entertainment than their heterosexual counterparts.

Even the show Trading Spouses has an upcoming lesbian swap. I've got my DVR ready.

 

YouTube Taking Its Share

Recent research by Harris Interactive suggests that the fear that online may eclipse TV is warranted. Over four in 10 (42%) online U.S. adults say they have watched a video at YouTube, and 14 percent say they visit the site frequently. Almost one in three (32%) of these frequent YouTube users say they are watching less TV as a result of the time they spend there.

However, YouTube has its own set of challenges as it tries to monetize the viewer traffic it has amassed. If YouTube is considering airing ads before its videos, they may be advised to halt that thinking; 73 percent of frequent YouTube users say they would visit the site less if it started including short video ads before every clip.

Damn right. When you're trying to watch a clip, who needs a clip before it. You can zap through TV ads and head for the fridge. And at least when you go to a movie, you can walk in and out of the previews. Even then they're only running at a fraction of the movie's actual running time.  The online experience is about instant access and with that a begging for customized messaging, not generic intrusions.

Further compounding the problem for the TV and advertising, YouTube usage is greatest among the group already hardest to reach through television advertising: young males. Over three-quarters (76%) of 18 to 24 year old males say they have watched a video at YouTube, and 41 percent visit YouTube frequently.

BusinessWeek Quote of the Day

For a moment of people quoting people quoting people....Bruce Nussbaum at BusinessWeek picked up on our interview with Marc Gobé as his quote of the day.  Check them out here checking us out here.

The Importance of Dreams

Citigroup Brands Beyond the Umbrella with "Citi"

Executives at Citigroup are prepared to rebrand the company “Citi” and to fold up its familiar red umbrella and instead use a logo with a stylized arc above the name.

The brand makeover comes out of the playbook of other big companies. Apple Computer, for example, last week shortened its name to Apple emphasize its broader ambitions for other technologies, like the new iPhone. Several years ago, Morgan Stanley ditched the suffix of Dean Witter, and Federal Express became just FedEx.

The new name and look, which follows a 14-month review of the bank’s brand, will be presented to the Citigroup board this week, according to several executives close to the process. No final decision has been made and it could still undergo some minor changes. Read more (NY Times)