Brand Noise

MIT Student Creates iShoe for Seniors

Sometimes new inventions hit home just a little too hard.

MIT graduate student Erez Lieberman is working on an "iShoe" which uses technology developed by NASA to create an insole that could help elderly people keep their balance and prevent falls. The iShoe insole would measure and analyze the pressure distribution of the patient's foot and report back to their doctor.

Now which shoe to partner with is the question? Which brand of sneakers do seniors prefer? After my own mother took a major fall cracking her orbital, her doctor recommended Reebok's but Reebok's just didn't jive with her sense of style. These days, she's sporting Crocs and Land's End footwear just like other grandmas who want to be chic and comfortable. Wii Fit, anyone?

For iBeer Tie Ins, Networks Need Strengthening

So the Carling iPint from BMB is currently one of the most downloaded free applications on the App Store. It's top ten in the USA and I don't think you can even buy Carling here. There's also iBeer.

Cool apps, yes. They've created a lot of chatter about the need for geo-locators for pubs and ecommerce/loyalty ties. That said, two things come to mind:

1. What's the common denominator that drives beer consumption? Its social aspect.
2. How reliable is the availability of a particular beer brand at any given moment?

Luxury bling in the BRIC?

Teeth-tattooing and jewel-embedding has been on the rise as a trend in India over the past few years. Proprietors of clinics that offer the service in Bangalore say they get two to three customers every week and the number is rising.

Unlike body tattooing, where a needle is used to inject the ink, in teeth-tattooing, specially designed stickers are used.

In the US, the Heward Dental Lab in Salt Lake City specializes in custom hand-painted crowns. Decodent has got the teeth jewels.

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Mountain Dew Vehicle Repurposed for Nike?

Hub Strategy's first assignment for the Nike 6.0 Extreme Sports Group led to the creation of an action-sports urban assault vehicle -- actually a converted 1959 amphibious tank-like truck -- initially tricked out by the agency for the Mountain Dew's Action Sports Tour.

What's up with that? A repurposed vehicle?

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Diamonds, A Catalyst for Change in India

When planners for the De Beers India "Diamond Bride" campaign set out to "puncture" what they called the BFIW (big fat Indian wedding), the first glimpse of opportunity came when research revealed that wedding jewelry was one of the few areas where the bride had some say.

Within the Indian wedding ceremony gold has been an abiding piece of the bride's adornment for centuries…yet it turned out that a gold bride was perceived by many as being "too decked up, traditional, with a vernacular accent, fearful, obedient, surrounded by uncles, aunts, squealing cousins, at a hustle-bustle-hotch-potch of a wedding party."

In contrast, the "diamond bride" was imagined to be "elegant, at a select gathering, an extrovert who speaks her mind, and, above all, casual, cheerful and happy, not nervous at all, even though she is getting married."

Diamonds, the planners hypothesized, could be the catalyst to a contemporary cultural paradigm waiting to be advanced…

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For Some, When it Comes to Green: Pretty is as Pretty Does

Discovery Network's Planet Green figures that viewers will swallow their environmental medicine only if it comes coated in a bright, sugary syrup.

• On “Emeril Green”: The diet lentil salad Emeril Lagasse prepared for a woman trying to maintain her 130-pound weight loss came topped with a fried egg. Layering organic tomato, lettuce and avocado on a hamburger — on a brioche bun — for a picky teenager, Mr. Lagasse, the Louisiana-trained chef, implored her to let him add mayonnaise. “How about just a little bit?” he urged. “Because it’s homemade.”
• On “Hollywood Green”: A recent segment celebrated a tanning salon with solar-powered tanning beds. The show reported glowingly on the establishment’s bamboo walls and air purifiers but didn’t point out that the solar-powered tanning beds still rely on carcinogenic UV rays to darken customers’ skin.
• On “Wasted!”: A family living in a vast McMansion (a 9,000-square-foot living room) with five cars was asked to cut back on everything from gasoline (its consumption comes to about 218 gallons of crude oil a week) to paper towels and lighting. After three weeks even modest stinting helped, though the lady of the house drew the line at replacing flame-shaped light bulbs in her chandeliers with boxier energy-efficient ones. “They’re absolutely hideous,” she explained.

At least they're honest. With multi facets of green consumers today, you can't make all extremes happy--so why fault Planet Green for "narrowing their focus?" Better a little green gets through to these consumers than none at all. And the backlash provides fodder for other content.

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