Brand Noise

Tate Gallery Distributes Ltd. Ed. Cains Beer

The man who created the Sgt Pepper album cover has designed a beer bottle label to celebrate Liverpool's Capital of Culture year. The label by artist Sir Peter Blake features a Union Jack with his signature, and is featured on Cains' Best of British lager bottles. Cains Beer, based in Toxteth, Liverpool, plans to produce 250,000 bottles. The specially-labelled beer will be available until December. It is available in the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern galleries as well as supermarkets.

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Fortunoff Selling to L&T Owners

Fortunoff has agreed to sell its more than 80 year old business to an affiliate of NRDC Equity Partners, the owner of the Lord & Taylor department store chain.

NRDC Equity Partners plans on investing $100 million into the Fortunoff business, with investments being made in both existing and additional stores.

For the last decade or so, Fortunoff has existed as the place your mother took you to set up your bridal registry or buy an engagement ring. It was a safe bet, yet sans innovation.

The safe-bet factor levied the brand as the generation in charge moved through the Baby Boomers, but for it to work across Gen X and Gen Y is going to call for transformation.

Timeless brands quickly become timeworn without evolution.

Tappening Taps into a Need

Not a new story, but certainly one of the most compelling ones in which a small group of influential consumers created a huge ripple effect of demand for a coveted item, like the bag at Whole Foods that everyone waited in line for.

When Mark DiMassimo, who founded and runs Digobrands, and Eric Yaverbaum, who runs Ericho Communications, founded Tappening, they intended the site, www.tappening.com, to be an educational website where the public could find up-to-the minute information about the detrimental damages the bottled water industry was causing the environment. They personally financed an inventory of reusable water bottles that were available for purchase on the site. DiMassimo and Yaverbaum expected these 39,000 bottles to sell throughout the first year of their new project and self finance their marketing message. Their initial inventory sold within 36 hours.

For a beverage company, a campaign like Tappening forever changes the value of bottled water. The question remains—how will the bottled water makers deal with that? So far, Coke is offering no comment. What remains is that there’s a value that lives on in regard to portability and functional aspects. But what price does that come at? Let’s look at the bottle. Will Coca-Cola encourage refilling their bottles?

The answers aren’t simple. This opens up a whole new set of issues. You’ll start to see filtration products on the horizon. Imagine a bottle with a built-in filter that you can refill, say 10 times. Each time the filter adds a functional aspect like electrolytes that you desire to your water.

Along those lines, Pur Water Filter known for its in-home filtration has been offering its Exstream portable bottle purification system to the outdoor sporting community. But no one has bought 39,000 units of it in 36 hours.

Kid Robot, Secret to “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Success?

“Yo Gabba Gabba!” began appearing on Nickelodeon in August, and with remarkable speed it has acquired fans who are preschoolers and fans who are old enough to be their parents...Charles Rivkin, the president and chief executive of Wildbrain, which produces the show, says, “I challenge you to find another preschool show that four months after going on the air is actually selling adult apparel at Barneys.”

While plenty of shows for children have also appealed to adults — “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” “H. R. Pufnstuf,” even “Sesame Street” — “Yo Gabba Gabba!” updates this idea for a generation that, it has been argued, is ambivalent about letting go of its own youth.

The real deal came when the original creators hooked up with Wildbrain. Back in 2006, Wildbrain acquired a majority interest in Kidrobot, which makes and sells high-end “designer toys” and apparel that appeal to fashionable young adults (who may or may not be parents). Thus “Gabba”-related products arrived in exclusive retail settings much faster than usual, demonstrating consumer demand to other merchandise partners.

You couldn’t ask for more perfect serendipity in partners, which goes to prove that authenticity starts at the drawing board. Had “Yo Gabba Gabba!” been conceived under other premises, it wouldn’t have been strong enough to bring into the Kid Robot world. On the other hand, if “Yo Gabba Gabba!” merchandise went straight to big box retailers you would’ve had a watered down product. The Kid Robot connection offers the brand longevity, with more staying power than it would have had on its own.

(Image: T-shirt recrafted into dress by JinJur.)
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HyperLink My World, Please

The Green Holiday catalog from Barney's arrived in the mail yesterday filled with everything from Lanvin shopper bags to organic Levi's. But no sign of what color that fabulous lipstick is on the cover...
In my perfect little world even the Barney's billboard at Mulry Square would have a teeny Semapedia tag that would give me all the info I need--provided all colors were perfectly matched.

Boutiques Fade in LA: New Strategies Required

From late 2005 to early this year, fashion boutiques popped up in L.A. like poodle skirts to a sock hop…Feminine outposts such as Iconology, Presse and Lily Savitch helped turn La Brea Avenue into a high-fashion enclave, while Sienna, Milk and ECookie upped the style quotient on the Westside. This new crop of boutiques was the antithesis of mass-market, offering a tightly edited selection of merchandise that represented the owners' particularly L.A. spin on the trends of the day.

Yet some of their closings and slowdowns have cast a shadow on L.A.'s reputation as an up-and-coming fashion capital…When consumers start tightening their purse strings, high-end retail suffers first.

Years ago, it wouldn't have mattered how deeply department stores discounted their merchandise. They didn't carry the edgier designers...But in an effort to chase the boutique business, department stores including Nordstrom and Macy's have, in recent years, developed new divisions for young, cutting-edge brands.

Tracey Ross said she no longer can afford to buy overly avant-garde pieces -- a shame, considering her keen eye for new design talent. "I love cultivating new designers," she said, "but I can't have pieces in my store that don't sell anymore.

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At Macy's NYC, Only Santa is Real

We made the annual trek to Macy's Herald Square to see Santa with much insistence from my 60-something mother. It's the only place where Macy's is like it used to be, claims she who has had a Macy's credit card since 1956. Or is it? She paraded herself proudly at each sales counter waving the 20% Macy's discount card recently mailed to her--Only to be dismayed that the card was not accepted at any of the favored spots that make Macy's feel like the "old days." It's been policy for as long as I can remember that certain discounts are not extended to these leased departments. Yet the prolification of today's leased departments have deconstructed Macy's Herald Square into essentially a mall. So the Macy's my mom thinks is a nod to yesteryear is simply on lease. That makes it impossible for the essence of what was Macy's to ever extend beyond the...(er)...flagship.

But at least we know that the Santa at Macy's is real. According to my five-year-old, he never has to ask her name and he knows that she's grown a lot. That gives Macy's about another five years to grab hold of their brand before this kid hits tweenhood and steps up her retail expectations. As for now, she thinks Macy's is magical--that one brief visit each year holds her imagination for 365 days.   

Nike Looks Under The Radar

Under current Chief Executive Mark Parker, Nike is depending on lesser-known figures -- like a Los Angeles tattoo artist known as Mister Cartoon. Though far from mainstream, Mr. Cartoon rivals Nike's high-profile jocks for influence among a certain crowd that is young, Latino and hip-hop...Athletes still rule at Nike. But the game is changing. Nike's traditional endorsement strategy has taken a few hits recently. It dumped NFL star Michael Vick.

Mr. Parker sees the challenge thusly: "The question is, how do you not let your size become a disadvantage? How do you keep an edge, a crispness, a relevance?" At Nike, the drive to recruit under-the-radar influencers like Mr. Cartoon is on the rise and a key part of the company's strategy.

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Fashion Bullying Moves to Middle School

Dorothy Espelage, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,  says she has seen an increase in "bullying related to clothes." Having access to designer clothing affords some kids "the opportunity to become popular -- and that protects you and gives you social power and leverage over others," she says.

Over the past three years, numerous designers have targeted the lucrative children's and teens' markets. Little Marc, the kids' clothing label by New York designer Marc Jacobs, expanded its line this winter and dropped its price, making it more accessible to a greater number of shoppers...

What's curious here is that middle school kids are at a crossroad, moving beyond the parental threshold. Yet they still are looking back for parental approval. Branding at this age shoots right back at the parents. How kids are perceived at this stage and how they receive that perception shapes their future brand directions. WIll they become Abercrombie kids and constantly seek what's "in" or will they break out of the mold?

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(Photo: Vintage tintype of a pre-teen.)

Lilly Pulitzer: Borne out of Necessity

Bored Palm Beach socialite Lilly Pulitzer opened a juice stand in 1959 to pass the time, but she found one drawback: The citrus concoctions discolored her clothes.

She instructed her dressmaker to create a uniform that would camouflage the bright stains, and the "Lilly" design -- sleeveless cotton shifts in vibrant prints -- was born. The style was an instant hit with customers, who soon began placing more orders for dresses than juice.

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