There are a lot of ways to gauge the best brands around. And with the help of Brand Finance, Forbes, and Interbrand, we’ve created an infographic breaking down the best brands of 2014. Find out which brands made it to the top, below.
Monthly Archives: April 2015
Pinpointing The Best Audience
Almost a year ago, Foursquare began rebuilding it’s company by splitting into two apps– Foursquare, for discovery purposes and Swarm, for check-in purposes– and shifting it’s business focus. At the time, the decision left many users confused (and even drove some away, reportedly), but as of today, it is clear what Foursquare aspires to do: corner the market on location-based advertising.
Today, Foursquare announced the launch of Pinpoint, a location-based advertising service that will use geo-location information to target ads to the relevant consumer. While Foursquare plans to use information collected in both of it’s apps, it also plans to target non-Foursquare users. Location-based advertising has been around for some time now, but Foursquare plans to use it’s extensive database of locations– something that could only be built with the help of it’s app users– to pinpoint “the precise places that [advertisers’ audiences go] to in the real world.”
Pinpoint will open up new ways for brands to micro-target the correct consumers. For instance, if a user has checked into Chili’s and Applebee’s, they might soon be targeted by Olive Garden, one of the first brands to adopt Pinpoint. Brands like Samsung, Choice Hotels, Land Rover and Wild Turkey have signed up for the service, as well.
As with all location-based targeting, brands will have to balance being seen as “creepy” with the value they can provide to customers. This balance is a priority especially given the specificity of the locations being shared. Brands might be able to manage this by offering deals directly to the consumers they now know will have the most interest.
What Sparks Our Fire: Exciting new ways for brands to reach their most receptive audiences
Coffee Of The Future
Single serve coffee pots and their plastic pods are brewing up a lot of controversy, and Singapore-based designer Eason Chow has come up with a conceptual solution to the wastefulness. Instead of the plastic pods, the coffee pot uses sugar covered pods that dissolve in hot water. The pods would come in different sizes and flavors, and the amount of sugar would be adjusted by the thickness of the sugar coated shell. “Chow said he was inspired by sugar-coated candy from his childhood, which would reveal different flavors as the layers dissolved.”- Fast Company.
What Sparks Our Fire: Creative designs that help our favorite products become more environmentally friendly
Marc-eting 101: User-Generated Content
We sat down with our CEO Marc Sampogna to talk about the latest trends in marketing and branding. This month we asked him the following questions, “Recently, we’ve noticed a lot of brands sharing user-generated content across their digital channels. What is the most effective example of this that you’ve seen? What do you think are the benefits of having consumers create and share content for brands that they love?”
There’s no doubt that user-generated content is extremely effective for brands to market their products or services. It provides content to populate the brands digital platforms and allows them to build brand loyalty by fostering unique experiences for their customers, both digitally and in real life.
We all remember the Doritos activation, “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, which yielded thousands of submissions, all culminating with the winner’s spot airing during the big game. While that’s certainly a very effective and memorable one, there are others that I believe have a longer tail.
Take Jones Soda — they literally place consumer photos and stories on their labels to celebrate the quirky nature of the brand and those who enjoy it. They’ve been doing this for years, and others have followed in different shapes and forms. Such as Twisted Tea, and even Coke for that matter, taking it to another level with their custom shareable cans campaign. And who can forget Mt Dew’s Democracy, where they asked consumers to design the packaging for their latest flavor or Starbucks’ MyStarbucksIdea.com, where consumers share and vote on the coolest idea that they think Starbucks should integrate into their stores. My favorite was coffee flavored ice cubes — avoids the watering down of your ice coffee with regular ice cubes. Simple, yet genius.
No matter how you slice it, brands will always benefit from empowering their consumers to participate in their story. Whether it’s designing it, naming it, or sharing how you enjoy it, we just want to be a part of it. This results in broader exposure for the brand, as well as newfound perspective on exactly how they’re audiences experience their products and engage their brand. So, I certainly believe that brands will continue to embrace the “power to the people” approach, and find new and unique ways to do so.
The (he)ART of NYC
New York City at it’s core, is known as a center of the arts. You can get your art fill all over the city, making stops along museum mile, gallery hopping in Chelsea, taking in the street art in Dumbo, or making the trek out to PS1 in Queens, and now even in one of the most iconic spots in all of the city… Times Square.
Now, as New Yorkers, we tend to avoid Times Square at all costs, but artist Peggy Ahwesh’s City Thermogram, has made it a destination spot for art lovers as well as tourists.
City Thermogram unveils both NYC’s electrical grid and the heat signatures of the human bodies that crowd its streets onto many of the largest billboards in the area. It’s a portrait of the urban everyday through the lens of a heat-sensitive camera. Using innovative technology, the piece recasts our ‘photographic’ world into one of unexpected revelations about our bodies, energy sources and personal devices. While this technology is usually used for scientific purposes, in Ahwesh’s hands the camera reveals the dynamism of the human body and offers a heat-based visualization of the electrical power grid that we all operate within.
This is part of the Midnight Moment series, the largest coordinated effort in history by the sign operators in Times Square to display synchronized, cutting-edge creative content on electronic billboards and newspaper kiosks throughout Times Square every night.
What Sparks Our Fire: Innovative Art in Unexpected Places
