soulsight®

Credit: enschedeaanzee.nl

Wish you could snap your fingers and a cold beer shows up? How about a quick phone call? Grolsch has found a refreshing way to bring cold to the streets of the Netherlands with its "Cool*Season" campaign. Just dial up the "Cool*Hotline" and a Grolsch-slinging rep will zoom in on a scooter (complete with refrigerated sidecar, no less) and trade your other brand of beer for a chilled can of Grolsch Premium Pils. Each can features a "Cool*Meter", ensuring you'll get the optimal chilled experience. Very cool.

For more info on other "Cool*Initiatives", visit the Grolsch site.

In a world of changing demands and definitions, nothing is more in flux than the meaning of the word "luxury". Creating a unique brand experience beyond an emphasis on the product itself is increasingly important. If a holistic experience is created, truly personalized and considered by the consumer as a luxury, then a luxury product is born. For luxury is no longer just Almas caviar, Perrier Jouet champagne and Stuart Weitzman shoes. Luxury is purely in the eye of the beholder.

“Fluxury” is a term coined by trendwatching.com for the ever-evolving definition of luxury. Luxury itself is not a new concept, but its definition is a moving target. While delving further into this new realm of “fluxury”, we have uncovered several examples of how you can start to think about your brand in a new light. By tapping into learnings from the “fluxury” movement, your brand has the potential to not just exceed expectations, but move to unpredictable and rewarding heights of success.

Download Printable Fluxury Movement Insights

Pre-Design Research Discoveries

So I was reading an article about the new Acropolis Museum project in Athens (yes, get over it, I am Greek) and learned that during pre-construction excavation something amazing happened. An entire ancient city was discovered right where the bulldozers and diggers were ready to rumble.

"Oh no!" you might say, as many did. Most believed the project would be canceled or at best postponed many years due to the discovery. But, the famed architect Bernard Tschumi (neither have I) found inspiration!

Instead of wallowing in the unforeseen discovery, he embraced it. He cleverly designed the museum around and on top of it, highlighting the ancient and hailing its marvel and influence on the modern. And now it's becoming one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city.
What the heck does this have to do with design research? Well, I’m glad you asked. Many times, brand managers are presented the opportunity to do independent pre-design research. It is the one tool that good design firms have at their disposal that goes mostly unused. Many of the reasons not to pursue pre-design research, that I have heard, stem from a fear that it may contradict the very hard work that led to the green-lighting of a project in the first place. The homework has already been done. Why run the risk upfront when it can be done on the back end and corrected at that point?

It’s a tough sell, but I believe making choices out of fear will get you nowhere. If the lesson of the Acropolis Museum teaches us anything, it is that in the unknown there is great potential, and in discovering the potential early, one has the ability to adapt quicker, create smarter and perhaps more successfully due to the fact that you aren't "fixing problems" but creating solutions with information from the beginning.

So embrace research, or maybe just give it a friendly little hug at first. Bravely prepare yourself to look at the data as a treasure map instead of a road block, and you’ll find gold.

Read more about the new Acropolis Museum in Athens

The holiday season has arrived, and, here at Soulsight, we welcome the turn of the calendar page and the dusting of fresh snow we received this morning.

We began to ponder how our brand equity relates to the holidays. Should our holiday gifts be adorned with the traditional holiday color palette or our Soulsight equity colors (as outlined in our shiny new standards manual)?

That opened the door for a confab about how the holidays relate to consumer brands. The holidays are an endorser of many of the products that we will buy this year for friends and family. They do have an emotional connection that fulfills a need state of many consumers, and, truth be told, the holiday season is one of the most globally identifiable emotional consumer touch-points.

It is the challenge of each brand, though, to determine their logical place in the aura of the holiday season. Some consumer brands, of course, will borrow the shiny equity of the holidays to reinforce their essence, polish up their image, or just bask in the halo effect of the beautiful twinkling light. But brands need to to be true to themselves and understand the consumer's perception. The brands that can align the consumer's perception with their own projected brand image will be most successful.

A few brands have made great strides in "owning" the holidays. Coca-Cola is a great example of a brand that completely dominates its category during the holidays. Soulsight has been privileged to be a holiday partner of Cola-Cola for an unprecedented 4 years. The holiday design created for last and this year's season incorporates brand specific holiday iconography. Each brand (Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Fanta, etc.) has their own unique "gift wrapping" that exudes their respective brand personality and ties into the parent brand essence.

Hershey's brands also have a strong association with the holidays. Who doesn't have a bowl of red, green and silver wrapped Kisses in their home for guests to enjoy this time of year?

Williams-Sonoma has a notably beautiful collection of holiday design. It does a terrific job of adopting the spirit of the season into the design architecture to further elevate their respective brand image.

What these brands do so well is make sure that the projected holiday personality is in line with the consumer's current brand perception and expectations. In this way, the promise perfectly aligns with the experience, just like the heartwarming feeling you get on a snowy winter morning.