Brand Republic Blogs

Asia takes centre stage for ecommerce External website

by Katrin Jaehnke, 24/05/2013

According to a recent global survey by eMarketer, 2012 saw B2C ecommerce sales in the Asia-Pacific region grow more than 33% to $332.46 billion.

The same report predicts that this year, the region will see another sharp hike with sales increasing by more than 30% to over $433 billion—accounting for over one-third of all global B2C ecommerce sales. This will put the Asia-Pacific in pole position in global B2C ecommerce sales, for the first time, surpassing even North America.

by Greg Taylor, 24/05/2013

The lights are on and hundreds of commuters are home. To show-off its new home décor range, Target built a life-size dollhouse in Grand Central Station.

by Chris Arnold, 24/05/2013

What do you believe in? God, football, politics, vegetarianism, ethics… don’t say you don’t, we are all hard wired to believe in things. The trouble is, sometimes those beliefs deserve a little more open mindedness.

Forget the digital cluster bomb – be more like Bob External website

by John Watton, 23/05/2013

It’s said that the average person is exposed to 30,000 marketing messages a day. To me that’s worrying news for us marketers – especially if it’s your job is to build marketing relationships with consumers.

by @gordonmacmillan, 23/05/2013

The Daily Mail’s website, the MailOnline, is closing on the New York Times as it records its biggest day for global daily unique browsers as it racked up 9,558,256 to the site and its apps on April 16.

by Robert Phillips, 23/05/2013

Despite predictions of the demise of email, figures from the Radicati Group show that there were around 2.1 billion emails users in 2012, with the number set to grow beyond 2.8 billion in the next four years.

by Jonathan Staines, 23/05/2013

There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha about Abercrombie & Fitch recently. Someone discovered an interview from 2007 in which the CEO, Mike Jeffries openly talked about their discriminatory approach to marketing: “We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive, all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” The brand does not offer clothes for women over a US size 10 or anything over ‘large’.

by Greg Taylor, 23/05/2013

Forget the Fisher Price smiley-faced phone. Now children can make real calls from a real mobile all of their own. (Cheers, Andy P.)

Dubbed the BratBerry by sceptics, 1stfone is the brainchild of Ownphone and is aimed at children between four and nine.

by Sue Unerman, 23/05/2013

Britain’s Eurovision dreams have been dashed again. No great surprise that Bonnie’s song came 19th out of 26. That won’t have caused a total eclipse of the national heart.
What is a surprise is that academic research from a noted music college has conclusively proved that this is a perfectly fair and just result. Denmark triumphed on merit alone. European politics had no part in it. According to this recent research, there is no truth at all in the idea (widely believed over here) that the voting essentially involves friendly countries doing each other favours, while countries who may have thrown their military or diplomatic weight around in the past get treated less generously.

by Tom Ollerton, 23/05/2013

Marissa Mayer certainly knew what was coming when Yahoo announced its $1.1bn (£723m / 857m euros) purchase of blogging platform Tumblr earlier this week. Rather than waiting for the critics to pounce, she issued a rather succinct, clear and highly quotable message proactively: “we promise not to screw it up”.

by Marco Felicio, 23/05/2013

And I’m certainly no Tom Cruise. Before I explain this issue it’s important to understand that a website is like the human body. Your health is not only based on your current routines (eating, exercise, etc.) but lifestyle choices you’ve made previously. If you stop smoking today you’ll still have a higher chance of getting heart disease for many years to come.

by @gordonmacmillan, 23/05/2013

Electronic Arts has been named the number one brand in the Social Brands 100. EA won for its ‘Battlefield 3′ first-person shooter game and beat American Airlines, Innocent, Argos and Tesco, who all made the top 10.

by Mark Cluer, 23/05/2013

Who do you trust more to recommend a product to you, someone within your social circle, or the person paid to market the product?

It’s not a hard question to answer, and that’s why recruiting third-party brand advocates is one of the hottest topics in marketing right now.

by @gordonmacmillan, 22/05/2013

Twitter has announced an addition to its Twitter Cards today to allow marketers to generate leads and drive purchases and all within the space of a tweet.

It is a significant move that brings the ability for Twitter users to easily leave their contact details within expanded tweets, called the Lead Generation Card, to express interest in what a brand is offering.

by Charlotte Henry, 22/05/2013

Many businesses try and engage user and demonstrate their expertise via running chats over Twitter. These are on a chosen topic, and curated and followed by a pre-assigned #hashtag.

Twitter chats can be a very useful way of networking and community building for those involved, however they are also easy to miss. While you can read the conversation back, this clearly limits the interactivity and value of the conversation.

by NABS, 22/05/2013

Words by Alistair Proctor, Creative careers coach at NABS

Recent issues of Campaign have both celebrated Patrick Collister’s appointment and examined why older creatives have such a hard time of it. Here is an example of age securing a plumb job as head of design in a youth dominated business. For me however, it wasn’t the fact that he’s been hired as an older creative that struck me, it was that I’ve always known Patrick not as an art director, or in this case a designer, but as a copywriter. He is also a very effective Creative Director and I imagine that that is why he’s been hired.

by Greg Taylor, 22/05/2013

To promote its new Office 365 software, Microsoft placed an ad with free wifi in a special edition of Forbes magazine. (Nice spot, Alex.)

The ad was made up of four pages, with a super-skinny router and battery packed in between. After activating the wifi, readers could get online for free (thanks to T-Mobile) for 15 days, wherever they took the magazine.

by Lol and Nat, 21/05/2013

Apologies in advance for what may be a darker post than usual. Dark, but in some way practical, I hope.

Yesterday a friend and co-member of the DDC* and I hit upon a realisation. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to magically edit those bits of the internet that remind you of things you’d rather not be reminded of? Banners, Facebook ASUs, emails, etc.

by Greg Taylor, 21/05/2013

Mayonnaise isn’t just for sandwiches. At a supermarket in São Paulo, Hellmann’s used NFC technology to suggest new recipes to shoppers as they perused the aisles. (Thanks, Tim.)

by Dave Trott, 21/05/2013

In 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait.
By 1991 it escalated into what became known as The First Gulf War.
Kuwait couldn’t be allowed to just fall into the hands of a military dictator.
Everyone was outraged.
Kuwait would have to be invaded.
Iraq would have to be thrown out.