Where do good ideas come from? Is it possible to create the right environment that triggers creativity? In what kinds of spaces do we need to be in order to think creatively?

These are the questions that Stephen Johnson, a writer and speaker, raised in his presentation Where good ideas come from, published on TED: (more…)

I first wrote about Zumba, a funky Latin workout, almost a year ago.  In that post, I talked about the challenges that any services organization can encounter in its attempt to build a funky brand. The main challenge for Zumba, I said, was to ensure that its main customer touch points (places and ways in which people experience the brand) remain consistent. Which seems like a big task given millions of Zumba-like, or Zumba-inspired, courses currently offered around the world by external fitness instructors. (more…)

The Funky Startup Contest has come to an end. Thanks to all of those funky startups that have responded and participated!

Why we organized the Funky Startup Contest

What was the reason for this contest?  SCHMOOZY FOX launched the Funky Brand Interview series in the summer of 2009. Since then, I’ve been meeting talented and passionate people — CEOs, founders and top managers — whose enthusiasm, love of fun and understanding of brand strategy translated into building successful funky brands.  After a year of great encounters,  (more…)

Snapshot of the Coach web site

Coach and Affordable Luxury brand strategy

Coach -- a brand of hand bags from the US — has frequently featured in class discussions during my marketing courses.  One could argue that its phenomenal brand success story can be attributed to a carefully orchestrated strategy of affordable luxury – selling high quality bags at high prices, and at high volumes. (more…)

The summer is over, and our summer funky startup contest has come to an end.

SCHMOOZY FOX has selected, and interviewed three exciting startups:

1) Crashpadder, an online community that helps find cheap short-term accommodation
2) The Smart Hanger, eco-friendly paper hangers from Toronto
3) Zigfreda, a colorful luxury wear brand

We think that all of them are on the path of building funky brands. (more…)

Hello, fans of funky brands! As you’ve noticed, SCHMOOZY FOX has been a bit silent over the past couple of weeks. We’ve been taking a break from computers to enjoy the summer, give ourselves a boost of creativity, and, of course, schmooze! (more…)

Time has come for yet another country-specific list of funky brands. This time around, let’s look at what’s going on in terms of innovative, desirable and funky brands in Italy.

Italians are famous for their sense of style, and innovating through design.¹ This is why almost all of the brands you’ll see here have incorporated superior design as core of their brand strategies. (more…)

1. Roberto Verganti, Innovating Through Design, Harvard Business Review, Dec 01, 2006 [↩]

Here is a photo of a magazine back page that I took this morning. It made me think of a new trend that is emerging in the area of celebrity endorsements: business celebrities as brand ambassadors.

Even if you are not familiar with the term, you’ve most probably come across brand celebrity endorsements on many occasions.  These are short or long-term partnerships between a brand and a real person, usually a celebrity from the world of music, sports or movies. If you’ve seen ads with Hollywood stars next to cars, perfume or other products, then you’ve seen a celebrity endorsement in action.

In such brand partnerships, celebrities serve as the so called meta-brands: overarching, superior concepts that add  positive associations to other brands wanting to relate to them. For celebrities, it’s also important to choose the right brands to work with, because at the end of the day, they have to pinpoint these people’s personal brands. (more…)

I was very happy to hear that my Alma Mater, Tufts University in Boston (I went to the Fletcher School at Tufts back in 2001), has been exploring the power of social media in order to identify best applicants for its top-ranked undergraduate education. (more…)

Lately, I’ve been busy interviewing founders of funky brands, sharing tips with you on various subjects of brand and marketing strategy, and hey, doing work for my clients. So,  I haven’t as a result written a plain vanilla funky brand review in a while.

Time to correct this bad gal’s behavior!

Although, wait a minute, the brand in question is actually a perfect fit for any bad gal’. They even have a product called Bad Gal Mascara.

The brand in question is called Benefit Cosmetics, and its place of birth is San Francisco, which happens to be one of my favorite cities.

I guess it was the mention of San Francisco (written somewhere on the product display in a shopping mall) that caught my attention right from the start. To give this phenomenon a proper name, let’s say that San Francisco was my first brand entry point for the Benefit brand.

In other words, it generated enough curiosity in order for me to continue exploring Benefit products.

And what did I find out? (more…)