Today I want to draw your attention to the two new groups on LinkedIn recently created by SCHMOOZY FOX.

First, there’s a group called FUNKY BRANDS.

Here is a direct link to this new LinkedIn group and I invite you to join it!

Another LinkedIn group recently created by SCHMOOZY FOX  is called Affordable Luxury.  It is also very relevant to all those who are in the business of building innovative, striking (aka “funky”) brands. Here is the direct link to this LinkedIn Group.

In one of my previous articles called How Funky Brands Can Be Profitable, I discussed how a consumer product or service could succeed if positioned in the affordable luxury segment.  This segment can also referred to as mass luxury or new luxury.

From SCHMOOZY FOX’s perspective, there’s a close link between two groups.

In fact:

The Affordable Luxury group falls nicely with the concept of funky brands.

There are several ways of looking at it.

In fact, most of SCHMOOZY FOX’s clients are consumer goods or services seeking to craft a brand strategy that will aim at their positioning as affordable luxury brands. And in our experience, most funky brands are exactly affordable luxury products or services!

Just have a look at our Funky Brand Interviews with all those brilliant businesses that have been built based around such elements as creativity, design, affordable luxury and fun!

SCHMOOZY FOX invites you to become members of one of both groups on LinkedIn!

Schmoozing and fun are guaranteed!

Photo by Theresa Thompson on Flickr

Today, SCHMOOZY FOX’s  Funky Brand Interviews are turning one!

Since last June, we’ve interviewed founders and top managers of some of the funkiest brands out there. In each of these interviews SCHMOOZY FOX has tried to uncover personalities and interests of real people behind brands, as well as learn insights into these innovative companies from a personal perspective of people who work there.

From the Dutch lingerie queen, to a talented photographer who helps people build funky personal brands, to a funky T-shirt brand and a top luxury fashion designer -- all of our interviewees could identify with SCHMOOZY FOX’s concept of funky brands. And this is definitely something to celebrate!

Below is the list of all SCHMOOZY FOX’s Funky Brand Interviews to date, and there will be more funky ones coming soon!

And don’t forget, we’ll continue to celebrate throughout the summer! If you are a funky (or funky-to-be) startup, you can learn how you can benefit from some top-notch brand strategy coaching that we’ve arranged for you FREE of charge! Learn more here.

OUR FUNKY BRAND INTERVIEWS TO DATE

Interview with Rowan Gormley, CEO of Naked Wines

Interview with Marlies Dekkers, the Dutch “lingerie queen”

Interview with artist Thaneeya McArdle

Interview with Kyan Foroughi, CEO of Boticca,com, an online jewellery market place

Interview with James Payne from Baileys Irish Cream

Interview with Tekin Tatar from BeFunky.com

Interview with Wim Somers from Theo

Interview with founders of Lotty Dotty

Interview with Michael Chia, a photographer who helps build funky personal brands

Interview with Martin Bachmann, CEO of Maurice Lacroix watches

Interview with Anders Wall, CEO of Biomega bikes

Interview with fashion designer Tim Van Steenbergen

Today I have some important news for you!

At the end of June, SCHMOOZY FOX will be celebrating one year of its Funky Brand Interviews.  And in this respect, we have some great gifts to offer to those who want to build a funky brand!

If you know talented and passionate entrepreneurs setting up an innovative brand, please spread the news to them!

Our prize

It’s a great way to start building your brand awareness online through SCHMOOZY FOX’s social media channels.  It’s also a fantastic opportunity for ideas-rich and cash-poor start-ups to get smart advice on how to get on the right brand & marketing track right from the start!

Please note that SCHMOOZY FOX’s past and present clients, as well as interviewees, are not eligible for participation!

Please spread the news, and happy schmoozing!

After a couple of weeks of silence due to my exciting vacation in Morocco, I am back with this short post in the category of Funky Schmoozing.

Right before taking off on holidays, I presented SCHMOOZY FOX and its approach towards building funky brands to an audience of web start-ups at Beta Group in Brussels (to find out more about Beta Group, see this post).

My main message to the audience was this,

“Brands do not take care of themselves.”

In practical terms, it means the following: (more…)

Screenshot of Dell's web page

I have just attended the European conference on web entrepreneurship, Plugg 2010, and here is another post in my Funky schmoozing category on the same topic.

The Beta group in Brussels was set up a year and a half ago, and its mission is to provide networking opportunities for Belgium-based entrepreneurs passionate about the web. An important part of each Beta group meeting is a series of short company pitches that web start-ups present to a usually sizeable audience of investors, geeks and other web folk.

And imagine this: over the past 18 months, 68 web start-ups have presented their projects on stage, and only two of them were represented by ladies! To address the situation, Jean Derely, the group’s founder, came up with the brilliant idea of dedicating one of his Beta meetings exclusively to women entrepreneurs.

It will be on March 30th, and SCHMOOZY FOX is scheduled to be on stage too, with a presentation about specifics of branding for web start-ups.
Register for the Ladies on Stage event on March 30th in Brussels here and see you soon!

I just came back from Paris, where I attended the show of a talented Belgian designer Tim Van Steenbergen and discovered some up-and-coming funky fashion brands.

While experiencing the Paris Fashion Week first-hand, I thought of the importance of such an event which has a very distinctive brand. It is in fact what one could call a meta-brand. In other words, it’ s an overarching, superior concept that adds usually positive associations to other brands that want to relate to it.

Think of the Oscars. Taking part in the Oscar ceremony, being nominated for the main prize, and of course, winning the Oscar gives huge credibility to those movie industry participants who are lucky to be part of this event. The Oscars nomination ceremony is a meta brand for all those that can and want to benefit from it.

In a similar way, Paris Fashion Week is another such meta brand that helps participating brands propel to the fame and greater brand awareness. Paris Fashion Week is the fourth in a series of other major semiannual fashion weeks. The “big four” take place in New York, London, Milan and Paris.  Fashion collections are shown several seasons in advance so that fashion buyers have a chance to prepare their stock in a timely manner. For instance, right now in Paris designers are already presenting their Autumn-Winter collection for 2011.

After catwalks are over, designers and their teams quickly prepare show rooms that are visited by fashion buyers from the world’s leading boutiques and luxury department stores. Some successful fashion brands manage to ensure their annual turnover just in a matter of a few days, with all of their stock being ordered by a handful of leading fashion boutiques.

In this sense, there are many immediate and tangible benefits from taking part in fashion weeks, as they are a great way to ensure sales for participating brands.

It’s only the world’s leading fashion houses that present their collections during Paris Fashion Week. But curiously, the spill-over effects of this meta brand can also be beneficial for some much smaller brands and fashion start-ups. It seems that many rent small show rooms and promote this fact within the framework of Paris Fashion Week, even without being able to afford higher level participation in catwalk shows. In this sense,  even without a guarantee of large-scale sales, such small brands can benefit from intangible spill-over effects on their brand awareness from the Paris Fashion Week meta brand.

Also see my funky brand interview with co-founder of a funky-to-be T-shirt brand Lotty Dotty that I discovered during Paris Fashion Week.

Last year, I attended the Plugg conference in Brussels for the first time, and I am happy I’ll be going again this year. I found Plugg to be a great way to discover some promising web start-ups from around the world, and listen to venture capitalists and technology gurus talk about business opportunities on the web.

Given SCHMOOZY FOX’S brand and marketing strategy work for web start-ups, an event like Plugg is great chance to check out the fresh web talent out there. I guess this time around, Plugg will be a showcase of advanced technology and web apps. Will the participating start-ups be able to convince us of their commercial and marketing know-how as well? We’ll find that out next week.

For those who are not familiar with this annual event, Plugg is a conference that brings together European web and technology start-ups and gives them a chance to pitch their business ideas to a panel of venture capitalists. It’s also an annual celebration of web entrepreneurship in Europe.

Check out the list of all the participating start-ups by visiting the Plugg site.

In order to get a sneak peak at this year’s Plugg, I asked Robin Wauters (Plugg organizer, TechCrunch editor, serial

Robin Wauters, organizer of Plugg 2010

entrepreneur and simply an avid user of the web), to talk about the event.

SCHMOOZY FOX: Robin, is it still possible to register for Plugg 2010?

Robin Wauters: Yes, you can register until the day before the event, even. Readers of your blog can register with a 25% discount using the code plugg-25percent here: http://mijnevent.be/en/event/101/plugg-2010.

Robin Wauters: To be honest, it will be much of the same as last year. We think the formula works well, and we’re really excited about the line-up of speakers and startups for this year. But always happy to receive suggestions from anyone who attends to see how we can improve the conference for next years.

Robin Wauters: Likewise