What's Hot June
Despite the downturn, retailers and brands are still finding time to celebrate.
Retailers and brands have started to highlight heritage to instill customer confidence by demonstrating that they have the credibility to weather turbulent times past, present and future.
M&S have been holding a penny bazaar as part of their 125th birthday, in a tribute to how they started, on a market stall selling all products for a penny.
Selfridges have linked with their resident brands and designers to offer limited ranges using their famous Pantone 109 to celebrate their birthday and highlighting key events in-store. We were impressed with the range of brands who had commissioned specially designed pieces for the Selfridges 100 collection, including Coca-Cola, Absolut and Converse.
Sainsbury's have underpinned their 'try something different' ethos by highlighting their 140 years worth of examples including ‘Great British recipes’ to ‘treat the family to’ along with a page on their site dedicated to showing products that they introduced to the UK and when such as being the ‘first retailer to source British eggs over 110 years ago’.
While Persil offer family-based gifts, such as 2for1 at The London Dungeons, Blackpool Sea Life Centre and Dublin Zoo to celebrate their centenary. Persil have also created a micro-site dedicated to their centenary with a selection of TV adverts available for viewing, some made some very interesting viewing, showing the evolution of television advertising, not to mention hairdos!
Source: 2020 report on recession-proofing your business, June 2009
2020 in Design Week’s Top 50 consultancies
What's hot? We bloody are! 2020 have been ranked 49th overall in Design Week's prestigious "Top 100 consultancy" survey in the 2009 listings published this month. Considering that the survey now includes digital agencies in addition to the more traditional consultancies, getting a place in the top 50 makes us almost scorching.
To add more fuel to the fire (ahhhh the heat metaphors just keep on coming..!) we were also placed comfortably in the top 20 for efficiency (i.e. fee-income per head), where we came 18th out of the entire design industry. This list is what the editor of Design Week, Lynda Relpth-Knight, describes as an indicator of "what's really happening in design" and even mentions specifically how we (along with a couple of other agencies) "shot straight into this chart, showing that efficiency isn't the province of any one discipline. It is about sound business sense and an attitude of mind." And also proves that the team at 2020 are on FIRE.
Source: The Top 100 Consultancy Survey 2009, Design Week, May 2009
Waitrose on (two) wheels.
Waitrose have introduced a local electric bike home delivery service. Why electric? One might ask, well, to keep their customers’ produce fresh in the chiller boxes attached!
Currently only in small towns (e.g. Poole in Dorset), they have been introduced to the streets in order to increase online deliveries without increasing the amount of vans on the road.
Similarities between ‘the old days of grocery boys’ and this new service have been commented on but with the ability to tow up to a hundred and twenty bags of shopping, and a range of fifteen miles, these are helping increase sales whilst having little impact on the environment.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk, 7th April 2009
Over a million people cast their votes for the Builders Breakfast.
Walkers’ “Do us a flavour” campaign to find a new flavour of crisps for the British public has been won by Emma Rushin who entered the competition with the Builders Breakfast flavour.
She now walks away with £50,000 plus 1% of all future sales, whilst five runners up receive £10,000 each. An amazing 1,077,000 people cast their votes in the end with the Builders Breakfast flavour obtaining 22% of the votes.
The campaign included a high profile TV advert campaign, posters and advertising on packs of Walkers crisps. In an interview, James Stillman, Head of Flavour Development for Walkers said “Walkers has always been passionate about flavours and we really enjoyed seeing how inspired and creative the British public has been with their ideas.”
Source: PotatoPro.com, 8th May 2009
The UK embraces twittering
Every brand, newspaper and celebrity appears to have a Twitter account at the minute, and few are afraid to use them.
Retention rate in the UK is up by 16% MoM after 42% of users who visited the site in February returned in March, with Facebook scoring an 84% retention rate in March. Twitter’s user base has grown exponentially from 121,451 in October 2008 to over 2.3m in March 2009.
Due to the sleek nature of the site with updates being limited to 160 characters (the same as a standard SMS text message), users can post new content swiftly throughout the day.
Reports of Stephen Fry, an early adopter of the technology, posting from a lift he was stuck in recently is not uncommon along with the rather odd news of a user posting multiple messages whilst being trapped under rubble from a plane crash after it had fallen off the runway.
Source: Marketing Week, 6th May 2009
Baroque at the V&A
If you need to get away from MP’s expenses scandals, the over-used R word and the constant news of job cuts, look no further than the Baroque exhibition at the V&A this summer, escapism at it’s finest.
Source: www.vam.ac.uk/baroque 2nd June 2009
Lots of new store openings this month!
Over the past two months there have been many new store openings, especially luxury stores such as a marvelous flagship Ferrari store on Regent’s Street, below are a selection of the most recent that you may not have heard of.
Hotel Missoni, Edinburgh
This new five-star hotel is the jewel in the crown of the prestigious Milan fashion house boasting a hundred and thirty rooms, two Royal Mile shops and the largest RBS branch in Edinburgh.
Lanvin opens London flagship store
Celebrating being 120 years old this year, Lanvin is the oldest French fashion Couture house. Their new store mixes Versailles and Art Deco styles to create a Parisian apartment feel for their customers, with furniture and jewels adding to the décor.
Marc by Marc Jacobs
Despite choosing a 19th century, former bank building for this new store, the inside has the feel of a fantasy realm with the building’s original parquet floor adding flavour and mystique.
Liberty beauty hall
June 1st saw the Liberty department store reopening their beauty hall.
Kelly Hoppen launches The Yard
Notting Hill also gained this month from Kelly Hoppen MBE’s new flagship store moving from Fulham Road to Notting Hill Gate.
Fred Perry pop-up shop
Fred Perry are celebrating their birthday this year with a pop-up shop in the Newburgh Quarter of Carnaby, the shop is open until June 21 2009.
Louis Vuitton now at Westfield
A Louis Vuitton store has now opened at the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherds Bush.
John Lewis Home, Poole
John Lewis announced their first new format store in over twenty years in May, John Lewis Home, which will cater exclusively for the home market. The first store is due to open in Poole, Dorset this Autumn.
Notting Hill’s yummy mummies can head to LOFT Design by…
Eco-friendly, natural threads now have a new home, in the new LOFT Design by… in Notting Hill, to celebrate the French chic’s twentieth anniversary.
DaSilva Interiors in SW1
All kinds of retro furniture can be found at the new DaSilva Interiors store from English, Italian, Brazilian, you name it spanning the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s, a must for fans of quirky designs of yesteryear.
Source: VisitLondon.com, 2nd June 2009, Drapers, 9th May 2009
