Observations

In business it’s one of the oldest and most credible forms of promotion, the ultimate goal of any brand - to get people talking about you. In a world where the internet has made it possible for a thought or idea to be shared across the world at a phenomenal rate and where ‘going viral’ has become a universally understood term, social networking sites have made the holy grail of ‘word of mouth’ even more desirable to obtain, but few have worked out how to harness its power.

In December I was fortunate enough to be in Dubai. When there, I spent a day in The Mall of Dubai… ironically not to shop, but to see what the biggest mall in the world had to offer – and literally the whole day was only just enough time!

My thoughts on the retail can wait for another time; what interested me most was what happened in the main food court… the word ‘court’ seems somewhat euphemistic… “Mega colossal food stadium” may have been more appropriate.

After three long years in production, which Stella McCartney puts down to her own perfectionism, she cannot help but describe her new perfume L.I.L.Y. with an element of romantic nostalgia; “Firstly, I think it’s a beautiful name: simple and feminine. It also links to one of the main ingredients, which is lily of the valley. On a more personal note, my parents (Paul and the late Linda McCartney) had nicknames for each other. My dad’s nickname for my mother was L.I.L.Y, which stood for ‘Linda I Love You’.”

I decided to wrap this year with a note on 2011’s great escapes.

It came to me at last month’s Drapers Fashion Summit, where the air was abuzz with words of in-house designer collections, collaborations and multichannel drives for sales. The battle for brand differentiation and sales generation leaves little room for experimentation and self-fulfilment in these austere times, unless we are talking about the luxury sector.

Inevitably – and as it often does – it all started with Tesco. Or, as they’re known in South Korea: Home plus.

As the now-famous YouTube video tells us, Tesco found that they were second in the South Korean market, partly due to the lower number of stores they had in comparison to their main competitor. Their mission was to explore whether they could become number one in the market, without increasing store numbers – namely, via their online store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJVoYsBym88

So, by now you will have all seen the new Olympic posters for London 2012

These are bound to cause a lot of debate, last time we looked a number of the British public had already aired their angry views on the BBC website.

Much excitement has surrounded the opening of Westfield Stratford City this week and deservedly so with it breaking various records in terms of size in Europe. So of course 20.|20 sent a crack team of retail experts down to the gargantuan new shopping centre to find out what all the fuss was about.