Pop culture
Luxury fashion brands appear to be in the grip of a toy onslaught…
First came news that Karl Lagerfeld had collaborate with Bearbrick to create Chanel versions.
Then Karl Lagerfeld himself was immortalized Next, the German toy company Steiff announced that a Karl Lagerfeld bear would be released in 2008 in Colette to coincide with fashion week.
And now, the infantilization continues as Dior fights back with Hello Kitty. The June edition of Vogue will feature Hello Kitty wearing Dior…
The fashion spread will show Kitty modeling the latest autumn and winter designs by John Galliano for the Dior brand, posing with the designer and enjoying a shopping spree in Paris.
“Of course this is the first time the historic fashion house of Dior has had a cartoon character model their entire collection,” said an official at Conde Nast Japan. — (Via Reuters)
It looks as though size zero models are not the problem, it’s the sub zero models that are the growing threat…
Pop culture
Between 2003 and 2005 we ran The American Brandstand project. It was a research initiative to track the shout-outs that songs in the top 20 Billboard songs gave to brands.
Downloads of each of the reports are still available; 2003, 2004, 2005
The branded songs in the Billboard chart were dominated by hip-hop. These were the ‘bling’ years of hip-hop, where no self-respecting rap star would get through a song without mentioning Mercedes, Hennessy, or Cristal. Some more creative singers were also able to get mentions of less likely brands, such as Holiday Inn, Geico Insurance. McDonalds, and Polaroid.
Lil’ Kim famously managed to mention 14 brands in the 2003 song The Jump Off.
However, since 2005, the amount of brands has fallen sharply in the Billboard chart.
So it was refreshing to hear Chester French’s new song represents the most triumphant brand mention for years… The Jimmy Choos
“She’s got her Jimmy Choo-woooo-woooo-wooos
She’s NEEDS her Jimmy Choo-woooo-woooo-wooos”
Marvellous. We’re not sure whether it will make it to the Billboard chart, but it certainly deserves to… Here more at Chester French’s MySpace page.
Pop culture
Louis Vuitton is to officially announce tomorrow the the upcoming Brooklyn retrospective of Takashi Murakami will coincide with the launch of a new collaboration between Marc Jacobs and Murakami.
It’s monograms. It’s camouflage. It’s monogramouflage!
Starts April 5th
Marketing
His name is Bond, James Bond, and news leaked out over the weekend that for the upcoming 007 movie, he is going to be wearing Ford, Tom Ford.
For years, Bond wore Brioni. More recently, there were rumors that the suits might switch to Dunhill - or to a bespoke tailor on Saville Row, but now Tom Ford is thought to be the new strongest contender.
James Bond movies carry some of the strongest product placement equity in the world. For Tom Ford, it represents a strong collaboration for a brand which is based on a strategy of instant heritage, masculinity and classic tailoring.
Ian Fleming was fond of listing items and brands as a lazy way of establishing scenes and characters (with the Walther PPK and the Martini being only the most famous examples) but matters do seem to have soared to another level. Pierce Brosnan’s final outing, Die Another Day (2002), is widely regarded as the most product placement-heavy film ever made, with 25 promotional partners, right down to Bond drinking Bollinger and using a Phillips razor. According to Variety, £31.3 million was raised in one deal alone, when Aston Martin replaced BMW as the film’s official vehicle supplier. — (Via The Times, UK)
Pop culture
We are big fans of the incredibly tortuous statements that luxury brands sometimes feel the need to make when they announce a collaboration with a celebrity.
It’s not easy to combine a flattering description of the celebrity, make them seem human, include the entire brand manifesto, and pass the whole thing off as a simple, and obvious, comparison.
Today it was the turn of Lexus…
“The luxury of Lexus is reflected in the elegance and sophistication of Alicia Keys; her grace and style are tremendous. In the same way that Keys’ passion resonates in her music, at Lexus we are driven to create the finest luxury automobiles through the attention to detail that is required to create refined art and design.”
It could have been worse, they could have included a pun on the word “keys”, but the sentence does seem to gallop away from itself towards the end.
Meanwhile, Giorgio Armani, who provided the clothes for the Alicia Keys tour disappointingly avoided a comparison, preferring his clothes to speak for themselves. — (Via PR Newswire)
Pop culture
Last week Time magazine boldly announced the return of vinyl records.
From college dorm rooms to high school sleepovers, an all-but-extinct music medium has been showing up lately. And we don’t mean CDs. Vinyl records, especially the full-length LPs that helped define the golden era of rock in the 1960s and ’70s, are suddenly cool again. Some of the new fans are baby boomers nostalgic for their youth. But to the surprise and delight of music executives, increasing numbers of the iPod generation are also purchasing turntables (or dusting off Dad’s), buying long-playing vinyl records and giving them a spin. — (Via TIME)
This week, the first thing to appear on the Louis Vuitton Milan runway was a vinyl record case — which either means that vinyl has gone high fashion, or vinyl has gone the way of the steamer trunk…
Either way, it seems that curiosity for vinyl album covers has certainly been bubbling under for some time on various blogs, such as Vinyl Sleeve Heads
The analog / digital lines might be getting re-drawn.
Pop culture
The Britney Spears saga continues to fascinate the media - even Associated Press admitted last week that B.S. stories were a priority for the newswire.
As her apparent problems continue, in economic terms, everyone seems to be winning… By following the money, it’s fairly easy to see that keeping the trainwreck half-on half-off the tracks is a lucrative option for everyone involved…
Portfolio magazine has assessed the value of the Britney Spears economy, with Gawker providing a handy pie-chart.
To the casual tabloid reader, Britney Spears’ life looks like a train wreck. To the Britney Industrial Complex, comprising everyone from paparazzi to perfume vendors, she is a gold mine. Whether she’s shaving her head or battling for custody of her children, Britney seems to grow more fascinating (and to some people, more lucrative) every time she stumbles. Recent court documents suggest she’s amassed a $125 million fortune and continues to rake in about $737,000 a month, or nearly $9 million a year. But that’s chicken feed compared with the overall Britney economy. — (PORTFOLIO)
Pop culture
We’ve come a long way since the years where hip-hop stars just waved champagne bottles and dropped mentions of brands in their lyrics.
These days, many have leveraged their entrepreneurial spirits into strategic relationships with brands and product developers.
Here’s a quick round-up of what the hip-hop boys did next…
Diddy signed a contract estimated to be worth over $100M to promote Ciroc vodka at every possible opportunity, not just representing the face of the brand (Via YouTube)
Pharrell designed jewelry at Louis Vuitton. The original announcement for this was made in April 2006, but the launch will take place next week - 21st January - in Paris (Via EurWeb)
Dr. Dre created a line of luxury $400 headphones (Via BeatsByDre)
And Jay-Z spent $66M on a hotel space to launch his J Hotels brand (Via CoStar Group)
