Los remedios penales (cfr. canon 1339) y penitencias (cfr. canon 1340)….61

Back in 2000, two friends here in sweden opened a second-hand store in stockholm. they quickly built a thoroughly modern story with a skull logo that hit the market when consumers walked a sort of customer cat-walk of real life with their unique look (the €40-50 price tag for their jeans is also great storytelling.)

today, their consumer catwalk has taken Cheap Monday to 28 coun-tries with over 1,000 stores in europe, the Us, Japan, australia, Canada and the Middle east. Check out how modern sensibility meets common sense in a skull at Cheapmonday.com. i think the brand Cheap Monday should be Cheaper on Mondays so the brand can deliver a little more on its name promise. Regardless of what day it is, this is a brand that knows how to hang on to its first loyal customers.

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“A brand that grows too quickly can risk losing its core of early adopters who consider the brand to be theirs.”

adam Friberg, Founder, Cheap Monday (Willebrand, 2007)

in a lecture given by Cheap Monday’s co-founder adam Friberg, he explained how their business plan was visualized with dancing apes to the tune of €50 million in sales. Many people laughed at this joke, but not long afterwards, the company was bought by Hennes & Mauritz for

€100 million. as Cheap Monday had moved in on both the cheap modern jeans segment and had taken over some prime retail locations, the buy-out was a smart move by Hennes & Mauritz. smart, but not Cheap. they did miss one little detail – they should have bought them on a Monday.

a little humour can be quite profitable.

a lack of humour, on the other hand, can be expensive for a brand as apple learned when it lowered the price of its iPhone just after many early adopters had bought them at almost twice the price. the headlines hurt the brand, even with the company’s attempts at reimbursement.

Jeans have always used sex-appeal as a selling point. Bongo Jeans, for example, has always used a certain star’s tush as a symbol for the brand.

Yet, there is still a certain amount of objectification involved.

as for girl power, the tickets to the spice girls’ reunion concert in london sold out in 37 seconds. over 1,000,000 fans bought tickets. girl power is a force to be reckoned with.

When many people unite against a brand, a demand for an alternative is created. it is in many ways trendy to be against something, probably because it is a natural way of making a strong statement about who you are and what you believe in. Brands have become our way of talking with each other and we all want to say something and be someone.

Customization is an optimal version of differentiation for many brands. Here is an idea for levi’s Jeans. “levis YoU” – new jeans burst-ing with your creativity. the jeans market continues to grow with ever more styles and colours. When i talk with salespersons in clothing stores,

they say that the variety of jeans is directly related to consumer demand.

Years ago, levi’s made jeans so popular that they even made the cover of a Bruce springsteen album. But today the product is more ‘undercover’

than ‘on the’ cover. the number of jeans brands on the market is a chal-lenge that great advertising cannot meet alone. Companies who produce jeans are faced with the challenge of making their jeans stick out. Here is one idea of how they can work with consumers.

Why not offer jeans consumers a sewing machine and some paint at retail outlets? Why haven’t the producers of the sewing machines and textile paint colours tapped into the jeans trend? Consumers of today want to be individuals and not have the same jeans as everyone else. the market is wide open to colour and personalization. levi’s could tap into this individual trend by designing their one version of a sewing ma-chine that doesn’t look like it belonged to someone’s grandmother. this new machine could not only sew, but also paint. it could be connected to the levi’s site and Mtv for new patterns (you see a music video and it instantly produces the jeans in the video.)

When you upload your own jeans design to Mtv, maybe the next time they show the same music video, Bono in U2 would be wearing them. this added-value would increase their bottom line and create a direct connection with consumers. it would make it easier to find talented new designers. to inspire new patterns, this new sewing machine could also be connected to maps at google, so you can use your own street map as a jeans design (and find your way home late at night…). What map would you use on your jeans?

in Beverly Hills, there is a new store called Fashionology la that un-derstands that fashion is about personality and that brands should offer real individual value. that’s why they let customers (mostly teens) make their own clothes and even design them. When their friends ask where they bought their clothes, they can answer that they designed them themselves at Fashionologyla.com. great storytelling and a great way to tap into the 4 dimensional steps that build buzz. letting consumers spread the word by being a part of the story is smart and fun in a time when YoU are the

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centre of the world. the next step could be to let the designers sell their creations and become a sub-brand to Fashionology la.

I once saw a movie where the grim reaper asked a person if he was ready to face death. “Can it wait until after the next Super Bowl?” he asked.

advertising is as much a part of the super Bowl as football. the com-mercials are often made just for the game or at least to be released in the context of the super Bowl. We need more “super Bowl time”. every commercial should be specially made to fit into the context of the show where it airs and become part of the “entertainment package.”

try saying to your clients or your agency that you’re going to turn your next commercial into a super Bowl moment. Unlikely, but it’s worth a shot and at worst you may end up with better advertising. every time people get together for something special, the advertising should be just as special and worth investing time and money in.

“Brands have to incorporate a brand platform that fully integrates the five senses.”

Martin lindstrom, Brand Sense