Here at Cultural Branding we aren’t averse to a tipple or two so we were delighted when Beefeater 24 – the new gin on the block –and the Design Museum joined forces to produce the Super Contemporary exhibition. This most contemporary of exhibitions, with its Super Collaborative approach, commissioned fifteen of London’s creative luminaries, including Paul Smith, Wayne Hemingway and Tom Dixon, to come up with new concepts in architecture, fashion and design. The programme of 24 events around the exhibition and the updated historical costumes in the tank outside the museum caught the eye of journos and the public, while referencing Beefeater’s commitment to promoting the past, present and future of their London home. The partnership has generated considerable media interest and debate, which means that it is really pushing boundaries. With such a high-profile entrée into the world of cultural branding, we can only expect Beefeater 24 to continue to build brand value through imaginative and striking cultural collaborations.
Swatch has teamed up with MTV to launch a new art and design programme: Swatch MTV Playground.
The cross-platform effort showcases the work of aspiring artists working in 2D and 3D animation, illustration, graphic art, motion design, film and music. The showcased work is available to view online with the website functioning as an interactive web gallery. The accessible and diverse online site is available in 19 languages and targeted at artistic communities worldwide and of course the devoted MTV viewers. Both Swatch and MTV have also been busy promoting Swatch MTV Playground through a digital seeding promotion across all parts of Europe and Asia, targeting industry creatives, students and MTV spectators. Moreover, MTV is set to produce a sequence of vignettes branded ‘Talk @ the Playground’ later this year. The scheme will couple up musicians with well-known artists from the world of design, fashion, fine arts and film to converse about the joys of creativity.
Over the years Swatch has been recognised for its musical collaborations, working with contemporary pop artists in a variety of ways. Swatch Art Specials have been crafted by the likes of Keith Haring, Akira Kurosawa, Sam Francis, and Pedro Almodóvar. Even the Blue Man Group has been a recent collaborator. In addition to these collaborative relationships, Swatch this year invited a young contemporary artist to help stage the live art spectacle ‘CreArt by Swatch’ in the Piazza San Marco during the Venice Biennale, to celebrate the brand and The Swatch 2009 CreArt Collection. Speaking on the brand, Klaus Peter Mager, who heads Events International Swatch noted, “Swatch has always had a very democratic sense of contemporary art… Art is an important pillar of our brand’s identity”.
The campaign was kick-started with an artistic challenge to interpret the theme: ‘Imagine Time in The Future’. Each competition offers a range of prizes such as tuition grants, internships and cash awards. The result so far has been phenomenal as students and professional artists worldwide have offered snapshots into their own imagined ‘time in the future’. All of the entries are available to view online, including the recently revealed winners and runner-ups.
It’s Wimbledon time, the sun is shining, Murray isn’t out yet and we’re excited about who will win the ellesse Tennis Art competition to celebrate 50 years of the brand’s tennis heritage.
ellesse have set the challenge to artists and designers to create work to show off fifty years of the brand – with a hint that winning pieces might even influence the future direction of the company. ellesse are also working with the London College of Fashion who have run another competition to design outfits that would have the All England Lawn Tennis Club running for the rulebooks, as well as a competition for the Instituto Italiano Design. To complete the set (!) they have commissioned a screen print artist, a typographer and an animator to create new artworks based on the tennis theme with a few penguins thrown in as a nod to the old company pets Ettore and Giorgino. We love the short animation by Babis Alexiadis.
Now all we need is our invitation to their 50th birthday party in Rome…
