Popular product purchasing: Tokyo's ranKing ranQueen

The Lounge have recently been out and about trend spotting in Japan and couldn’t help but let everyone back home know about ranKing ranQueen, a Japanese gift store with a difference.

The concept is unique. Each of the 8 small stores stock and rank the top 3, 5 or 10 most popular products of the moment for easy comparison. They do this through a combination of assessing sales data from department stores and conducting their own independent research with consumers on Tokyo’s busy streets. This data is then used to assign a ranking to everything across a range of categories from the latest confectionary, beauty products and mobile phones to the more weird and wonderful sections that include items such as eggplant toothpaste, jelly toothpicks and wax masks.

Liam from One Direction wins a Brylcreem Paste

Nice to see that our promotions have the X Factor as the Lounge delivers Brylcreem directly into the hands of celebrities!

The guys from One Direction were visiting the Covent Garden Bench store, and whilst there, they look part in our Brylcreem Paste scratch card promotion. Lucky Liam came away smiling, as he won a full sized Paste product.

Look how pleased he is!

The power of brand immersion - drinking Spritz in Italy

Our Italian Lounge Trend Hunter, Lily (aged 20, Venice) has been telling us about spritz...


Spritz is a typical and widespread drinking tradition in Northern Italy. It is a wine-based cocktail commonly served as an aperitif in northern Italy, especially the Veneto region and surrounding areas. However, as of late, the custom is picking up momentum and spreading across Italy and Germany. The drink is prepared with Prosecco, a dash of a liqueur such as Aperol and topped off with sparkling mineral water. It’s served over ice in a lowball glass, garnished with a slice of orange and an olive and a bowl of crisps on the side. Aperol - produced by Campari - has become the most popular type of spritz and in essence is the identity behind this lifestyle.

Lynx All Nighter

Just over 2 weeks ago (doesn't time fly?!) we hosted a VIP experience for some lucky Lynx consumers at the Lynx Musicstar All Nighter event. The line up included Professor Green, Miss Dynamite, Roll Deep and Audio Bullys and was held at Alexandra Palace on halloween night.

For a true Musicstar experience, we made the VIP area into a music stars penthouse, complete with bedroom and bathroom themed areas a full DJ line up and live feed from the main room. One lucky winner also had their own area with personalised drinks service from our gorgeous Lynx Minxs, a chauffeur driven limo to and from the event and an overnight stay in a luxury penthouse apartment for her and 7 of her friends!

In addition, the VVIP area was 'green room' themed, guests were personally escorted from the private entrance by our lovely Lynx Minxs and spent the night in style.

Our prize winners and guests all seemed to have a cracking time and managed to, erm, keep it up all night!

Stella Artois launch new product in classic style

Just came across this pretty slick launch for the new Stella Artois Black for InBev (through Mother & Punchdrunk).
Awesome theatrical take on an on-trade promotion transporting consumers (literally!) into the era which is the essence of the brand. Storylines and setting are intended to evoke the nostalgia of classic French cinema, with four different narratives on offer. The idea is that 'passengers' then trade experiences back in the bar after their journey. Nice!

It is kicking off on the 14th Nov in Village East and running for 2 weeks.

Link: Stella Artois Black Presents The Night Chaffeur

Cheers!
Tina

Film's a driving force - 3D projection mapping for the Toyota Auris Hybrid

The Lounge's creative director, Martin Homent appeared in The Metro this week (Tues 9th Nov) in the D&AD article 'Film's a driving force'.

Martin comments on 'Get your energy back', 3D projection mapping by Glue Isobar for the Toyota Auris Hybrid.

Check out The Lounge's slideshare

...because it's full of insightful presentation slides into the world of under 35s.

If you want to find out more about students, tweens and how your brand can engage them more effectively, visit www.slideshare.net/loungegroup

wanted : Social media manager

The Lounge Group is hiring.
Our clients are running some great campaigns and looking to launch a few over the next few weeks. So that's where you come in. We're looking for someone with ideas, solutions and how to put it all together. You get to join a very cool team bursting with great ideas and a history of highly successful campaigns.

Once you've put all the parts together, got the sign offs, we want you to roll it out. Get it out there to the hungry web. Promote it, spread the word, encourage the activations, interact with the followers, influencers, even the dodgy ones.
Then, once your amazing campaign is live we need you to monitor, measure, optimise. Making sure our clients are blown away by this amazing industry we call Social Media. Show them what these amazing tools do for their brand.
This is the process that you will be a part of, from the ideas through to the live activity.

We are looking for someone that is passionate about everything web, especially SM sphere. Are you a cool geek? Show us your blog or blogs, what's your twitter account address? Do you have some great case studies from previous campaigns? Plugged in Last.fm to foursquare api's to recommend great pubs based on music choice? --- don't worry, neither have we, just an example!

Looking for people with around 2 years experience in Social Media.

Send your CV to hello@theloungegroup.com and tell me why you are keen to get on board this funky little ship we like to call The Lounge Group.

Speak soon!

Can brands still make the cut for students?

Marketing Week's article on 28th October features The Lounge's director, Sara Gil, talking about how brands need to take the time to understand students if they want to build brand loyalty with them.

The article discusses our recent "Freshers Safari" to the University of Surrey, where we observed freshers and older students in their natural environment to gain insight into their worlds and to learn how brands can connect with them better.

(The article says we're a research agency but we're actually a BTL marketing agency, working from research and insight through to activation.)

Excerpt from the article:

'The Lounge director Sara Gil says marketers should take time to understand today’s students to avoid adopting a “back in my uni days…” approach to this market.

What are teens putting on their bedroom walls?

The Lounge has been speaking to The Evening Standard about how teenagers are decorating their rooms.

Posters from Smash Hits magazine no longer seem to cut it as many teens are getting serious about interior decoration, even buying original artwork to pimp their bedrooms and turn them into stylish hideaways.

We questioned members of our Network of 10,000 under 35 year olds about this to find out what teenagers are really getting up to in their rooms decor-wise.