Death of the brand website? A Lounge perspective...

There's been a lot of discussion about this lately. Of course brands have been setting up camp on Facebook for years now, but to date a branded Facebook page has normally been as a side offering alongside a separate brand website.

However, the more sophisticated Facebook brand pages become and with brands like ASOS is championing Facebook ecommerce (allowing users to buy through their Facebook page as well as their site) it begs the question over whether there's a need for separate brand websites and how much longer they may last.

One of the latest discussions around this is The death of the brand website? on Brand Republic.

Our MD, James Layfield, offers a Lounge perspective...

Hendrick’s Refined Courtship Clinic

The Lounge recently ventured out to experience Hendrick’s Refined Courtship Clinic. The free pop-up was open for the second year running to offer etiquette tips to both singletons and couples looking to woo potential suitors and develop their relationships just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Social Media Week London: The Future of the Social Web

There have been a lot of exciting conversations going on for Social Media Week #smwldn

Yesterday The Lounge got down to The Social Web: Have We Arrived? at the Design Council in London. It was hosted by Meebo, a social platform (already big in the USA) that allows users to share content with all of their social networks from any site on the internet.

Elaine Wherry, co-founder of Meebo, introduced her vision for a web that is inherently social: a people-centric, interest driven web where websites come to know users as individuals, connecting with the person beyond the user id.

The greatest ad BMW never made

We spend a large part of our lives connecting with our favourite brands. They’re a part of defining who we are. I’ve also spend a large part of my own life developing ways to create a connection between brands and consumers. However, this film says more about that connection than any advert I care to remember. It’s probably the most effective piece of communication never written.

- Martin Homent, Creative Director of The Lounge Group
@mhoment



Description of the slideshow by its creator, YouTube user 42bill:

This is a photo story of my father's 1958 BMW R50:

Boy meets girl, gets married, buys motorcycle. Rides it for 60,000 miles and has accident when wife is pregnant with 3rd child. (me) Wife orders motorcycle to be taken off road until all her children are grown and on their own. One day when bike is moved to a different storage location, son sits on bike and dreams of being a Jedi Master like his father. Couple grows old together and bike is not ridden for 40 years. Husband is now a grandfather of 7 and married for 50 years, when he dies of a stroke at age 71.

Son looks over the old rotting machine and finds note attached to it from his father to him. Son decides to restore the old 1958 BMW R-50 as a tribute to his father. With the help of many friends, especially Peter Nettesheim, world renowned BMW collector, bike is restored to look even better than it did when it was built in Germany.

Immersive gaming

Immersive games, also called Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) take place in the real world using everyday life as a gaming platform. Players work together to solve a puzzle or challenge with the adventure lying in the sense that the game's events could be real. From a marketing perspecitve, it's a great example of social media integration with offline marketing.

The first true ARG was created by Microsoft in 2001 to market the film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The game, 'The Beast', seeded a trail of clues across various media channels over 3 months, which players followed to reveal a secret related narrative. With the mantra “this is not a game”, The Beast achieved over 3 million active participants and an online community that was still active for years after the game had ended.

Immersive games can also be simple treasure hunts or day-long action games. Some FMCG brands are creating campaigns that involve aspects of immersive gaming; for example the M&Ms Find Red campaign in Canada that has just finished hid in three Toronto locations and challenged consumers to find him by following clues and using Google Maps Street View.

Cooler than the iPhone: Line Phone

Ok, well maybe it would be but it's a concept at this stage.

The Line Phone (video below) is, in essence, an ultra-sleek touch phone & therefore not wildly different but it's pretty damn awesome...

Floxx - FitFinder is back!

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Kit Kat: Have a breakism

Kit Kat continues to offer consumers a break - this time from abstract art.

For some, abstract art can feel like a heavy topic but Kit Kat lightens it up with this playful parody, using unexpected humour to reinforce their brand message in an original way.

Ubachswisdrun/JWT created a blank red canvas 'with no meaning whatsoever' for Kit Kat. It's installed into the Abstract USA exhibition Rijksmuseum Twenthe in the Netherlands (which runs until February 2011):

'We’ve added one more work of art to the collection ourselves. A painting that has no meaning whatsoever. To give people a break from all the modern art with multiple layers and deeper meanings. It is what it is. A big red canvas. Have a Break, Have a KitKat.'

MD James steals angel's wings

This is The Lounge's Managing Director, James, looking very happy
because NOT ONLY is it his birthday today, he also gets to model the angel wings our Brand Ambassadors will be wearing for the next Lynx campaign.

Birthday cake gives you wings!

Sol Cinema: cinematic caravan powered by the sun

Lounge Trend Hunter Lily (20) has brought The Sol Cinema to our attention this week. It's a 1960s caravan turned into a mini solar-powered cinema that seats 8 adults. It's a non-profit project created by the charity Undercurrents.

The Sol Cinema, or a a similar vehicle, would be a great component in experiential campaigns. Not only is it creative and fun, it is also bang-on trend reflecting both the macro Eco-cool consumer trend for all things green as well as the nostalgic vintage trend. It could also tie into the trend for Localism due to its mobile nature and if it screened local-interest films.

Imagine if... an energy provider toured fetes, festivals or seaside towns in the summer in a caravan like this. They could flag up their green credentials whilst screening short-films relevant to the brand - perhaps consumer-created.
Imagine if a close-to-nature healthy food brand (like Innocent or Dorset Cereals) did the same, highlighting their clean living, fun brand personality whilst capturing consumer imaginations. Brands could go exciting places in this caravan!

Amnesty campaign makes the invisible visible

Sometimes the choice of media is as much a part of the idea as the words and pictures. This is proved here by this wonderful piece of work for Amnesty International.

Created by Brothers and Sisters and Mentalgassi the campaign highlights the plight of Troy Davis, on death row in the USA for a murder he's always claimed he didn't commit and for which there is no physical evidence.

Davis' face appears on bars of fences at three locations in London. When you look at the fence directly the image is invisible, but when viewed from the side Davis' face eerily appears as though behind prison bars.

The campaign is a call to action for people to visit www.amnesty.org.uk/fence

Unhappy hipsters

Happy Friday everybody!

In celebration we thought we'd share the latest witty blog post from Unhappy Hipsters that our Trend Hunter Kate (Chicago & London) has shared with us...


The Ikea room so overwhelmed her that she abdicated all possessions (save a woven basket) and embarked on a journey of suburban foraging.

(Photo: Joao Canziani; Dwell)

We love Facebook but...

...can't ignore that there's a bit of a backlash.

Of course this anti-feeling is coming from a minority. With 27m users, Facebook is the UK's second most popular website after Google, so hardly at risk of a mass exodus. However, there is currently some kudos attached to deleting your account.

Part of the reason for this is Facebook's own success. So many people use it it often feels compulsory to have a Facebook profile now, especially for under 35 year olds. When a Facebook invite is often the only invitation to a party, it leads people to question if they want to rely on a networking site to organise their real-life relationships.

There is also some disillusionment as an increasing number of people start to wonder if there is any real value in having 500+ 'friends' (see our previous blog post about anti-social networks). Any majority behaviour is always going to encourage some 'rebellion' in the opposite direction, so there's also an element of a minority looking to distance themselves from the crowd.

We came across this video on YouTube the other day, You need to get off Facebook. Nicely produced, it summarises a lot of the reasons some people are choosing to leave Facebook. See what you think!

The Lounge predicts trends for 2011

The Lounge was trend forecasting in The Evening Standard this week, From 11 for 2K11: Trends to watch out for in 2011 (Mon 20/12/10) :

Anti-social networks

Forget having 1,576 Facebook friends. James Layfield, director of The Lounge marketing agency, predicts that 2011 will be the year we begin to personalise our online friendships. "We will choose to tighten our friendship circles, turning to the likes of Path, which allows a maximum of 50 contacts, and Diaspora, which sorts your connections into aspects so that any private information you post will only be shared with the people you really know," suggests Layfield.

Chromaroma - turning mundane journeys into a game

Chromaroma is a new immersive game that aims to make your real-life journeys around London more fun by using travel details logged by your Oyster card. It maps visualisations of your journeys around the city online in your account and encouraging competitive gameplay with others.

Brought to our attention by Lounge Trend Hunter Rachel, 23, the real fun lies in joining one of four online teams and accepting missions to earn points, such as visiting a new station. It's similar to becoming mayor of a venue on Foursquare, as when you check in a location enough times your team 'owns' it. Other teams can usurp your ownership by checking in more often.

Chromaroma feeds into the emerging digital trend of turning mundane aspects of daily life (in this case, the commute to work) into a game with digital platforms and 'real life' become increasingly blurred. Another example of this trend is the smart phone application Epic Win that turns your to-do list into a game - you reach new levels as you complete your real-life chores.

Timberland and the gift that keeps on giving

As Jack Frost was just about to start doing his rounds, The Lounge hit the streets to raise awareness of Timberland’s range of Earthkeepers footwear.

Our trusty Brand Ambassadors were deployed onto Oxford Street and Regent Street armed with Timberland jackets and shoes (which helped to avoid the bitter elements!) and were tasked to hand out Timberland's specially made ‘bags for life’. In line with the range of footwear, the bags were made from recycled products and were a gift from Timberland to the lucky Christmas shoppers.

After an amusing start to the day where the general public thought we were handing out free Timberland clothing whilst we were getting the staff their uniforms (“You can’t blame me for asking!” said one person), the bags literally flew out of our hands and by the end of Sunday we had made 64,000 people a little happier and a little greener.

- Anthony, Operations Manager

Nokia's ice touchscreen

Martin Homent, The Lounge Group's Creative Director comments:

Six years ago at a D&AD lecture, I was told that my entire world would fit in my pocket. My photos, videos, friends, diary, entertainment, music and games. And not just that. It would all be
on one device.

Six years on it seems to be something we take for granted. But at the time, this was the vision of Frank Nuovo, the Chief Designer at Nokia. He referred to it as the 'digital pocket'.

It's easy to forget just how pioneering Nokia are when the handheld market today is seemingly dominated by Apple and Blackberry. But it's this kind of thinking that has set Nokia apart from the competition and given them numerous 'firsts' in the world of technology. (I was lucky enough to see a museum full of them at their headquarters in Finland - a gadget geek's dream).

Imagine... a boat like this as part of your campaign

This is fantastic - a 'capsized' yet fully functional half-boat, made to look like it's full-sized and sinking. Imaginative and playful, it certainly makes you look twice and could generate great publicity for a campaign.

Created by the French artist Julien Berthier.


Submitted by Lounge Trend Hunter Lily, 20, Venice.

Europe loves cycling, but what does this mean for brands?

Cycling may be particularly trendy at the moment but it's more than just a fashion. It's an integral part of many people's lives - an alternative to the gym or the train; a 'green' statement and a hobby. There are opportunities for brands to build loyalty by becoming the facilitator or innovator of this lifestyle passion.

Naturally Barclays cycle hire scheme is one obvious - and high budget - example. It demonstrates the bank's generosity and adds value to the activity itself: it frees cyclists from the worry of theft or the hassle of where to leave their bike.

Another concern for cyclists is arriving at work sweaty and bedraggled. Brands could encourage consumer love by taking inspiration from the Adidas Runbase in Tokyo. The 'Runbase' is a concept store where runners can shower for free, rent lockers and borrow Adidas running gear.

It's not difficult to imagine a branded 'Cycle base' in Britain. Not all offices have showers so this could be a generous way of a brand enabling more people to cycle to work.

We're recruiting!

The Lounge are looking for people between the ages of 18-35 to be part of a European community for a famous global brand.


Do you have a passionate interest/or work in any of the following areas; music, photography, action sports and urban art?


We are looking to recruit fluent English speakers living in/originally from Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Denmark, Norway and Sweden to be part of this project.