Luxury Trash
Will Spring 2012 see the well-heeled wearing discarded fish skins on their feet?  Marcia Patmos and Manolo Blahnik have teamed up to create the sustainable Marcia Patmos for Manolo Blahnik collection of shoes for the spring — made entirely of discarded tilapia skins, cork and raffia. This is the first eco-friendly endeavor for Blahnik, who has worked with Patmos on two styles, a double strap, open-toe flat and a strappy, high-heeled sandal in color combinations of electric blue, black, nude and yellow. Each creation will retail for $895 at Manolo Blahnik stores.  

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What makes great companies great?  Who’s winning in the war for the global middle class?  What is the future of big data? What social strategies work? How can we think more creatively?  And how can we design breakthrough digital products and a better user experiences?  It’s all in this month’s Innovation Inspiration.

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People have been calling it “Sweet City” [Tian Cheng] for generations.  The name pays tribute to Neijiang’s erstwhile regional importance as a producer of candied fruit [guofu] and grower of sugar cane.  Guofu can still be found – if you are prepared to search for it that is.  But, as befits the way it is sold in the few surviving local street markets, what’s left of the industry is merely a quaint side-stall on the outer fringe of the fast-developing Neijiang economy.

But that’s not to say that things have turned sour for Neijiang’s 4.3 million people.  Read more…

There is no doubt that China is one of the world’s most fascinating markets.  And the normal rules of engagement for marketers don’t always apply.  For brands to succeed, brand owners need a deep understanding of the cultural complexity of the market and the estimated 1.3bn people it serves.

To answer some of the most pressing marketing questions facing marketers in the Middle Kingdom, we recently held events in Shanghai and Hong Kong that provided participants with compelling insights into this fast-changing marketplace. Read more…

Le jeudi 3 novembre lors du salon Paris 2.0, Added Value intervenait à une table ronde animée par Jean-Maxence Granier, Directeur Associé de Think Out, sur le thème de l’utilisation des communautés en ligne afin de collecter des insights et co-créer avec les consommateurs (cliquer ici pour lire l’intervention d’Yves Jaques, Project Director Added Value) . Après la table-ronde, nous avons demandé à Jean-Maxence les enseignements qu’il en avait tiré, les enjeux et les freins de ces communautés, ainsi que leur avenir.

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One of the biggest challenges of consumer research is that it is often focused on the present; consumers tend only to play back what they are currently experiencing and what they know is going on around them right now.

For brands this is tricky.  On the one hand, understanding ‘now’ is useful to get a sense of context and to course-correct on current strategy or to adapt to consumers needs.  But on the other, it’s hard to get a view on the future; how the bigger picture is changing and what opportunities – and threats – those changes might bring.  Read more…

Added Value South Africa’s anthropologist and cultural insight specialist, Dr Inka Crosswaite, shares the trends shaping the South African market for 2012.

‘Autonomy’, ‘recognition’, ‘freedom and discovery’, ‘belonging’, ‘more global, more local’, ‘identity blur’, ‘new consciousness’, ‘vitality’, ‘wired world’ and ‘take a stand’ – 10 phrases that South African brand owners should pay attention to as they hold the key to current shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours. Read more…

Sydney:  Added Value Australia, part of Australia’s STW Group, has evolved its management structure and created a new senior executive position to help build on recent growth and business momentum.

The new management structure will see current deputy-MD James Pike undertake the Managing Director role, effective immediately, to focus on continuing the company’s strong pattern of growth and team development.

And as part of a major push to further develop existing client relationships and build on recent new business success, existing MD Melissa Carey has been appointed to a new role; Client Development Director.  Carey will also take on global responsibilities, working with Added Value’s Global team to develop new service offerings both in Australia and the region. Read more…

Innovation is key to competitiveness in the global economy. But, too often this so-called “innovation” is just a rearrangement of an existing offer (a “renovation”), or it fails altogether. Read more…

Scott Porter, our VP of Methods in the US, recently attended the first annual Southern California Machine Learning Workshop (SoCaML), hosted by UC Irvine. Scott asks:  in the context of research and insight, why should we care about what the Machine Learning community is doing?

For those not familiar with Machine Learning, it is a scientific discipline related to artificial intelligence.  But it is more concerned with the science of teaching machines to solve useful problems as opposed to trying to get machines to replicate human behavior.  If you were to put it in Star Wars terms, a Machine Learning expert would be more focused on building the short, bleeping useful R2D2 than the shiny, linguistically gifted but clumsy C3P0—a machine that is useful and efficient as opposed to a machine that replicates behaviors and mannerisms of humans.  Read more…