Focus: Latest

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Paleo: dieting goes back to the Stone Age

Paleo is a diet that emphasises the importance of understanding our species' evolutionary history by determining which foods promote optimal health. When consumers aspire to go back to a time before your brand existed, how do you engage them?

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Du darfst: Fuck the Diet!

Low-calorie food manufacturer Du darfst has outraged German audiences with a bold new campaign. In response to widespread frustration with dieting, and using shock tactics, it targets a newly emerging female consumer.

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Maison Cailler: chocolate with personality

Maison Cailler is a new luxury brand from Nestlé that offers a customer profiling system which personalises chocolate. Consumers in developed markets remain cynical when it comes to big corporations, so how can Nestlé tackle this challenge?

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Hello Sunday Morning

In 2008, 22-year-old Australian Chris Raine decided to give up drinking for a year, and blogged his experience on a website, Hello Sunday Morning. His behaviour has influenced thousands of fellow Gen Y-ers to take their own abstinence pledge.

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Nescafé in China

To make a splash in China's fast-growing coffee market, Nescafé is turning to the politically engaged heartthrob Han Han for help. In this most repressive of societies, is it best for brands to side with the establishment, or rock the boat?

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Transform Your Patch: Britvic vs. broken Britain

‘Transform Your Patch’ is a new civic initiative from PepsiCo and Britvic that aims to regenerate 165 unkempt wastelands across Britain into football pitches, parks, playgrounds and other community spaces.

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Carling Black Label: Be the Coach

On 24 May 2011, the South African football fraternity celebrated the launch of the Carling Black Label Cup. In this one-off battle, fans were allowed to pick their teams and strategies for the match using their mobile phones.

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The Brink: Britain's first dry bar

The Brink in Liverpool actively markets itself as “Britain's first dry bar”. Given the spate of anti-drink messaging in the media, this represents a wider market opportunity for brands aimed at health-conscious Brits.

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Heineken's #mysunrise

Heineken has launched a new campaign that adopts the unlikely strategy of telling people to drink less. In the UK, a country that doesn’t often go in for half measures when it comes to booze, how will the message go down?

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Custaba coffee app

Intimidated by the range of choices on offer, and fearful of making a social faux pas, some Japanese consumers have turned to Custaba, an app that allows them to rehearse their Starbucks orders before venturing into actual stores.

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Pizza Hero

Domino’s is inviting plucky pizza fans to try their hand at making pizzas with its new app, Pizza Hero. Exclusively released for the iPad, aspiring pizza makers are challenged to assemble a pizza in a retro-styled arcade game.

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McTV

The TV dinner takes on new meaning as McDonald's rolls out its latest marketing scheme to bring a digital TV network to dine-in customers. McTV aims to have mass appeal and become part of the ‘McDonald’s experience’ for in-branch customers.

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Fashionably fatty

Food consumption in Sweden is shifting away from low-fat produce to more wholesome, full-fat choices. Products such as cream and butter are increasingly preferred, indicating a change in what kinds of food are perceived as healthy.

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Heineken Starvision

Heineken Starvision is an interactive video jockey (VJ) tool that allows audiences to become stars for the night with the help of their smartphones by putting pictures and text messages on screens in clubs as immersive 3D soundscapes.

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Poundbakery

Poundbakery is a fixed-price, value-led business new to the high streets of Northern England. The baker's focus on quality and value reflects the shifting expectations of consumers who are reassessing their attitudes towards the word 'cheap'.

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Minimize me

The Swedish family-run restaurant Max Burgers isn't your typical burger joint; it advises consumers to eat less beef. How can the counter-intuitive practice of discouraging consumption of a core ingredient work as a strategy?

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Culture Kitchen

Started by two Stanford design graduates who discovered the potential for community through ethnic cooking, Culture Kitchen has become a platform for empowering immigrants and creative collaboration.

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Wellness Club

Supermarket chain Whole Foods is piloting Wellness Club, a community that helps its members lead healthier, happier lives. For a fee, members receive access to lectures, courses, support, supper clubs and other special events.

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Dining on the dotted line

At upmarket restaurant Rogue24, diners are being asked to fill out a lengthy contract agreeing to desist from using phones or taking pictures, and even to pay a fine for cancelling their bookings at the last minute.

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Coffee Common

Coffee Common is a collaborative brand of world-class baristas and roasters that is committed to educating people about coffee. The network represents an innovative business model that eschews quick profits for long-term, sustainable results.