by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Storytelling | May 12, 2010
The wave, the ripple, the droplet, the metaphor — exploring allegorical symbolism in brand and business strategy. The idea of water is a metaphor that has consistency to the notion of exploring how people connect with each other: touch, connectedness, stories...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts | May 11, 2010
Exploring brands, the equine legacy, design story and materiality Working in Sweden, with a branding program with the luxury group Hästens I found exploring the history of the brand — which, in Swedish, means “Horses” — is intriguingly...
by Tim Girvin | Concepts, Scent | Feb 16, 2010
Paramount Studios Are you telling the truth – do you smell right? The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time . . . and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. (Proust, 1913/1928,...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts | Feb 3, 2010
Examining the idea of brand, signature and personality I was thinking about the idea of hand-writing and the character of the person. By a typical extrapolation, I’d liken the brand to the human — in the warmed sense that brand is more than merely the skin...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts | Dec 1, 2009
The pursuit of comfort: contentment during uncomfortable times Working on the brand revolution of Cinnabon, our research focused on finding what was missing, in the heart of the brand, retail experience and relationship management. Actually, there wasn’t any....
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, General, Storytelling | Nov 7, 2009
Strategies of brand patterning, collaborative design and Girvin evolutions Design is about the embrace of change. And any brand, over time, has to freshly attach to the conception of transition in continuously and resiliently responding to shifts in the market. The...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Retail | Nov 6, 2009
The red seeing eye of the Droid: exploring brand differentiation for telephone hardware First off, since this blog is about brand messaging and imagery strategy, it would be good to explore that as a opener, so there’s some ground to the accusations. The basic...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Marketing 2.0, Retail | Oct 31, 2009
Better than a store, you can eat there: Microsoft Café Exploring a new conception from Microsoft, a café in Paris — to be short-lived, yet an interesting telling on the principles of relationship development. But, Windows 7? Imagery sources Like good...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Concepts, Trends | Oct 26, 2009
What if your brand is about a cause? What if your brand is humanity? What if your real messaging reach is love? This is an overview of Girvin’s strategic thinking about the nature of humanitarian and cause-related branding strategy and tactics. There have been a...
by Tim Girvin | Brands, Retail | Oct 23, 2009
Image from TechFlash Taking pictures of Microsoft’s opening retail with iPhones. Sometime back, a friend of mine offered to introduce me to the new leader of Microsoft retail. I won’t mention either name, since it’s pointless now — I never...
