Nike Virtual Sports Spray

Nike's innovation group seems to be on fire! First Sparq and now this. Word and images are surfacing about a vitrual spray, that glows in the dark, and allows you to create your own lines for nightplay. You can color court outlines, the ball, players, anything and be ready to play. The paint disappears after two hours. No word if this is environmentally friendly or not. Apparently it was developed by Nike with designer Pierre Haulot. Very innovative way to take the game late at night. I for one can see some great beach games here.

viahighsnobiety

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Living the ALife

InquiringMind Magazine has a behind the scenes peek at one of the original NYC streetbrands, ALIFE. ALife has been a truly original brand, establishing itself through mainly footwear and growing the brand to a global conglomerate. Their followers are nothing short of rabid, as I can attest to standing for almost 3 hours with 60+ folks for a red/flourescent green t-shirt down on Rivington. InquiringMind has an extremely candid and open conversation with its founders, Rob, Arnaud & Matt. They let loose on their creative backgrounds in graffiti, professional deathshifts of business and advertising, and how their love of brands developed into Alife. The guys take the time to discuss their thoughts on the overplayed art/street movement, which brands can step to them, who else could do a worthy collabo with Levi's. Hint: Ego plays a big role in this discussion. With that being said, its great to see the mindset and motivations of major streetwear players. They even give us a hint of where the scene might go next. All you kids thinking of creating the next big hit, take a read and see what you are up against. It might make you think twice.

ALifestyleLikeNoOther

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Clean Sneakers - Jason Markk

Product Alert!


Cool Hunting just reminded me about a Staple Design(ed) Limited Edition version of ths. Who needs sneaker cleaner? Well prepare to have your mind blown away sneakerheads. This product works and the design is top notch. Get yours if you want your kick game right.

CleanClean

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Sustainable Shoes

Nike is usually on the brunt of environmentalists' attacks. Seems that are trying to make notice of when they play nice with Mother earth.

Saw this article on CNN that dives into Nike's slow to realization "Considered" line.

Nike is using, the year of the 23 to blow out its most important personality. Not just because he played bball at UNC. The Air Jordan XX3, is the first basketball shoe shaped by what Nike calls "e-Considered," "approach to design that favors environmentally-preferable materials, reduces toxic chemicals and curbs waste." Considered debuted in 2005, as a niche brand , with an god-awfully weird but happinesss-inducing leather boot. It used vegetable dyes, was bonded without chemical glues and had hemp laces. Being a sneakerhead, it caught me by surprise. Smart, but not necessarily a brand burner. Apparently , the "Considered" philosophy has umbrellaed over to more and more products.

This is a great step for Nike to take the lead. As the article points, "going green" often comes at a sacrifice of style and substance in the name of the environment. The real deal still exists if people will buy the shoe for this or for the style that has iconified Jordan and Nike over the last few decades. Will the shoe change the industry or is this a marketing ploy? It certainly feels good now, but time will tell if all shoes begin to be made this way. And will consumers sway to purchase this because its green or because its Jordan and looks damn good? I always say its about the product, not the marketing, but this might be a rare combination.

For a more interesting look, check out the designer who helped helped create the idea, Jeff Staple; with interesting perspective on this sole creation. He lists the criteria for a "Considered" product as is:

"To be qualified as CONSIDERED, is must maintain these benchmarks:
1. Must be made from recyclable materials. (i.e., 100% recyclable plastics or veg-tanned leathers.)
2. Zero Toxins. Zero chemical adhesives. (no glue.)
3. Mechanical vs Chemical. (using mechanics and engineering to put the shoe together instead of chemical solutions.)
4. Closed Loop Technology. (the shoe must be able to come back 100% as another shoe or something else. Nothing goes to waste.)"

[ed. note - Thanks JS for the link! Have to make it down to the store sometime soon]

JumpMan

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ESPN SportsCenter

In case you missed it, i made my sportscasting debut yesterday. More on this at a later date








TheMotherShip

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The History of Vans

Those cool cats over at sneakerfreaker have a super rad interview /visual histography with Steve Van Doren, the founder of Vans. A rare insight into the building of brand that has soaked culture with its designs and communications for the last 30 years. I think its been published before, but it always amazes me to read about the humble beginnings as a rubber company. Equally amazing was "since 1900 there had only been 3 companies that had manufactured vulcanized footwear in the US, Randy’s, Keds and Converse," when Van's was formed. Whats truly incredible is the amount of customization and consumer interaction the brand was based on, which only makes it the more radical for a 1960's shoe brand run out of a rubber factory. Several other firsts include customized skater pro models, innovating to develop high-tops to protect ankles from skate wipeouts, sport-sponsorship on a grassroots level, and even a user-generated (i hate that term) system to introduce new models. I'm a Swoosh guy, but really an excellent read which should educate many brands on how to remain culturally resonant for decades.

Spicoli

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Rewards: US OPEN

Citibank pretty much upped the game years ago with its reward lifestyle positioning. American Express has been one to quckly follow suit (despite it wanting to be an originator, you arent). They have created some authentic claims though evident in my visit to the US Open yesterday. Upon showing your card you (and your party) recieve a wireless radio to listen to the matches, which also turns into a normally functioning radio for sporting events after the match is said and done. Brilliant! You can also "borrow" a wireless lcd tv to watch every match while on the premises as well. AE has stepped up its marketing and communications over the years to position its simple credit card, as giving insider access to events and rewards. While everyone talks rewards, AE makes it come true in real life experiences. Enhancing events makes every brand-member worthy and part of a greater experience. The best part was not needing 10,000 points or the black diamond magenta card. This sorta brushes against the whole brand is a utility thing everyone seems to kick around gloriously. How does a brand's functions affect your head next to your actions. In my case, it created a richer and more meaningful experience. It gets me asking why arent more brands creating reward type relationships with consumers. How can they reward patronship beyond the core product? What makes AE so outstanding is not being linear with X being given for Y, such as points. Reward is by definition, something special or extra. If frequency or amount must be relied upon to create a relationship, consumers feel 'used' by the system. Giving back outside the core product or with typical "rewards naturally extends the brand and develops a stronger consumer relationship, setting the brand up for value outside of its core, creating a potentially longer lasting and more robust brand.
Aeee

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MDC Takes Innovation Front and Center

Innovation is coming front and center as noted in today's Wall Street Journal.

MDC Partners is expected to announce today that it has acquired a majority stake in Redscout, a consulting firm that works with clients such as Nike, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo Inc. New York-based Redscout offers services such as trend watching, brand consulting and package design. It also develops new products -- something Madison Avenue has in vain tried to add to their arsenal. Jonah Disend, Founder and Chief Executive, talks about some of the problems today's advertisers are facing , the currency of ideas, and a few of the more intriguing trends influencing today's marketers.

The Wall Street Journal: Many ad agencies have flirted with trying to get into product or services development as a way to gain new revenue streams. But it's never really caught on. Why do you think they haven't been able to make that part of their business model?

Jonah Disend: "The discipline of making ads is often about being as different as possible from the competitors. This is not necessarily the goal with product development, and certainly not the starting point. So often with advertising you think, 'How do I add brand value through communications so that I make them want my brand versus your brand?' We think, 'How do I add value to the thing itself in order to drive desire?' Also, there is a totally different mindset when it comes to innovation versus marketing. Almost every time I interview someone from advertising and I ask them to come up with an innovation solution for a category, they immediately go to marketing and promotions solutions. They may get to targeting and distribution, but they rarely get to the foundational elements of the thing itself. These foundational elements include: the Achilles' heel of a competitor that can be exploited in our new product; recognizing categories which are desperate for a new approach, such as JetBlue to the airline industry; identifying a new behavior that is begging for a new service offering; or spotting technologies or capabilities in a client's stable which are being underleveraged. These are all critical to innovation."

Innovation is an emerging and greatly misunderstood field. Check out the article for more fascinating insights from one of the brightest and best-kept secrets in the world of brands.

Redscout Innovation in WSJ
Redscout

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Redscout Salon Presents: Rob Walker

Redscout initiated the second in a series of innovation roundtables last week. The featured speaker was Rob Walker, contributing writer to the NYTimes, author, and idea provocateur for Murketing. He also has one of the best Flickr groups on the net with his street savvy eyes. Rob is often at the forefront of consumer theses and the subsequent branding implications, and each week seemingly stumbles upon another rich area for fodder. Rob was kind enough to share his opinion as a journalist, on consumers, marketing, and brands. The night was also an excellent networking opportunity for individuals from various backgrounds. Rob had quite a few interesting points such as:

-Red Bull starting as the epitome of anti-mass only to become a mass brand

-Apple's lack of transparency and openness, which can actually boiled down to "Cool Stuff for Sale"

-The power of youth today to have adopted marketing on granular levels to the extent they not only create brands for themselves, but communicate through brands

-The similarity between the ambiguity of Livestrong and the iPod. Both brands mean so many things to multiple crowds

-Reminded me that the true phenomena of Obey is that it was pre-internet, not just its expanse

-The power of brands ultimately lie in the value consumers place, not necessarily what the brand brings or percieves

-Real gurus invent their own words

-Mass culture might be gone with the invention of the net and democratized information

Rob gave a very thought-provoking style and let us know he has a new book dropping soon. Much of this will be explored in a further deep dive here on the Lifefilter. Stay tuned! Redscout will presenting another salon later on in the summer at a "secret location"

Murky Marketing

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Reef Dram Sandals: Innovation Flip or Flop?

Reef is one of the more visible surfing lifestyle brands, despite mainly making footwear and only in the last few years expanding its clothing line for males. Many of my shredding friends swear Reefs as the most comfortable sandal. We all know that Rainbows are actually the most comforting sandal we can put on our feet. The Reef DRAM sandal has a "POLYURETHANE ENCAPSULATED CANTEEN IN HEEL WITH SCREW CAP" aka......heel flask. So i can store liquid in my feet?? This isn't Reef's first foray into mixing sandals with drinking. Is this a true innovation 1up on the beer hat? Clearly Reef knows its target isnt just guys who surf and party, but all drinking guys who might need a nightcap handy. Slightly gimmicky, but you have to applaud Reef for colliding unlikely worlds of drinking and footwear here. This is quite a creative example of enlarging the target on a niche brand. It may not break Reef out as a lifestyle brand yet or be a true game-changing innovation, bu it is another fine addition to a growing footwear party line.

HeelsUp

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Skateable Ads

Quiksilver knows its target and it knows how to brand. These ads, created by Saatchi & Saatchi Copehhagen are brilliantly executed. The medium is everything. Nothing like an ad that lets you grind it all while improving your technique. This is like giving smack to an addict....

Skate or Die

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NYC Snowboards

Gotta give credit to NYC Parks & Rec. They can do things most others can't. That includes throwing not one but two, huge snowboarding rail jibbing huckfests in the middle of New York City. On Thursday, February 8th, the world's top pro riders will converge upon NYC's Union Square to compete in the city's first ever major pro snowboarding competition. The Union Square Street Sessions presented by(insert wanna-be-cool sponsorship here) Jeep will attract top snowboarding pros such as Marc Frank Montoya, Eddie Wall, and Lucas Magoon to compete Head-to-Head for a prize purse of $30,000. 24 Men and 8 Women will participate in a rail jam format on a customized urban rail, the largest ever built in NYC. The custom rail is being built at the Jib Lab in Mountain Creek NJ(clearly jersey is the capital of snowboarding). On February 10th the city is throwing its WinterJam which is open to those who won't sue the city should they rack themselves on the rail. Oh Yeah! San Francisco already did this in a much cooler way (they have real hills) as pointed out on the Lifefilter right here at Icer 2005. So laugh in the face of global warming with the rest of the New Yorkers, as the event will go on snow or no snow.

Street Sessions
Winter Jam
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Interactive & Open Source Brands: A-Z Skateboarding

It seems these days that the consumer is being attributed success to every aspect of marketing. While that is really just laziness, there are a few projects that wouldn't be possible without the work of zealots. DXInteractive has done an incredible amount of research to create a visual encyclopedia of skateboarding tricks. This interactive reference has tricks and terminology, that has been verified by skaters themselves, much like wikipedia. Skateboarding terminology is often subject to localism and tricks can actually have two different names despite accomplishing the same result. This open source experience has become one of the defacto guides for skaters through its open-sourceness along with its meticulous trick list. Great example of consumer created content, but i wouldn't give em the bank yet.
Methods
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Chicago is cold

Sorry for the absence of posts....

Im here in Chicago doing some work for my Gatorade client. If you are in town, and wanna grab a drink tomorrow evening drop me a line. On another note, im thoroughly disappointed at the lack of festive spirit here for halloween. :/

Lifefilter@gmail.com


Nice Carpet
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Coming to backyard near you

Royal Caribbean’s has a monster ship forthcoming, the 158,000-ton, 3,600-passenger Freedom of the Seas, which will bellyflop into the ocean in May. Royal Caribbean has cultivated a reputation for sporty cruising for some time, but the Freedom of the Seas raises the stakes with a top-deck attraction called the FlowRider—a 32-by-40-foot pool propped up at a 45-degree angle with a three-inch-thick sheet of water flowing up it at a rate of 30,000 gallons per minute, creating an artificial wave for surfers. Royal Caribbean likes the FlowRider so much that it’s built this Web site around it. It can’t be long before a Royal Caribbean ship has a Ferris wheel. Ok but the real rage is with me and my fellow surfers. The Flowrider is sweet but ouch here goes our culture. We are a fierce tribe to say the least, and this is basically the suburbization of our sport, culture and pride. Though if i was on this ship, I would be rockin this 24/7. Its interesting to see a cruise ship use an attraction like this to generate interest in cruising...Only one person can ride it at a time.....me, id be worrying about doing an air off the ship. i just reallly want this at my house. now thats perfectly acceptable.
surfing the titanic

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Haight Skate: Snow style

CURSES! San Francisco gets all the cool stuff. I can complain since i used to live there. Stuff like Icer 2005 makes SF what it is. Anyone who has ever skiied(you ski if you are uncool and suck at life) or snowboarded (all you pimps out there), has dreamed of burning through a city. San Francisco would be at the top of anyone's list too. More than 200 tons of crushed ice were trucked in, and a kicker was built on the Fillmore Street hill. Then, under a perfect blue sky, 20 of the world's best skiers and snowboarders did their thing. We used to watch people bomb down the hills on skates and its where i got started skateboarding for real. Only Californians would be crazy enough to do this and actually do it.
Hella cool

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NASACAR

Peter Diamandis, founder of the aerospace Ansari X Prize, plans to turn what sounds like science fiction into reality in about a year. At a ceremony Monday in New York, Diamandis unveiled the Rocket Racing League as its co-founder and chairman. "For me, it is a remembrance of sort of 'Star Wars' pod racing," said Diamandis, referring to the rocket race portrayed in 1999's "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace." Instead of a long time ago in another galaxy far, far away, these races aim to begin in October 2006 when Diamandis hopes to hold an exhibition event with four so-called X-Racer planes. A typical hourlong race imagines a spectacular X-Racer liftoff allowing fans to follow each rocket plane by tracking their 20-foot exhaust plumes and watching large-screen TVs. Streaming multi-angle video would be available from each aircraft, showing cockpit, "on-track" and "side-by-side" and wing-angle views. Fans also would be able to track races by using hand-held GPS devices connected to WiFi systems. The rocket planes will have a liquid oxygen/kerosene fuel mix, calculated to have a burn time of four minutes, requiring pilots to shut down their engines repeatedly and glide, then restart to pass opponents at up to 300 mph. The race course would be two miles long, a mile wide and about 5,000 feet high. So far 1 prototype has been built, conveniently called the ez-rocket. I know nascar is insanely addictive, but how can it be to watch a plane a couple thousand feet up. People love the destruction of NASCAR, destruction here means death. RedBull Air Race might have just been 1-upped.
GoGo GadgetRocketShipCarThing

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Moo Shoo Skate

Influx, one of my favorite sites...even if they ignore my emails has a great post today. I had to relay...So Danny Way jumped over the Great Wall this summer, and now China is building the world's largest skatepark. And trust me its ginormous to be understated. Its currently coming in at around 12,000 square meters!
"Clearly, China wants to be the global power in extreme sports. China even has a government minister in charge of extreme sports, a position that Tony Hawk probably comes closest to occupying here in the US. One could easily be lulled into believing the becoming an extreme sports power was the last thing on China's mind. However, it makes sense, as thanks to the efforts of ESPN, its now a global sport that has the eyes of millions of young adults worldwide, eyes that will increasingly looking to China for the latest events. The other point it raises is how fast China is moving. It is easy and comforting to assume that there is a linear progression to China's development: from agrarian to industrial to information. What if industrial and information occur simultaneously, like they are? What if China's development curve looks less like our all history books on the development of civilization and more like Moore's Law?" hmm influx always asks the good ones...
Skate or Die

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Cruise Control

43 contestants are battling for a spot in a government-sponsored desert race to speed development of unmanned military combat vehicles. The Grand Challenge is sponsored by the research arm of the Pentagon known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is spending $9 million on this year's event. Nice to know the pentagon again looks to creative minids outside the government. This year's may have the best results yet -- and the winner could collect $2 million. The robotic vehicles began Wednesday in qualifying rounds at the California Speedway. Half will advance to the October 8th Grand Challenge. The grueling, weeklong semifinals are designed to test the vehicles' ability to cover a roughly 2-mile stretch of the track without a human driver or remote control. Participants ranging from souped-up SUVs to military behemoths will be graded on how well they can self-drive on rough road, make sharp turns and avoid obstacles -- hay bales, trash cans, wrecked cars -- while relying on GPS navigation and sensors, radar, lasers and cameras that feed information to computers. Last year none of the competitors finished the race. This year 7 finished the semi-final course on the first try. My money is on the computer science nerd.
mr. roboto drives

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When Bad Marketing Gets Uglier

I was lucky enough that my friend Alex had an extra ticket to the US OPEN. Being my first OPEN, i was happy to tag along and see Sharapova play. For ovbious reasons....Upon entering the station near the stadium, i was enundated with various ad's for Andy Roddick's Mojo. Once inside every single space had a logo slapped on it. Ralph Loren's polo logo seemed to get larger on every wall and piece of clothing i saw. The ball boys had logo's so large i could see them from the upper deck. The flower wall seemed to be sponsored by Heineken. Each row had about 20 logos and ads ran during breaks between games. The one piece of good work i saw was American Express, which by showing a corporate a card, loaned you a radio to hear the live broadcast during the event. Very Cool. Logos slapped everywhere. Horrible. When will American businesses realize that slapping your logo on a wall at an event isn't enough? The fact Heineken is on a wall does not make me buy it, even if its one of 3 beers they sell there. It might as wel be invisible. Another note: The French, Austrailian, nor Wimbledon has so many gratuitous logos allowed on court. Look at the Chase sign on the net...."sell out with me" by Reel Big Fish comes to mind
ps
Sharapova looked angelic.

Me and Maria sitting in a tree

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