StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 161 CityBrander is a branding and PR company which helps global cities rebrand and reinvent themselves, primarily by expanding the reach of the city to include interesting and important sites in their vicinity. For example, CityBrander defines London as the triangle between Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton. This notional expansion increases the impact of the city on the world stage, while also promoting the development of transport infrastructure to better connect the expanded areas (as a secondary effect). CEO QUOTE " Hemingway says that everything far from the sea is province. I say that everything not included in a global city logically falls outside the global city and has therefore missed the boat. Sometimes people can get very agitated about their local sense of belonging. However, the world does not care about the minutiae of local senitmentalities. " - said CityBrander founder and CEO Cindy Brangelina . City of London (image source: Wikipedi...

StartupRealities No 153 WisdomCelebs is a personal branding and copywriting company which positions its celebrity clients as thought leaders by providing them with a daily stream of novel quotation-worthy statements. The company's team of personal copywriters follow the activities of their famous clients and produce for them relevant and compact thoughts in tweet format. CEO QUOTE "We are modern-day speech writers but our focus is not on long speeches; instead we produce tweetable pearls of wisdom. No one has the time to read or listen to a long speech nowadays - no matter who the speaker is. Even Donald Trump has cottoned on to this ... and has been very successful in attracting attention with his tweets. I am not holding up Trump as a role model. I am merely acknowledging his success as a Twitter celeb. We aim several notches higher with our quotable pearls of wisdom." - said WisdomCelebs founder and CEO Winston Celentano . School of Athens painting by Raphael...

StartupRealities No 147 YoungRankings  produces annual standard-format rankings of children in relationship to various commercial brands and organisations, e.g. " 10 under 10 loyal ice cream X customers ", or " 15 under 15 girl scouts leaders ". To ensure that high ethical standards are maintained, rankings participation for under-age children and teenagers requires parental consent and is merit-based rather than consumption based. For example, ice cream customers are rated for their passion for the brand of ice cream, their creativity, social media profile, videos, and engagement with the brand - and not based on monetary value of the consumed ice cream. The company also gives profile and visibility to the parents of each ranked (winning) participant unless they request anonymity. CEO QUOTE "You have surely come across many of those 20 under 20, 30 under 30, 40 under 40 rankings. But no one before us had ventured into the under-15 or under-10 space. Child...

StartupRealities No 133 CountryBranded is a brand agency which helps companies develop products and services under brand names that contain relevant country references with positive associations, e.g. ScottishWindpower, JapanElectronics, BrazilBeach. The agency also helps such companies establish a credible association with the given country, including procuring raw materials from there, setting up an office in the country or hiring local staff. CEO QUOTE "Don't we all have country associations in our minds? Champagne and luxury goods must be French; fashion is Italian; automotive technology is German; and robots must be Japanese. CountryBranded steps on these associations and builds on them. Small wealthy countries are an easy sell: no one has anything against Scotland, Belgium or Norway as they are not in the news much and most people around the world have never even met a Scottish, Belgian or Norwegian person. So even if the product is not directly associated with the ...

StartupRealities No 131 NonBranding is a marketing agency which helps companies launch brands with names that describe them with what they are not, for example NonMilk, NonSchool, NonBank. The company runs year-long brand awareness campaigns to get a new non-brand established on the market. CEO QUOTE "NonBranding as a concept originates from the limitations imposed by trademark-protected brands or registered denominations of origin, for example many food products in the European Union . If a German sparkling wine cannot be legally referred to as champagne, it can perfectly legally be called NonChampagne. My favourite brand name is NonPlusUltra, which is Latin for 'nothing further beyond the pillars of Gibraltar' and a play on the national motto of Spain: Plus Ultra, or Further Beyond" said NonBranding founder and CEO Nona Brangelini. Diet and NonDiet Coca Cola (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 130 BillboardsOnSkin is an advertising agency which paints company logos on the skin of paid volunteers who are then sent to attend mass events. The company benefits from huge media publicity around the use of human skin for advertising, even if this is done with the free will of the participants. All materials used in painting the logos can easily be washed off afterwards under the shower. The only inconvenience caused to the ' human billboards ' is that the logos need to be applied on smooth skin, so hairy chests, arms and legs need to be shaved beforehand. CEO QUOTE "Event organisers sometimes ban our 'human billboards' from entering some events. In that case, they are requested to gather at a reasonable distance from the entrance and stay there for the duration of the event. This usually creates more media publicity than if they were allowed to attend the event." - said BillboardsOnSkin founder and CEO Bill Skinner. The Wikipe...

StartupRealities No 126 LogoExpander is a graphic design consultancy which improves brand and company logos by maximising the space that the logo takes up and minimising the blank space around letters and symbols. The company's specialty is designing logos in a 16:9 aspect ratio, which optimises space use compared with square logos. An example of a logo of similar proportions is the eliptic horizontal logo of Samsung. CEO QUOTE "When you display your logo on your website, you are in full control of the layout and will clearly make it work. However, when other people display your logo on their website, say, in a list of partner or client institutions, this list puts square logos at a disadvantage because someone with the horizontal Samsung logo will take up twice the amount of space. There is no malice in it; the format simply doesn't work for square logos. We help to fix this by redesigning logos in the most sensible format possible." - explained company founder...

StartupRealities No 118 CreatingSeating  is an innovation and design company which helps airlines rebrand and upgrade their economy-class plane seats. The company's key focus is renaming window seats as #CreativeSeats, as these seats allow maximum privacy for the passenger, while gazing out of the window of a flying plane is known to enhance creativity and ideation. For passengers who would use the window blinds as a headrest to help them sleep, the company has designed additional headrests that are fitted at the top of aisle and middle seats. The company recommends that windows blinds should not be pulled down or the windows darkened (depending on the plane model) during flight to allow passengers in window seats to interact with and be inspired by the outside world. CEO QUOTE "Passengers who want to doze off on the plane usually ask for a window seat. But that's such a waste. Windows exist for a reason: to allow us to look out of them, not to prop our sleeping heads...

StartupRealities No 116 MultiCommercials is an advertising agency which produces video commercials that advertise multiple brands of different products in a single video. This allows a multi-faceted ad story to appeal to different target audiences with different brands and products that are advertised, so that every viewer will pick up in the video only what is relevant to the person. CEO QUOTE " We brought the linear world to an abrupt end. Before us, it was 'one commercial = one brand.' Since MultiCommercials was founded, the 'equal' sign has been broken. Just as most movies don't tell a single story, so a commercial no longer needs to advertise a single product. For example, if you see a video made by us where champagne and strawberries are served in a hotel room to a guest with a pearl necklace, this video will most likely be advertising brands in all four categories: champagne, strawberries, hotels and jewellery. In the past, one brand would have been...

StartupRealities No 74 ArtistsGuild is an art wholesaler which organises artists into guilds so that a group of artists work under a common brand and develop recognition for the brand faster than individual artists could do under their own brand. The company owns the brand but shares revenue from branded art sales with the artists under an 80:20 revenue-share scheme, retaining 20% for the company. CEO QUOTE "The old proverb Unity is Power works similarly in the art world: unity is brand awareness. When you have 12 or 25 artists working for a brand, the brand has 25 ambassadors. A mountain which has 25 peaks would be more visible than a mountain with just one peak," alluded ArtistsGuild founder and CEO Archie Gielgud. 12th century painting by Wang Ximeng (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 58 EastWestConcerts is a concert organiser that pairs up a Western and an Asian singer to perform together on tours in the US, Europe and Asia. This expands the market and the awareness of the respective singer in their non-native region. CEO QUOTE "You scratch my back, I scratch yours. This is the principle we use when we pair up two stars who are known in their region but unfamiliar further afield. Even the biggest K-pop stars don't have the same level of recognition in the US as they have in South Korea; and the other way round: Taylor Swift is a celebrity in America and Europe, but not necessarily in China," said company founder and CEO Ellen West. Concert in Melbourne, 2005 (Source: Wikipedia )