StartupRealities

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 94 LuckyDucky is a B2B consumer behaviour consultancy which helps its clients enhance their marketing and product offering by incorporating elements perceived to be lucky by the target customers. For example, the company uses heavily the number "8" when dealing with Chinese customers as "8" is a lucky word in Chinese because of the homophony between the pronunciation of the number and the word "get rich" [fa] in Cantonese. CEO QUOTE "We know everything about luck in different cultures and we help our customers adjust their product names, packaging and offering to increase the perception that a purchase of a product or a service will lead to good luck. We also help businesses pick lucky dates for launching major sales campaigns: lucky dates not from the perspective of the business but lucky as seen through the eyes of the customers," said LuckyDucky founder and CEO Lucy Ducato. Horseshoe on a door as a lucky sign (imag...

StartupRealities No 38 OceanAdopt is an environmental marketing company that offers individuals and corporations to adopt a plot in the ocean and emails them a satellite photo of their adopted plot once a year. The standard plot offered to individuals is 3x3 metres (i.e. 9 square metres in total) and the standard plot offered to corporations is 1x1 kilometres (i.e. 1.0 square kilometre, equalling 111,111 smaller individual plots). The three-metre dimensions and plots were chosen to coincide with unique identification of plots of the same size on the what3words.com website, where each 3-metre-side square is allocated a unique 3-word combination to denote its location (instead of geographical coordinates). CEO QUOTE "We cannot give you the sky because the sky would be difficult to photograph from above. But we can give you the sea. And we do. Each of our customers adopts a unique piece of the ocean," said company founder and CEO Ossian Elevson. "The photo we email t...