Brand Mix

Here's my summary of some of the most interesting things I read this last week. This edition focuses on new collections and lists of information.

1) Europeana: Europe's digital library, museum and archive
Inspired by ancient Alexandria's attempt to collect the world's knowledge, Europeana was launched with great fanfare on November 20th. Too much fanfare it turns out because the site was getting 10 million hits an hour before it crashed. It's now in redevelopment and expected to relaunch in December. When it's back, it will be a repository for millions of digital objects, ranging from film, photographs, paintings to newspapers and books. (More details here and preview here.)

2) The Monthy Python Channel: YouTube
But who cares about all human knowledge? Far more important is the news that Monty Python is white-flagging it and launching a channel on YouTube. After weighing up all their options from stoning to suing the people who were "ripping them off," they decided "being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are" to put all the collection from their vault on YouTube, for free.



3) Life Photo Archive: Google
Millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today, most never published are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google. Search tip: Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive.For example: november 22 source:life led me to this:


4) Ad*Access: Duke University Libraries
The Ad*Access Project has images of over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955, many from J. Walter Thompson and including this from United Airlines:

5) Alltop:
Alltop's was launched by Guy Kawasaki as an "online magazine rack" of popular topics with a declared purpose to: "help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web." I'm happy that my blog features on the branding page.

6) Marketing 50: Advertising Age
Advertising Age honors the top brands of the year. The 50 brands includes Coors Banquet. The review gives no credit to the new packaging but, if I may be allowed to do a second piece of promotion here, you might like to know that the design work was done here at Landor, San Francisco. Other brands featured: Flip, Greenworks and LZR Racer.

See you next week for more stories from the world of brand strategy.