Influx

Google makes it very easy to donate to the Japanese Red Cross. Posted by Ed Cotton

Japan from Eric Testroete on Vimeo.Posted by Ed Cotton

Jean-Marie Shields, Head of Trends at Starbucks gave an excellent presentation at last week's PSFK conference in San Francisco. It became clear that the brand is increasingly looking to Japan as a source of inspiration for the future direction of the Starbucks brand. Tokyo's coffee houses and cafes...

Verena Dauerer is the only foreign journalist working at PingMag, the inspirational and influential Japanese art/culture/design website. Here's an interview I did with her recently where we talked about PingMag, it's unique ownership, design and Japanese design. 1. Can you briefly describe your...

There once was a time when art sponsorship was a subtle thing; brands used to discretely put their logos onto the promotional materials and leave it at that. Those were the days when art and commerce were kind of separate, in the last few years we’ve seen much more of coming together of the...

A couple of interesting examples of "local" as an important concept.1. Sigur RosA new documentary from Sigur Ros about the band returning from a world tour to Iceland and seeking out small venues, so they could  re-connect with their home country and people.2. ANAAd for Japanese airline ANA...

Anderson Analytics recently conducted an interesting study to understand if US college students (1,000 sample) knew the country of origin of certain brands and rank the best countries of origin for specific categories. Students want their cellphones, MP3 players, stereo systems and cars to be...

At the WOMMA Basic Training conference in New Orleans, we got the chance to hear the story behind the launch of Nintendo’s Wii from Stephen Jones of Golin Harris and Perrin Kaplan, VP Marketing at Nintendo. Obviously Wii is a great product and was destined to be a success from the get go, but...

Last month, Japanese retailer Muji, announced that it’s setting-up shop in the US, opening a New York store in the Fall of 2007. One store is hardly going threaten the domestic players, but it will provide them with an interesting glimpse into one possible future.It’s likely that...