As the designers, fashionistas, celebrities journalists and bloggers descend in their thousands on London Fashion Week – fresh from the hectic schedule of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in NYC – brands are lining up to strut their stuff on the cultural catwalk.

Vodafone is once again the principal sponsor of London Fashion Week, as it aligns itself with the £21B British fashion industry, closely followed by brands from a wide variety of sectors, including American Express, Mercedes-Benz, Canon, Lavazza and Vitamin Water, to name but a few.

Vodafone will be present in both the big events around LFW (Vodafone London Fashion Weekend) and in the finer details (handy phone chargers under the seats); Canon will ferry photographers to and from the shows; LG will provide hands on help with its backstage ‘Steam Team’; and even technology retail chain Currys will be in on the act, touring a designer dress made from HDMI cables across its stores.

Fashion, by its very nature, is an expensive business. With may designers required to stump up in the region of £80K to stage their fleeting catwalk presence, brand sponsorship is something of a necessity, not just in terms of funding the show itself but also in terms of wider PR and awareness.

Likewise, with consumers eager to be brought closer to the things they are passionate about, this lavish lifestyle led sector offers tangible assets for brands that view fashion as more than a mere seasonal marketing accessory.

There has been a seismic shift in the way people shop for fashion over the last few years. And as technology continues to innovate, and digital and social shopping become the norm, brands activating on the fringes of fashion – a sponsorship here, a designer partnership there – have a real opportunity to gain a pivotal role at the beating heart of the fashion ecosystem.

Exclusive FRUKT Insight Report

Interested in unpacking how your brand can benefit from building an entertainment strategy around fashion? Then download our ‘Exclusive NYC Fashion Week Insight Report’, highlighting our pick of the very best brand activations during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

“Fahr’n, Fahr’n, Fahr’n in ein VW…”

Every self confessed music aficionado has a soft spot for Kraftwerk. There are not many bands that can lay as much claim to revolutionising music production, song structure, visual aesthetic and the fusion of music and video.

So when we heard that there’s a MoMA retrospective of Kraftwerk planned, we got very excited.

Last week it was announced that VW would support an eight-night live performance exhibition, featuring 3-D visualization and a selection of original compositions by the electronic music pioneers. Each of the eight consecutive evening performances will feature one of Kraftwerk’s eight albums performed in chronological order: Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991) and Tour de France (2003).

This is a nice activity for VW -  it is linked to technology, connects back to their homeland of Germany and rewards consumers with cut-price tickets. It will also surely provide a wealth of content which the brand can harness in due course. Most of all it positions the brand as culturally astute and in touch with technology, innovation and the preservation of legacies.

Automotive brands and music have been getting closer and closer over the last decade, a trend that we’re big fans of. From Scion’s multitude of tastemaker programmes to OkGo’s various branded adventures, there’s lots to admire out there. With such an indelible link between driving and music we think there’s plenty more room for brands to innovate in this space and we hope to be part of making some of it happen.

As the annual love fest that is Valentine’s Day (or Single People Awareness Day) kicks in this morning, we thought we’d take a look at how marketers are angling to leverage a chunk of the £880M we’ll spend in the UK (and a whopping $17B in the US) this February 14^th.

Lamenting the fact you are single on Valentine’s Day? Well, at least you are doing your bit to beat the recession. A recent study calculated that British singles are contributing £3.4B annually to the UK economy in their pursuit of love. That’s around £1.3B spent on entertainment, bars and restaurants, near on £1B on clothing, £420M on travel and £324M on haircuts, among a variety of other products and services. In short, those looking for love are big spenders.

Naturally, brands are only too keen to harness the sentiment around Valentine’s Day to build awareness and drive sales, here’s how some of them chose to spread the love this year…

Kirin beer – say it with flowers

Possibly our favourite Valentine’s Day promo comes courtesy of Kirin beer, who are attempting to claim back some love for men this year with the introduction of the Beer Bro-quet, a hand crafted bouquet comprised of 10 mini cans of Kirin Ichiban Beer. A simple concept, but also a clever one, as it serves to drive female awareness of the brand and instil the notion that this is a brand that is in touch with its feminine side.

Heineken – Serenade App

Heineken took elements of its online film ‘The Date’ and developed an innovative Facebook app that enabled users to create bespoke musical date invitations, performed by a live band. The ‘Serenade’ app, which was made available in 20 languages, offers up a humorous and highly personalised take on the standard e-card message, giving users access to a database of 640 possible song options. In addition, the Facebook activity was supplemented with an 8-hour YouTube event, ‘Serenade Live’, where songs custom written for selected Facebook and Twitter submissions, were performed live. A crucial element here was the inclusion of the sender and recipient, who – through the power of Skype – were brought directly into the experience, showcasing their reactions.

Victoria’s Secret – Kiss and Tell

This time of year is big business for lingerie brands, and Victoria’s Secret pulled together an integrated campaign to promote its product in the run up to the big day. The brand is launching its Gorgeous collection today – with a limited-edition fragrance, ‘Bombshell in Love’ – and has been busy promoting the launch, offering ecards via its main website and a social media promotion on its Facebook page inviting fans to share their ‘kiss and tell’ stories. The brand also made good use of its ever-popular Victoria’s Secret Angels, posting videos from models such as Adriana Lima and Candice Swanepoel talking about their first kiss.

Krispy Kreme – Twitter Love Roulette

The doughnut company decided to tap into the ever-popular social gaming phenomenon with the launch of a Twitter based gaming app aimed at singletons. The Twitter Love Roulette game, which can be accessed via the brand’s main website and Facebook, invites uses to enter their Twitter name and spin a wheel to match them with another player.  The clever part comes in the follow through from here, with conversations that are sparked from the pairing (using the hashtag #krispykremeloveroulette) automatically entered into a prize draw for the chance to win a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Starbucks – Love Augmented

Starbucks took its successful Magic Cup App holiday promotion and gave it a Valentine’s twist, enabling customers to send virtual messages. Special Starbucks cups adorned with hearts can be scanned with the iPhone and Android App, bringing the hearts to life through the power of augmented reality. The video of flying heart-shaped flower petals can then be sent to loved ones, via email or Facebook, with an accompanying message and/or Starbucks Card eGift. A cute campaign, focused directly around the brand’s core product. It also, somewhat indirectly, highlights its Eco credentials, as it manages to recycle an Xmas campaign into a Valentine’s promo.

Now that the dust has settled on another Super Bowl weekend, what have we learnt from an event that has become the pinnacle of the advertising calendar in the US; other than people like dogs (man’s best friend appeared in ads for Bud Light, Volkswagen, Skechers and Doritos) and not middle fingers (M.I.A. upstaging Madonna with a single digit).

The big lesson here is ultimately one about long-term engagement through entertainment. Yes, a large number of brands will see a vast viral video spike and spark a number of water cooler conversations post event. But what happens in the weeks, months after the Super Bowl, when game day is yesterday’s news?

Brands invest heavily in music, film and celebrities in their ads on the day, but often don’t follow through with the very people they have touched through their innovative use of entertainment. With fans crying out for content and experiences that bring them closer to the things they love; be it sport, music, film or fashion – playing the long game becomes increasingly important

Entertainment is unique in that it has the ability to provide that most elusive and sought after return on investment – a long term emotional connection. Ultimately the Super Bowl ad is the bookmark, not the story. And with this in mind there is a vast opportunity here for brands that are prepared to step up to the plate and invest in a broader entertainment strategy, one that delivers additional touch points throughout the year.

To find out how your brand can benefit from a long-term entertainment strategy (and to see our pick of the Super Bowl ads) download our ‘Super Bowl XLVI – Exclusive FRUKT Entertainment Insight Report’.

So your brand has decided that budget spent on building a credible association with music is a sound investment. However, amidst the big ideas there is still the niggling question of how to put your physical product at the heart of the campaign.

Back in the dark ages of music and brand partnerships (a mere 7-10 years ago) the on-pack promotion was about as far as product became integrated into any wider music experience; a free download here, a competition sweepstakes there. Traction was low on the whole and badging of product with music – slapped on like an afterthought – only served to highlight the gulf between brands, music and fans.

Things have changed dramatically since then, and the last few years have seen brands looking at a variety of ways to infuse product with music, from Pringles and Smirnoff turning packaging into physical speakers right through to Adidas devloping music creating footwear.

Here FRUKT takes a look at 3 recent music led campaigns that are putting the product centre stage.

Red Stripe – product as musical building blocks

‘Make Something from Nothing’, the first of a series of cultural projects under the ‘Made with a Red Stripe’ banner sees the beer brand teaming up with a variety of creatives – including sound artist Yuri Suzuki and DJ Al Fingers – on a vast sound sculpture constructed out of Red Stripe product.

Envisaged as a celebration of the DIY culture of the brand’s Jamaican roots (and pushing it’s sustainability credentials) the cans were collected from the Notting Hill Carnival and recycled into the 2.5 metre musical monolith.

It’s a clever fusion of culture, technology and art that turns the physical brand into a core component both in construction and the final production (with the metallic resonating of the cans an essential part of the aural experience).

Absolut – bottling up cultural sounds

Absolut has been busy rolling out a major integrated campaign in Miami of late, however it has also been developing an interesting sound installation project in India that places interaction with its iconic bottles at its core.

Absolut teamed up with the India Art Fair, turning ten of its bottles into audio artwork, enabling visitors to sample – through the use of ultra-sonic range sensors and monaural speakers – cultural sounds and music by placing their ear in close proximity to the bottle.

The brand is no stranger to melding together creative elements, such as music and art, into its marketing mix, and this particular example is once again testament to the brand’s ability to convey credible content without sidelining the product.

Beck’s – Music inspires sales

Beck’s has a long history of working with the creative sector, infusing its brand with a raft of credible cultural content from music to high art. The ‘Music Inspired Art’ project which debuted in the UK a couple of years ago is currently up and running in New Zealand, inviting a number of bands (such as Cut Off Your Hands, Ghost Wave and Parallel Dance Ensemble) to partner with artists on the creation of bespoke beer labels. The tracks that inspired the labels are available to download via the brand’s Facebook page.

As with many of these partnerships the campaign sees Beck’s acting as a facilitator of new creative content, however the difference here is that the whole premise centres around the brands core product putting creativity directly onto the bottle and utilising music as a direct sales driver.

At the close of last year FRUKT released Field Work 2011, the definitive guide to brand activations at music festivals in the UK; the culmination of many months spent shoulder-to-shoulder with passionate music fans at the cream of the country’s best events.

Now – despite the biting cold of the winter months – a whole new year awaits, and once again we are eager to see what brands will be activating and just how they integrate their products/services into the heart of the festival experience.

However, with the UK summer unfortunately still some way off, we have been turning our attention to the other side of the globe in order to get some early insight into what activations 2012 might bring.

Big Day Out, one of Australia’s largest music events is currently well under way with a number of major brands on board, including Converse, Motorola, Durex, Mercury Cider and V Energy. Here we take a look at 3 of our favourites:

V Energy – interactive photo sharing wall

V Energy was once again at Big Day Out with the V Energy Green Room, recreating a nightclub experience, complete with Australia’s hottest DJs and full on laser shows. The brand also created ‘Club in Can’, a dance powered club inside an oversized can of the popular drink. However, it was a simple photo sharing opportunity that caught our attention.

The V Energy Power Wall, which featured a large (3 metre by 5 metre) touch screen and a built in HD camera, enabled music fans to capture their festival memories and share them with other fans and the wider social world through the brand’s Facebook page.

The overall V Energy experience is indicative of what we saw last year in the UK, with a distinct focus on destination branding, setting up credible entertainment additions to the festival timetable. The photo wall helps to join up the dots in the outside world. It’s simple, yet effective, and highlights the need to tap into the true essence of the festival experience, helping fans to create lasting and sharable memories.

Motorola – simple fun goes social

It’s not all about technical wizardry when it comes to building engaging on site activations. Take for example Motorola’s Defy + Motoslide, a giant inflatable slide with a 12 metre high drop and a 55 metre slipway.

It’s big, brash and undeniable fun – which is just what you want and need at this kind of event. It’s also tied in directly to digital and social activity, with photos taken of fans uploaded behind a fan gate on Facebook, driving those all-important likes. Fans who tag themselves in photos could win a Motorola Xoom tablet.

Mobile brands were sorely underrepresented in the UK last year, so it will be interesting to see which brands put a bold stake in the ground in 2012.

Mercury Cider – music heritage in a can

Mercury Cider is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year and music festivals are high on the marketing agenda in 2012. The brand created a limited edition can which was available at the Big Day Out Melbourne and Adelaide events, plus they also developed an enhanced bar experience on site, especially geared towards male festival goers. The bar doubled as a ‘man cave’, complete with pinball machines and Big Day Out memorabilia.

The brand further cemented its on site presence by enabling fans to get up close and personal with the bands they love, providing drop in slots where local acts (including Bluejuice, The Amity Affliction and The Getaway Plan) would drop in to sign cans of Mercury Cider.

At FRUKT we’re relishing the rapid pace of advancement in the publishing world, where technology has so much to bring to the literary experience. However, we also have a soft spot for books in their natural, tangible, old-school form.

Around 1.33 million people found an eReader in their Christmas stocking at the close of 2011; 92% of these being the iPod of the publishing world, the Kindle. This is all well and good, but there is a real beauty in print and the evocative nature of books that you simply don’t get from the greyscale world of E ink.

‘Words. Words. Words’, an interactive installation set at the heart of London department store Selfridges, is turning its head against the digital tide and converting all things wordy into an immersive experience, giving large sections of its store a hands-on linguistic twist.

It’s pretty impressive stuff too. The rather clever chaps over at It’s Nice That have taken over the store’s iconic windows with a series of beautifully crafted displays, developed an interactive literary hub in the store’s Ultralounge and constructed a gigantic wooden ‘word-a-coaster’ that spews out 30,000 fortunes to awaiting recipients at the end of its journey.

The key takeaway here is that books don’t have to be bookish, and likewise ads don’t just have to be billboards and TVCs. Actions, as it is often said, speak louder than words and this highly emotive and tactile celebration of the written word is testament to how experiential activity can alter our view of a product we thought we knew.

With Facebook apparently driving the value of brands by €6 billion across Europe in 2011 its not hard to see why every brand under the sun is hell bent on boosting its tally of Likes.

However, there are still a sizeable number of brands out there that aren’t playing the social game as well as they could be. Out of Interbrand’s Top 50 Brands in 2011, 27 companies apparently failed to respond to a single customer comment on Facebook – which kind of defeats the point of the platform, surely?

FRUKT took a quick delve around amongst the f-commerce and fan gates to see which brands are turning social to their advantage:

Schweppes – Timeline time machine

Carbonated drinks brand Schweppes is among the early adopters of Facebook’s new timeline, jumping on the new lifestyle visualisation tool to deliver a highly personalised story.   The Unexpected Future app sees the brand utilizing a user’s Facebook data to make lofty predictions about how their life may pan out in a variety of areas – such as wealth, career, adventure, romance and fame – by posting faux future posts from their friends.

The concept of looking back to look forward highlights one of Schweppes core brand statements, that it is the oldest soft drink in the world (dating back to 1783). However, instead of pushing heritage here, the brand has opted to look towards the future with a simple, quirky app timed to fit in with New Year resolution fever and the uncertainty that surrounds the January months.

Durex – making sweet music together

This clever little campaign from the condom manufacturer seeks to bring Facebook users into closer proximity via a quirky social music challenge. The ‘How in-sync are you?’ Facebook game, part of a wider marketing campaign for Durex’s new Performax Intense range, is set to launch in the run up to Valentine’s Day.

The Facebook game is comprised of two turntables and a cross fader mechanism, along with a healthy dose of Marvin Gaye played at different speeds. Couples need to keep a selection of tracks in sync across two separate turntables – one male, one female – for 10 seconds to prove their “virtual connection” in order to proceed to the next level.

Using ‘Let’s Get It On’ may not be subtle, but the game itself is,  cleverly appealing to both sexes without pigeonholing either into any stereotypical roles. It’s also indicative of how music can be incorporated into social promotions to define an emotional connection with a product.

Sam Adams – Crowdsourced Facebook beer

Following an ongoing theme that sees consumers acting as creative collaborators alongside brands, crowdsourcing is an ever people trend across Facebook, giving the power of choice back to the people. Often these campaigns boil down to selecting a flavour from existing choices, whether it be crisps or chocolate bars (as evident in Kit Kat’s latest Facebook promo).

US beer brand Sam Adams, however, is letting fans get much more hands on with its brand, turning its Facebook fans into master brewers and letting them create a limited edition beverage through the social platform.

The ‘Crowd Craft’ project sees Facebook fans aided the brand by selecting the beer’s color, clarity, body, hops and malt, with the final product launching in a selection of bars during the SXSW festival Austin.

Mini – pyromaniac Facebook fans

Brands are going to increasingly creative lengths to drive up their Facebook page subscribers, offering up ever more ingenious incentives to click that tiny like button.

The two main drivers for consumers (if they aren’t already enamoured with a brand) are content and competitions, i.e. you either get something you can’t get elsewhere or you win something. Both, however, need a hefty dose of innovation in order to turn digital heads.

Mini’s ‘Fan the Flame’ Facebook competition is a good example of ingenuity in action. A brand new mini countryman hangs suspended from a rope. In turn the rope is suspended over a Bunsen burner. Every like generated through the brand’s app sparks a flame, and if your like triggers the rope to burn and releases the mini, you win it.

A really smart meld of digital with physical, letting Facebook fans effect tangible events.

Cadbury’s – giant chocolate Facebook thumb

Brands – and seemingly fans – love celebrating landmark Facebook milestones, especially when they notch up several million fans. These trophies of community building naturally become yet another way to drive likes as campaigns in their own right. Whether its Axe looking to create a flag to celebrate collecting 10 million fans or Heineken giving away 1 million hugs to match its Like target.

Cadbury’s decided to create a Facebook promo that put its product front and centre in a big way with its ‘Thanks a million’ celebration, creating a massive thumbs up sign out of bars of chocolate (3 tonnes worth). The brand even invited along one Facebook Superfan to the construction party.

Not only does this celebration generate a great piece of video content – with the focus more on the process than the end result – but it also highlights how brands should look towards integrating both their product and real fans into the heart of any milestone event.

The most pivotal point in the US ad industry calendar is almost upon us, and as the players take up their positions on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for Super Bowl XLVI brands will once again be out in force with a raft of ads hoping to ingrain themselves on the public’s retinas.

With a 70,00 strong crowd and a TV audience in the region of 111 million there is a lot more at stake here than whether the new England Patriots or the New York Giants triumph. This is a battle for the hearts and minds – and increasing the social media soul – of the US consumer.

Naturally big audiences demand a big upfront financial cost, and with ads rising from $2.1M per 30 seconds in 2003 to a whopping $3.5M in 2012 putting all your eggs in one basket is an increasingly big gamble for brands.

The power of a great ad is undeniable, however, it’s still only the tip of a yearlong marketing iceberg that spans digital, social media and experiential activity. Here’s a few stats that indicate the pre and post event potential of a smart ad campaign:

57% – pay attention to ads prior to the game

25% – seek ads out based on favouring the brand

19% – seek out ads due to celebrity involvement

36% – of viewers will share ads via social media

87% – of which will share via Facebook

20% – will ‘like’ a brand’s Facebook page if they deliver a favourable Super Bowl ad

27% – will talk about the ad in a physical social setting post event

All great touch points, but what happens as the status updates disappear and those water cooler moments shift to other conversations – the conversion is ultimately as important as the touch down.

Take the automotive sector for example. With eight brands all vying for attention this year – and consumers finding it harder to distinguish between them – going beyond the ad is an essential

Pre event digital buzz is something auto brands are increasingly getting better at, with Kia opting to drive engagement by releasing its ad trailer in cinemas, VW netting over 8 million views of its trailer via YouTube and Chevrolet scoring 32 million views of its pre event ad competition (latching on to a concept utilised by Doritos). However, post event activity, which pushes the entertainment agenda into wider experiential activity is often remiss.

Super bowl ads give brands the opportunity to create an emotional bookmark in consumer’s minds. Ensuring they engage with the rest of the story requires a robust entertainment strategy that follows through the line, joining up the dots and delivering a consistent brand story in the downtime between these vast ad opportunities.

As the first month of 2012 draws to a close the predictions of self proclaimed media futurists and trend analysts are still rattling round our head. The trends that tend to stick though are the ones that have been around a while, but still haven’t really come to fruition. Personalisation and making consumers’ lives easier are two things that will never go away…

So say hello to Experia’s ‘Smart Tags‘, another example of these two wider trends in action. Providing a slight twist and advancement of Near Field Communication (NFC) these small key ring compatible tags combine and systemize functions by environment. Check the video below to see these clever little tags in action.

It’s undeniably cool. However, considering that QR codes still have haven’t really entered the public consciousness and that location / content services such as Repudo are still in their infancy – mainstream penetration feels a way off yet. That said, maybe the future success of Smart Tags will be driven by a less clunky user experience, as frequently experienced with its scanable QR cousin.

For marketers this new technology provides all sorts of opportunities. Personalised product and service offerings focused around key lifestyle moments (from the day to day, to travel, finance, keeping fit) and smart ad and content exchanges based on location. Creating campaigns based around special events and moments (think football World Cup, Valentines or similar). For example, see your favourite band play at your favourite venue and by default receive band content direct to your phone just by walking through the door.

One thing is for sure though – we’re going to see more of this and mainstream consumer uptake is only a matter of time as we all become smart phone users and technology allows us to interact with such offerings, seamlessly and stress free, turning it into part of our day to day life.