Cherryflava

Cape Town Geek Dinner

Posted on 22. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Cape Town’s nerds have decided its time to band together and trash a restaurant with a few hundred bottles of Stormhoek wine in hand.

The idea is to have an informal dinner get-together, to share ideas, network, compare laptops and drink Web 2.0 wine.
There are going to be a few standup comedians speakers to entertain – would you believe, us being one of them.

Should be a hoot.

If you’re keen -
Date: 30th August 2006
Venue: Relish www.relish.co.za
Time: 18:30

See who’ll be there and RSVP by editing the Wiki.

Pink PS2

Posted on 22. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Sony are milking the last remains out of the PS2 business model before the release of the much anticipated PS3.

Appealing to some people, they have released the all important ‘pink PS2′.

Surely if you ever really wanted a pink console, you would have taken the black one and done a Marc Ecko on it in the back yard?

We lost our PS2 after spraypainting it a camo motif.

PlayStation 3: T-minus 3 months, not started manufacturing – Engadget
PS2 tickled pink – Gadget Candy

Thailand does some rebranding

Posted on 22. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Does a city’s / country’s tourism brand make you want to go there?

When we think of Thailand and Bangkok – images of red light districts immediately spring to mind.
Urban slums, cheap, fake branded goods, fighting arenas and clawing humidity are all part of our Thailand perception.

Instead, Thailand
is to launch tourism initiatives under a new slogan "Unforgettable
Thailand" and with a target of encouraging tourists to spend more money
on its soil.
As for Bangkok’s new slogan, announced by Governor Apirak Kosayodhin "Bangkok: Harmony of LIfe." In
all truth, "Harmony of Life" was merely arrived upon after they found
out the initial brandname "City of Life" had been claimed by Hong Kong.
The new slogan comes with a new logo (a flower) and a program costing
the government US$40,035.14 to explain its symbolism.

After attending the Cape Town Fashion Week, where we were brainwashed with  our own promo ad before every show, we still can’t remember what Cape Town’s forgettable slogan is.

One things for sure, if you do spend too much money and time in Thailand you’re sure to leave with a little something, which will ensure you’ll never forget the place.

Thailand to encourage people to spend more – People’s online
Bangkok gets new slogan – Gridskipper

Previously: Club Thailand – Cherryflava

Become a millionaire by answering these three questions

Posted on 22. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

In a country so full of opportunity and desperate for the brave to step up to the plate and lead the way, its really easy to make a difference and become a millionaire at the same time.

Ask yourself these three questions:

1. First, what comes easy to me, but harder to others?

2. The second question is, what would you do for work for years and years and never have to get paid for it?

3. And the third question is, how can you be of service and how can you give back?

Rings a bell with our latest read:  ‘The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success’ by Deepak Chopra.

If you don’t feel that you are presently making a remarkable difference around the place – maybe its time to answer these questions.

Want to be a millionaire, Ask yourself these questions - Business opportunity blog
[via]

Who knew: South African woman ‘prefer shopping to sex’

Posted on 21. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

This just goes to prove that South Africa is full of amazing retail business opportunities.

South African women value shopping above sex, survey results suggest.

Of women who took part in a "Fantasy Survey" promoted by
a drinks company, 45% said they valued shopping over sex. Only 26%
voted the other way round.

Three quarters of the women who took part described
themselves as having a shoe fetish while 70% said they did not have
enough clothes in their wardrobes. Almost half (48%) of women surveyed
said men had no real understanding of their needs and desires.

There you have it – as easy as a polititian scoring a ‘killer deal’ on new M-class Merc.

All the marketing research you’ll ever need in one BBC article.

Its either import and sell Jimmy Choo shoes; or someone please write a half decent manual on giving the loving touch for us okes to understand.

SA woman ‘prefer shopping to sex.’ – BBC

Flashes: What grows three times bigger than normal and doesn’t impress anyone?

Posted on 21. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

• While in South Africa you struggle to bribe a nurse to remove your well-used bedpan, a hospital in London has just introduced its own winelist for its patients. Fancy stuff.

• ihaveanidea thinks that global advertising sucks bad and has hired the services of a witch to brew up a magic potion to help creatives think more creatively. And here we were under the impression that their was just a delay a customs for imports from Columbia, which was causing all the problems.

• We can hardly contain ourselves on the news that global product placement during TV shows like Survivor and Egoli is set to triple – even though everybody watching knows that Simon Cowell was drinking neat Cinzano from of his Coke branded hip flask.

• After its opening weekend and all of this ‘Snakes on a plane’ hype – we’re confused. Reuters reports: ‘Snakes on a plane’ fails to charm moviegoers, but in the first paragraph the article states that the movie…." crawled into the No. 1 slot at the North American weekend box
  office with estimated ticket sales of just $15.3 million." Last we heard to be no.1 was a good thing.  Just goes to show that crap with lots of hype is still crap.

Micro-entrepreneur office space comes to South Africa

Posted on 21. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Great news: the micro-entrepreneur, funky, I-wanna-go-to-my-cool-office business concept has finally been started in South Africa.

We’ve been going on about this for some time now, about how nice and different it would be to have a coffee shop-type space, which is fully techno hooked up to run a small publishing company from.

Habitaz is developing a network of furnished business centres, shared
work spaces and meeting rooms in South Africa and all major business
hubs in the rest of Africa.

A novel twist added by Habitaz is the pre-paid office card. While most
of Habitaz’ lease plans are per month, their pre-paid GreenCard allows
customers to rent space and facilities by the hour, minute or megabyte.
A card costs ZAR 1,000 (USD 145 / EUR 115), and gives holders access to
all of the facilities at Habitaz, each of which are charged by use.
Facilities include open plan workspace that’s open 24/7, with free
parking and ‘bottomless Ethiopian coffee’ (ZAR 22/hour), admin support
and secretarial services (ZAR 19.74/15 minutes), phone calls, delivery
services, etc. [via]

As far as we can tell, the service is presently only available in Joburg (which sucks just a bit), but hopefully it’ll roll out to the lifesaving club at Clifton 4th just in time for summer.

The card idea is cool, haven’t seen what the offices look like, so can’t comment on whether that’s going to get us excited, but we can’t help but suggest that the owners collaborate with an existing successful brand like Vida e Cafe or Caffeine as a coffee supplier instead of offering a ‘bottomless Ethiopian blend.’

Check them out at: Habitaz.co.za

Previously: The coffeeshop office – Cherryflava

UPDATE: You can’t get much past our supa-swift eagle eyed readers.
Leon sent in this contribution seconds after we punched the publish button:

Risk: The Game of Global Domination

Posted on 20. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Cracking ad for Risk – a board game (not linked to anything ou can do on a computer) done by Saatchi and Saatchi: Singapore.

The various extentions for this campaign are wild.

via

Free business idea: Do lunch

Posted on 18. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Having kids must be a damn pain in the neck.

They demand only the latest and most expensive brands, ignore you,  waste their time and their minds sending each other filthy messages via SMS and on top of all of that you still have to feed the buggers proper food so that they don’t get fat.

To us the obvious thing to do is to get rid of them. Send them elsewhere and see them again when they turn 30. But for the purposes of this post there is a business opportunity in feeding them.

Kid Chow is a catering company that supplies nutritious lunches to kids who’s parents have signed them up to be fed properly.

Parents order online and pay via PayPal one week in advance. Lunch
is then delivered between 10 a.m. and noon to the school. Mom and Dad
can even type up a personalized note the evening before to be included
with the delivery.

Rather than mystery meat, think
teriyaki chicken rice bowl and Caprese pasta salad. Other selling
points? Kid Chow uses local, nitrate-free and trans fat–free
ingredients, as well as biodegradable packaging. [via]

If you’re a caterer or a stay-at-home mom looking for a way to make a million – here’s a glaring opportunity right here. Take it – its yours.

Website: Kid Chow

Experts agree: Adult branding doesn’t sell product

Posted on 18. Aug, 2006 by Cassandra.

Old-school marketers have always believed that; if you undress your brand with a touch of T&A, slap an umbrella, your product and a university co-ed on a golf course with heavy breathing old men – you’re building your brand.

It doesn’t work!

Bikinis and beer are pre-dick-table and boring.

A French online clothing brand tried the porno-vertising branding route and ended up fuelling tonnes of online teenage gawking, but very little sales.

American Apparel it could be argued have built their brand around their home-shot barely legal images, but how much of their success is due to their ads as opposed to their overall strategy of being an edgy, hard and fast American retailer with a nut at the helm?

Website NSFW: French adult clothing brand
Website Ads: American Apparel
Web porn no help to t-shirt sales – Political gateway