Cherryflava

Adidas welcomes you to The Street

Posted on 18. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

The Streets are where it’s at. That’s why most of the events and work that we do happens right there – on the dirty, vibrant, colourful, busy, cosmopolitan streets of Cape Town.

We know it, Adidas clearly knows it, but ironically most folk are a little nervous of it. That’s were the cookie is.  Touch it.

Here’s the new one from the German sports brand featuring Snoop Dogg and Becks. We’re not too crazy about the backing track, but hey – it’s for the kids right?

Beer for you, chocolate for her…and Wrestlerish for after

Posted on 05. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

Beer and chocolate pairing

Beer, chocolate and bands from Pretoria are not our usual combination on a Friday evening, but it will be tonight at &Union.

Sounds dangerous…and right up our alley.

Rainbow parking = free parking

Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

All we really want is free parking

In Eilat, Isreal there are lots of cars and parking in the city is expensive. So a paint retailer by the name Tambour decided to sponsor some free parking as part of its advertising strategy. Because they’re a paint brand, they painted the free bays available the colours of the raindow and offered the thoughtful gift to the citizens of Eilat.

In Israel there are several distinct colors to mark parking regulations: Red-White = no parking / Blue-White = paying parking…and now rainbow parking = free parking for everyone!

No rocket ships or fancy stuff – just good ol’ honest free parking to make life just a little easier and turn a paint retailer into an urban hero.

via

Darth Vader terrorises Cape Town

Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

If you thought aliens invading Joburg was scary – the good news is that Capetonians seem far more relaxed about the prospect of Darth Vader and a couple of those navy looking dudes in white plastic suits walking around Long Street. As long as the mountain is still in it’s rightful place and you can still buy crack from the guy wearing the rasta hat on the corner of Bloem Street, we’re cool like that.

Unlike New Yorkers – who got Snoop Dogg in the mix with a remixed Vader tune and were invaded by a full battalion of futuristic navy people with real guns. Makes Mr Vader strolling through the Biscuit Mill on a Saturday morning sampling organic carrots look rather peace-loving.

Maybe they should have thrown in a few of those ‘prawn’ things for more effect.

Previously: Adidas gets into bed with Darth Vader – Cherryflava

Via we-are-awesome

The Cape Town Stadium

Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

Inside the salad bowl

Saturday game at the brand new Cape Town Stadium between Ajax and Santos was poor. Both teams should be ashamed of themselves for not using the opportunity to play proper football instead of goofing around like a bunch of amateurs. But maybe they were a bit in awe of the amazing new ‘cathedral of sport’ they found themselves.

The stadium itself is simply breathtaking. You feel like the players are literally just a few meters away when watching from the stands. With only 20 000 fans in the stands – the sound of vuvuzelas and sighs was deafening – so when that place is packed with 60 000+ screaming sports hooligans, it’s going to be chilling.

Can’t wait for rugby games [there's one in early February] and rock concerts to be added to the venue’s mix. Can’t wait to go back.

Outside the Cape Town Stadium

Entering 'the cathedral'

Warwick Wine Estate launch their gourmet picnic experience

Posted on 18. Jan, 2010 by Jonathan Cherry.

Mike Ratcliffe and Jeremy Sampson eye the brie

Being a company that fully understands the branding power of a great experience, we were lucky enough to be invited to test drive a gourmet picnic at Warwick yesterday. Mike and his team have transformed a section of their picturesque farm into a picnic experience that’s not short of great detail. Tapping into the global trend of marketing collaboration, he’s teamed up with celebrity South African chef Bruce Robertson – who designed the perfect food combination for the setting and the wine. And the combo of talents works just fine.

Fueled by chilled crystal goblets of fruity Sauvignon Blanc and interesting company there are far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. [thanks Mike]

BTW – if you’re a fan of packaging design, be sure to check out a bottle of the Warwick ‘Black Lady’ Syrah. A more touchable bottle of wine surely doesn’t exist in South Africa.

More: Warwick Gourmet Picnics

More: See the Warwick ‘Black Lady’ Syrah after the jump

Cherryflava 2009 report card: Our year in review

Posted on 22. Dec, 2009 by Jonathan Cherry.

Rock gods Fokofpolisiekar were our first guests on the Cherryflava Peep Show

The year 2009 was a bit like a teenage first date for us – cheap and fast with a rushed, awkward goodbye.

It was a year of recession, pig flu, the death of Michael Jackson, the rise of Tiger’s wood, a new president, solid rugby results and some brand new triumphs for us.

If we have to give this year a theme it would have to be ‘experiential’. We seriously hate the word, but there was a concerted focused on experience branding this year, from the design of our own products to the unconventional strategy work that we did for our clients.

Jason Stewart's BRAND HOOLIGANS presentation in Long Street

We launched ourselves deep into the dark, murky world of marketing conferences with the debut of BRAND HOOLIGANS and SecondBase and even started our very own live TV talk show – The Cherryflava Peep Show.

BRAND HOOLIGANS - the experiential marketing conference

We’ve hosted and had a few drinks afterwards with some esteemed guests, including: Fokofpolisiekar, Justin Bonello, Porky Hefer, Mike Schalit, Andrew Baxter, Rui Esteves and Brad Armitage, Mike Ratcliffe, Dave Levinsohn, Justin Letchert, SeanO and Jody Aufrichtig. That’s not forgetting the Yuppiechef blokes (Andrew Smith and Shane Dryden), the legends from World Wide Creative (Fred Roed and Jason Bagley), Andrew Cordoza, Nikki Friedman, Gareth Cotton and Jason Stewart.

Brands we worked with this year included: Woolworths,  British American Tobacco (Switzerland), Sony (South Africa), Cape Town Partnership, Tradewinds, Paula Wilson PR, CScout (New York), Big.Words.Scare.Me, Steenberg Winery, UCT Graduate School of Business, Virgin Active, Brewers & Union, Digicape, Nokia, The Grand Daddy Hotel, Cofferoutes, Zoopy and Jax Panik. Business-wise we have grown significantly in 2009 despite the recession and with our new strategy of product sub-branding and the packaging of our consulting services, the foundation has been laid for a great 2010.

The Skim nailing one of those 'donut and hot chocolate' things in Spain

Thanks to Sony we went to Spain and ate far too much carpaccio for our own sensitive constitutions. While there we realised that South African’s are not too shabby when it comes to hosting events and that immigration officials at Heathrow Terminal 5 are some of the rudest people on earth.

On the publishing side we finally upgraded the website from Typepad to Wordpress (with a few major snags along the way) and completed another year of our regular CapeTalk 567 Ad Feature on Wednesday mornings with Aden Thomas and the Cherryflava feature on MFM92.6 morning show with SeanO and Lize Kay.

The year 2009 will be remembered as a tough one, but overall we’ll give ourselves a B aggregate for the year. A good percentage of the hard work done this year was done as preparation for 2010 / 2011.

We’re going to take a little break from the office and the blog for a couple of weeks. We’ll post sporadically but will be back to a full schedule on 11 January 2010.
See you all safe and sound next year. Have a cracking festive season and thanks so much for supporting Cherryflava in ‘09.

There’s a lot of luv going around Cape Town

Posted on 18. Dec, 2009 by Jonathan Cherry.

Balls are luv

Over the past week we’ve spotted an abnormal amount of hearts tagged on things around the city. If it’s not somebody proclaiming their love of balls all over the city, it’s push button love in Claremont.

Push for luv

Update: The heart sticker seems to be related to ‘the heart sticker revolution’

Further update: The football tagging is related to Puma’s support of African teams. More here

Cherryflava now powered by Digicape

Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by Jonathan Cherry.

Sexy

We’ve been plonking around for some time now with outdated machines that haven’t been able to keep pace on the digital publishing side of things here at Cherryflava. That was until this morning when our friends at Digicape offered us a brand new MacBook Pro and MacBook to assist with some much needed computing power.

We’re in love. Everything is so bright and shiny and fast it’s like rediscover the Internet all over again.

If you’re thinking of asking Santa for something Apple flava’d – then know that Digicape is offering a number of wicked Christmas specials including a R500 gift voucher with any Mac bought before 24 December to spend on a bag or a mouse or something useful like that. So go check them out in Roeland Street Cape Town.

Back to playtime!

The 5 secrets of innovation

Posted on 03. Dec, 2009 by Jonathan Cherry.

Get out there

Innovation requires a few things to happen. A creative mindset, cat-like curiosity with the world around you and a fair amount of ‘out-of-your-comfort-zone’ time.

CNN have an interesting article detailing the results of  six years of research on the topic. The result? To innovate you need to practice associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and discovering.

Read more: Learn the five secrets of innovation – CNN

via