“We were getting our candy floss knickers in a twist about the seemingly endless creative high teas being anything but, so we decided to put our money where our mouths are and create a unique pop up high tea experience that will be both warm, wet and wild and fine, fresh, and fierce.”

If you haven’t seen the clip it’s basically a candy lover’s wet dream.  It’s not hard to understand why someone who is passionate about baking would be inspired by it.

Brandalizm™ is often driven by fans or haters because the wave essence is: Voluntary promotion or destruction of brands. The site has a disclaimer: “We’ve been asked to reiterate that Katy or Will Cotton are NOT involved or endorsing this event in anyway and are happy to do so. “

That’s the key with Brandalizm™.  It’s usually creative people who feel strongly enough to either pay tribute or tear down.

To be honest, I find the copy used in the campaign a bit… ahh… confusing.  I’m not getting the logic of “stupid conquering the smart world.”  Regardless, I do think that Exelbook is pretty cool, and it’s also a great example of the essence of the Brandalizm™ wave: BRAND HACKING.

By mashing up Exel and Facebook and allowing people to be a bit naughty at work, they are continuing their long tradition of branding themselves as edgy and envelope pushing.

Here are some examples that fall into the Brandalizm™ wave.  Brandalizm™ is about “volunteer promotion or destruction of brands.”  Usually these ideas are born out of love or hate for the brand.  I’m thinking these sweet comestibles are on the love side of things.

You have agree that this Big Mac macaroon is all kinds of awesome.  I’m calling it… I think macaroons are the new cupcakes, incidentally.  Anyway, if you want to have a crack at making it yourself such and such has given you the recipe here.

Gizmodo featured these iPhone chocolates:  “The 20-piece box set includes 4 different flavors, and the artwork on each icon isn’t a wrapper, but is actually printed in edible ink directly onto the chocolates. Each box will set you back $46.44, but that’s without a contract so it’s quite literally a lot easier to swallow than buying the real thing.”

How about these cute Twitter & Facebook cookies!! The gal who made them said she’s been inundated with requests.

The Human Truth™ of Brandalizm™ is “You don’t own your brand, I do.”™ And even though that can result in negative press sometimes, in these cases, it’s actually a super sweet homage.

For those who don’t recognize the typography, its been emblazoned on millions of metal heads shirts for the better part of twenty years.  Yes Slayer, the mighty kings of  head banging have been “Biebered”.

I find the mash up of one of the pop-iest popstars to ever storm the music scene with one of the most un-pop bands in existence, pretty damn funny.

It also makes me think of how logos and branding really do get into your brain… As soon as I saw it I thought Slayer, despite it spelling Bieber.

Brandalizm™ has many, often humorous, examples of brand hacking.  As the Human Truth™ clearly states: “You don’t own your brand, I do.”

A few examples:

Sure, we’ve all done stupid things (apparently dressed as hipsters, no less) but this to me sounds like they’re trying to market to MacGyver by calling him an idiot.

After a while, it just starts to feel like they’re alienating me for not being a moron.

The first of two things I’d like to talk about is something I’m sure I’ve ran into the ground, in a coffin and with a wooden stake. Yes, the Twilight boom has certainly exploded; causing three TV series about Vampires to burst into production, countless books resurfacing onto the end caps of Barnes & Noble and of course the jump the shark/nuke the fridge moment; when they appear in commercials.

If you missed Verizon’s vampire ad, it’s pretty much a scene from twilight except the hot vampire leaves the Debby Downer girl because she has bad coverage, and the werewolf sweeps in. Then you have the Bing commercial of the vampire that drags a girl into his room to eat her, which clearly isn’t creepy at all. And of course the most recent was the American Idol commercial for Ford where they did a confusing rendition of The Bravery, all decked out as vampires.

And now, the newest cue that apparently screams Gen Y market money is Ke$ha. If you don’t know who or what a Ke$ha is, it’s a singer. A girl that sings about waking up in random peoples homes from partying too much, brushing her teeth in whiskey and getting drunk for the party that night so it repeats itself. Not the most likely Grammy candidate but it’s sold like wildfire on iTunes, and now it’s invading commercials.

Well, not just commercials. The first real cue was during Fox Rocks week, where they recreated The Simpsons intro and featured Lisa singing her drunk anthem “Tik Tok”.This immediately sent the internet in one of two rages, one of the show officially being over because they’re using something aimed at teenagers and pushing it out of Lisa, a character who considers 90% of everything in that song blasphemy. The rage was how The Simpsons should be more like this, more relevant. And as expected, this voice was cried out on Youtube and Twitter, the perfect echo of a Gen Y group who already has the song on their iPod.

But more recently, it’s appeared in another bizarre place; the trailer for the movie Marmaduke. How a movie about a giant goofy dog relates to “errrybody gettin’ crunk crunk” I’m not sure; but throw it into a movie based on a comic no one from this generation knows and people will look up at the screen just to see what’s playing the song.

However, all this being said, relevance is still relevance, I mean after all I am talking about it right now, so they did their job. But, it’s not memorable. I think the same effect, but on a polar opposite view is the Betty White push. When Betty White, in all her awesomeness(I’m not biased at all am I?) was in that Snickers commercial, everyone got Betty fever, and soon people wanted to see her everywhere.

What’s the difference? You have Betty White appearing in original situations where you’d never imagine someone who’s 88 years old. It’s still a forced fad, but it’s one that people can appreciate, because it still holds a breath of originality. And if you’re going to force something without being original, you’ll get the hits, but what are they worth if nobody really cares?

You can find anything online on April Fool’s Day, canned unicorn meat, pets as food, fake movie and game trailers, altered headlines. And while this is all in good fun, for those of us in the insight world it means twenty-four hours of “is this true” and verification time. But I won’t go into that, what I think is more interesting is the spirit of online April Fools jokes.

When you think about it, there’s not much to it. You just type some text, post an image or video (of course, some groups like IGN go all out and make budgeted and scripted productions) but beyond that you don’t really have to leave the comfort of your home to pull one off.

However, when most brands pull a fast one, they seem to forget they go trigger happy with a lawsuit when anyone does it to them. Finding a sense of humor in our own brand is a smart move, because if you don’t then there’s a 90% chance someone else will.

Take the iPad, within an hour of announcement, the joke names had higher rankings on Twitter than the announcement itself. People need to prepare for this, because the Internet is many things, and a kind little lamb is not one of them.

We’ll be talking more about Brandalizm in the upcoming quarterly report, so I don’t want to spill too much, but I do think it’s funny that brands who otherwise get offensive about brand hacking are completely accepting of it one day a year.

And for now, I’m off to eat my unicorn meat, watch the Legend of Zelda movie trailer in my tauntaun sleeping bag, read up on some LOLcats and try that new Krispy Kreme diet.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you, the picture above is actual “Obama acid blotter. Yes… LSD….trippyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

It is safe to assume that you have achieved ultimate pop icon status when your mug is featured on a sheet of acid in the style of an Andy Warhol print!

We don’t know what is worse, the physiological effects of this item or the “change” puns it is guaranteed to produce.

E.G.
Finally, the change he promised us is here at last.
- jeligula

Trippin’ for change…
- VagabondAstronomer

The audACIDy!….of Dope
- pmarble

ahem….

I think that my point has been illustrated.

Definitely not an official site by any means, it’s quite simple – they pull in mentions of HSBC from the Twittersphere, then classifies them as a Fail or a Win for the bank and compiles the results in the fail pie chart, pictured.

Here’s a sample: “I hate HSBC with the biggest dissatisfied passion. Don’t tell me one thing and then tell me something completely different. ANGER” from tfooksbale

“HSBC must have the worst online banking / customer service in the world. How have they not collapsed yet?” from JGoldsteinNYC

Yikes.

As of 2009, HSBC is both the world’s largest banking group and the world’s 6th largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.  My gut tells me this site could be just like an annoying fly at the picnic for them but it made me think about the Human Truth™ of Brandalizm™

““You don’t own your brand, I do.”™

Twitter and other social networking sites have taken public opinion sharing to a level that has not previously existed.  That’s great news if your brand is being praised but can be a sobering reality check if it’s not.  Bottom line is: you have no control of this… the only thing to do is not give these blabber mouths any ammunition!  Have you done a “realtime mention” search of your brand or company lately?

Brandalizm says: “You don’t own your brand, I do.”™

And what better example than some random house in Mexicali representing one of the world’s most exclusive brands.  How would the fabled House of LV feel about this humble abode sporting it’s exclusive monogram?  Will they sue? Probably not but we’ll keep you posted.