A Brand called MARBELLA

In 1954, Prince Alfonso von Hohenlohe converted his family farmhouse into the Marbella Club Hotel. And so, a brand was born. 

Prince Alfonso was a visionary who was enchanted by this particular spot of Southern Spain. The Marbella Club grew from just 19 bedrooms, one suite, a dining room and a bar to today’s total of 84 rooms, 34 suites, a spa, Beach Club Buffet, Grill, the MC Café and a golf course. In addition, the area around it received such great demand that it became known as the “Golden Mile” (a part of this having been named Bulevar Principe Alfonso Von Hohenlohe) and Marbella has evolved into a magnet for the exclusive. www.marbellaclub.com

Prince Alfonso’s vision of “Marbella” has withstood time. But it has also withstood the highs and lows of the tabloid coverage. As with any of the world’s top brands, barely a month goes by when the UK press does not report a controversy of some kind – the incidences of boom receive nearly as much attention as those occurrences of bust. Yet the truth is that through it all, an influx of luxury tourism continues to secure Marbella’s position as one of the world’s most desired locations.

Prince Alfonso’s utter enthusiasm for Marbella also aided many successful property deals for his elite associates. And over the years many other entrepreneurs have emulated his real estate prowess with a market of high profile clients. Nick Stuart founded Spanish Hot Properties 4 years ago and his passion for the area abounds. He says “Over recent years, people have started to come to Marbella looking for a country in crisis. Of course, in these economic times there are deals to be made, but as a comparison, you do not go to Mayfair seeking bargain basement properties. Marbella has a history that stems from the days of the Marbella Club. And there are still plenty of people who have an emotional link with the area, born from their own family backgrounds. Marbella has always attracted the rich and famous and so, this creates a self-fulfilling phenomenon. Of course, the climate (a full 4º warmer in winter than any other area of Spain) and the locals help – you could not wish for friendlier neighbours than the Andalucians”.
(Marbella Property)

The Marbella Arch was constructed 18 years ago, though is now the subject of controversy as it has been dismantled due to new road infrastructure.

Marbella’s popularity increased from the 60’s thanks to improvements in the infrastructure with motorways stretching as far as Alicante. In fact, as head of the Costa del Sol Promoters’ co-operative, Prince Alfonso himself lobbied the installation of improvements for the road systems, airports and water supply (also the conference and exhibition centre which spurred the growth of Torremolinos as a mass market holiday destination). Whilst local life did slow in the mid seventies due to the first large-scale recession, it gained rapid pace once again in the 80’s as property demand from Northern Europe outstripped supply. Requirement was further fuelled by an increase in the native Spanish market as the country began its evolution into one of Europe’s most modern. Málaga airport is still undergoing major renovations today and connects to over 60 destinations worldwide with approx 13 million passengers per annum.

Again Marbella demonstrated a brand strength that many top companies attempt to imitate in today’s business. Get the core appeal right, create a buzz and then make sure that the infrastructure works to maintain the demand. 

Ian Waudby has worked in Marbella since 1989 and has run the highly successful real estate development company, Crest Homes, for many years. In 2010 he joined forces with Spanish Hot Properties to make the most out of the evolving demands of the area. Throughout his experience Ian has witnessed the cyclical nature of the area first-hand. His company also boasts an impressive list of exclusive properties and a clientele including “A” list celebrities. He says, “The target market is always moving, but it is always there. When I started out in business here you had a strong retirement market, nowadays the younger “bling” market is much stronger.” Ian also adds that he believes that “the end of 2011 to end of 2013 will be the best “harvest” years for the opportunistic investor in Marbella”.

Whilst the savviest marketeers do indeed understand that the most successful products appeal to the heart, not the mind (source: businessweek.com) it is always a mistake to overlook the core science of what the product aims to achieve. Luckily this isn’t something that Marbella has ever had to worry about. The sunny weather is generally constant, the hotels, restaurants and beach clubs are glamorous  and the celebrities just keep coming…

Kyra Dawson in her article Brands of Emotion agrees … “If a name can evoke the security sensation of that phrase "satisfaction guaranteed", then you've got a winner.” We think that sums Marbella up quite nicely.

If you would like to learn more about how to create a brand that can withstand the test of time, contact Pudding Creative.

PUDDING DESIGN SUPPLEMENT : LIU BOLIN, The man, the art, the invisible.

Liu Bolin from Shandong, China, has developed into a world recognised artist since his emergence in the early 1990's following the Cultural Revolution. Liu creates an amazing form of art which features himself as a real life invisible man.

His first solo exhibition took place in Beijing in 1998 leading up to his most recent work entitled 'Hiding in New York' which is currently display in the Eli Klein Fine Art Gallery until :
September 28th 2011. 
(New York City)
http://www.elikleinfineart.com

Each photo takes up to 10 hours to compose where Liu transforms himself with full painted camouflage as he becomes invisible and submerges into his surroundings. Astonishing work. Here's a short selection of our favourites showing his diverse and topical subject matter from the supermarket, to the forest to a British red telephone box :-

image source: www.wikipedia.com

Reference information and images sourced from:  telegraph.co.uk, elikleinfineart.com, laughingsquid.com, wikipedia.com. 

What is "good" website content?

… well, the proof is in the Panda...

Pudding Creative could most definitely be accused of repetition when it comes to the words “we have a publishing background, don’t you know?” But we hold a high regard for the old disciplines of print publishing where one mistake could have a detrimental effect on a very large, not to mention expensive, print-run.

There was a time when every page of a magazine was first sent to bromide proof, then produced as 4-colour film and only printed to page once the colour cromalin proof had been fully approved. But then just 3 letters – PDF – replaced this long-winded process. And now, time has moved on so much that the “mag” has been largely replaced by 1 sole letter – “e”.

Of course, the concept of magazines and publications of all types has further progressed with the evolution of the Internet and, most notably, the blog. The blog, which was crowned as a noun in its own right in 1999, provided individuals with a voice. The writer no longer needed to await invitation from the supreme Editor. By 2004 the “blog” was even being used on a worldwide scale by businesses and politicians. And, of course, it was not overlooked that this rather convenient new tool was also helping companies to make their way up the search engine listings.

There are many different options for the business or the individual to use when publishing their updates. Forbes has created a list of their top 11 with Wordpress being number one www.forbes.com

As you will guess, with so many formats, there is obviously a lot of demand. And rapidly the power of the blog rolled into overall website content with more and more website templates being made available for minimal cost to the users. But whereas all traditional print publishing was proofed, proofed and then… well, proofed a little more, there is little to zero proofing involved in what is published within the World Wide Web.

Well, until now…

It seems that Google (the undisputed force of law and online order) has had enough of their cyberspace being littered with substandard content. And so they have introduced “Google Panda”. googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
Google Panda is a new algorithm that has been designed by the rather clever ‘bots to help people find more high quality sites when searching the web. And one of the first points that they like to make is that it is the client who is the reader, not the search engine.

As Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz and Will Critchlow, founder of Distilled, discuss in their “Whiteboard Friday”, these new Panda algorithms are based on real human responses to website content.
www.seomoz.org
“…people don't think this is high enough quality. This isn't going to get past the Panda filter. You're in jeopardy", says Rand.
They continue by explaining that the oh-so clever Google can actually evaluate a website content in terms of reliability, trust and authority. And so, perhaps, the days of churnalism are over.

1. churnalism
Term coined by author Nick Davies to describe poor practices of modern day journalists who "churn" or recycle news stories off the wire or Internet without appropriate critical investigation.

But that begs the question, what is good website content?
SEO mastermind Paul Lopez of Solar Internet and owner of celebritiesinmarbella.com says that it comes down to just 2 basic rules…

“Rule 1 for good website copy is to write good quality content without thinking keywords or search engines. Research your subject and write as if it were a normal article. You don't want to bombard your visitors with keywords and the chances are that if you are trying to write for the search engines it will be bad quality and not a good user experience.
Rule 2 is never just copy content. There are a few reasons for this but the main point is that the search engines don't like duplicate content and the latest panda update is very much focused on quality content. If you want to figure in the search engines then write your own copy. Show the search engines, and your visitors that YOU are the authority on your subject.”

Lisa Richards, Editor of www.resource-magazine.com also agrees that “content farming” is detrimental to the standards of the World Wide Web. This focus on producing words that satisfy the algorithms set by search engines (rather than the subject matter itself) often produces confusing articles with little factual relevance. She notes, “the appeal of high visitor numbers is proving more alluring than high quality. I’ve seen journalists and PRs garnering editorial support from bloggers by rewarding responses or offering freebies rather than actually looking to the quality of their own work”.

Content Farming can be a thankless task

Of course, the actual words contained within a website are only part of the battle when considering an “authentic” website. Rand reminds us that appearance is equally important.
“A lot of this comes down to design, and authority is really branding familiarity. Have I heard of this site? Does it seem legitimate? So I might get to a great blog like StuntDouble.com, and I might think to myself, I'm not very familiar with the world of web marketing. I haven't heard of StuntDouble, so I don't recognize him as an authority, but yeah, I would probably trust SEO information from this site. It looks good, seems authentic, the provider's decent.”

Companies have been known to work very hard to create a reputable brand name in the real world, only to throw all that hard effort away with a substandard appearance online. It is important to remember that your brand is the sum of your staff, your services and all of your marketing initiatives – and that includes your website. So, make sure that it receives equal time and effort.

Pudding Creative can help you to achieve a high quality website presence with solid content and an irresistible style. 
Contact us for a free consultation on how we can improve your business.
Tel: +34 667714346 
Email: hello@puddingcreative.com 
Web: www.puddingcreative.com
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PUDD FILE: INTERNATIONAL BRANDING - The power of the BILLBOARD and other printed marketing ideas

Following a period of super exciting digital presentation work this summer, we at Pudding are delighted to also be working on a series of printed material and signage including billboard designs to support a rebranding campaign and we thought we would share a few of the images that we have collected as part of our design studies. Just goes to show that old school style printed advertising is still very much at the forefront of international marketing and design for many brand giants.  Here's a selection of our favourites which both deliver an incredibly powerful message and a few smiles.

Brilliant use of the limits of a given billboard space by Formula Toothpaste

Billboards can have a life after dark - Eskom

Not to be confined by the extents of  a billboard  - love the shoelace touch! by Woodland

Frame it...from one of the world's leading brands PSP - one of a series of ingenious roadside advertising campaigns

And frame it again... here promoting the regeneration of  an dying art form - the handwritten letter from Eesti Post
- we say long live the post!

and when a roadside billboard is just not enough,  build yourself a bridge...Adidas

...or if you can't have a billboard at all,  why not use your building instead? who said size doesn't matter?  

...very subtle advertising from Heineken on this construction site - look closely

...and the not so subtle ....from Abercrombie & Fitch - what can i say?

but if you don't have a billboard,  a building or a construction site, all is not lost (advert by Ché)

There are many unexpected opportunities for printed marketing campaigns even in this digital age - all you need is a little out of the box thinking and you can transform some of the most unexpected places into a dynamic advertising hubs
(Bus shelter promotion for Real Hiphop.com.br)

If you'd like to know more about our current projects and our unusual range of branding, creative design and marketing services,  please drop us an email here CONTACT US or give us a call on +34 667 714 346 and we'd love to say hello. Thank You!
compilation by Pudding Creative