Brand Diversification...Perfect Xmas gifts?

I know what you are thinking....Alex? Why lower the tone of this blog by posting a well lit and perfeectly taken photo of a lady in her underwear. Well it is not just any old underwear from Primark. It is infact quality lingerie from Real Madrid FC. They spent over £200 million pounds on new players this summer and insted of going on money-spinning tours to Asia or creating personalised Xmas cards or introducing a third/fourth kit they instead decide to bring out this range of hilaroius Real Madrid underwear. There is a mens range but I couldn't find that picture by couldn't find I mean I didnt look.

This form of brand diversification is interesting and all jokes aside it's actually not a terrible idea. The world's biggest club having a huge range of merchandise which now includes lingerie, this is not the greatest of ideas but I can see this working. Real Madrid have a 90,000 seater stadium, a huge fanbase across the world and are huge in the lucrative Asian market. The team plays Champions League football every season, buys the best players and is very succesful. The Real Madrid brand is healthy so it just goes to show some brands will work in many different markets while others will not. Check out the West Ham lingerie below as worn by pop sensation Katy Perry. It is also going on sale at a West Ham shop near you for a limited time for a whopping £300. I know the East End of London is not as glamourous as Madrid but who cares its Christmas!

Nearly as good as a flying skate board

I like technology and I was hoping to have a flying car or by the very least a flying skateboard by the time I was grown up, the idea came from the hit film Back To The Future but alas in December 2009 there is no such invention. At least AR (Augmented Reality) is here to entertain me. AR is described by the fountain of knowledge that is Wikipedia as- a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality. Artificial information about the environment and the objects in it can be stored and retrieved as an information layer on top of the real world view.

This form of technology has been on my radar for sometime and although Youtube has plenty of AR videos (some involve huge fast food restaurants and others involve funky ways of finding the nearest tube station) I have the feel that 2010 is the year when AR will get all grown up and mainstream. I can see a plethora of marketing uses for AR and I am sure some smart digital agencies already have cunning plans for AR in 2010!