Meet the target audience of the GendeX™ Mutual Fund from Thrasher Funds

GendeX™ Not your father’s mutual fund.

A Changing Financial Market

The GendeX™ Mutual Fund (Ticker: GENDX) from Thrasher Funds targets the estimated 60 million people born between the mid 1960s and mid 1990s—a demographic largely ignored by the financial community according to Thrasher.

In the Pink: Access and Appeal

The Thrasher Funds brand identity breaks from traditional financial motifs by dipping their logo—a staid engraved “T”—in shocking pink (right), and reflecting their target customer in imagery (above). The Thrasher GendeX products bring real value to this unique investment brand. A $100 beginning balance and minimum monthly contribution of $50 makes an automatic investment plan feasible for young professionals. GendeX holdings also feature companies relevant to their target market such as Apple, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Lulu Lemon and Nike.

Thrasher Funds shocking pink logo

As markets and demographics change are you reflecting that change in both form and function across all brand touchpoints? Engage your customers in ongoing dialog to discern their short and long-term needs and desires.

Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life landing point

Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life museum is fashioned after Van Gogh’s painting, “Cafe Terrace at Night”

Virtual Van Gogh

The Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life museum offers much of what you’d expect in a real life museum—with a touch of Second Life (SL) surrealism.

The museum exhibits 70 virtual works by Vincent Van Gogh with descriptions and historical facts about the Dutch Post-Impressionist. Befittingly, each of the 20 rooms housing the exhibit is set in perpetual twilight and the outer grounds of the museum feature overlook balconies, fountains, and garden terraces abutting a reflective and restful sea.

Unlike real life museums, this SL version includes teleportation, 3-D tours and experiential paintings that visitors can virtually “step into” to peruse selected works.

Worth the Teleport

If you like something you see, reproductions are for sale at the museum store, including virtual floral arrangements. You can even take home a reproduction of Van Gogh’s famed Starry Night for a reasonable L$35 (35 Linden dollars) the equivalent of about 12 US cents.

Appreciating Culture Clash

A confluence of culture, The Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life museum is a metaphor for today’s brand marketer—an emergent culture where old and new collide in ever-changing venues of communication.

Visit the museum.

[ via: malburns ]

A Relative Observation

The world has descended in droves upon the 2012 London Games organizing committee (Locog) site to view the widely criticized Wolff Olins logo design above. According to the Financial Times, nearly 350,000 unique visitors from 178 countries have dropped by for a look with hit rates doubling every 24 hours—all since Monday.

A Subjective Observation

We’re experts, brand agents, designers, keepers of the knowledge of all that sells and communicates, and some of you value our opinion on such things. Well, this one is bigger than all of us.

The new London 2012 mark is too acidic, too simplistic, too pedestrian and just too harsh in its styling for such an important worldwide event. Plainly, the aesthetic is lacking any real finesse. But the fact that we don’t like it is irrelevant to this particular brand.

10 Objective Observations

1. Memorable. Like it or not, if the new mark isn’t indelibly etched on your mind’s eye already, it soon will be.

2. Graphic. Bold counts, and this mark is nothing if not bold. It will compete with nearly any visual noise out there and hold its own.

3. Pragmatic. This suite of marks will reproduce well in any medium: print, web, interactive, television, apparel—no problem.

4. Malleable. The flat planes in this mark allow for a window-like view—albeit a broken window. All manner of messages can be displayed in its ample panes without compromising the core brand.

5. Colorful. It’s the Olympics. Color is a staple element of all Olympics. Color represents diversity, youth and vibrancy—this mark just ratchets it up an acidic notch or two.

6. Childlike. The 5-piece jigsaw puzzle design seems thrown together—too easy? Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso made careers out of such simplistic imagery. Simple often equates to memorable.

7. Different/New. Of course it’s controversial, there’s not a staid preconception within a kilometer of this mark—no human forms, no flags, no indigenous architectural graphics.

8. Descriptive. 2012. What’s fundamental in differentiating one Olympic from another? The year. “Do you remember Nadia in the 1976 Olympics…?” No misunderstanding which year belongs to this mark.

9. Consistent. Personal preference aside, the elements, stylings and schematics of this mark are sound and consistently deployed across the system.

10. Buzz. Game over. Mission accomplished. 350,000 unique visitors—since Monday? Wolff Olins should have negotiated a commission based on a “ubiquitous distribution” clause.

A Reflective Observation

In response to the world’s incessant need to socialize online, Wolff Olins even incorporated a social design experience. Site visitors are invited to submit their own design variations based on a given template. Here are 3 that caught our eye:

1. Tim Johnson, York (a stark color averse approach replete with braille); 2. Alexey, Moscow, Russia; 3. Nicholas Gaffney Brooklyn, NY USA

Eventually the public, this mark, and the controversy surrounding it will find comfortable harmony with one another. And then this will be the most memorable (and brash) mark in Olympic history.

An online petition asking for its recall was shut down after two days and nearly 50,000 signatures because the originator did not want to damage the reputation of the London Games. Besides, they’re too invested to pull the mark.

Even though we don’t care for the new logo aesthetically, we applaud the impact. It’s here to stay—ride that publicity wave for all it’s worth.

A Protest

Tom Wayne, owner of Prospero’s Books in Kansas City, Missouri, loves books. Recently looking to reduce his used book inventory, he found he couldn’t even give them away. So he got a permit and burned them in protest (see the Yahoo article).

Read a Book? LOL!!!

Apparently the 18-34, web 2.0, GenMe, millennials just don’t read books much anymore.

According to a recently released study on The Arts and Civic Engagement by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), 18-34-year-olds have the lowest literary reading rate among all adults at 45.2%. In 1982, the rate for the same age group was 61.1%, the highest among all adults at the time.

Burning Issues

The Internet is one likely cause in this behavioral swing. With the web’s seemingly infinite supply of information and the finite number of hours in a day, books are becoming arcane, expensive, and volumetric. Committing to more than a 2-minute video, a podcast sound bite, or a short blog entry is increasingly impractical if GenMe individuals hope to keep up.

Relevancy, Transparency and Brevity

Trying to reach GenMe and other market segments flooding into online social environments is a long-term, long tail play. Consider words like transparency and participation over terms like selling—and above all, keep it brief.

In fact, if you’re still reading this, you may be over 35.

*Download the complete NEA report here:
Civic Engagement pdf | 136 kb

Image source: n8ive

On June 11th, Brainstorm Principal Jim Wolfe will conduct a presentation for university admissions professionals at the North American Coalition for Christian Admissions Professionals (NACCAP) 2007 North American convention held at Biola University in Southern California. The session will focus on Web 2.0 and the cultural implications of online social networking when marketing to GenMe individuals.

“This presentation has been in great demand primarily because institutions and corporations alike are becoming increasingly aware of the potential dangers and opportunities of the social networking phenomenon,” according to Wolfe.

Admissions professionals will learn how to leverage Web 2.0 techniques and engage with this illusive demographic.

For an in-depth exploration of how Web 2.0 can affect your enterprise, contact Brainstorm. For a download sample of the Brainstorm higher education presentation, click here:

Brainstorm Web 2.0 | 52KB pdf