Tuesday 24th August:
Banish the bugs (beautifully)
These days, who’d be without a hand sanitiser? They’re great for freshening up after Tube travel or banishing that ‘ewww’ feeling when the soap and water supplies are hit and miss at festivals.
This little number has come to our attention for its good looks and all-natural bug-beating prowess.
Its list of ingredients reads more like a health-giving mocktail than a hand sanitiser. Check it out: manuka honey, liquid vitamin C, white willow bark, aloe vera, zinc, radish root, white tea leaf, lavender and lime. Mmmmm. At least those germy germs can die happy. Find out more at http://www.quashme.com/
Tagged with: Health
Friday 20th August:
Take note
If you’ve been stuck in meetings all day and have the headache to prove it, the Osim iPen might be your new best friend.
It’s a retractable ballpoint pen with a built-in vibrating acupressure massager. Word has it that applying it to your temple area melts the stress away. Apparently it even comes with a guide to various acupressure points all over the body.
Via www.osim.com/uk
Tagged with: Health
Friday 23rd July:
What’s the future post-World Cup?
The world’s media and soccer fans may have left Johannesburg, but Nike wants to remind people about an even bigger goal: the continuing need for AIDS education and medication in Africa. Its new spot promoting its partnership with (RED) aims to stir up soccer fans by featuring stars such as Didier Drogba.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglRldqdCo4
The campaign extension comes with a Twitter-based interactive element: tagged tweets will be added to the ‘Join the Movement’ map of Africa that’s made up of red shoelaces — which Nike is selling under Nike(RED) and donating the proceeds of to the Global Fund. Nike’s Twitter tags echo its ‘Write the Future’ World Cup campaign: ‘Lace Up, Save Lives’ for its red shoelace campaign, You’ve seen the future. Now write it. Join the fight.
Via. http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/07/13/Nike-Write-the-Future-Post-World-Cup.aspx
Tagged with: Charity, Health, Sport
Friday 30th April:
Progressive yoghurt
The health benefits of probiotics have been recognised for years, but consumers mostly buy them in nutraceutical form. Now, however, you can make your own. Australia’s Microbioflora has produced Progurt, a do-it-yourself yoghurt kit that aims to provide an alternative to those store-bought products.
The company sells a branded DIY yoghurt maker along with accessories including refrigeration tubs, electrolyte complexes, prebiotic syrups and probiotic sachets. With over 1 trillion CFU capability, each Progurt probiotic sachet contains a formulation of multiple strains of probiotic bacteria of human origin to enhance and strengthen the immune system. No artificial flavours, colours or preservatives are added. A starter pack including one incubator, one tub, prebiotic syrup and a pack of 15 probiotic sachets is priced at AUD 440.
Currently, Progurt is available online and through select Australian retailers.
Ref. http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/progurt/
Tagged with: DIY, Food and drink, Health
Friday 22nd January:
Let your fans decide
Vitamin Water’s latest flavour, launching in March this year, was developed and named by the brand’s Facebook fans. The black cherry and lime flavoured drink will be called ‘Connect’. One Facebook fan, Sarah from Illinois, won $5,000 for her role in developing this new product.
The competition was interesting and unique in that it used Facebook fans to develop all aspects of the product and is a great example of co-creation.
Choosing the flavour – over the summer Facebook fans were able to monitor and add to buzz about different flavours. The more chatter about a flavour online, the higher it was rated on the Facebook page. And by mid-September the most ten talked-about flavours were put to Facebook fans for them to vote for their favourite. This is a good example of using a community to help sort and rank ideas in a co-creation process. Fans couldn’t create their own flavours from scratch, but could influence the top 10 flavours and then vote for the best.
Designing the packaging – when the flavour had been selected (in October last year), the Facebook fans were able to use the app to design the packaging – the look and feel, the blurb and colours used on the label. Fans could collaborate with up to two more Facebook friends to develop the packaging and the final winners were chosen by a panel of experts.
Naming the product - alongside the packaging and look-and-feel, Facebook Fans were asked to name the product. The team who created the winning name were given a prize of $5,000.
Tagged with: Co-creation, Food and drink, Health, Social networking, Water
Monday 11th January:
A new kind of ‘chilled’ drink
In Los Angeles, medical marijuana dispensaries outnumber Starbucks and McDonald’s restaurants combined. And now the city is embracing a new mood-altering beverage with a cannabis-oriented marketing campaign. (A big thanks to Eliot S from the windy city).
Southern California has become the bestselling market for Mary Jane’s Relaxing Soda, a sugary drink laced with kava, a South Pacific root purported to have sedative properties. Matt Moody, the nutritional supplement developer who created the beverage, said the name is an unabashed reference to weed, though the relaxant compounds in kava are chemically unrelated to those in marijuana.
Along with drinks like Slow Cow and Ex Chill, Mary Jane’s is part of a new group of so-called slow-down or anti-energy drinks. They rely on folk-medicine sedatives, including kava, camomile and valerian, to provide an alternative to caffeine-laced and jitter-inducing energy drinks such as Red Bull. These ‘relaxation’ drinks have become popular fodder for food bloggers, with some calling Mary Jane’s ‘weed in a bottle’.
Nathan Scholl, a waiter at a Santa Monica restaurant, said he’s ‘hooked’ on the cola-coloured liquid, which comes packed in a clear 12oz bottle with a blue label. “I drink it after a long day. It takes five or 10 minutes to sink in and then I feel relaxed and slightly euphoric,” he said.
Ref. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-kava29-2009dec29,0,6531543.story
Tagged with: Energy, Food and drink, Health
Tuesday 4th August:
Co-operative advertising
Want children to eat healthy? Brand their food into an international icon; their favorite athletic shoemaker, perhaps. That’s what the Association of Swiss Health Insurers, Santé Suisse, did. It has re-launched a campaign that features a banana in the shape of a Nike swoosh, with the words ‘Just Do It’ underneath. Good on Nike for teaming up with a health campaign, and good for Santé Suisse for helping to make being healthy look cool. (Merci mille fois, Le Nic.)
Thursday 30th July:
A ‘regular’ cookbook for digestive troubles
‘The Un-Constipated Gourmet: Secrets to a Moveable Feast — 125 Recipes for the Regularity Challenged’ cookbook by Danielle Svetcov promises to help people poo without lecturing on exercise, low-fat eating or odd food pairings. Instead, the book offers gourmet recipes (the author boldly compares her tome to The Joy of Cooking) that use ingredients proven to, er, get things moving.
Svetcov’s categories for effective regularity are fruit, legumes, chocolate and coffee. Recipes include bourbon truffles, gorgonzola-stuffed dried fig salad, chorizo and chickpea stew, and red wine compote with crème fraiche.
Monday 23rd March:
How can you be more persuasive?
Think like Fitness First. No more living in denial about the size of your waistline, thanks to this fantastic, albeit terrifying, guerilla marketing initiative from the health club chain. Unsuspecting commuters in the Netherlands are faced with viewing their body weight in bright lights – quite literally – when they take a seat at this Rotterdam bus stop. A little scary maybe but extraordinarily clever, and guaranteed to increase membership numbers at the local Fitness First. (Thanks Ben for this one)
http://www.ibelieveinadv.com/2009/03/fitness-first-bus-stop/
Tagged with: Health, Retail
Wednesday 28th January:
Self-help is on the rise so how can you make the most of it?
Think like PatientPak – a collection of antimicrobial and other hygiene items for those planning a hospital visit. Its aim? To kill 99.99% of bugs, including nasties such as MRSA, salmonella and E. coli.
For £16, you get a set of 14 different germ prevention items, ranging from hand, surface and fabric sanitizing sprays to an advice leaflet, disposable pen and polite bedside sign to remind others to wash their hands.
PatientPak was made available from UK stockists such as Amazon.co.uk, Tesco and Mothercare late last year. Separately, much of the pack’s contents are readily available, but by bundling a range of products for a specific purpose, the brand has created a new product that should speak both to consumers’ worries and their desire for convenience.
Ref. http://www.springwise.com/index.php?page=2