#brand-e

Leica’s new Leica M Monochrom has been made to not even see colours. That’s because it has no colour filter array and can concentrate on luminance values and deliver true black-and-white images.

Michael Kors is leaning heavily on social media to get consumers in a loving frame of mind for Valentine’s Day with a Falling In Love campaign. The fashion brand is deploying the #FallingInLoveWith hashtag across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, and has allied with Marie Claire and Neiman Marcus to put on an online chat series around 10 Things Worth Falling in Love With, writes Maria Stadtmueller.

“For some of you, February 14 is a fun chance to glam up and put on the charm, for others, not so much,” says Kors. “And I get both sides, people. This year, I thought, let’s start a conversation about February 14 that’s more about the potential positives of the day than the obvious negatives. 

Sixty percent of Top 100 Japanese brands are on Twitter compared to 95% of leading companies in the US, according to a Kobe University study. In addition, Japanese corporates simply tweet basic informative messages without engaging consumers, similar to one-way communication in traditional media, while most of their US counterparts mention other users in their tweets, ask questions, retweet other users’ messages and initiate conversations using hashtags.

“The average number of tweets posted in seven days is way higher in the US than Japan. Coca-Cola, Walgreens, MTV, General Electric and Playboy stood out in our American sample as all these brands posted more than 150 messages a week,” says the research. “There was only one brand from Japan which posted more than 150 tweets in a week – [food maker] Ajinomoto.”