Notorious Beam Team

When we went to Wahaca in Covent Garden we filled our pockedts with what we thought were prettily coloured boxes of matches. But joy of joys they turned out to be little cardboard sticks with chile seeds attached to them.

I didn't take a picture of the seed book from Wahaca but I have found a website called Matchstick Garden which does them. They make a great alternative for restaurants and businesses instead of making boxes of matches.



So we planted our chile seeds about 2 weeks ago in some vague hope that they might sprout. And shock of shocks... they've only gone and sprouted! Our office is rapidly developing into a tropical garden with a bird of paradise, 2 Sauza agave plants, a small succulent and 8 nubile chile plants. In only a matter of months we'll be harvesting our crop of chiles!





Well done Wahaca. What a great example of new marketing. Essentially they have given away something surprising, interesting, relevant, good and talkworthy. On object of sociability that gives Wahaca a feeling of authenticity, goodness and engagement. Keep an eye out for updates on how the little chaps are getting on.

From a supplier in Russia these wall mounted party clocks are good fun. They respond the level of vibe at your house party / bar and measure the type of party you're having. Would make a good piece of branded Ooze.

From Coroflot:

"TwentyFour Wine uses rubber bands as its label. In doing so an everyday item is transformed into something beautiful. This reflects a good wine's ability to transform a normal meal or occasion into something more meaningful and unique."

Oozey bottle design. It's playful, tactile and something to talk about. I wonder if this popped up on the Stormhoek project.

From Think Geek:

"The Ultimate in Cool Style

Your tasty beverage is warm, so what do you do? Reach into the freezer and grab an ice-cube or three. Plonk. Swirl. Cold again. But, as you circulate through the crowd, body-heat warms your drink. The ice melts, and you're left again with a warm, and now watered-down, beverage. This is neither stylish nor efficient.

Sleek, shiny and way way coolAt ThinkGeek Labs, we're all about science, so we experimented. We gave Timmy, the ThinkGeek lab monkey, a highball of a tasty amber colored beverage. Instead of ice, we gave him the Piet Hein Drink cooler, a hunk of highly polished super-ellipsoid stainless steel, stuck it in the freezer for an hour, and dropped it into Timmy's drink. Plonk. Swirl. Cold again. We watched as he mingled through the party.

The drink remained cold - colder than a similar volume of ice could make it. It stayed cold longer... MUCH longer, and didn't dilute the drink. The magic behind this is a liquid core of a top-secret substance that freezes solid and releases its cooling mojo slowly. And talk about style! The shiny metal egg in his drink turned lots of heads and instantly made him the center of attention."

Great piece of ooze. Really premium. Something to get talked about.

Who fancies having a personalised barware set as recommened by This Next members:



To buy any of the items click here.

The wider point of all this is that This Next is a brilliant site: it is a user generated, discovery social network where users share cool things they find. Whenever we make stuff/ooze to support our brands our aim should be to get it on this site.

From Anamorphic Series

"The Anamorphic Cup is the first product to employ the centuries old visual play of the anamorphic cylinder.

The stainless steel cup has a polished mirror finish. The porcelain saucer is printed with distorted images or words. These graphics can only be viewed correctly though the curved, reflective surface of the cup. The image is indecipherable when the cup and saucer are separate.

The initial launch of the Anamorphic Series was in the form of a prototype salt and pepper shaker. It was first shown in 2000 by designer, Ross McBride, at the 100% Design show in London. The Anamorphic Cups were first shown as prototypes during Tokyo Designers Block 2003, and consequently became a retail product the following year.

The Anamorphic Cups are the first in the Anamorphic Series range of products. Future items will include a creamer and sugar dispenser, and drinking glasses."



As we've noticed before there's a Guinness version of this... Wouldn't it be fun if we could make some really cool branded glassed like this. It would make for a great piece of Ooze and would definitely be talked about!

Brief extract from the excellent adliterate blog:

"Stop brushing the 'mother's ruin' heritage under the shag pile but embrace it with the ferocity of a dog on heat. Wallow in the debauched world of 18th century London whose 17,000 gin houses were rapidly sending the capital to the dogs. In particular design your bottle to look like something straight out of Hogarth's Gin Lane. This will give you stand out on the back bar, curiosity value and a way in to a wonderfully rich visual language.

Wrap this counter category approach up in a personality that revels in the unusualness of the product - maybe publishing your own newspaper, holding an annual Chap Olympiad, encouraging bartenders to play croquet or providing rushed commuters with momentary relief."

For the rest of the post click here and explore the links.



It's a great case study of how to launch a brand into a stagnant market and highlights that using the internet in the spirit of the brand is a very powerful tool. What I like most is their use of well thought out merchandise that people actually want in their lives. This brand has Ooze written all over it.