Nike Brand Cathedral

(picture courtesy of the excellent Crackunit - more here)

The Nike pop up store inShoreditch closes next Saturday and is well worth a visit if you haven't seen it. As well as some great product (I bought two of these) the whole experience is great. The shopfittings are beautiful, lots of great graffiti and a room where you can play basketball or whatever.

This idea of creating places where you go to worship the brand are increasingly common; if you watch the crowds at any Apple store many people are just browsing - or maybe going for a lecture. (Flickr has over 80k picture tagged Apple Store!)

The Comme de Garcon Dover Street Market in London is another wonderful example - they curate the space and have lots of competing brands for sale there - all building the perception that Comme really understand style and fashion.

In the car market, the best examples used to be the showrooms on the Champs D'Elysees for Renault and Peugeot but they are less impressive these days. For more examples have a look at the Trendspotting take on brand spaces - though many of these are a little gimmicky for my taste.

Creating a real brand cathedral is expensive, but it can be really effective.

Comments

[Chris The ideasman]

I totally agree with you Simnon,
spent dozen of hours in Apple Regent Street and loved the experience.

Additionally to that it is essential to create a tribe who needs a leader, Seth Godin's new book ("Tribes") comes out on the 21st and I cant wait...