Well, until we saw this one – then we went ‘Aghhhhhh!!!!!!!!’and made a mental note not to paddle in ponds where dogs, frisbees or tennis balls might be.

Enjoy this collection of cute underwater doggies knashing away at toys and random old grannies, in a frankly sinister fashion. These photos were taken by Photographer Seth Casteel who spent hours underwater in Los Angeles taking pictures and risking the health of his legs. Twelve dogs took part in the shoot, including labradors, a border collie, a dachshund, a bulldog, a Belgian tervuren and a King Charles spaniel. A book, Ruff Water, is planned.

We want to share this special day with you, with a selection of romantic and slightly naughty images, videos and products:

Because we think you are…

We give you our (Hidden) Heart (Cupcakes) -- ahh!

We are wearing our heart on our…er…head…

We would take you here on our Valentines date

We promise to listen to every magical word you say tonight

We bought you this cute little puppy

and this 56 carat diamond

If it gets cold on the Island, we can snuggle up…

..and dine out on some Vagina Cupcakes - ooh!

and if all goes well, we’ll make you breakfast in bed

and then who knows….

Watch the Lego Proposal video here

What Happened? Plasters

Muscle Leggings

Little Men Carpet

Ammonite Sink

Smoking Bells, Japan

Rainbow in my room nightlight

Sound machine Interactive Turntable

80s Disco Style – Macbook Pro keyboard back light

With a small waist, ample bust and legs that don’t seem to end, she has been the source of every young girl’s beauty ideals for more than fifty years.  Often criticised as “too superficial”, Barbie has been a great marketing tool, which artist Jocelyne Grivaud celebrates on www.barbiemamuse.com

Here you’ll find Barbie in an array of iconic poses, dressed in anything from Coco Chanel, to Picasso style or even as an Avatar (our personal favourite).

The fashion retailer ASOS kitted out barbie in some killer LBDs and shoe master Christian Louboutin has designed a limited-edition collector’s set of Barbies sporting red soles for Net-a-porter.com. Say hello to Dolly Forever (wearing fringed boots and a safari dress) and Anemone Barbie (in a lime satin floor-sweeper) who both come with not one but three pairs of lust-worthy Louboutins. Yes, we can still lust over them, even if they are in miniature.

There’s also Cat Burglar Barbie, who’s all leather catsuit and leopard-print thigh-high boots – these dolls aren’t for kids! Log on to Net-a-porter.com now to buy the über-collectable dolls for £100. http://www.net-a-porter.com/product/60586

This was thanks to an installation by Greyworld art collective, on behalf of Tropicana’s Brighter Mornings campaign. The artificial sun emitted light equivalent to 60,000 light bulbs and could be marvelled at and appreciated through dusty sunglasses.

We pity the poor girl that had to sit in a deckchair in January wearing a cosy warm vest (!!).

Tropicana initially launched this campaign in one of Canada’s northernmost towns where days go by without the sun rising at all. Despite the idea being more paramount and suited to this particular town, Londoners warmed to it nonetheless. With ad-worthy footage from the spectators along with nationwide press coverage, it has proved a success for Tropicana.

Lynx is predominantly known, worlwide for its laddish advertising in which scantily-clad women flock towards men in their hundreds or fall from the skies in mockingly angelic costume at the push of an aerosol can’s button. With such a strong macho and frankly chauvinistic brand aesthetic and advertising some could say is demeaning to women, belittling them as nothing more than sexual objects, it is surprising to learn that they are currently launching a scent for women!

At first it seems, with little change in aerosol graphics and an unusually dull advertising campaign it is unlikely to appeal to women. With a target market of 15-24 year olds, however, it is possible that young teens may be a major buyer due to the heightened sexuality and personal discovery experienced during this time. With Lynx often worn by young teenage girls as an attempt to affiliate with the opposite sex, it is probable that with a women’s scent this could become a more accepted ritual, which could span across into young adulthood.

Similarly, like Yorkie’s ongoing campaign in which it is claimed to be “Not For Girls”, women and young girls alike respond in a retaliating way, challenging the brand by purchasing the product anyway. Women’s Lynx could be the new way of actively shunning the macho approach of the brand showing that women are in acceptance of it.

However, by becoming a unisex, rather than solely male brand, could the campaign backfire and alienate the very men who treasure it as a product that is just for them? Or will we start to see semi naked men, ripping off their clothing and flocking to any woman who douses themselves in the irrisistible fragrance? (We’re hoping!)

By adding a feminine version, the overall masculinity and macho-nature of the brand may be lost, and along with it some of its loyal Lynx Lads. Time will tell…

We’d like to extend a big thanks for this fat inducing ‘thank you’ gift to Us from Zack our Intern.

Prospective Interns – take note! The bar has been raised…can you beat this? If yes, contact Seb@Vividbrand with your C.V .

The purpose of the Portas review was to identify what the Government, local authorities, businesses and others can do together to promote the development of new models of prosperous and diverse high streets. 

For her summary of recommendations see the list at the bottom of the page below:

Whilst we recognise that hard and cold commercials are without doubt preventing fledgling businesses from starting and flourishing on our local high streets, what is most interesting, is Portas’s focus on social engagement, community development and the ‘Neighbourhood plan’.

High streets originally emerged from an essential need to visit the best vendors in your village or town to snap up fresh, organically grown vegetables (in the days when organic was not trendy, but meant vegetables went ‘off’ very quickly), hand kneaded bread from the village Baker and meat to feed the family. Knowing who supplied your food and who was the best vendor in your town was an essential part of the commercial transaction and it was implicitly understood by Mums that being friendly and building a relationship with your vendor could ensure you would get the best cuts of meat, your granary loaf would be saved for you from the baying masses on Saturday morning and you might even benefit from home deliveries. Out of Britain’s large cities, this system still exists in small pockets of the country, but to many city dwellers, this kind of retail transaction is unheard of in modern high streets.

The difference between this type of transaction with a local high street vendor and retail engagement with mass market retailers in large city shopping centres or out of town retail parks is based in human nature.

Firstly, commercial transactions are very much between individual PEOPLE as opposed to a person and a big BRAND or RETAILER. Here lies the key. Where there is a transaction between two people, a personal engagement and relationship with the person who runs the store you are purchasing from will develop. You are then likely to recommend said vendors to your neighbours, friends and local family, who will then undoubtedly gather and connect on the high street when shopping. This builds community engagement and support, drives more footfall and fosters competition between like vendors in the area.

This engagement simply does not exist in a mass supermarket, or in out of town retail, primarily due to the scale and size and the sheer volume of consumers. You are highly unlikely to ever see the same people or shop assistants in the Supermarket you visit and frankly no one really cares if they do in any case, because what is attracting consumers to mass retailers and out of town shopping centres, are the LOW PRICES and convenience. But what is missing from these transactions are ‘the human factor’. And it is the human factor that fosters community life and engagement and builds diversity, interest and unique brands and business for our High Street. Out of town shopping centres such as Westfield differentiate themselves from the high street by creating a shopping ‘experience’ that is all about entertainment, interaction and fun. I recently attended a Harpers Bazzaar Beauty event in Westfield, London, that featured a beauty consultation with the Magazine’s Beauty Editor, a fashion show, fantastic bands and personal styling advice, for example. Would this ever happen on a high street? Sadly very rarely. In fact, if you were to visit any two high streets across the country right now, you would probably find rows of the same chain stores and shops, all missing that critical ‘ human factor’, entertainment or theatre. Is it any wonder customers are deserting our unimaginative, cloned high streets?

Vivid Brand is lucky to reside next to a fantastic street called Lambs Conduit Street in London. Here you will find a multitude of independent boutiques, gift stores, hand made crafts, florists, cafes and galleries. Whilst the street is no more than 400 metres long, one could quite easily spend an entire afternoon browsing it’s wares, talking to the shop owners and lounging in it’s cafes, or attending on of it’s exclusive events. Lambs Conduit Street has got right, what so many high streets have got wrong.  If you would like to see how how a high street could and should look, come and visit and pop in to say hi to us afterwards.

httpv://www.monocle.com/sections/edits/Web-Articles/Lambs-Conduit-Street/

Visit Lambs Conduit Street

Shoppers, or Human Beings, like human interaction and engagement. If you make someone happy, they will ‘like’ you and will want to talk to you again and visit your store. Mass market Retailers and brands are now slowly evolving and re-establishing the way they engage with their customers using new technology. Whilst you can still tell friends you ‘Like’ X Brand, you can now also post it to your Facebook status and Twitter feeds, or post photos of desired items for comments and discussion. Or if you are areal fan, you can even create a blog to share your love. Biotherm, a skin brand tapped into the human factor by using Twitter to look for people complaining of being ‘tired’ and then offered them free product samples for their new anti fatigue skin range. A great idea, but the brand could have used the technology to suggest they visit a Biotherm pop up store to drive footfall onto the high street. But what is their incentive to do this  currently? (queue Mary’s very pertinent points about business rates and utilising empty retail space).

The report details how retail spending on the high street is falling massively in favour of shopping centres and out of town stores and central to this decline is to the impact that increasing spend online and via mobiles is having upon the high street. Consumers have massively changed their shopping behaviours and patterns in the last 5 years and no longer see bricks and mortar Retailers and Websites as two different things. They see them as one. Consumers now expect to be able to check a price of a product in store on their mobile phone and then order online and perhaps collect in store when it is convenient, or even have the goods delivered to their work. Marks & Spencers perfectly illustrated this when in the first week of the release of their mobile website being launched, a purchase for a sofa worth £4k was made. Yes, that consumer could have made the purchase on the high street, but it was so much more convenient to do this in their lunch hour on their phone.

Technology, social networking, online retail and the penetration of mobiles into the core of the way humans interact and engage with each other, products and brands, is shaping our retails needs, wants and preferences. Brands, retailers and indeed local councils need to harness this to identify strategies for attracting and engaging with their customers in a more meaningful, useful way that looks at REAL human interaction and wider social needs across the evolving Shopper Journey.

Mary Portas’s 28 Recommendations:

1. Put in place a “Town Team”: a visionary, strategic and strong operational management team for high streets

2. Empower successful Business Improvement Districts to take on more responsibilities and powers and become “Super-BIDs”

3. Legislate to allow landlords to become high street investors by contributing to their Business Improvement District

4. Establish a new “National Market Day” where budding shopkeepers can try their hand at operating a low-cost retail business

5. Make it easier for people to become market traders by removing unnecessary regulations so that anyone can trade on the high street unless there is a valid reason why not

6. Government should consider whether business rates can better support small businesses and independent retailers

7. Local authorities should use their new discretionary powers to give business rate concessions to new local businesses

8. Make business rates work for business by reviewing the use of the RPI with a view to changing the calculation to CPI

9. Local areas should implement free controlled parking schemes that work for their town centres and we should have a new parking league table

10. Town Teams should focus on making high streets accessible, attractive and safe

11. Government should include high street deregulation as part of their ongoing work on freeing up red tape

12. Address the restrictive aspects of the ‘Use Class’ system to make it easier to change the uses of key properties on the high street

13. Put betting shops into a separate ‘Use Class’ of their own

14. Make explicit a presumption in favour of town centre development in the wording of the National Planning Policy Framework.

15. Introduce Secretary of State “exceptional sign off” for all new out-of-town developments and require all large new developments to have an “affordable shops” quota

16. Large retailers should support and mentor local businesses and independent retailers

17. Retailers should report on their support of local high streets in their annual report

18. Encourage a contract of care between landlords and their commercial tenants by promoting the leasing code and supporting the use of lease structures other than upward only rent reviews, especially for small businesses

19. Explore further disincentives to prevent landlords from leaving units vacant

20. Banks who own empty property on the high street should either administer these assets well or be required to sell them

21. Local authorities should make more proactive use of Compulsory Purchase Order powers to encourage the redevelopment of key high street retail space

22. Empower local authorities to step in when landlords are negligent with new “Empty Shop Management Orders”

23. Introduce a public register of high street landlords

24. Run a high profile campaign to get people involved in Neighbourhood Plans

25. Promote the inclusion of the High Street in Neighbourhood Plans

26. Developers should make a financial contribution to ensure that the local community has a strong voice in the planning system

27. Support imaginative community use of empty properties through Community Right to Buy, Meanwhile Use and a new “Community Right to Try”

28. Run a number of High Street Pilots to test proof of concept

For the full report from Mary Portas, go here.

Each of the building’s 800 windows were covered with vinyl as 16 projectors, beamed 4D images onto the structure, attracting aproximately 20,000 spectators who lined both sides of the River  Thames to watch.

With 1.8million hits on You Tube to date, this was a fantastic use of marketing budget.  For the price of a low key press campaign, this digital activation raised awareness with a big bang, leveraged the cool factor and implicit endorsement of Deadmau5 and their loyal fanbase, targeted the young and hip crowd and social endorses Nokia need to build brand love and encouraged social sharing amongst those that were there or heard about it.

For those who missed the evening’s show, here’s the video in full:

Whatever it may be, we are frankly loving this Christmas spirit of decadence and exhuberence! In times of economic harship and with online sales sky rocketing, this may look a tad extravagant. However if ever there was a time to create theatre in store to drive footfall back onto the highstreet -- then this is it.

Check out our selection of the best from this year and Christmas’s past:

Swarovski Window, Harrods, London

A spectacular window display portraying an enchanted forest. Featuring thousands of sparkling Swarovski crystal elements of different shapes and sizes.

Karl Lagerfeld’s Windows at Printemp, Paris

An incredible display of imagination and fantasy featuring the Maestro himself and fabulous moving characters.

Watch the amazing video too:

Selfridges White Christmas, London

Epitomising this year’s White Christmas theme, the Oxford Street windows create a true winter wonderland in the heart of the capital.

Each pane of window has been transformed into an enchanting, oversized music box, some playing re-engineered carols whilst others provide eerie, magical sounds to evoke the feeling of a ‘crystal clear Christmas’. Admirers are encouraged to play around with the windows to their heart’s content as each pane is equipped with a state-of-the-art touch-screen wind-up system to control the track.

Get down to Selfridges to be immersed in your favourite festive tunes and guarantee yourself a White Christmas.

Agent Provocateur, London

I wouldn’t normally associate a robot with Christmas, but this is a clever play on ‘boys toys’ for saucy lingerie retailer Agent Provocateur and perfectly targeted at their shoppers at this time of year.

Lego Christmas Tree at St Pancras, London

Made from 600,000 Lego bricks, this HUGE Christmas tree is 40′ tall and is adorned with 1200 Lego baubles. Given 70% of toy sales  are made in the critical last two months pre-Christmas, this is a great vehicle for raising awareness of the brand in a high profile, high footfall area. However, one might question why this was sited so far away from the nearest Lego retailer. A pop up Augmented Reality Lego store could have enhanced this offer. Or  Lego could have created different baubles that represent different products, so that when you scan them with your mobile, it automatically opens up a Lego page for instant wins or online purchasing?

Harrods Christmas 2010, London

This one made it in for sheer wow factor. It literally stopped me in my tracks as I came out the Knightsbridge tube in Christmas 2010.

Harrods theme was the Wizard of Oz -- that old Christmas classic we all know and love!  The whole of the store was lit up in Emerald green and the Wicked Witch of the East’s ruby slippers could be seen, seemingly trapped underneath Harrods. At night the ruby slippers were lite up and glowed red. Fabulous interpretation of Christmas!