Brand Urbanism

A growing number of consumer brands are investing in the city, working together with cities to find solutions for urban issues. In a time of austerity, brand urbanism provides local governments with more possibilities in realizing ambitious projects, while giving brands a one-off opportunity to show their involvement in and responsibility for the city.

Coca-Cola Launches Pop-Up Dining Room

Coca-Cola is known for its always surprising marketing campaigns. This time the Atlanta-based producer of the sugary black gold joined forces with the Italian TV-chef Simone Rugiati to promote eating together with friends or family. On a cozy plaza in Naples, Italy a converted Coca-Cola delivery truck pulled out a dining table. Inside the truck Simone Rugiati was cooking a wide variety of local dishes. As the video shows, everybody was invited to join in on the fun.

Buy Your City A Landmark

London’s brand-new landmark looks like two cranes making love together. In fact, Anish Kapoor's 115 meters high structure is clearly meant to add a new icon to the city of London for the occasion of this year's Olympics.

Trade Your Dog’s Poo For Free Wi-Fi

Internet provider Terra collaborated with DDB Mexico to launch a campaign that rewards you for disposing your dog’s droppings with free Wi-Fi. Talk about a treat, and encouragement of good behaviour for the tethered ‘always connected to our mobile devices’ individual. Instead of special signs or the threat of a fine, this pilot tries to make to those poo-littered parks in Mexico (a little) cleaner with positive reinforcement...

Smurbanism Works!

What was supposed to be a temporary transformation looks to be a permanent change. The South Spanish town Juzcar was turned entirely blue for the latest Smurfs movie by Sony Pictures. After 141 days blueness, the inhabitants of the small town have voted to keep the façades of the buildings blue forever. The reason is […]

Let’s Paint The World’s Ugliest City

With the project Couleurs Carolo, the Dutch company AkzoNobel aims to support the Belgian city of Charleroi to become a bit more colorful.

AOL’s Rainbow City

We predicted the top trend of 2011 to be ‘marketing is urbanism’, which stands for the increasing involvement of brands and companies in shaping the urban atmosphere. Brand exposure seems to go beyond ordinary advertising — it has become an integral part of urbanism, architecture and urban planning practice. AOL’s Rainbow City is just another campaign […]

London’s Cycle Super Highways Get Barclays Blue

Worldwide governments have to economize, which generally means there will be less money to spend on the city's public spaces. Here on Pop-Up City we are very much interested in new financing strategies concerning public space. Would it, for instance, be possible to give world-leading brands the opportunity to invest in public spaces while giving them some brand visibility in return? Usually only talking about such an idea leads to angry faces and automatic defending mechanisms. Generally, brand involvement is considered something bad in the urban planning community. It seems to be completely normal that local governments sell all empty walls for advertisement space in order to earn some extra money, while at the same time it is not done to ask brands to get involved in public space design... even when the community could get something worth-full in return.

Puma's Flex City

Apparently connections between brands and spatial interventions are succesful, considering the rise of the pop-up stores. The formule though seems to change slightly from using temporary empty spaces to a more profound architectural strategy. Complete new flexible constructions are set up with the singular issue of promoting a brand. PSFK comes up with the new […]