We talked with the executives of LPK company, which claims to be the world’s largest employee-owned brand design agency with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. Richard Cleveland and Samuel Charlier told Popsop about how that employee ownership scheme works, what the European offices are up to and why clients consider LPK a «happy brand».

You are welcome to share your thoughts on this article written by Darren Foley, Managing Director at Pearlfisher, London

We are all too aware of the ongoing economic difficulties and retail caution with Habitat, Thornton’s and Jane Norman three more casualties of the British High Street. But all is not doom and gloom. The Royal Wedding and choice of British designers and British brands favoured undoubtedly gave yet another boost to the British economy, an iconic ‘Cool Britannia’ message is being heralded in the run up to Britain’s hosting of the 2012 Olympics and we are welcoming the news (19 June) that luxury British fashion group Mulberry announced a sharp rise in profitsreporting a jump to £23.3m from £5.1m a year ago.

You are welcome to share your thoughts on this article written by Steve Puttock, Managing Director at Schawk, Inc., London

The global marketplace is providing businesses with fantastic opportunities but also, inevitably, moving into new markets can cause headaches! One area for particular concern is around the creation of international advertising and marketing campaigns. For the sake of efficiency, it makes sense to create a master campaign that can then be adapted and deployed across local markets. However, this is not a straightforward process by any means.

Innovation. It’s what every client is talking about at the moment.  Why?  Because, as a result of recession-induced budget cuts, the past couple of years have seen an extended period of innovation inactivity for brands.  Instead of investing in NPD, brands have been under continued pressure to massively discount to entice short term sales—but at the same time, by entering a price war they have commoditised their offer and lost the brand essence which justified consumers buying their product over cheaper branded or own label products.