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TCH wins best culture blog for 2007 & 2008!

It's official. We are proud to announce that we have won the Best Culture Blog category at the Weblog Awards for 2008. We are thrilled to take out the prize, our second, after also winning the same category at last year's awards.



A huge thank you to all of our very progressive and active readers who voted for us. We thank you for supporting us. We look forward to continuing to inform and inspire you with our finds.



Pics via TCH Platinum

Cool hunting, we've discovered, has an interesting side effect. Each week we receive excited emails from the creatives, designers, architects and entrepreneurs we have featured on the site reporting massive spikes in traffic on their websites and an avalanche of international enquires from agencies, retailers and other potential customers wanting to know how they can get their hands on their work. Most report being inundated with enquiries from the international print media - major magazines and newspapers who rely on The Cool Hunter and other great blogs to find content for their pages.

It's all part of the Blog effect, lead by the Bloguls (blog mogul). The Bloguls have revolutionized the global media and the practice of journalism. Print can no longer compete, in terms of reporting information first. By the time newspapers and magazines hit the news-stands their content is already old news. Bloggers are setting media agendas and have become a crucial resource for print journalists, who rely on them to supply raw, uncensored, immediate information. We experience this first-hand every day when we receive emails from major publications asking us for high res images and more information on posts, which we see covered in their pages weeks later.

The world's most powerful mastheads, such as the Vogues, Vanity Fairs, Wallpapers and New York Times' of the world - have had to accommodate the increasingly influential Bloguls, with whom they now compete for advertising dollars as growing slices of marketing budgets are being funnelled into the blogosphere.

Google validates the Bloguls' influence. As just one example, our recent post on the new W Hotel in Hong Kong ranks as one of the top three posts on the property, just below the site Starwood Hotels that owns W. This means that when anyone in the world does a Google search on W Hong Kong, the very first review they see is ours. The bottom line is that blogs reach more people than print media.

Here at The Cool Hunter, we are happy to report that much of the benefit of our influence as an information source flows straight back to the people and brands we feature. For the past four years we've endeavoured to bring you the most inspiring stuff from across the globe and we are thrilled that the exposure we have given up-and-coming creatives and designers has helped launch careers, build media profiles or taken their businesses to a whole new global level.  

We thought we'd share some of these stories with you from a selection of random posts.



Within 48 hours of being featured in this post Amsterdam-based architecture and interior design group i29 was flooded with emails from design publications around the world including Frame Mag (Netherlands), Monitor Mag (Russia) Elle Decoration (Romania) CASE da Abitare (Italy), LOFT publications (Spain) BOB magazine (Korea), GULF interiors (Dubai) De Architect (Netherlands), ONoffice (UK) Cover Magazine (Venezuela), Sisustajalehti (Finland) Vivenda (Netherlands) Maru Magazine (Korea) and plenty of other print media and numerous design blogs.





Dutch architects and interior designers Uxus recieved a "tenfold" increase in traffic to their website after we featured their project Merus Winery in California. Uxus was flooded by queries from magazines around the world, including Wallpaper (UK), Noblese Mag (Korea), Marie Claire (Brazil), GQ India, Casa Da Abitare (Italy) FX Mag (UK), Absolute Marbella (Spain), Home Journal Mag (Hong Kong), ID Mag (USA), The Shorlist (UK), Future Laboratory (UK) and many more.





"I have received tons of inquiry e-mails from all over the world with regard to my collection after your feature. Several people ordered hats. I assume the order volume would have been quite a bit higher, though, had my online shop been up already.
 
It has been interesting to see that the inquiries also came from very far away places – Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Korea, Israel (in addition to the US, UK, Belgium, etc.). Since I have had a lot of good press in Europe (especially the UK) and in the US and UK for instance through the publications in the respective Vogues I was quite used getting mails and orders from Europe and the US. But before your feature I had definitely fewer attention from the aforementioned other areas.
 
In total, the visitors on my page are up by 100-200% at the moment". Rike Feurstein



"For the month after we were written about in thecoolhunter.net, I watched the history of Europe unfold in my inbox. At the time we only had UK shipping enabled, and I was getting emails every day: he said 'How can you ship to England but not Germany?' and then 'You ship to Germany but not Poland?!' Now we’re in Luxembourg and the Czech Republic and Slovenia. We just enabled shipping to Colombia." Andy Dunn - Bonobos Founder



"Being on The Cool Hunter has resulted in a handful of opportunities - the NYTimes being one of them. After my work was posted on the site and I was commissioned to design an image for the cover of New York Times real estate magazine. My exposure on The Cool Hunter has allowed me to quit my day job." Andy Gilmore



"It’s because thanks too The Cool Hunter I’ve been featured in over 50 magazines that can be viewed on my website under editorials on the information page. The lights even ended up in Argentinean Playboy! Along that I also have generated many jobs within Australia, many o/s enquiries and an actual job in San Francisco.
 
I’m about to move out of my studio in my garage into a real studio which allows me to employ staff, too as business is growing fast and I desperately need more space as well as extra hands. So I can’t begin to tell you how much I thank you for making me famous!" Volker Haug



"The opportunities that thecoolhunter.net feature has provided me are beyond what I could have ever imagined. Not only did it kick start my career as an artist, but it did so almost overnight. I’m a graphic artist for network TV as my day job and fine art was solely a hobby. The day the feature came out I literally woke up, looked at my phone and had about 100 emails asking for information about the piece.  Within a couple of weeks the stats for my website showed over 300 other websites linking to me and nearly a half million visitors to my site from over 60 countries. 

I was written up in a number of international publications and was offered paid corporate speaking engagements such as at Disney animation. I just completed my first solo gallery show but have also had my artwork featured at 2 additional art galleries in group exhibitions. Additionally, I am working on commissioned pieces for international buyers all of whom found me on thecoolhunter.net. Currently my art is being considered for a feature film in which it would appear in a high end home. I am also about to show some pieces in homes for sale in the 10 million dollar plus price range.

There are no words I can use to express my gratitude for the exposure that you have provided for me." Matt Bilfield, artist



"Being featured on The Coolhunter has certainly increased awareness and understanding of Aesop to a very appropriate and progressive audience. Posts have resulted in communication with Case Da Abitare, Harpers Bazaar, Virgin Blue Voyeur, Surface, DIDD (industry), GDR (industry), A4 (Poland), Attitude (Portugal), BMW Magazine (Germany). Belle (Australia), Marie Claire (Australia), Cubes (Singapore) too many to list." Indi Davis - Aesop



Pretty Beach House has been inundated with queries following the distribution of your newsletter and post - I can honestly say it’s one of the best ever results we have seen from the publication of an article. Kate Pascoe Squires - Mark Patrick Agency

 

The Cool Hunter Platinum Trend Briefings
Making other people's business your business so you stay in the know

With close to a million readers each month, The Cool Hunter has become a global authority on cool and innovation. But what you see on the site is only a small sample of our research.

We've been saving the rest for our professional readers who can now access this vast pool of knowledge for the very first time via our new Weekly Trend Briefings. Covering trends in product design, marketing, advertising, social trends and consumer thinking, The Cool Hunter Platinum Trend Briefings allows your business to stay ahead of the innovation eight-ball.

In a globalized 24/7 world staying "in the know" is crucial. Consumers are educating themselves and influencing each other at break-neck speed.

They know more and expect more, presenting a challenge to brands to come up with creative ways of attracting and holding their attention. Much of modern business is about staying ahead of this and keeping abreast of how the innovators are responding.

Which is where The Cool Hunter Platinum Weekly Trend Briefings come in. Our briefings bring the best of The Cool Hunter to your business, so innovation doesn't just become part of your company's internal program - but part of its identity and culture.

Supplied as a PDF, The Cool Hunter Platinum Weekly Trend Briefings are not meant to be hidden away on the desktops of a few select employees in marketing - they are designed to be printed as A3 sized posters and hung around your office so every employee can be inspired by innovation on a weekly basis as they go about their work. Our briefings are about creating and fostering a culture of innovation in your business - offering information as inspiration.

The Cool Hunter Platinum Weekly Trend Briefings are about accessibility - print as many as you want and place them everywhere - from the mailroom to the CEO's boardroom because innovation and ideas inspire everybody in your business to create success.    

This is a paid service. For Annual subscriptions of 48 editions, contact laura@thecoolhunter.net

The World's Coolest Hotel Rooms - the first in a series of the cool hunter-branded books has just been published by Harper Collins Publishers (US). Next in the line will be The World's Coolest Houses, The World's Most Creative Work Environments, The World's Most Innovate Retail Stores and a few other special book projects.