Why should brands care about peace? This seemingly odd question has suddenly become a hot topic in agencies and marketing departments around the world. D&AD, the non-profit that represents the creative community, has launched a new pencil, the White Pencil. The award is there to reward creative work that would be worthy of a Black Pencil, but is changing the world for the better at the same time. This year, D&AD’s challenge to the creative community is to make more than 20 pct of the world population aware of World Peace Day.

There are number of reasons why it could be good branding to promote such a big cause as peace in the world. Let’s look at three good reasons to get involved.

1. Brand is the most direct link between the values of the society and the bottom line of your company. So brands need to be on the forefront of the public moods.

If their business practices get out of synch with the public the results could be disastrous.

The environment and climate change are a good examples of that. When fear of global warming went mainstream in the naughties many brands were caught on the back food and lost out on a big opportunity to position themselves as progressive, forward-looking and innovative. Only a few smart brands, for example Toyota and GE, quickly saw the opportunity of aligning themselves with the shift in public attitudes. Both Toyota and GE – Toyota through being first to market with a hybrid car and GE by aggressively marketing Ecoimagination – successfully repositioned themselves as greener than their peers and their competitors are still playing catch up from that.

In a similar way, it is highly likely that the peace cause will be just as mainstream (in fact that is exactly what Peace One Day and D&AD is hoping for). Brands that are on the forefront of this trend will benefit from extra trust and positive associations from all their audiences.

2.  In an increasingly digital world, great content has become more precious than ever. When content is abundant, attention becomes scarce. You will only get it if you have something very interesting to say. So good content is key to any brand campaign. You can no longer run a campaign based on an old brand theme without having something, real, tangible, new and exciting to back it up. Often this new thing is a new product or and added feature to a new produc. But it could also be a new initiative, such as engagement with a good cause.

If brands can find original ways to promote world peace day and integrate it with their brand messages, the peace day involvement could be become a cost- effective way to get a new exciting story about the brand out there. In short, world peace day is potentially great brand content.

3. It’s no news that there’s a war for talent going on. And many bright people want what they do to be meaningful. By taking part in a cause like world peace day, brands get an added reason why someone should work for them. This isn’t only helpful for recruitment.. Working with a good cause is energising and motivating for everyone who already works for the firm. We all know it feels good to do good, and a workplace that does something good in the world feels better to work for than one that doesn’t.

There are many other reasons why brands should take part in the White Pencil and there are also some reasons why it might not be right for all. But at least all ambitious and forward-looking brand managers should think seriously about whether to join in or not. They could be missing out on a big opportunity to push their brand forward in an unexpected way.

Posted in: Branding by rasmusbechhansen
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It’s been a week, and things move on. Still, got some thoughts.

Survivor is dance, music, film and poetry. There’s sculpture, choreography, composition and space design. I’ve never seen so many forms of expression thrown together on a stage. I was curious to take creative insight from the sidelines– watching a part of the development, rehearsals and a couple of the stage performances. I thought it might be instructive to the work of marketers and brand people like us. Our work is not the same, but there are parallels.

1. As with any strong brand creation, the idea matters. A lot. Great art is not random decoration, but follows a big and original vision. Stick to the big thing in your head and heart. Keep it firmly in focus. Don’t let the trials and tribulations of a production sweep it away.

2. Mix it up. Bang a choreographer/composer and a sculptor/painter together, add in one unbounded music director and his inspired orchestra, a massive ensemble of spirited drummers, a troupe of magical dancers. They’ll add, blend and cook it – and there’s no telling where this will go.

3. Be open, stay loose. Yes you have a vision, but let new stuff in. If it works and enhances the idea, take it. Build it in, make it part of whole. Don’t worry whether it was planned or envisioned to begin with. If it’s good.

4. Allow the innocence of outsiders, the kids, the drummers, your mum. The raw impulse of people who are not ingénues who can inject fresh notions to work that has been laboured over by the pros.

5. Take things as they come. And they do come: a riff, a new step, a crash, a flash. Build them into the vision, to round it out. Don’t resist the unexpected contribution of colleagues. They may have just the final piece of the jigsaw you’re looking for.

6. Your audience is part of the project. If they’re flat, the show will be flat. You get nothing back. If you invite them in, welcome them as part of the experience, you’ll get that spark.

7. Raise the tension. Demand people’s courage. Let them tread risky paths. Feel the danger. And then, love it. And keep calm. It’s a combustible formula.

8. Don’t be prissy. The arts aren’t compartmentalised. A dancer is a cameraman. A drummer is a reader. A singer is a sculpture. Clearly, the guy from the Independent on Sunday with the look-at-me, spiky, red, glittery hair-horns clearly had some trouble ranging beyond his pigeonhole. Don’t listen to sour critics.

9. It’s ok to be incomplete. The end idea matters, even if it’s a project in process. The aim to realize the vision is interesting in itself. A strong idea is strong, even if it’s unfinished. It’s ok to share, before it’s perfect. My friend Lance watched Survivors, got it, and said that.

Posted in: Art, Branding, Film, Music by michael
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We weren’t surprised by the debate that greeted the new Waterstones logo announced on Wednesday. Whenever a much-loved highstreet brand undergoes a necessary change, it is always received with fervent critique.

We’ve talked briefly about the brand implications on our News section. But in the open forum of our blog, we wanted to address a different and unfortunate line of commentary that emerged. Specifically, that the new logo breaks a sacred rule of grammar.

Any linguist or English student will tell you that dropping the apostrophe from ‘Waterstone’s’ does not break any rules. For in fact there are no ‘official’ rules for punctuation in the English language. They will then calmly explain that what we have are really just guidelines. And that even these don’t really apply to company names. Look at Lloyds TSB, Boots, Foyles and Selfridges.

There’s a great post here about why, despite this, people get so upset about ‘mis-used’ apostrophes. But the really sad part is, that in their self-inflicted sorrow, they forget to consider about how dropping the apostrophe affects the communication of the name.

Do we still know that it is the same bookshop? Does the name feel less old-fashioned and proprietary? Is it an easier word to type? Does it match the url? Does it look better?

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. But in each case our answer was, “Largely, yes.” Which goes some way to explain the decision.

As a final thought, in the last chapter of Ulysses, James Joyce used just two full stops in 36 pages. The power and emotion of this chapter are to a great extent amplified by his contravention of a basic punctuational guideline.

Feel free to pop into a Waterstones and check this for yourself. If it turns out you agree, you could even buy the book. And discover that punctuation, like language itself, is not about right and wrong. But what it actually says.

Posted in: Uncategorized by timjackson
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Barbican rehearsal rooms. Sunday. Early December. Gray outside. Roads, not much moving. It’s still early. People come drifting in. With drums. Every kind of drum. Every size. Every tone. Inside, some massive, and I mean crazy huge, drums are set up. Yaron gets things going. Fast. No faffing about. Rhythms on sheets, beats and tunes are riffed and shared and learned, in turbo time. The energy is off the scale, immediately. The music director – Yaron – is literally bouncing off walls, chairs, people and drums. He shoutsings, don’t know what else to call it. It’s electric. It’s very Israeli: utterly precise and pinpointed, and, at the same time, loosely, inspirationally, creatively wild. Beautifully unhinged..

The drums, our focus, make up about one eighth, maybe only one sixteenth, of what the production team had to worry about, as it developed what yesterday night premiered as Survivor, the Hofesh Shechter and Antony Gormley extravaganza of sound, sculpture, song, movement, dance and metal that, last night, set the BarbicanTheatre alight with a fresh appreciation of what the creative mixture of arts can produce.

The 200 drummers. Anyone who can drum. And read the notice to join in, back then in the old year. And drum they could. The darbukas, the jembes, the bodrums and tablas, basses, toms and snares of people who had never ever come together before that first rehearsal. Galvanised by the Hofesh pros: Chopper and Norm, Dominic and Spaghetti (he’s thin. And tall). Massive sounds, booming giant drums and gongs. Bang. Daggadigadaggadagga. And among them all, in the middle of the din, my son, with all his disabilities and with all his intense love for rhythm and music. Drumming away, radiating, laughing, banging out creativity, banging out freedom. Closely looked after by his sister Eliana, drummer too, swaying to the beat right next to him.

Susan and I were privileged – blessed – to witness the stages of creation towards the finished thing, towards perfection. Especially the drumming part. So much else must have happened in quiet, even tortuous moments, when the piece was dreamt, conceived, fought over and fought through. So much utterly challenging work and detail, no doubt leaving little peace of mind – or even a piece of mind – for holiday recovery and refueling after a manic year (Political Mother!).

And were the producer team too busy to plan, foresee and arrange for my son’s very considerable needs? Not a bit, despite being frantically busy. They had kept a track of their minds open, to map out his participation. Focused, professional and creatively uncompromising, absolutely. But human and caring too – never too busy for our boy and his quirky challenges. It’s a magic combination of contrasts– like ice and fire – and it came together, with the piece, with the choreography and in the work especially of the Lauras (Sutton & Broome), producers extraordinaires.

Chofesh, Yaron, Anthony, the Band, Helen, the Lauras. Others too. A creative team combining, vision, verve, imagination, sharp sharp performance, easy humour, and a wonderfully free ranging wit to smash conventions and surprise the senses. Throw in the brilliant dancers (he did), add a blast of Gormley Genius, bring in the sounds and steps of the East, pour in a couple of dozen strings, trumpets, Ikea boxes (best use of anything Ikea in a long time) and you reach towards a new idea of man, space and art.

We watched one part of it grow, the drums, 200 drums. And then we watched how it all came together. Yesterday, for the first time.

We too work in the creative sphere. Design. Words. Sound. Brands. But if it’s art, it’s commercial art. Whereas Survivor exploded onto one of London’s great stages as art proper. Loved it. And will never forget it.

There’s much for us to learn about pathbreaking creative, and I’ll blog that out in a next piece.

*Chofesh. Hebrew for Freedom; Liberty. My point exactly.

Posted in: Art, Branding, Music by michael
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So basically I love books. Like LOVE them.  I mean, I admit that I probably fetishise them in a way that isn’t normal for everyone (going into a shop and stroking the covers of books that I won’t be able to buy that day, but promising I’ll come back for them when my next pay check comes in, does sometimes earn me a look that’s somewhere between confusion and pity) but I honestly don’t care. I love the smell of them, the feel of them, the way the spines look when they’re aligned on my shelf. I love the many ways in which I can organize them – alphabetically, by genre, by the third letter of the author’s second name – and seriously, Dewey is my homeboy. Books just have an intrinsic aesthetic appeal that cannot be matched or replicated by a screen.

When someone tells me that they have a Kindle, I’m going to be honest, I lose a bit of respect for them, and I know that ultimately we’re never going to really be friends. I know it makes sense, I do. Books are expensive, they’re heavy and they take up loads of space.  I was 5 when we moved house for the first time, and all I really remember about that experience is the various removal men who came round to help us pack up and transport our stuff, straining and groaning under the weight of our household library. “You’ve got a lot of books, don’t you?” didn’t really seem to cut it. I’ve since moved house twice now on my own, and the transit of my personal book collection is without a doubt the most cumbersome part, but for me they are the most important of all my belongings. Some of them I bought myself, some I stole from my parents’ shelves, some I got because I liked the cover, some I got because I thought if other people saw the cover they’d think I was really smart.  Some were inherited, some were gifts from friends and some were from a boy who took me to Sandoe’s Bookshop on Blacklands Terrace and read me Pablo Neruda poetry amongst the stacks. They’re all special and they all mean something and I wouldn’t part with them for anything.

While it’s true that ebooks offer you the possibility of owning hundreds of texts in one small machine for minimal prices, I don’t believe that this is necessarily a good thing. When you buy a book from a bookshop you engage with it physically, you hold it in your hand, you see how much it costs, you assess the amount of time that it will take you to read it and decide whether you have that time to give it. You are making a commitment to it.  It’s all very well being able to download multiple books in a matter of minutes, but if they’re not there on your shelf all beautifully bound and inviting and begging to be read, are you really going to bother? Doubtful.

E-readers also actively encourage awful things like making it easier for middle-aged women to read the Twilight Saga on the tube without the embarrassment of being seen to be a middle-aged woman reading the Twilight Saga on the tube.  Guys, some things feel wrong for a reason.  It’s just about acceptable if you’re a 14 year old, but I hate to have to break it to you, Edward Cullen is a fictional character and he will never love you. I’m sorry.  However, I think the best argument against e-readers come from the people themselves. I really just cannot get behind any product with a marketing campaign as condescendingly smug as the current Kindle Christmas advert. In it, the clever man is smarming at his silly girlfriend for carrying around all her books and magazines in a huuuge handbag before showing her how much better his Kindle is, “Woww!” she swoons. Vomit. His self-satisfied grin is enough to make your skin crawl. It just shows how someone can have access to all this knowledge in the palm of their hand and still be an utter moron. He is the guy with the Kindle. Ask yourself, are you that guy? Do you want to be that guy? Hells no.

Celia Archer, 21, reads English at the University of Bristol.

(Image: Illustration by Quentin Blake for Roald Dahl’s Matilda)

Posted in: Books, Education, Life & Style, Technology by celiaclementine
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Everyone in the world with every book ever written in their pockets. Popping into their local Idea Shop to exchange monologues after a quick sesh with the ‘TeachURself: Shakespeare’ app. Grabbing a flirtatiously-designed copy of Mrs Dalloway on the way out for a quick cruise round Tate Modern. Hold on, your hover bike needs charging! Not to worry, you can hop on its Borisian predecessor instead…

It’s an exciting vision. But there’s something missing. Not from the book cover (whether paper or plastic (or both)). But from what’s inside.

Technological advances influence the way we live. They also influence the way we think, and the way we create. To throw out some famous examples: All-weather paint lets artists go outside for the first time: Smackdown! Impressionism. Cut small enough grooves into vinyl: Hello the album. Photography outdoes Realism: Abstraction does it better. Electric power: H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Home editing music software for the antisocial: Wait, is that really a good idea…? O, hi Moby.

For better or worse, technology transforms art as well as its distribution. So, on the eve of the digital book revolution, we can make one guaranteed prediction: literature is going to change.

And not a moment too soon. Contemporary writing is in a rut. Postmodernism, the last thing that anyone got (ironically) excited about, was killed off in 1991 with American Psycho. (And some argue that it never really happened in the first place). A glance over the Booker Prize archive and you aren’t exactly spoiled for choice: a) Old man/woman poignantly reminiscing past mistakes b) Something about poverty and/or magic in India. Try poetry and we find our esteemed laureate, Carol Anne Duffy: “The reason an onion is like love is that it has many layers and it makes you cry.” It’s not a terrible idea, but if it’s done better on E4 then it’s just not trying hard enough: “Love is like a roll of tape/It’s real good for making two things one/But just like that roll of tape/Love sometimes breaks off before you were done.”

So, what’s the new wave going to look like? There’s a great article by Megan Garber, about how the social nature of (non-fiction) books could become more important than the books themselves. A sort of Roland Barthes 2.0. It goes a bit far, but New Fiction will surely be characterized by social. No more book clubs or thinking that no one understands your love for Barthelme, just click on a paragraph and get all emotional with someone who loves it even more than you. This instant, line-by-line public scrutiny will leave little place to hide for the whimpering oldies and onion similes.

The novel itself will contract (‘Nanovella’, coined) to accommodate shorter attention spans. Style will become more about what is unsaid than what is said and such ambiguity will further fuel speculation and social debate.

With lower distribution costs, publishers will take risks on new writers and those they miss will stage their own social media driven coups against the dissolute establishment.

And the language of literature will evolve, refreshed with the new digital grammar and vocabulary, and pass on its fruits to journalism and copywriting.

Such specific oraculing is tricky. Artistic predictions have to take into account all the politico-cultural-socio-economic factors of tech ones, but with the added unknown of the Muse. Any serious attempts are going to be unrealistic, over realistic or just plain wrong.

But the point here is not what’s going to happen, but that it’s going to happen. And the last time the publishing industry changed on this scale (the Gutenberg printing press) we got the Renaissance.

So, the digital revolution is coming and the cover will indeed be changing. But thankfully, so too will the book.

Posted in: Uncategorized by davidmilsom
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Are books sacred? You know, in the ‘holding a book gets you closer to godliness’ kind of way. And if they are, does the sanctity extend to their digital versions? Does reading Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom on a Nook, Kindle or iPad fill you with the same inspiration as curling up on the sofa, turning physical page after physical page, touching, feeling, perhaps even smelling, the paper and print?

Really the question is, does the soul of a book lie in its content alone, or does the format feed it too?

If content alone defines a brand, then physical books do not matter. The great stories can be told, and read, on screens – and with plenty of tech benefits too. So the brands should work in just the same way as before.

True, you won’t be seeing every fellow holiday maker lounging around the pool reading Dan Brown’s latest code – always a great ice breaker – as there’s no cover to hook a conversation to. And you’ll not chat up that young woman at the Tate because her tear-streaked copy of One Day is peeping out from her handbag. If the content we consume is not evident to those around us, will we still make the same social links, defined by shared taste and mutual interest?

Some might say, books are a private thing, a matter for personal reflection. Not a social medium. Is that so? Or, is that always so? Content defines passions, and passions create communities. The new formats may obscure this sort of affiliation.

Here’s a truism: Everyone’s different! No one has precisely the same set of preferences and habits as everyone else. And with 7 billion citizens of our planet, there’s a whole lot of variation in media consumption. Some will hold on to books till the day they die. Others will plunge deeply into digital only. Yet others, will do a bit of both. Others still may start their young lives as digital mavens, only to discover the sensory rewards of printed paper later (Read Gary Shteingart’s Super Sad True Love Story).

To me, the name of the game is eclecticism: have everything for everyone, let people choose. People have the power and control to build their content libraries around themselves. Let them shake and stir it, according to their own tastes and circumstances.

What does this mean for publishers and book retailers? It means, everything’s sacred. Whatever your format, do it really well. Meaning: respect the content, and respect the vessel it travels in.

You’ll have to do ebooks, so do them really well. Think far forward and understanding how they will be consumed; especially as they go through successive innovation phases. Retailers and distributors need to be alert: no space is required for digital books. Theoretically anyone can do it: your bank, the electrical retailer, the post office, Tesco of course. But it’s the curatorial brands that will convince people to trust them, brands that demonstrate taste, judgment and a deep understanding of content.

And for good old books? Love them, but make the experience of buying them exciting. It may not be as instant as a download, but it’s amazing how much experience, inspiration and fun you can put back into bookselling. (Don’t forget micro-publisihing and micro-binding!) Ditch the fusty, embrace modern entertainment. Turn your bookshops into idea shops. They’ll be the best place to trade insights, opinions and imagination on the High Street.

And, crucially if you’re a bookseller, stay flexible. Stock ereaders, go long on ebooks, arrange your space to offer everything for everyone. Build your brand for every customer, and every format.

Posted in: Books, Education, Life & Style, Technology by michael
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According to Cisco, the number of Internet-enabled devices will exceed a mind-boggling 15 billion, by 2015. That’s more than twice the world’s population. Basically, the numbers of tablets and smartphones are exploding. Hastened by a race between manufacturers across the planet to launch sophisticated but affordable tablets, which really could change everything.

The world’s cheapest tablet, priced at the equivalent of 23 pounds, has just been released in India. Making the internet-enabled digital world accessible to many billions of people, not just the privileged few. Opening up a world of education, communication, entertainment and ecommerce to all 6.7 billion of us.

This year, sales of ebooks outstripped sales of printed books on Amazon. Amazon’s Kindle ebook and ereader business is expected to account for 10% of Amazon’s annual revenue by 2012. Ten percent of the revenue of one of the world’s largest tech companies. Goes to show that the demand for ebooks and ereaders is voracious – and growing incredibly fast.

Amazon recently announced that Kindle owners can borrow ebooks from 11,000 local libraries, across the United States. Free of charge. Just like in a physical library. The world is changing. And the opportunities for books and book lovers have never been greater.

Amazon reports that Kindle users read more books. It may be because serious booklovers buy Kindles. But it could have a lot to do with the technology too. Think about it. You want a book. No trip to the shops, or the library. No ordering online and waiting for the post. You want it. You press a button. And 15 seconds later, you’re reading the opening line.

It gets better. All the books old enough to be out of copyright – from Shakespeare to the works of the Bronte sisters… they’re free. Yes, free. So you no longer need to be wealthy to have a private library. You just need 23 pounds to spend on the world’s cheapest tablet. And an internet connection.

Future generations won’t need paper libraries. They’ll find the idea of them quaint and limiting. Dusty halls with finite shelf-space, books falling apart from wear and tear. And the Dewey decimal system, instead of a powerful algorithm, to help you find what you need.

The print world has limited print runs and no ability to auto update, so your beautiful book not only takes up valuable real estate, but it ages too. The digital world brings infinite opportunities. Knowledge saved forever, retrievable in an instant, never out of print. And alongside the power of the printed word, the power of the full-colour image, video, audio, augmented reality and infinite links. Books that are literally living and breathing, update like apps, and are packed full of magical discoveries.

Books are going digital. And that’s a beautiful thing, because it means more people, reading more books. It means more people teaching themselves to read through literacy apps. It means democratisation of knowledge. Freedom of inspiration. Poetry for the people. Education for everyone. And I can’t wait.

Posted in: Uncategorized by verityevans
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The view from the 41st floor of the newly built Sheraton in D Cube city shows the scale of Seoul’s ambition. A high rise city on the scale of São Paulo, whose only boundaries are the surrounding mountains (and the DMZ).

South Korea is feeling the global economic meltdown but they’re not in recession. Far from it. With new buildings shooting up from the ground at every turn, and some of the world’s most respected brands: LG, Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, Lotte, Korea is really going places.

The iPhone didn’t launch in South Korea until 3 years after it did in the UK. Smart phones didn’t take off until a year or so ago but already 90% of the population have one. Koreans are quick. They walk quick, they talk quick and they pick up new things quick.

There’s a real sense of pride here. A sense of national identity from the Bimbimbap to every car, bus, truck and van being Korean made (Samsung even make houses here). And this pride is ready to explode on the global scene. Korean art and pop music are the next global exports.

Watch this space…

kamsahamnida

Stuart & Regine

v3 in Korea

Posted in: Uncategorized by stuartwatson
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In 1988 I started work at a company called Wolff Olins. I brought my
personal computer to work with me. It was one of the early Macintosh models
(I believe our very own Stuart Jane still has two in his house). It had a small black and
white screen, a cable to connect to a printer and a small floppy drive. This
was pre-internet, pre-email, pre-web! The only other computers in the
building were two ‘communal’ Apple desktop machines for designers to try
out. One was monopolised by Hans Arnold, a Dutch designer and typographer
who was the only person who knew how to use the new technology.

The WO board asked Hans and me to come up with a technology strategy. (I was
included because I owned a Mac (!) and because I had worked with Atari
computers in New York.) We toured the world looking at what other companies
were doing. The two that impressed us were Landor in San Francisco and Total
Design in Amsterdam. Both had started to invest in Apple computers for their
people. The alternative was a £25,000 machine, a huge sum back then,
called the Aesthedes, which had every ‘menu’ function as a mechanical
control on an enormous NASA-style keyboard. This was the Porsche of
computer-aided graphic design, each computer needed its own room and,
believe it or not, some design companies were proudly buying it.

Our strategic recommendation was to “Buy Volkswagens, not Porsches.” In
other words, to bet on Apple. Seems obvious now, of course.

Going back to my Macintosh, it’s difficult to convey how empowering it was
to be able to produce one’s own A4 sheets with elegant typography. But that
was the whole point of Apple. To give the power to you. The alternative IBM
world of computing had kept the power at the centre and people accessed the
corporate mainframe via dumb terminals. Apple was a new model of work.

Today we run our company on Apple technology. We’ve spent over a million
pounds on Apple kit. From our servers to our iPhones to everything in
between. And whenever we see another piece of technology, from SatNav in the
car to inflight entertainment systems, to the Sky box at home, we wonder why
it can’t be as beautiful to look at and to use, like (almost) everything from
Apple.

Steve Jobs said that Apple were simply trying to make products that were at
“the intersection of art and technology”.

For v3, operating at the intersection of art and commerce, there’s lots we
can still learn from him. And especially from his commencement speech to Stamford graduates in 2005.

It includes brave thoughts like this:

“Remembering that you are someday going to die is the best way I know to
avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already
naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Philip Orwell

(fantastic image by Jonathan Mak http://jmak.tumblr.com/)

Posted in: Uncategorized by joeweir
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