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Branding is for cows, stories are for people

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That was one of the real gems from the Brand New conference in SFO last week, a thought from Bruce Mau’s studio shared by Paddy Harrington. I love their thinking, their philosophy, their design and their modesty.

It was super inspiring and a real honour to speak amongst such a fantastic bunch of people.

A few things stood out for me: “Move fast and brake things”, Facebook’s unofficial mantra, summarised the the work that was shared by Everett Katigbak and Ben Barry. Great to get an insiders view of the hackers culture and how little corporate Facebook still is.They also showed some beautiful films made to help shift perception of Facebook, from just fun to meaningful and useful.

Brilliant to hear Vince Frost and see his always stunning design, also how he made the difficult transition to such a distant market (geographically I mean), and what a strong story of great work and success.

A real gem was Studio Infinito from Peru. Their work is an explosion of energy and optimism. And their humble approach to design makes it all so much more appealing and interesting to look at.

It was a real pleasure to meet Matteo Bologna you could easily mistake him for a lunatic, if the work wasn’t so amazing and considerate. His thinking on how typefaces speak even when they’re not saying anything is so relevant to the making of voice for a brand. His obsession with typography combined with a Roberto Benigni je nes c’est quoi made him the star of the show.

Armin’s comments and wit throughout the conference, were a good reminder not to take it all too seriously. It’s just branding after all. Not rocket science.

I think we all left with a similar feeling, that when brands work, they are about much more than image or logos, but coherence between what you do and what you say. Between all aspects of the offer, product and image. At the end, it’s about joining the dots to create exceptional experiences.

Thanks everyone for a great time!

:0)


(Marina Willer)


Retail fantasy: learning from Las Vegas

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I’ve noticed two stories from this week about magazines (specifically Conde Nast) extending their brands beyond publishing toward other lifestyle pursuits. The first, “Magazines Begin To Sell the Fashion They Review” in the Sunday Styles section of the NYT consolidates a trend that’s been in the pipeline for a while: buying the clothes in magazines right on their sites (leaving Vogue or Elle with a small commission) or through co-branded efforts with dedicated e-commerce.

“On Park & Bond, a new e-commerce site for designer men’s wear, Jim Moore, the creative director for GQ, can be found describing a red Calvin Klein turtleneck as “something that can take that gray flannel suit and give it a little bon vivant.” The sweater, which costs $225, is tagged as a GQ Pick, inside the GQ Store.”

It’s official: fashion media has reached mass advertorialization. Consumers are buying where they read, and a new kind of seamlessness in is in the works, a trend we sometimes call “Instapurchasing,” in which integrated buy-it-now options speed up consumer spending. This is not cynicism: there’s a good reason to believe that consumers can benefit. Good content and good products, especially in fields like fashion and hospitality, do not suffer in close proximity to one another. The magazine-as-retailer is only a logical inversion of the concept boutique.

The day after the New York Times piece, WWD announced that Conde Nast International has licensed a new set of bars and restaurants with its magazines’ names:

CONDE NAST SETS MORE RESTAURANTS: The publisher said it will open a Vogue Café in Kiev and a GQ Bar in Istanbul in 2012. The new establishments are in addition to Condé Nast International’s existing restaurants in Moscow, which number a Vogue Café, a GQ Bar and a Tatler Club. The Vogue Café in Kiev will open in partnership with the Otrada Luxury Group, which owns businesses including the Buddha Bar in Kiev, while the GQ Bar in Istanbul will open in partnership with the Dogus Group, which has interests in hospitality, banking, media and retailing.” 

Nate Freeman, at the New York Observer, offered some playful suggestions for how Conde Nast might extend the franchise:

“The Teen Vogue Totally Virgin Margarita Bar! ( King of Prussia Mall, Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania): When you’re 15, running around the mall shopping all day can get exhausting. Why not sit down and have a refreshing summery beverage? Everyone loves margaritas — but don’t worry, mom and dad, Conde Nast will make sure these drinks are completely booze-free. Located in the biggest mall in the east coast, The Teen Vogue Totally Virgin Margarita Bar! will sling a warm weather favorite to girls who want to relax, open up a magazine and discover new ways to trick boys with their wiles. Nail polish not included.” 

Partnering with companies like “the Dogus Group, which has interests in hospitality, banking, media and retailing” presents interesting possibilities for how publishing might reinvent itself in an age of media turmoil. Commercial interests in publishing continue to be tricky double-edged lifelines (the “Crunchgate” TechCrunch/VC money scandal is only one recent example). It might be smart to redefine “conflict of interest” as “seamless lifestyle experience”: what happens when the GQ online store interfaces with the GQ lounge? 

Current realities like Amazon one-click-purchasing and wired NYC subway stations mean you can go to a store, try on a pair of jeans, take them off, leave the store, and purchase them on your phone while sitting on the subway platform. As new applications like Google Wallet and Net-a-Porter’s Window Shop gain momentum, retail will need to focus less on the moment of purchase (since it might happen anywhere) and more on brand experience as a flow. Let’s call it ambient retail.

In 100 years, will Conde Nast be like the Ace hotel (or Trump), holding down united hospitality and retail properties all over the world?  Could it become a luxury behemoth like LVMH? Or the Shinsegae group, which runs “chic outlet shopping” such as Woodbury Commons? What about something like the coming Meadowlands megamall-slash-waterpark development?

Here’s a proposition to save both publishing and the suffering city of Las Vegas: Vogue should become a casino, offering nightlife, lodging, shopping, and gaming under a single roof. One day people will be shocked to hear it was ever just a magazine. 

(Emily Segal)

Photo courtesy of letitflow.com

Curator: The New WolffOlins.com

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Wolff Olins is proud to launch the latest version of our website. With this new version we’ve explored the idea of how brands truly exist online. Many brands are challenged with managing their digital landscape as it stretches across social media, owned sites and PR outreach. With out latest website we’ve created the ability to curate the conversation about Wolff Olins. 

With all the many sources of content and conversations that circulate around your brand it becomes challenging to not only manage but to have a unique voice. Add to this the challenge of mobile, tablet and multiple browsers and every brand has numerous ways that consumers can reach them, all of which must be managed. Utilizing existing platforms our latest site aggregates content from many sources into a branded experience that looks just as good on a laptop as it does on the iPhone. We do this by stripping out the clutter that defuses the conversation and focusing on the experience. 

As each piece of content is imported we redesign the image, text, video, etc. to create and support a unified brand experience. What further differentiates this concept from other content aggregators is that each piece of content can be interconnected with content from around the Internet related to the Wolff Olins’ brand, and our clients. We’re able to bring in images, articles, videos or one of many other pieces of content from a location, curate it into a unique page and connect that content with a site, news story or other link to deliver a deeper, more interconnected, understanding of how brands actually exist online.

Lastly, we’ve built this site as a test product. We are now proud to offer it to our clients as a new tool in your kit to create unique brand experiences. We call it Curator.


We’ve built this site with our development partners Public Class on the back of a custom-built Application Programming Interface (API). It handles the importing of multiple content types from a variety of customizable online sources. For us and anyone who’s interested in using Curator it means updating in the platforms we use everyday to get our message out online. The API feeds content into a CMS where an admin can mix together live streams into the website allowing for real-time curation of our online brand. With Curator in the back-end we can design brand-led front-end interfaces allowing our clients to rebrand, redesign and reconnect the conversation about them. 

5 Principles of Brand Experience

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In a world where Brands are no longer defined by positioning but their roles in peoples lives, the experience that a Brand creates and curates though it’s products and services is fundamental to the sustainability of the business. Most peer-to-peer recommendation is based on experience - our perception, the emotional take out of interacting with products and services - if the experience fails, then so does the Brand. So how do we design the end-to-end Experience? How do we support the role of the Brand in the world? The following is presented as a set of principles and questions that brands should consider when designing this system.
 
The modern Brand Experience should be: Ubiquitous, Social, Semantic, Sentient and Human.

Ubiquitous

- Throughout the experience / value chain
- Across multiple channels
- 24 - 7 - 365

Where many brands will focus on a few discrete stages of the end-to-end experience, the opportunities for providing increased customer value will usually lie outside of these. Typically many brands will focus around stages of consideration and transaction, yet for customers greater value can typically be gleaned post purchase - Services vs Sales. As a brand, what are we uniquely positioned to offer? What and where are we credible for? Where do we have permission to play? How can we fit seamlessly into or enhance existing systems? How do our customers want to interact with us? Where? When? What are the patterns of these interactions?
 
Social

- Enhanced by the social graph (but not dependent upon it)
- Creates and facilitates conversations
- Shareable

Brand experience is improved by the presence of other people - their knowledge, opinion, history and future intent - can the experiences we design be enhanced by people but still work in their absence? Does the experience prompt and capture conversation and build on the insights?  Is the experience itself and the artefacts within it shareable, viral?
 
Semantic

- Gives meaning to complex multi layered data
- Understands human requests
- Connect-able

More data exists in the world than ever before, data that can immeasurably enhance our existence if understood and interpreted correctly. Yet this data is complex, multi layered and disconnected - how do we interpret meaning from this, build connections to form insights and answers? When we allow people access to this data, how human is the interaction? Why do we only ask binary questions? How much do we cater to subtly or nuance? With the data we own, do we build and allow connections to and from it? Often data only makes sense when layered with other data that gives it meaning.
 
Sentient

- Context aware
- Reacts (pre-empts) accordingly
- Learns

The brand experience should be living - this requires an understanding of context and the ability to react to it. Do we sense context - time, place, occasion, preference, social connection and history? Can we react or pre-empt against context? Our lives are built around patterns - yet do we observe and learn from deviation?
 
Human

- Simplifies complexity
- Democratises the service
- Creates new behaviours
- Gives immediate value

Simplicity democratises, and can allow a brand or its products and services to reach new audiences, so why do we often design complexity over simplicity? Why do we bombard customers with choice? Why don’t we design for accessibility? Why a ‘press-and-click’ when a gesture seems more natural and intuitive? And can we even enable new behaviours by making things as easy as possible? Yet humanising an experience is not always enough - we need to make the value of an interaction immediately apparent, whilst conveying that this value will build over time with increased engagement.
 
While these principles are by no means definitive - as a starting point for challenging the existing experience, they can help a brand maintain a role that is living, human, considerate and above all - valuable.
 
Nathan Williams @nathanawilliams is a Strategist at Wolff Olins London specialising in Brand Experience and Technology. Thanks to contributors - Yelena Ford and Morgan Holt.

Tech 1 Brand 0?

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So Kodak is on the ropes.

Beyond just falling victim to the digital revolution, Kodak found itself on the wrong side of a double-wammy that can hit any industry: a new product (in this case digital) that although inferior is so much cheaper (in this case, than film) that people flock to it. It’s a phenomenon hitting all sorts of industries from education ($1000 degree anyone?) to retail (ASOS).

Lots of businesses see their brand as the defense against this phenomenon. The brand can help by signaling quality. Yet, only a very few niche brands can maintain significant premiums without out-innovating the competition on value.

The fact of the matter is, the enabling, leveling, democratizing power of technology will always make things cheaper, and that’s a good thing. And the always progressive nature of technology means those things will get better and better in no time at all.

Today’s hardened consumers are armed with hard facts. Any brand that tries to buck the trend by making a quality argument as a defense against a value argument is living on borrowed time.

This is something to rejoice in. It compels us to continually make new things and make them more accessible and affordable. And in this, Brand and Technology can play for the same side, inspiring and equipping the organization to invent relentlessly. The guys at Jawbone (jawbone.com|) illustrate this perfectly.

There is of course an alternative. You can just sit tight. Trouble is, you may just end up with the wrong kind of Kodak moment.

(Ije Nwokorie)

The East Africa famine appeal

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We love the Good For Nothing crew. So when an email went round asking for people to take part in one of their Creative Riots to find a way to raise £1 million in 50 days for the East Africa famine crisis we were more than happy to pitch in. Ambitious? Yes. A bit mad? Yes. Impossible? No. 

Why?

Because East Africa is facing a desperate crisis. Large parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Republic of South Sudan are suffering from the worst draught in 60 years, with famine being declared in parts of Somalia. This has left 12 million people in desperate need of food and water. If they all held hands to form a human chain it would stretch from London to San Francisco and back again. 

So, after a weekend of creative thinking/hacking/doing collaboration, the idea for the 50/50 Project was born. A platform - built by our lovely friends at Made by Many – where agencies and individuals can set up mini fundraising projects, initiatives and experiments for the East Africa crisis, enabling creative and energetic networks of passionate people to do great things. The response has been incredible - from the big to the small, from a Twitter swear jar (receive a weekly bill for your Twitter potty mouth) to Africashback (where you can donate money as you shop on Amazon). 

So what could we at Wolff Olins muster to do our bit? Well, a couple weeks ago we kicked off a month-long, inter-office, fundraising bonanza at our home at 10 Regents Wharf, London. Using the kitchen as the centre of our efforts, we are asking people to once a week donate the cost of their lunch or just an extra 50p to the cause. And, alongside our neighbours OMD, Bernard Hodes and Doremus, we are going to match every penny raised. To get things started, we had an East African inspired menu raising in total £1,279.14. And we have 3 weeks to go! 

We also wanted to raise awareness around the building for the cause. Not satisfied with the brief to create a humble poster for the Appeal, our whizzy design intern, Jonas Skafte, decided to create an installation for our space on canal side to really bring home and communicate what 12,000,000 people actually means; the incredible scale of the situation. Each uniquely coloured dot represents someone at risk from the crisis - all at risk of disappearing forever. 

In fact, not even our offices are big enough for 12 million dots…

We’re aiming to end on 26th October. So from now until then we’re going to try and do our bit.

Thank you everyone for their support and generosity so far. It is very much appreciated.  

(Yelena Ford)

Making do

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I’ve lived in Islington for about 3 years now, over which time the high street has evolved. Predictably, the number of mini-supermarkets (a depressingly familiar oxymoron) has increased. But so has the number of craft shops. In a neat reflection on the ‘make do and mend’ attitude that follows any recession, savvy storeowners have spotted an opportunity for a new type of consumerism. Less buy, buy buy. More do, play, make.



To give a few examples:

Drink, Shop, Do – www.drinkshopdo.com – where you can drink tea, play scrabble and learn how to re-create vintage reverse hair rolls

Loop - www.loopknitting.com - where you can learn to knit and crochet as you choose your yarn

The Make Lounge -  www.themakelounge.com – where you can hold parties and attend workshops for everything from embroidery to cupcake decoration

Ray Stitch – www.raystitch.co.uk – a haberdashery with built in café for coffee while you ponder which sewing class to sign up to

Is this just a recent, N1-specific phenomenon? 

Luxury goods brands the world over realise the potency of the artisan back story. The recent Valentino documentary was brought to life by seeing his expert Italian couture seamstresses at work, and the likes of Hermes have been leveraging their harness-making heritage for years. 

However, certain brands are enabling the craft boom across borders. Look at the success of Etsy – the online marketplace that connects consumers with crafters, across 150 countries. In their words, they have built a 10 million strong “community of artists, creators, collectors, thinkers and doers”, offering members not only a chance to buy and sell, but to meet at ‘labs’ (e.g. bootcamp for fledgling artisan retailers, DIY brewing workshops etc.) and contribute to forums. This is taking artisanship to a new level of customer engagement. And I believe their mission is one that is relevant to consumer-goods brands worldwide: valuing authorship and provenance as much as price and convenience.

In a world where we are willing to pay £7 for a fruit salad but balk at paying full price for a paperback on Amazon, isn’t it about time that we re-calibrate the value we put on creating something original? And isn’t it time that influential brands (publishers, manufacturers, retailers) helped us make that shift? 

In my area at least, it’s the small, independent retailers that are taking the lead in making us excited about making things.

(Amy Lee) 

Looking for the smart

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Ever wish we could set the clock back to 2009? Me neither! That would be odd, and somewhat concerning. After all, the American economy was drowning, unemployment was rising, and the consumer was understandably freaking out. Even the characters from LOST had escaped their Island (or did they? They did, but they were already dead…mmm…too soon?). People wanted out, and for good reason.

So, it was strangely nostalgic to read a recent BBC article about a new developer-friendly operating system for ‘Smart Cities’ being designed by the Portuguese start-up, Living PlanIT. It reminded me that it had been a while since I’d heard the American media discuss Smart Cities, or the ‘Smart Grid,’ and the idea that these concepts may have been retired to the buzzword-bin caused me to reminisce on their glory days. It turns out that those days existed right in the middle of 2009, kicked off at none of than Super Bowl XLIII.

Game aside (sorry Arizona Cardinals), the ‘Recession Bowl’ was interesting because America’s big three automakers broke from tradition and decided not to run ads. Bad sign for Madison Avenue, worse sign for Detroit. Within this dour landscape, GE stepped in with a big pitch on the economic and environmental potential of a new Smart Grid (a consolidated, digitized, efficient whiz-bang new American energy grid), positioning themselves as the company ushering it in and adding a jolt of optimism to a depressed economy.

A ‘Smart’ zeitgeist suddenly took hold—President Obama was talking it up, industry start-ups were Wall St. darlings, and the DOE was rolling out over $8 billion in stimulus funding to various projects around the country. 

And then…what? It would be silly to blame the media for a short attention span, and cynical to identify political infighting as the culprit for the ‘smart’ receding from public discourse. Ultimately, the responsibility falls to those tasked with concepting and marketing these ideas to the public. In an entrepreneurial, app-centric culture, where consumers feel more inspired than ever to be producers, perhaps the best way to reignite our interest in smart energy and communications systems is by taking a queue from the likes of Living PlanIT and envision them not only as sources of efficiency, but as platforms for our own creative ambitions.

Without further ado, let’s get out of 2009 and back to the future.

(Alex Keith)


Three reasons why email still rules the Internet

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Email is, besides all its flaws, still the cornerstone of the Internet. If you look at new successful services that are gaining traction, many of them are companies that use email in a smart, new way. The past couple of years, we’ve seen this from daily deals startups, like Groupon, GiltCity and Living Social. These companies take advantage of email’s ubiquity and deliver deals in your inbox. While you can view daily deals on an app (like ScoutMob or Tenka) or a browser, email is still the easiest, most inclusive and most memorable way to get discounts and save money. You get it once a day – it’s quick, digestible and habitual.

Even Twitter and Facebook  – communication channels in their own right – are heavy users of emails. Think about the email notifications you get when you have new followers, messages or events.

After all the talk about the shortcomings and impending death of email, it is still here and pretty much unchanged. Here’s why:

1. It’s where we spend most of our lives

The inbox is where people spend most of their Internet life. 107 trillion emails were sent on the Internet in 2010, the average number of email messages a day was 294 billion. It is one of the most effective places to prompt users to do something. While we may have profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and now Google+, it’s still people’s default communication platform for private and work use. In short, it’s where your eyeballs are most of the day. Especially now that mobile email is filling every small micro-boredom moment in the taxi, waiting by the bar and in the bathroom :)

2. It’s still our core identity online. 

An individual message commands more time and individual attention than most social media platforms. Whtespace capitalizes on this fact by providing a way for people to share ideas and inspiration with more thoughtful curation. Although Facebook and Linkedin are getting very close, email is still our default form of identity on the web – particularly for real friends and professional circles. Personal email addresses are like our phone numbers only the people we care about actually know it. Furthermore, most websites anchor their interaction with you through email – it’s the way they keep you informed on changes, help if you’ve forgotten your password, etc. Because of its ubiquity, it helps consolidate and streamline communications into one channel.

3.  All emails are born equal and play with human curiosity. 

Our brains are amazing when it comes to filtering out information that is not relevant. Most eye-tracking heat maps of users looking at a normal web page will tell a clear story about users’ ability to ignore not just ads, but whole areas where ads normally appear. So far, emails are equal (besides auto filters and smart inboxes). While the subject line, sender and first line will give you some clue as to the content of an email, you won’t know if the email from your client is a message giving positive feedback on your last presentation or an angry diatribe until you actually open the email. It’s a big game of emotional email lottery. You never know what will appear.  This can trigger curiosity and a higher sense of alert.

So while other forms of communication will take more of your attention, email will be around for a while.

(Melissa Andrada @themelissard and Henrik Werdelin @werdelin

Melissa Andrada is a strategist at Wolff Olins New York and co-founder of Whtespace, passionate about creating opportunities for creativity and collaboration.

Henrik Werdelin is the managing partner at Prehype and advisor to Whtespace. Henrik has been an advisor to a long list of successful startups and was recently named Top 100 Most Creative by Fast Company 

Re-blogged from Random Projects and Thoughts from Henrik Werdelin  

 


The Sentient Brand Experience

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Of the 5 Principles of Brand Experience previously explored: Ubiquitous, Social, Semantic, Sentient and Human - there is one that stands out as an opportunity to be owned…

Ubiquity - Being across the experience chain is clearly owned by Nike - Nike call themselves a services business, not a sneaker business. They create value around the use of sportswear, not focus on shifting units.

Social - Enhancing the experience through the social graph and prompting conversation and shared experiences: The recent Facebook and Spotify alliance.

Semantic - Creating meaning from complex data in a way that’s usable by humans - Google

Human - Reducing complex technology to the point of democratisation - Apple

Which leaves us the fourth principle - that of the ‘Sentient’ brand experience. What do we mean by sentience? Not the often misunderstood conscious awaking of artificial intelligence - but the simple ability to react to, or rather pro-act against context, or put simply, a trigger.

Who’s closest? Generally brands involved in Location Based Services, or rather location based Services themselves - the leader so far? With it’s release of ‘Radar’ foursquare has taken a step closer to context awareness - yet Foursquare isn’t really a mass consumer Brand with a clear proposition - it’s more a tool for brands to push to customers, and for customers to interact with each other and the environment driven by simple game mechanics.

Most location based services are in fact ‘dumb’ - not dumb in the derogatory sense, but dumb in that most re-act to a single parameter, location, only when asked: press button… receive nearby pubs - hardly clever. No location based service can as yet can re-act to, or more powerfully pro-act against context.

What is context - Its a combination of place (environments not points), people (implicit and explicit networks and their collective knowledge) and history (where I and my network have been, were we are now, and where we plan on going) - Where we are, our relationships, collective knowledge, and behaviour over time. Why hasn’t this been cracked? The technology required has only just reached our pockets, even with the release yesterday of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus device incorporating an accelerometer, GPS, compass, gyroscope, light sensor, proximity sensor and barometer we are only just arriving at a real ability to sense the environment in a mass, yet personal way. Layer this with increasingly intelligent, lightweight applications, ever more power-full devices and faster networks and the opportunity only just begins to emerge.

The question is, who’s going to take it?

I Communicate, Therefore I Am

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Talk to Me is a vastly comprehensive digital innovation exhibit at MoMa NYC featuring a range of works interpreting humans’ interactions with technology, from diagrams and apps to products and spaces. Paola Antonelli, curator of the exhibit describes goal to “explore how objects communicate with us… emphasizing how the need to share information and have a dialogue with audiences is overtaking form and function in contemporary design.”

With QR codes tagging every piece and a rare encouragement to break out your iPhone and interact with the work in a major institution, the exhibit is a smart and engaging look into the closing gap between life and our relationship with more intuitive technology. Antonelli explains the dominant trend in emerging technology design in communication “people need to communicate with each other. But they also communicate with objects, with cities, with the Internet, with literally everything.”

About 20 of the projects were sourced by open submission on the online, live, micro-site facet of the exhibit, Beyond the Galleries, documenting the process of the exhibit as well as a broad database of apps, projects, interfaces, readings, discussions and more.  Some notable projects include the Rubik’s Cube for the Blind by Konstantin Datz, Wolff Olins’ own Jody Hudson-Powell’s Hungry Hungry Eat Head, Tweenbot by Kacie Kinzer, along with the popular apps Talking Karl, Chris Milk’s Wilderness Downtown for Arcade Fire and AOL Artist Sascha Nordmeyer’s Communication Prothesis.

Definitely worth seeing, the exhibit runs through November 7th.


(Melissa Scott) @hello_melissa

‘Rubik’s Cube for the Blind’ image by Konstantin Datz’
‘Wifi Dowsing Rod’ image by Susana Camara Leret
Hungry Hungry Eat Head photo via Wired

Hayat Sindi: inspiring change in Mideast through i2 insitute launch

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Scientist, inventor, Harvard and Cambridge graduate, Saudi Arabian native and pioneer—Dr. Hayat Sindi is an inspiring woman, a powerful force in the advancement of science, social good and a sign towards the emerging cultural shift in the role of women in a conservative region.

Today at PopTech, Sindi launched her latest project, the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity, (i2 institute) which focuses on encouraging entrepreneurship in the Arab community amidst an unemployment rate of over 40% and a rapidly growing youth population entering the workforce. The website states “Our mission is to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and social innovation for scientists, technologists and engineers in the Middle East and beyond.” Wolff Olins and PopTech collaborated with Sindi to develop the brand and identity around her platform.

“I believe that we can put science and society hand in hand and we should customize science for the benefit of the developing world. Small people can achieve big dreams.” Sindi stated. She also hopes that “i2 will make stories like hers less exceptional and more possible for every young innovator.”

Raised in Saudi Arabia, Hayat convinced her family to let her study abroad in London in 1991 where she proceeded to excel in her field, becoming one of the world’s leading biotechnologists. She co-founded Diagnostics For All, a new medical diagnostic technique using small, affordable paper strips and a drop of blood or saliva to diagnose liver disease, and perhaps eventually AIDS. While the innovation is still in development, it has huge potential to save lives in the developing world.

“A true scientist should focus on affordable simple solutions to reach everyone in the world.” Sindi commented during a speaking event in Jeddah in 2008. In 2009 Hayat Sindi became the first Arab woman to become a PopTech fellow.

Learn more about i2 at i2insitute.org and follow @i2institute.

(Melissa Scott) @hello_melissa

i2 image courtesy of National Geographic, PopTech photos by Kris Krüg via Poptech. i2 web design: Wolff Olins + Ranger. Sources: Daily Beast and Hayat Sindi Blog

Truly, madly, deeply

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I have had two clients in as many weeks fall in love with creative work. I don’t mean just being very happy. I mean truly, madly, deeply falling in love. Getting up out of their chairs, using emotional language, clapping, cheering and in one case, honestly welling up when talking about the work.

I am not the common link here. I am lucky to be working with two excellent teams who have produced world class creative solutions in both cases. But I’m interested in what the common factors were in both these (very different) client situations. What are the circumstances that can cause a client to fall head over heals for a piece of creative work?

First of all, the work has to be great. Of course. But it must be great in a specific way. It has to have drawn its solutions, conclusions and inspiration from a place of deep understanding of the clients needs. This is something beyond the basic audience, market, competitor analysis. It goes deep into what I call ‘client empathy’. It is one that requires stepping wholly inside your client’s shoes and acting upon their full range of challenges. Their colleagues, their boss, their budget, time and authority constraints – are all part of what we are understanding, caring about and helping them with when we work with client empathy.

Clients fall in love when they can see a way out of the woods. Part of the emotion they feel is gratitude and relief that we are helping them achieve something that they have been losing sleep over.

Secondly, the work has to be brave. It has to go further than the client was expecting and probably further than they are really quite comfortable with. A client told me recently ‘This could get me fired!’ And meant it in a good way. It’s part of human nature to enjoy achievement. Giving your client a sense of optimistic daring  by presenting them with a viable solution that they would not have previously though possible, is a very powerful thing. Great joy comes with exceeded expectations.

Thirdly, the client has to like you. I mean really like you. This one is highly subjective and hard to plan for but they have to start by wanting to be in the room with you and enjoying listening to what you have to say. This is tied to the empathy idea but it is not the same thing.  I think it is to do with a combination of charisma and good old fashioned kindness. You’ve got to be someone they would choose to go on a road-trip with – resourceful, dependable, thoughtful but also a lot of fun. I’ve seen many creatives miss this opportunity, preferring to take the ‘the don’t have to like me they just have to know I’m good’ stance. It doesn’t work. Falling in love with the work is in part, also falling in love with the team that created it.

Presentation is important. But not necessarily in the way you might think. I’ve always been a big believer in rehearsing presentations. Getting the flow just right, making sure the pace doesn’t lag or skip over details. But I’ve had equal success with off-the-cuff, unpolished presentations or ones plagued with technical difficulties. The key ingredient is to have a good story that you truly believe in and to tell it with great passion.

Why does it matter to have clients fall in love as opposed to just liking or approving work? Because it allows us to take them further. Love makes them brave. Excitement makes them think bigger and longer term. Less likely to pick over minor details. More likely to fight for and defend the idea within their own organization.

Most importantly, once a client has known true love, they will always come back for more.

(Kate Nielsen)

Designing Whtespace

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In this post, guest blogger and creative director Malcolm Buick shares his thoughts on Whtespace, our internal startup project that lets you create curated email newsletters.

In a world of content being shifted, moved, tweeted, socialized, and last but not least emailed, the creative process is relegated to being second fiddle, and productivity within the workplace takes a sharp decline. However, there is a need for sharing, and as the old saying goes “sharing is caring.” 

Whtespace was born out of necessity. As a creative, my mind drifts, and distractions are many. We created Whtespace to allow for ‘whitespace’ – free to think, free to create. Whtespace lets you feel safe in the knowledge that you can be informed on your own terms – in your inbox, curated and elegantly designed.

So what does this mean for design?

Whtespace was heavily inspired by the design philosophy ofMark Farrow, Peter Saville, Dieter Rams – experts and creators of hyper design minimalism, and creators of bands and brands such as Joy Division, Pet Shop Boys, Braun and many more – some of which only really have the most bare bones of information and function. 

With Whtespace, we tried to strip everything out that was not necessary.  This criteria in turn drove the design part of the problem, and made it clear to us what we needed to do was: keep it simple — no gloss, no shiny buttons, no “hi kids” language . After all it should be utility, it’s what you imprint upon Whtespace that is the most important.

Whtespace isn’t just for academic information junkies; it has many uses. You can use it to impress your boss when you want him to see all the hyper relevant things you are inspired by; it can also be a catalyst for a great beginning to a new client relationship, whereby you can share some early thinking to a particular problem you are working on. Whtespace can be as private as you want it to be, or you can project your lust for knowledge to the world. 

Keep in mind that the paint’s still wet, so be gentle.

(Guest blogger Malcolm Buick @malcolmbuick

Malcolm is a freelance creative director and co-founder of Whtespace. He is also a founder and member of the Friends of Wolff Olins Club. 

Re-blogged from The Whtespace Blog

Winter Account Management Internship at Wolff Olins, NYC

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We’re looking for an energetic account management intern to work with our team in New York City. You’ll work on a range of client projects; gaining a real perspective on the many ways we help clients achieve their business and brand goals. 



You’ll get to: 

Creatively problem solve a diverse range of challenges 

Collaborate closely with an eclectic group of experts in design, strategy and production

Manage the many, many details that need to come together to create big impact



We’re looking for someone who is:

Energetic + enthusiastic

Organized + detail oriented

Good at herding a group together

An active listener

Curious about the world + passionate about brands

A strong writer 

Collaborative + fun



Does this sound like you?

If so, please send to peoplenewyork@wolffolins.com:  

(Subject Line:  ACCT MGT Intern – WINTER 2011)

1. Resume

2. Cover Email – Why you?  Why Wolff Olins?



Other Details:

Timing: Full-time winter internship, 2.5 months

Start Date: TBD 

Location: New York City

Compensation: This is a paid internship.  

Who can apply? College students and recent grads –the internship role will be tailored based on experience. 

Deadline: Send your resume ASAP.  


Upcoming full-time positions at Wolff Olins - all based out of our NYC office.

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If you are interested, email your resume to us at peoplenewyork@wolffolins.com.  Include the job title as the subject and tell us “why Wolff Olins” and “why you” in the email.  

Content Manager/Web Editor: Responsible for daily content upload/creation, keep blog, tweets, etc. fresh on the home page, edit content for tone of voice, create/adapt content for web, author/edit marketing content, maintain editorial calendar

Junior Designer for Marketing & Website: Conceptualize and create marketing materials, case study design, image selection for website posts

A Honey Club welcome

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Last night we had our very first Honey Club event - an evening of meeting, greeting, and activities for our bee-friendly community right here in Kings Cross. 

What made it special was not just the fact this was the first time we had all come together, but the collective realisation that we are at the beginning of something exciting. All the months of talking, reaching out, workshop-ing, and building, finally we were all together in one space - a diverse community of individuals and organisations eager to get going and start to do things differently.

During the course of the evening, we heard from all the different individuals and organisations involved – about their journey so far and their motivation for joining or founding The Honey Club. Here are some of the highlights:

Hannah Judge-Brown, Sustainability Manager at Guardian News and Media, spoke about deepening connections in Kings Cross…

Jane Riddiford, founder of Global Generation, spoke about beekeeping as a unique platform for young people to engage with sustainability and enterprise…

Stuart Robertson, our wonderful building manager at Wolff Olins, spoke about how training in beekeeping has fundamentally changed his role as he works alongside young people and looks after this precious livestock…

Jihaan, a Generator, spoke about overcoming her fears of bees and the experience of pitching The Honey Club to local businesses…

Paul Glass, from OMD, spoke about how the Honey Club was helping them understand how they fit into their new home in Kings Cross…

And finally, the Wolff Olins worker bees – Bethany, Amy, Charlotte and Yelena - spoke about the huge impact The Honey Club has had on Wolff Olins – our work, our culture and our role in the community.

Everyone had a different story to tell. But we had a central thing in common - that being part of the Honey Club, learning about bees and building local connections was helping them understand how we are all part of something bigger – a social and environmental system where actions in one part would have an impact elsewhere. There was a real sense of excitement in the room for exploring this new role and finding a new way to engage usefully with our community, beyond faceless CSR.

It now feels very real. We are at the beginning of an exciting journey. Do we know exactly where we are heading? No. Does that matter? Not really. In fact, it’s the ‘not knowing’ that will take us towards the new, the groundbreaking and the unexpected. The energy in the room was brilliant and we have a whole bucket of ideas for initiatives that we can begin to trial and test. And bit-by-bit we’ll find our way, take shape and grow.

Thank you to all the people who came along and took part yesterday. It was a brilliant evening and we are thrilled to be on this journey with you.

(The Honey Club)

Simple: Future of Banking?

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“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” is a common rallying cry among the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The deep-seated dissatisfaction with the current banking system has led to a public demand to create real change within the industry. It also points to a major question: how can you innovate in a way that empowers consumers?

BankSimple, now called just Simple, is an exciting possible answer to this question. It opened its doors to its first round of customers this week. Many of us at Wolff Olins are fascinated by the innovative possibilities Simple offers and its potential to turn the banking industry on its head.

Rather than imposing its own system of doing things, Simple is built on people’s existing relationship to and behaviors around money.

Everyone knows that they should keep track of their balance, save money and plan for the future, but how many people actually do it, and do it well? Diet! Quit smoking! Resist that new iPhone! It comes down to making better choices, but we all know temptation is huge and change is difficult. 

In some ways, the current system of banking is incentivized for people to fail. As CEO Josh Reich puts it in Fast Company, “Banks make the most money when you make mistakes.” Navigating the banking system is often an intentionally confusing and opaque process.

Behavioral economics tells us that businesses shouldn’t coerce or tell people what to do, but rather create an environment that nudges people to make better decisions. Simple creates an architecture that helps people make better decisions about their money. 

What Simple does is translate the numbers and jargon into meaningful, everyday terms. Instead of just laying out your “available balance” and “actual balance,” it tells you your “safe-to-spend balance.” Their insight is that the top reason people check their account is to see if they can actually afford to make their next purchase.

In a Fast Company article, Simple Creative Director Bill DeRouchey says, “We do that math for them. Our UX philosophy is, let’s do all that stuff – let’s make it nearly impossible for you to fail with your personal banking.”

It takes the personal finance dashboard of Mint to the next level.  As an alternative to traditional banking, with FDIC institutions as partners, Simple doesn’t only aggregate your existing bank accounts into easy-to-grasp infographics, but also acts as a trustworthy agent that legitimately seems to have your best interests at heart.

Occupy Wall Street and Bank of America debit fee fiasco demonstrates a deep frustration with – and skepticism of – the status quo. A banking alternative that empowers customers to change their behavior and achieve their money goals may be one part of the solution. In order to survive in the future, traditional banks will need to vastly innovate their offer in a way that puts the customer at the heart of it. 

(Melissa Andrada @themelissard)

Melissa Andrada is a brand and content strategist at Wolff Olins New York. 

Parts and Labor

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By Alex Keith 

This October, a report was published by McKinsey estimating that the Internet has contributed more than a fifth of the GDP growth in mature economies over the past five years. That’s remarkable, especially at a time when these economies are struggling to get their populations back to work––producing and consuming the domestic product. So if the Internet is our ace in the hole for economic growth, and you and I are the prospective producers and consumers of the product in question, let’s take a look at the situation in front of us.

Arguably the biggest shift that has dominated the Internet in the past five years has been the move to make production and consumption a socially engaging activity. The consumer’s evolution into the participant dovetailed nicely with blogging and was a logical extension of niche communities that grew out of file-sharing, web forums and even chat rooms. The main difference, however, was that this new consumer/participant hybrid quickly began to feel its own weight when it came to creating external value, being made aware of this socially––not financially––by other people linking to and liking our stuff. 

So how does any of this affect GDP? Well, the ideal scenario for a growing GDP is a society in which the producers make an increasing amount of money by creating products for consumers to buy at increasingly higher quantities or prices. Since, on the domestic front, the producer is effectively the same as the consumer (we all buy stuff with the money we get from making stuff to buy), the Internet’s current social dynamic is strikingly lopsided. Producers are perceived as consumers (check), but producers are not being compensated enough—or even at all—to actually become the consumers needed on the other side of the equation. Liking this post would be nice for my social stature, but it won’t literally pay me and therefore motivate me to consume whatever advertising is targeted alongside it. 

This actually has serious implications. I’d encourage anyone highlighting income inequality within mature economies to assess the market value of their own production and demand a fare compensation from the social networks currently distributing it. And while that may sound a bit far-fetched today, there are a handful of companies identifying the economic imbalance between producer and consumer in this current climate, and offering their prospective participants a share of the revenue they generate. That should be a relief to all of us congratulating the Internet on its current 20% contribution to the GDP and wishing it many happy returns.

Alex Keith is on our account management team in our WONY office. He is a cofounder of the menswear label General Assembly.

Virtually Real

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By Dan Zuzunaga

Remember the future?  Or at least the future of commerce?  Always Open. Always On. Always Available. E-commerce was going to take the place of the so-called brick and mortar stores providing the consumer with convenient and immediate solutions to all theirshopping needs.  Want to shop at 3am? No problem.  Want free shipping? No problem.  Never want to deal with a salesperson again? No problem.  

  

When Apple opened its Itunes store we logged on and between 99¢ songs and P2P file sharing sites record stores closed in droves.  We were amazed whenAmazon moved past books into things like garden tools, and people started buying things like rakes online. When Gilt launched lunchtime turned into a mad race of who could get it, (whatever it was), into their “member cart” first with fashion conscious shoppers huddled around their laptops everyday at noon.  

In the last 20 years E-commerce has delivered on much of its promise and for a format that is still young enough to be constantly reinventing itself it represents a sizable portion of the market, with a share that is growing year after year.  So it’s interesting to note that one of the biggest online retailers, Ebay, is continuing with a new approach to the future of commerce this season. Ebay, with the expansion of its holiday pop-up stores into 12 cities, is joining what is probably the second biggest trend in retail, the Experience Economy.  The newest edition of Ebay’s pop-ups is the new Jonathan Adler designed “E-Bay Inspiration Shop” a series of shopable windows that opened in late October at 404 Park Avenue South in New York City.

The Experience Economy lives at the opposite end of a point-and-click spectrum focusing on immersive multi-sensory customer experiences that happen in the store.  While Amazon and the like have been making shopping more convenient to do in your underwear, traditional retailers have been inviting us to spend more time out-and-about, or rather in their stores.  From 300,000+ sf Bass Pro Shops with shooting ranges for “Jr. Hunters” to Gucci’s Artisan Corner where well-heeled customers can watch Gucci artisans in action as the brand “transports the craftsmanship of Gucci directly to a store near you”, the Experience Economy has been busy reinventing retail as entertainment for the last 20 years. 

Traditional retailers have long acknowledged the need to incorporate e-commerce into their strategies Ebay’s continued foray into brick and mortar is becoming a large scale investment by an online retailer into the world of brick and mortar.  To be fair the approach Ebay is taking with is more marketing than business model, this year Jonathan Adler designed “shopable storefronts” join the portfolio of Ebay stores.  Nevertheless as these retail mega-trends continue to merge the space between the virtual and the real becomes smaller.

Dan Zuzunaga is Senior Strategist at WONY.

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