THE CROSSED COW

So I’m going to have a little rant — don’t you just hate it when you see ads that blatantly copy something from Youtube? Fine. Okay, sometimes it’s hard for everyone to come up with good ideas so you inevitably end up ‘looking’ for inspiration. The great Steve Jobs once said that; “good artists copy, great artists steal” — he copied that off of Picasso — but it just smacks of laziness to see a carbon copy of a Youtube classic made into a 30 second sting [Rant over].

This music video is such a joy to watch, taking a ‘mini-swipe’ at the ad boys. It’s by Los Angeles rock band OkGo (produced by Syyn Labs) who are famous for their cleverly choreographed music videos. The premise is nothing new, but they’ve taken it to another level in sheer scale, you can’t help but be dazzled by it.  Next, I’ll rant about T-Mobile and social media…

This groovy website www.hayesdavidson.com/skyline/ allows you to plonk buildings willy, and indeed nilly, into the London skyline. The only thing I would add is a Godzilla option to destroy it all but that’s just me.

At the weekend I made a trip to upstate New York and visited the Dia contemporary art museum in Beacon. It’s an easy 90 minute train ride from Grand Central, with some pretty stunning views of the Hudson along the way. The gallery is a 300,000-square-foot converted printing factory and houses works of art too big to be shown in conventional gallery spaces. It’s a truly mind-blowing place. The scale of the building and the art within is just enormous. Top tip – don’t wear heels. There’s room upon room of works by Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin and Louise Bourgeois to name but a few.

Exterior view 1, Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. Photo: ©Richard Barnes. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation

Many of the pieces have been created specifically for the space: with Michael Heizer’s North, East, South, West and Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses being particularly memorable (if not a little distubing, claustrophobics beware). The graphic designer geek inside me also loved the Sol Lewitt wall drawings which occupy several rooms in the gallery.

I was also struck by the specially comissioned work by Zoe Leonard, who was asked to respond the the museum’s collection and location. I thought it was a good example of work that would pass the ‘would you understand the idea if it was described over the phone test’, something we strive to achieve in our work at TP. The piece, You see I am here after all, is made up of several thousand vintage postcards of Niagara Falls. The postcards, which were mostly bought online from sites like eBay, are arranged in a grid and positioned horizontally in accordance to their geographical location and vertically in accordance to the camera angle. The resulting visual impact of the piece is fascinating: a sea of sameness, but also every part a little different.

And then after all that walking, and all that thinking, there was a nice shop and a café at the end. Lovely.

Michael Heizer, North, East, South, West, 1967/2002. Installation at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY. Dia Art Foundation; gift of Lannan Foundation. Photo: Tom Vinetz

Richard Serra, Torqued Ellipse II, 1996; Double Torqued Ellipse, 1997. Dia Art Foundation; gift of Louise and Leonard Riggio. 2000, 2000. Installation at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY. Dia Art Foundation. Photo: ©Richard Barnes

The Ufficio di San Giorgio, founded in the Republic of Genoa in 1407, is believed to be the oldest chartered bank in the world. It was instrumental in the growth and power of the Genoese Republic, acting as governor of many of its overseas empires and serving customers as prominent as Christopher Columbus and King Charles V. For four centuries it remained a renowned institution across the whole of Europe, until Napoleon’s conquest of Italy eventually led to its closure in 1805. In the face of such success, one can’t help but suppose that the many generations of people running the bank were sophisticated strategists with a well-developed understanding of their customers’ motivations to do business with them.

Six centuries and three years later it’s not unreasonable expect financial services professionals to have built upon that learning, evolved and moved on. So consider this piece in last week’s Marketing Week by Cheryl Toner, Group Marketing and Communications Director at AXA – a contemporary pan-European financial services giant – speaking about a review (presumably lengthy and costly) of their brand positioning, in which she says the following:

“One of our key findings was that trust was key to the relationship with our customers. We have been looking at all the areas where we need to be seen as reliable, which is a key driver of trust in our industry. It’s basically about keeping our promises.”

No shit, Cheryl. You don’t say! Even Sybil Fawlty, whose responsibility for customer experience didn’t extend beyond the outskirts of Torquay, might have found that statement of the bleedin’ obvious a bit too, well, bleedin’ obvious to commit to print.

I mean, come on, this is hardly an original insight in to what makes financial services brands tick, is it? Trust, and therein keeping of promises, is the foundational principle of money itself – “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds” it says on the British notes in my wallet; “In God We Trust” on a US dollar – not a 21^st Century phenomenon hitherto unseen. For years, centuries and millennia of financial transacting it is a basic and obvious truth. That Axa describe it as a “finding” makes me wonder where they’ve been looking all these years.

My point here is not that Axa is wrong. Sure, trust is important. But it always has been, so unless this is a confession to past untrustworthiness, I really don’t see how or who this helps. It’s not a brand strategy, it’s table-stakes for staying in business. It’s not differentiating, every financial services business in the world is pursuing the same goal. It’s not a ‘big idea’ that will spawn innovations in products, services and customer experience. And it’s not a rallying cry for internal staff or customers to get behind – no one gets excited for very long by the Emperor’s new clothes. So, for me, that’s a waste of time, effort and money because if you’re going to review your brand strategy you should make sure it aims to achieve every single one of those things.

Even if you fail to achieve that, at least try to come up with something that a medieval brand manager would not already have known.

At the end of January,  I took a little trip from the (relative) warmth and comfort of my studio desk in Albion Courtyard, to the bleak wilderness of Davos, high up a mountain in the Swiss alps. A spot of skiing perhaps? A spot of snowboarding? Alas, neither.  I was sent out to help one of our clients implement some of the branding work we have created for them, as it was being unveiled at the World Economic Forum (or WEF).

For those of you that don’t know, WEF is an opportunity for those who are at the head of the (board)table to thrash out their views about the state of the World and what they are hoping for in the upcoming year — a big, big deal. I overheard someone in the corridor saying; “If you’re in to politics, this is the place to be.” So no pressure then? Previous years have seen such heavy hitters as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and even ex-president Bill Clinton attending the event hosted in the small Swiss skiing resort — such is the importance of the WEF conference. With the World economy recovering from crisis, this years WEF focused on the topics of Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild.

We were asked by our client to set up some digital brand communications within their corporate sponsored area. This took the form of a series of branded animations (two animations for each day of the conference) playing across large screens mounted along the walls so that the guests could watch, and follow, the animations as they moved through the space.

Without going into lots of information about the animations themselves, I thought I’d treat you to a video of my non-scripted ramblings via a Flip video camera that I recorded whilst I was there.

(Expect some mild expletives and some general poo-pooing of every other branding scheme…)

read more…

I’ve heard a lot of apologies lately. Sorry that your car doesn’t stop. Sorry that your train doesn’t go. Sorry to the sponsors, the fans and the wife (in that order). Sorry for the bad things that were written. Sorry for not being sorry soon enough. Sorry for not being sorry at all.

If you’d just landed from Mars you’d think that the business of marketing was about finding new and innovative ways to apologise (sorry, my UFO has left an intricate circle in your field). Which, for many marketeers, is probably not so far from the truth. It’s a symptom of a problem that many marketing departments have.

In too many organisations the marketing function is no more than the wagging tail of a much larger dog. It can only go where the dog goes, diligently following, hoping that the dog is good. When the dog behaves, the wagging tail may earn the dog a biscuit. But when the biscuit-giver gets bitten, no amount of wagging saves the dog from the kick that it will receive instead. When a business fouls up, no amount of saying sorry is going to make it better.

Where marketing departments need to be is in the creature’s brain. They need to be part of the decision about how to behave. And because marketing is about understanding behaviour, and the implications of that behaviour, it will therefore allow the brain to evolve. The creature becomes no longer a dumb dog but something much smarter. Something too intelligent than to bite the hand that feeds. I know I say this a lot, but for a business to truly succeed it must embrace marketing and creativity as board-level disciplines, fundamental to strategy and operations as a whole.

Of course even such creatively evolved businesses as Apple or Google will still make mistakes. But, as we’ve seen with the launch of Google Buzz this week, when things don’t go according to plan a profusion of apologies doesn’t need to follow. When your brain works as fast and as brilliantly as theirs, you can be forgiven the odd little nip.

So, to Toyota, Eurostar, Woods, Terry, Daily Mail, Vodafone, Toyota (again), Eurostar (again), RBS, HBOS et al, I make no apologies for sharing this point of view.

If you’re anything like me then you prance around with your iPhone glued to your hand 24 hours a day, but rarely attempt to make full use of it as a device for running such things as fun/informative/handy apps.

I’m impressed with the number of apps out there, but unlike some, I just can’t muster the enthusiasm to trawl through the lists until I find something that I like the look of, want to download and then actually play with for more than five minutes. I am somewhat app-athetic <boom boom> when it comes to apps.

Instead I prefer to swan around the studio pestering everyone to tell me what apps I should/shouldn’t have on my iPhone. Having done this fairly recently I thought I would quickly post a list of the top recommendations – from the folk at TP – so that you can also benefit from my app-athy.

So, in no particular order (although No.1 did actually obtain the most recommendations from the fattie food-junkies housed here)…

1. Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals – does what it says on the tin. Quick recipes with accompanying shopping lists so you know what to buy.

Our wee Jack, who’s renowned for her intolerance of swear words in blogs, made her own personal recommendation for this “My fav was called Tuna and Tomato Rigatoni, it was f*cking amazing! Also good that I’ve tried so far was Veg Jalfrezi, magic! Prawn and Pea Risotto, brilliant! Tonight I’m having the Cauliflower and Cheese Risotto… I’ll let you know how I get on.”

I think it’s fair to say she’s a fan.

2. My Fitness Pal - OK, so we’re all food-junkies but some of us like to think our bodies are temples too. <Warning – can potentially make you calorie-counting stinking bore – like me now. sob>

Our Miranda, the half-marathon running whizz-kid made this recommendation “You plug in your age, height, weight, how much you exercise, how much weight you want to lose etc. It then tells you your calorie limit per day. All you have to do then is keep a diary of what you eat (it does all the boring calorie calculations for you) and this wonderful app then tells you to stop eating like a glutton and get off your arse. It even provides little charts to tell you this. For free!”

3. Moodagent – I’ve yet to download this but I’m actually quite excited to.

Our gadget-daddy and all over tech-pimp Kev recommended this one “Neat little app that makes playlists for you based on your iPhone/iPod touch library. The app presents you with 5 sliders: sensual, tender, joy, aggressive, tempo, which you can pull and push, depending on your mood – and some how, as if by magic, it makes new playlists. Crikey knows how it works it out but the mixes are pretty good and you can save them to use when you aren’t using the app.”

4. My Pantone - yeah, yeah, yeah, what’d you expect? There ARE a lot of designers here after all…

Our guru and design-deity Greg Q made this (gushing) recommendation “Pantone  - £5 and never used… But I know I will one day!!!”

Thanks Greg. Errrr…

5. Eliss – A ‘classic’ game on the iPhone apparently. Looks very unsophisticated in its design however I’m lead to believe it’s ROCK hard.

Once again, daddy of tech-cool Kev made this recommendation “This was one of the first apps when the app store launched, yet it still feels fresh and it’s still blooming hard. The principle of eliss is simple. Resize the coloured dots, either by merging them or by dividing them, whilst avoiding different colour dots. What at first seems like a two fingered treat (steady…), soon turns into a 6 fingered freak out, holding and moving dots together at a frantic speed. Don’t let its cute retro graphics and ‘plinky-plonky’ music lead you into a false sense of security – this game is very, very, hard but very addictive.”

6. TuneIn Radio – enables you to listen to (and record!) over 30,000 radio stations – As long as it’s got Radio 4 this blogger will be a happy lass. (plus it’s got a very sweet icon)

Another verbose and lengthy recommendation. This time from our Nick E “Internet radio – simple, looks good”

Nice one Nick. Nice one.

7. Dropbox - AT LAST! I finally have an app that allows me to store docs on my iPhone. Didn’t realise quite what I was missing until now.

Our lovely Tim brought this wonder to my attention with his recommendation “Saving files to and from iPhone is something they should have implemented in the first place. So this is nice and handy. Saving PDFs, movies, music etc, to your phone without having to go thru’ the painful mediocrity of iTunes.”

That’s it for now I’m afraid. There are more, but quite frankly the ol’ app-athy (ok, ok, I’ll stop) is starting to set in and I need to get back to staring out of the window. Do leave your comments and recommendations for any of your favourite apps and save me making the effort to find more myself. Thanks.

I probably should also note that all of these apps are available from the iTunes app store through your iPhone/iTouch or computer. Or click here to go to Apple’s website store.

Helen.

After years of waiting, Apple and Steve Jobs have finally announced the worst best kept secret in gadget history – the iPad.

Ever since Jobs and Co. created the iPhone, there has been intense speculation that Apple were going to re-invent the Newton, with all kind of rumours about what the device would be and what it would be capable of.

For those of you that have been living in a bunker, the iPad is what Apple describes as a bridge between the world of the smartphone and the laptop — a third ‘mobile’ space that sits between the two. Indeed, at first glance, the iPad looks nothing more than a giant iPhone — it features the same glass multi-touch display (albeit a huge one at 9 1/2 inches), the same buttons – it can even run the same applications.

So many are wondering, well, what’s the difference; “Why do I need one of these shiny new toys when I have an iPhone and a laptop?… I was expecting an all-singing and dancing device that could read my thoughts and intiate command for me on the impulse of a brain wave! …This isn’t the JesusPad I wanted!” Yes, many of these points are true. But what people are forgetting to remember is that content is king, and just like the iPhone and the iPod before it, if the content is good, (in the case of the iPod; huge libaries of mp3’s versus a cd, and the iPhone with the app store full of entertainment and usefulness), then it will be a must-have product.

So let’s look at the killer app, and with a screen this size, it has to be publishing — anything from books to newspapers and magazines. Both Sony and Amazon (with the Kindle) have made significant inroads in to this new area with eBook readers: devices that are like carrying whole libaries in the space of a paperback. But these devices look a generation old compared to the user experience of the iPad – gimicky it may look, but simply turning and flicking a page on the iPad instantly feels more real. The printed book is all good and well, but it’s in the magazine and newspaper area where this product will excel. Take a look at this digital version of the Sports Illustrated magazine and try to say to yourself that you’d rather have a traditional magazine:

It’s been forecast for many years that the ‘death of print’ cometh. Maybe with the iPad and devices like it, we’re at the beginning to this new era. This fuzing of new-media and traditional print publishing into a new and interactive form is going to be exciting for both consumers and designers alike, hopefully reigniting what is a shrinking industry. Take a look at this concept video for a product called Mag+ by Bonnier R&D and their digital design partners BERG – it shows off the potential experience for what a product like the iPad can deliver:

No doubt the iPad will open the flood gates to millions of copycat tablet computers, all hoping to do the same thing. Will I be getting one? Well, I’ve always said; never buy the first gen of any Apple product; but if content as rich as this comes out, I might have to change my mind.

How quickly one can fall from grace.

Last weekend I had to get the train down to the coast once again, so armed with my vouchers from National Express I approached the ticket desk at London Liverpool Street and asked the man (dressed in National Express uniform) behind the counter for a return ticket.

Upon advising him that I was going to be paying with vouchers I was met with a surly sarcastic response about how “oooh, vouchers are our FAVOURITE form of payment”. Confused by his attitude I questioned if he was intending to be sarcastic or not. He replied, in an equally sarcastic tone, “no, of course not, we just LOVE vouchers. Of course come the end of the year the company accounts will be £50 short because of your vouchers so there will undoubtedly be a fare increase next year to cover the loss, but that’s just fine. Thank you.”

*BUMP*

The customer experience of National Express returns to earth with an almighty crash.

The Partners 2003 (top), Paul Rand 1966 (lower)

It was cool to see a discussion about the Ford Oval in the NY Times last week. We were lucky enough to have the chance to update the Ford Oval in 2003 for the centenary of the company. The mark has become symbolic for Ford, with a lot of pride invested in it – they have a saying in Dearborn that true Ford people ‘bleed Ford blue’! It wasn’t an option to do anything as radical as Paul Rand’s job back in the sixties, especially as Ford were struggling financially at the time. We also found that there were hundreds of versions of the oval all around the world (we lost count at 400), so our task was to create one that could be used everywhere. Needless to say the debates about every slight tweak were prolonged, but we were very careful to preserve the character of the ‘original’. The new Oval revealed on top of ford HQ in June 2003 was the first new standard since 1967. That made us proud too.

Some years ago, I treated myself to a Rolex watch with some inheritance money.  I had been working on a project with Rolex shortly before and had somewhat fallen for the allure and myth of the ‘Explorer II’.

As it happens, the oscillator of my Superlative Certified Swiss Chronometer has always exhibited arrhythmia. Over the course of a few days, it will happily gain a couple of minutes but I’ve got used to its idiosyncratic approach to time-telling which for the most part has generally made me slightly more punctual.

Anyway, this isn’t an attempt to deconstruct the rational or irrational behaviour of spending several thousand quid on something that one could spend £5 on and find it does the primary job of telling the time just as well if not better than your average chronometer.

No, this is about the relationship the brand continues to have with you when things go wrong or there is a need for some kind of dialogue. You see, Rolex recommend that the watch is serviced around 5 years mark.  Not that they’ve ever reminded me.  Mine is about 6 years old now but over the Christmas period something inside the stainless steel, expertly crafted one-piece oyster shell of my Explorer II started to vibrate whenever I moved my wrist. And then, just before New Year, the precision-engineered Oyster movement, the ‘height of precision, robustness and guaranteed long term performance’ just kind of….stopped….

So, last weekend I marched into my authorised Rolex agent, expecting staff to jump into action, the watch to be gently but expediently strapped to a watch stretcher, the Rolex helicopter to land  and my watch whisked off for the very best private-care and convalescence before being chauffer driven to my own front door and returned to my wrist in full health a couple of weeks later.

But no. Apparently, I was nonchalently informed, events like this are perfectly usual issues for swiss-engineered superlative chronometers. True or not, the fact that owning the watch might imply I’m a high-octane, adventure fuelled, every second counts kind of guy who relies on their choice of timepiece for accurate split-second, life or death decision-making doesn’t resonate in the quiet corridors and laboratories of Rolex. It would seem there’s no

time like Rolex time. I’ve got to wait between 14 and 16 weeks – yes upto 4 months (or 10,368,000 seconds to be accurate) before I can be repatriated with my son’s heirloom and I’m going to be expected to pay for the pleasure too.

So come on Rolex, if you can’t crank up your servicing mechanisms, surely there is something you could do at this point in the relationship to reaffirm my investment or even better re-ignite my relationship! How about offering a ‘courtesy watch’? Might that not encourage the idea of multiple watch ownership – trialling something a bit sportier or dressier in the interim period?  Oh, and it’s my wife’s 40th birthday just around the corner. But then you didn’t know that did you because you’ve never asked. Tant pis!

A really lovely experience idea from Coca-cola. Just wish they’d been having ideas like this in the days when I was at university.

Via Adland TV

It’s not often that I blog about someone having done something well (I am comfortable in my cranky, critical skin thank you) however I, uncomfortably, find myself in a position where  I genuinely wish to offer praise and ‘props’ to a company have made a good move.

To anyone who’s read my previous posts it will also come as a surprise that I would be praising a rail company, but believe it or not here it comes…

Just before Christmas I had to make an urgent trip from London to Essex. I arrived at Liverpool Street station, checked the departure time of my train, shovelled a big wedge of cash into the ticket machine and just as my tickets printed out the automated departures and arrivals board lit up in a frenzy of flashing lights as one-by-one the trains changed from ‘On Time’ to ‘Cancelled’, ‘Bus Service’ or ‘Delayed’. Mine was cancelled. The tickets, still warm from the printer, cowered in my clenched fist.

I then embarked on the most excruciating train journey of my life. Both the outward and return journeys were subject to cancellations, delays, lack of onboard refreshments due to a broken boiler, overcrowding and general displeasure.

On my return I set about drafting a letter of complaint to the train company responsible, National Express. Seeing as there has been a lot of talk of will they/won’t they mergers with Stagecoach recently I wasn’t holding my breath in getting a positive response to my request for a full, and immediate, refund.

As Christmas set upon us I received a letter from National Express to inform me that they had read my letter and would attempt to come back to me within 6 days. Actually, it was more like 15, but hey, it was Christmas and who’s counting? I was stunned to receive another letter the other day profusely apologising for the ‘unforgiveable’ experience I had had to endure that day on the train, and explaining the reasons for the delays/cancellations but in a tone that was more apologetic and responsible than blame-ridden and bitter. Neatly tucked in the folded letter were vouchers for rail travel (on ANY network in the UK) for not only the full return fare but for the full fare + 25%.

Now, I’m not too sure whether it should be a big cheer for National Express per se, or a big cheer for the cranky insistence of a grump like me, but regardless, I thought the communications tone, and the ‘above and beyond’ value of the vouchers were a great example of a brand’s ability to create a positive experience out of a bad one. Well done National Express.