Twisted Worlds by Jeff Kubina, on Flickr

February is here, and we can hear the gentle pop of New Year’s resolutions expiring all around us. Like soap bubbles that once were full of hope, reflecting a better future, many of our resolutions are now reduced to a moist residue on the harsh pavement of reality.

It’s no surprise that coming up with resolutions is much easier than keeping them. A 2007 study by Richard Wisemen from the University of Bristol showed that 88% of those who set New Year resolutions fail, even though over 50% felt confident they will succeed at the point of making their resolution.

New Year’s resolutions are commonly articulated as objectives, and just like business objectives, common reasons for failure can include lack of strategy, inconsistent implementation, lack of stakeholder engagement and cultural fixations. But there’s one pattern of failure I’d like to point out: the search for meaning trap.

When we set ambitious change-orientated goals, we are engaging with our definition of purpose. We are articulating various “happy ending” objectives and laying out early chapters for new, life-changing, narratives. In essence, defining resolutions is one of the ways we explore the meaning of our lives.

Similarly, defining business objectives is an activity intertwined with the organisational search for meaning. When we define business objectives we are exploring the purpose of our organisation and redefining a vision of our company’s future. The more critical the objectives are, the deeper we will have to engage with the fundamental questions about our brand. We will discover that in order to make significant changes to the composite and priorities of objectives, we have to engage with the question of who we really are as a company. That’s why in strategic processes you will find that terms like mission, vision, purpose, values, brand story, personality and other terms suggesting deep meaning tend to connect, raising further complexities and challenges.

This is the point where the search for meaning trap kicks in.

Because the search for meaning is a never-ending quest. The meaning you were happy with yesterday, will start to degrade in your mind the moment you leave it be, and even faster if you continue to examine it. Suddenly, the sense of clarity of intent and enthusiasm you’ve felt begins to wane, and you wonder if this was the right idea in the first place… Maybe that brand idea isn’t right, maybe you need to re-examine your vision. Maybe what you lack is a positioning statement. Maybe it’s really the time to revisit your purpose, or corporate mission statement. And what about getting a good idea of how the market has changed since the last time we went through the process of defining those elements? And who’s our target audience again? And what about the different ways different departments or subsidiaries have been going about the same process?

Before you know it, you are running a new company-wide brand programme and engaging everyone from the receptionist to the chairman of the board.

Hang on a minute! Didn’t we go through this just 18 months ago?

Oh but how the world has changed since… So much that by the time you finish this exercise you will have to start it again, just like you did last time you decided to “shake things up a bit”…

Now, you can never accuse a strategist of a lack of love for planning, but I believe that being stuck in an endless corporate search for meaning is the equivalent of moving from one resolution to another, one fad diet or self-help book to the next, without ever achieving any of the intended transformation.

The solution? In one word – Act!

Let go of the notion that you will ever reach a perfect definition of your brand or purpose.  You are on a quest, so stay focused on the road ahead and deal with the obstacles head on. You need something good enough which suggests a clear course of action. Little changes make a big difference over time and once your plan is even half decent, the rest of your energy should be focused on coming up with actions that make things happen and get things done.

If I could suggest one new habit for brands in the new year, it would be to stay focused on action. So shift the resources you were planning to spend on your Nth strategic planning programme of the last few years into actual things you can do for your world.

Throw away that self-help book, and start doing.

Each month, we’ll be posting a short profile on our most recent placements. You can find out a bit about them, and see some of their work…

Hello, my name is…
Tristan Dunbar
In three words I would say I am…
75 Percent Squash
And in my spare time I like to…
Play a lot of Blues.
I have just finished studying at…
Norwich University College of the Arts
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
visiting www.behance.net/tristandunbar or you can email me at me@tristandaviddunbar.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Foyles the bookshop 

Because…
You can run with the idea until you’re out of breath – then keep going.
You would never guess that I…
Really (really) like dragons.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Someone.

Hello, my name is…
Lucy Hutchinson
In three words I would say I am…
Determined, inquisitive, unconventional
And in my spare time I like to…
Put itunes on loud and paint, watch great films and explore new places
I have just finished studying at…
University of Leeds
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Visiting my website at http://lucyhutchinson.weebly.com/
Or send me an e-mail at lucyehutchinson@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
My Final University Project, Lost In Digital

Because…
It expressed an important social message in an unconventional way
You would never guess that I…
Am a fully qualified open water scuba diver
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Work with Jack Renwick (the partners old creative director) and get some experience of a small start up studio

Hello, my name is…
Laura Evans
In three words I would say I am…
confident, excitable, playful
And in my spare time I like to…
See friends. They’re really important to me.
I have just finished studying at…
Kingston University
You can see a portfolio of my work by…
Emailing me at evanslaura1989@gmail.com
And my piece of work that best represents me is…
Self portrait

Because…
It was an idea I had always wondered about – and when I finally did it – the results were amazing. It’s a playful idea that has been moulded into a piece of design without loosing its charm.
You would never guess that I…
Am an avid list writer. I write lists to keep on top of my lists.
After The Partners, I’m going to…
Magpie Studio

For example: I find the nature of BA’s on-board service (long-haul) is neatly summarised by the warning noise that sounds throughout the ‘plane just before the aircraft turns its engines on to full at the beginning of the runway for take-off. Here are my reasons for this:

1. It’s not designed to benefit passengers (we are already strapped in to our seats). It’s for the crew, to tell them to sit down. Much of BA’s service seems centred around what suits the crew rather than the passenger.

2. It sounds awful. It would be hard to find another two-note sequence that has such tonal dissonance. It manages to sound hostile at just the point that passengers need the opposite. Dissonance and hostility are wider themes in BA service too.

3. It is laughably out of date. The timbre of the sound is unlike anything I’ve heard since my ZX81 computer got thrown away in 1982. BA’s service hasn’t moved with the times either.

I could go on (I really hate this noise) but won’t. The point of this example was not to go deep into BA, but to explain the concept behind the word I am looking for. The noise is just one small thing but, for me, it represents the wider issue of which it is just a part, rather well.

So, what’s the word? I have spent some time searching for this of course, but haven’t quite found an answer that seems right yet. Some contenders have emerged though and I list a few here together with the reasons why I don’t think they are right:

Microcosm. Probably the closest, but implies that the thing is really a miniature version of the whole thing, which is not what I’m saying. I’m looking for something more conceptual than this. Back to the example, saying that the noise is a microcosm of BA’s service doesn’t seem right.

Epitome. In the sense that it means “the perfect example” then it is not wrong, but the thing here is not the perfect example, it is a perfect capture of its characteristics – and that’s not the same, I think.

Synecdoche. I read this piece in The Guardian at the weekend that suggested to me that this was the word I crave. But my OED suggests that this is more a linguistic term – a substitution of a word describing a part of the whole for the word describing the whole – than a way to describe a more abstract concept.

Now, I’m holding my hands high in the air at this point in admission of my ignorance. Perhaps one of these words is indeed the right one, and no doubt there is some word – obvious or not – that describes what I seek. Please, readers, make your suggestions in the comments section below.

But the reason I am searching for this word is not just out of intellectual curiosity (although I admit that’s part of it) but because the concept is an important one in the professional world of brand consultancy and design. In fact, it is the perfect way to describe what we do. We define and create things – words, identities, communications, objects, events, etc. – that are conceptually representative of the broad intent of the wider proposition to which they belong. When audiences experience these things, together or in isolation, their experience is therefore representative of the wider proposition, i.e. to have the experience of the thing is to have the experience of the organisation, company, or brand of which they are part. Because the human brain looks for patterns and consistency, positive experiences will build positive expectations for similarly branded experiences, driving willingness and enthusiasm to engage – ergo, business success. But by the same token, negative experiences will create wider negative expectations, and these may prevail over positives (that’s a human brain thing too) so consistency across all experiences is important too. In the ideal brand, every experience of every thing is, in itself, representative of the whole; experiences are interrelated and multi-dimensional, spider’s web on spider’s web of interconnected threads. There are tangible things, like products or buildings; intangible things, like customer service or social media; meta-things, like brand identity or how an organisation engages its own people in its brand; and, micro-things, like a small detail on a piece of packaging that just makes everybody smile. Each one of these is a representation of the brand and needs to be properly aligned.

There is a really important distinction to draw here between brand consultancy and management consultancy or, to put it better, those consultancies that have a design capability and those which do not. We both start out by setting out the master proposition at the organisation-wide level. That, in itself, is a complex and involved task. But where I am convinced that band consultancies, like The Partners, offer far greater advantage to clients, is that we then translate the proposition into the things that audiences actually experience: the things that take strategy beyond theory, and make it real. We create things that embody the characteristics of the wider proposition of which they are a part, thus making the proposition more compelling, more desirable, and better understood.

Now, if only there was a word for that…

I’m particularly looking forwards to this year’s grand prix season and I can’t wait to see how the McLaren boys do out on the track. Check out the video blow from the launch event and some more pics of the stunning car.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Our CEO Jim Prior, Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland and The Sound Agency’s Julian Treasure, were realising the dream they had conceived at the TED Global conference in 2009: Could they produce a TED event dedicated to a marketing and advertising audience, and would anyone come?

Not only were people applying to attend in their masses (we ended up being 400% oversubscribed for the event), but speakers were lining up to take part.

The conference was based upon the theme of ‘Why Better Human Understanding is the Key to Future Business Success’, and was broken down into four sessions over the course of the day.

The first session, Future Thinking was ‘an examination of how the mind works – what, how, where and why do we think’. This session included talks from advertising and behavioural economics legend Rory Sutherland who looked at the way we consider and purchase and how subjective that decision really is. BBH’s mobile (and gambling) afficiando Peter Sells presented the argument that not all data and research can be a true indicator of human behaviour. The (incredibly moving and inspiring) neuro-scientist Jill Bolte Taylor discussed the disconnect between the traditional left and right brain and how she monitored her own brain pattern during a massive stroke. IPA winner Tim Jones discussed the rising emergence of gaming principles in brand communications and how it appeals to consumers emotional needs, and the King of (Quite) Interesting facts John Lloyd filled our heads with insight and knowledge of varying human behaviours, past and present.

Rory Sutherland - A Few Lessons Governments Could Learn From Marketers

Peter Sells - A Nice Soft Wife On A Sofa, And Other Stories

John Lloyd - Really rather very (quite) interesting

The second session of the day focused on Future Connections. This session explored ‘emerging thoughts and new insights into how we will connect and communicate’ . First to take the stage was the CEO of Ecademy, Thomas Power, who encouraged us to form a ‘Digital Mindset’ for the future.  He was followed by Brooke Molinaroli from BT discussing how to successfully use social media channels for business. Pranav Mistry unveiled some technology so ground-breaking the room was awash with gasps of wonder. Research Fellow, Tim Ambler, who was unfortunately unable to join us live on the day had pre-recorded his talk on the mind and neuroscience, which kept the audience captivated. Then, to take us into lunch the much-anticipated Mark Lund, CEO of the COI delivered his talk on the future of our ‘Connected State’.

Thomas Power - The Future of Social Networks

Brooke Molinaroli - Social Media As A Business Tool

Tim Ambler - Ours Is Not To Reason Why: The Mind And Neuroscience

Mark Lund - The Connected State

After lunch we kicked off with the third session of the day: Future Senses. This session explored ‘the nature of experiences and the memories they formed’. We were, aptly, treated to a very special performance by musician Randolph Matthews. His music, formed of a melting-pot of wonderous sounds, really helped to liven and inspire everyone after lunch (I congratulated him later on for succeeding in getting a room full of business leaders to ‘hoot’ and ‘yelp’ with wild abandon – a truly remarkable feat). The TED video of Daniel Kahneman followed on from Randolph where he delved into ‘The Riddle of Experience Vs. Memory’. The Sound Agency’s Julian Treasure then took to the stage and treated us to an education in sound and how the mind & body reacts to different sounds. The ‘magnetic’ Simon Gosling, from Framestore, then impressed us all with demonstrations into the latest mobile technologies using high definition special effects. Finally, wrapping up the third session, Mark Davy from FutureCity discussed the connection between business and social purpose, and also introduced me to the name ‘Spitalditch Gate’ which I’ve been searching for on the tube map ever since.  Sadly it’s not there…yet…

Randolph Matthews

Julian Treasure - The 8 Expressions Of A Brand In Sound

Mark Davy - The Connection Between Business And Social Purpose

After a short break we entered the fourth, and final session of the day, Future Value. This session explored ‘new definititions of business success and a more holistic interpretation of value’.

Independent consultant, and former ad-man, Paul Feldwick started the session off by challenging the very definition of creativity. CEO of Marcus Consulting, Lucy P. Marcus instructed us on how to create a revolution in the boardroom. Laurie Santos followed with her talk on how humans and monkeys are not all that dissimilar when it comes to being bad with money. Media futurist Gerd Leonhard presented a lively, and fascinating, talk on the future of Intellectual Property and how in our increasingly ‘connected world’ ownership can no longer be truly exclusive. IPA Winner Sarah Morning the delivered one of the most-revered talks of the day. In only 5 minutes she introduced the audience to the concept of brands taking the ‘long approach’ and using digital methods to reinvent the notion of rituals (Sarah, and Tim’s full essays appear in this week’s Campaign magazine supplement). Jeremy Gilley, conceiver and founder of the Peace One Day movement then inspired us all as he told the story of how he took the concept of a one-day global ceasefire from being just a dream in his mind to an actuality, managing to agree a ceasefire with the Taliban and United Nations Forces allowing  him to arrange the  innoculation of a staggering 1.8million children against polio in just one day. Left somewhat sideswiped and speechless from the enormity of emotion in Jeremy’s message, Rory took to the stage for a final time and reflected on the day and what the true meaning of value is.

Paul Feldwick - Aesthetics And Jugs And Rock'n'Roll

Gerd Leonhard - The Future of Intellectual Property

Sarah Morning - The 10,000 Year Clock And The Eternal Coin

Jeremy Gilley - Peace One Day

After a long, and mind-expanding day, all that was left was for host Jim Prior to thank everyone, including our sponsors Millward Brown, and partners Haymarket Brand Media, Haymarket Events, and Deloitte. As the conference came to a close we all filtered through to the drinks reception full of chatter and ideas to share with our peers over a glass of wine.  Without a hint of bias, it really was an amazing day. Pick up a copy of this week’s Campaign magazine for a full-page write up from Jeremy Lee, and be sure to keep checking back on the official TEDxNewSt website as all the speakers videos will be posted up there shortly.

Here’s to TEDxNewSt 2011…

]]> http://www.thecrossedcow.com/2010/10/21/tedxnewst-the-day/feed/ 0 http://www.thecrossedcow.com/2010/09/27/wear-believe-act/ http://www.thecrossedcow.com/2010/09/27/wear-believe-act/#comments Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:25:53 +0000 Eagle http://www.thecrossedcow.com/?p=3040 Continue reading →]]>

On Thursday night at the Natural History Museum the world was introduced to a little yellow tag that will come to symbolise the struggle of millions to make the world’s roads a safer place.

Back in May we were part of a WPP competition to design a logo for the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety, the most ambitious campaign ever to reduce deaths on the world’s roads. The statistics make for horrifying reading, particularly in the developing world, ranking with TB and malaria in its impact, and growing fast every year. The Decade of Action aims to halt this, and with a concerted effort reverse the trend.

This will take the support of millions of people. And we didn’t think a logo would do it. We needed a physical symbol of support. Something you could own, could hold in your hand, could wear to show you were part of the fight. The AIDS ribbon, the poverty wristband and the remembrance poppy have become enduring symbols of their causes, and many imitators have taken advantage of the power of those symbols. We created something new that people could use just how they wanted: a metal tag that can be a badge, a necklace, a key fob, on a coat, a bag, even a pet.

Under the strapline ‘Wear. Believe. Act’ (a very smart idea courtesy of our friends at the FIA Foundation, the people behind the Decade of Action) the Tag was presented to the great and the good in the safety world as preparations begin for the global launch of the Decade in May next year.

Etienne Krug

It’s a little late for the great dinosaur in the main hall who oversaw proceedings, but we hope the rest of us will start wearing our support for the Decade – however we want to do that.

So taking our urge to watch cats, Ikea has teamed up with ad agency Mother to shoot this remarkable ad, using their Wembley showroom and a 100 cats. It seems to have paid off though – at the time of writing the video has already had 173,586 hits in just two days, the making of (below), attracting 1,318,505 hits! I’m wondering if there’s an opportunity here? Has Quicksilver ever thought about dog surfing videos?

PS. If your thinking of going to Ikea, you might want to take some antihistamine tablets before you go…

Just seen the new Heinz Baked Bean 100 year anniversary can to be rolled out this October, which, as an avid fan, I think looks pretty smart. However, I can’t help but wonder why they thought that taking all their inspiration from the past was the way to go forward? Along with the Anchor Butter adverts, that mimic the ‘ghost signs’ from the late 19^th century, and the 1966 inspired England football kit, it feels like were going back in time.

I know there’s lots of nostalgia, pride and reassurance in using old designs (which now seems to be a rite of passage for successful food brands), but personally I’d have much rather seen what the can might look like in another 100 years. Made from space foil that can be put in the microwave straight onto my jacket potato, something at least a bit more entertaining! Are food brands always going to look to the past? And if they don’t, what might the future hold for even the humble baked bean can?

Wayne & Garth Spotted

Alongside the part of my phone that actually makes calls (the old fashioned bit), my Google Maps app is probably one of my most used. It’s become indispensable in the same way that being able to text once was. What would we do without it!

Modern spoils aside, the success of Google’s mapping technology may partly be down to its adaptiveness. As with all good web services, the Google Maps API has spawned a mass of location based mash-ups. Google, for example, recently partnered with We Are What We Do to create the wonderfully rich Historypin. It’s all too easy to forget about the history that surrounds us here at The Partners HQ, but a quick post code look up perfectly placed archived and geo-tagged photos from over 100 years ago. To refer to images like this in isolation is one thing, to see them in context and contrast with our modern surroundings (places we inhabit everyday without considering the past) can completely transform our sense of place. Today, Berg London announced Dimensions. Born out of a series of workshops with the BBC, this set of mash-ups forces us to reconsider our surroundings by overlaying historical, political, and environmental data on to our own neighbourhoods. With these filters and layers applied, mapping becomes less about wayfinding, and more about changing perceptions of our sense of place; both of our own locality, and of others’.

With Google’s Street View, the mental images and memories of our surroundings are at once put to test, and the sheer volume of imagery captured by Google’s roaming cars across the world must represent one of the most significant image archives in existence. It provides us with an almost complete panoramic view of the urban environment, albeit one recorded in 1/100th of a second. For the virtual tourist, or the freeze frame voyeur, street view offers a world of exploration like never before. Last year, Art Fag City bought together snapshots of some of the more weird and wonderful findings. Our treasured Daily Mail more recently got in on the act with the story of a seemingly dead girl laying in the street.

Thank god last year’s AR craze has seemed to have died down, when every brand seemed desperate to get a piece of the emperor’s new clothes. This highly ironic video summed it up perfectly. Why do something that could be much better achieved without the added layer of a webcam? Context, of course, is key. ART + COM showed that there were practical and meaningful applications for the technology when they bought dinosaurs out of their skeletons and bursting into life at Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. And with dedicated hardware in gaming consoles, the opportunities still seem genuinely engaging. Oh to be a kid today!

Of course mobile and augmented technologies are a match made in heaven. Amsterdam’s Layar first launched on Android some years ago now, but the potential still seems to be slowly unfolding, and marketers are quicker now to spot an opportunity. While The Rolling Stone’s take on the Layar app for their Exile On Main Street album may have been overly literal, it’s interesting to think how we can begin to engage an audience not just online, but in the real world too. Over in Japan, where adoption of new technologies is often quicker than anywhere else, the Sekai Camera app spawned an ‘Air tagging‘ phenomenon. Surely it’s just a matter of time before this spreads. Let’s just hope users can learn to leave data behind that actually enriches our surroundings, and resist the kind of comments you’re likely to find in a shoreditch pub toilet.

Yesterday I received a notification from Google informing me I was now being tracked by Latitude. I’d opted in for this some time ago, only to be disappointed to find very few of my friends had shared my enthusiasm. Sharing your location with Google (search now factors in your location) is one thing, sharing it with your friends, it seems, is another.

The social aspect of location awareness is, however growing fast. And while Foursquare’s success may be in part down to its reward schemes and gaming aspects (ultimately, its competitive nature), the check-in concept now seems to be spreading beyond the merely physical, with more & more start ups like Gomiso allowing us to ‘check-in’ to movies and tv shows. It’s yet another way of allowing us digital natives to define ourselves not just by where we hang out, but also by what we consume. In 2010, privacy, and personal space appear outdated concepts, while the commodification of the personal reigns supreme.

If anyone can popularise the concept of location in the social space, it’s Facebook. Sure enough, Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed rumours that Facebook will soon be adding location to its services. Facebook might just show Google how it should be done here. Friends & followers, are you with me?

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.