Strawberries in January pt 3: the way forward: enhancing relationships, not creating totaly new ones

I realized there was no need to create new forms; all I had to do was design the relationship between a human, an object, and what is around the two. That realization gave me a big relief.

For example, if a client asked me “Please design a chair” while sitting in a good chair, I might go so far as to say, “Why? You’re already sitting in a nice one!” That’s almost it. People think that design is about making new things, creating new stimulations. But what about the good relationships that already exist? Why abandon all that and make things all over again? If there is already a relationship with a chair that is 95 percent good, then all that has to be done is to adjust the remaining 5 percent to suit the current needs. The client might persist and say “No, no, I want you to design it, Mr. Fukasawa.” But what I’m trying to say is that the important thing is how much design you can do with the remaining 5 percent of what has been 95 percent completed, how you can make the best out of the design that has already been developed and improved, and make your design along with what’s already there, instead of just throwing everything out and starting from scratch. Of course, to design that 5 percent is not as easy as it sounds because you have to further improve what’s already a great design.

Naoto Fukasawa

friday open vault: deutsch telekom + Oasis

call it cheezy, call it easy, but I admit this clip moves me



Can't wait for the album to drop...



have good one..

what if...we changed the budget

So here is one from real life actually that got shot down.

One of my targets, in my official capacity, for next year is to help Sales increase revenue (somehow it seems that's always a target). So to achieve that here is what I proposed.

Cut the target and budget meetings down from once a month to once every three months.

See most of our sales managers know at the beginning of a month whether they will achieve their targets. So when they know it's gonna be negative, they go on defense. cutting costs to reach margin targets, squeeze old clients for more and go on sales driven binges by offering everything at lower prices. This then only wrecks havoc on the revenue side, because if you have a bad month you go to the same clients a s always and dump the price even more. It's a cycle.

But what if you knew you had two months to make up you current negative? This would allow you to use a month, that is "lost" anyways to go on offence and take chances with new business. It would free up sales manager to be more proactive and the trickle down would be positive instead of fearfull.

Yes this is all just a theory, but never put to practice it remains that.

Back to the drawingboard.

what if: whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me

A comment I made about breaking the competition sparked the above quote from Matthew 25:40 in my head, given by Senator Obama at mr Warren's debate last week. That in turn lead me to think back to a comment made on the blog I commented on.

"Droga5 had the chance to lift the norm of Aussie adland" was in essence the comment.

What if, the responsability was put in the hands of the client, instead of the agency? Speaking as a client, I know that customers don't care.

They don't care that I have a 10.000 papers bigger circulation or that the competition has more display points. They base their decisions on emotional associations we trigger in them and the amount of interestingness we can offer in a fresh and original way. The only thing that they do care and share is their loathing of those who sell advertising space. So it's a question of getting them to a point of " I hate all of you as a category, but I like you personally..let's do business".

Because customers are tainted by experiences with others, you pay a price.

So why not as a client do the following:

Write a brief to your agency to do work for your competitors (off course presuming you got a good agency). It's like opposition research in politics, but in reverse. You do not want to be better than your competitors, you want them to be better for the sake of all.

You want to lift them to new hights and the category as well. Knowing off course that the better the competition get's the better you've got to be.

I am aware of category strategies that have been applied in the past, think Juan Valdes, but that was out of co-operation between competitors.

But has there been a client who actively demanded that he be surpassed by his competition, and even helped the process along? I hope so..

what if...some thoughts on the music industry

So there is a lot of music talent out there. Youtube has produced some stars (?). Everybody is a virtual platform that can act like a label and produce and distribute music, jadajadajada..

But on the other side we have the record label. They ain't going nowhere soon.

And the guys hurting the most are the A&R reps. The artist and repetoire peeps.

So here is the thing.

If you get famous on youtube or whatever, you can get signed by a label. But this way of doing business decreases the value of the A&R. He did not find the talent, millions of viewers kinda did.

Now...what if you had platform that was a a step ahead of the current distribution king, Youtube?

Say..if you have platform where you can tell the musicians/performers/actors that on the other side of the mirror you have the world A&R reps/casting agents sitting and sifting throught the acts, would this be interesting to a budding musician?

You make the money of the A&R reps by providing him with the acces to musicians sorted by genre and you give him the opportunity sign someone right before they mega explode. All at a monthly flat fee. So no ad revenues, just a check every month and a back end from 360 degrees artist income. That means shows, tours, sponsored deals, albums, dvd's etc..

On the other hand you get the content, because you have an audience that the musicians/content providers (still, no matter what everybody says,) want to connect with.

I like Youtube. But for the pro am who wants to get a something going, Youtube lacks the ability to connect me with people who want to pay me so that I can be a full time musician.

Labels do pay you, but don't want to sign you via a bidding war after 30.000.000 people have seen you. You have already lost money by free exposure.

Would this kinda solve those problems?? Would this be a proposition the A&R's of the world would pay for?

what if...you could be champion of the world

Just a quick post on an even quicker idea.

What with all the user generated content, 2.0, participation of the peoples going on in the world I have an idea:

What if we create the WCEF: World Championship of Everything (u like) Federation.

U got an activity, hybrid of old stuff or something u do with friends: sign up to the website, pick a date for regional preliminaries etc and (most importantly) declare yourself world champeen and allow people to challenge you.

Who does not want to be able to say he is world champion at something, anything??

the Role of the WCEF is the following:

1. to give you tools to plan your own world championship;
2. to look for sponsors (local to international) to help you out with any and all costs;
3. help you quickly determine whether the current format is ok, or needs some adjustment to make it spread;
4. fighting indifference and cynisme by promoting the cause of doing something/anything to world champion standard, instead of doing nothing;
5. buying every world champion a cold beer;
6. to make sure that the broadcasting rights are fairly distributed amongst all the championships;
7. to facilitate the breakaway of succesfull championships on their own (as with everything; money changes stuff, so why not make the split amicable)

just an idea (or a widget; or tv show; or nothing)

What...did I hear anybody say Innocent ;)

n to the h presents: lazy person's guide to briefing volume I

Basically all briefs can be boiled down into achieving two goals:

business goal and comms goal.

On the business goal side it's about one of three ( or a mix of the three):

1. get new customers
2. retain current customers
3. get more out of current customers

On the comms goal side it's about one of two:

1. create a "I knew there was a reason I liked his product/company/etc" reaction
2. create a "I never thought of it that way, that's interesting"reaction

Of course multiple business goals are mixed with the two comms goals. Like getting more out of current customers could need a "I never tought of it like that"reaction, etc..

The supporting evidence to help your agency along is:

1. new feature
2. new product
3. old product
4. old feature
5. mental position in relation to current culture

So there you have it.. the lazy person's guide to briefing.