I’ve been seduced by this sweet little meditation on sound, created by Soundcloud. It’s great to take a step back and consider some fundamental things about how we encounter the world around us.
Sound stimulus is so nuanced and so compelling (the hidden choir), how are brands using it to create richer experiences? Here are a couple of great examples found by Wolff Olins designer, Karl Sadler.
velosynth: velosynth is an open-source bicycle interaction synthesizer. It’s a small, hackable computer that augments the cycling experience by interpreting speed, acceleration, and other sensor data into useful audio feedback.
e-sound by Audi: Audi’s future e-tron models will cover long distances powered by practically silent electric motors. To ensure that pedestrians in urban settings will hear them, the brand has developed a synthetic solution: Audi e-sound.
Robert Jones is participating in a live web conference about naming things, this Wed at noon EST, hosted by the Guggenheim Forum. The Forum is a continuing series of moderated online discussions catalyzing intelligent conversation on the arts, architecture, and design.
On the simplest level, a name takes an object from an undifferentiated mass and makes it something individual—something unique. But what exactly does a name mean, communicate, do? How do we decide if a title is “successful”?
The forum will look through various lenses—branding, linguistics, poetics—to critically evaluate the fundamental issues raised by the relationship between something and what it’s called. Panelists include Robert Jones, strategy director of Wolff Olins; Frank Nuessel, Professor of Modern Languages at the University of Louisville; and Ben Zimmer, executive producer of the Visual Thesarus and Vocabulary.com and language columnist for the Boston Globe.The discussion is moderated by Mark Abley, journalist and author of The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English.
“The Name Game” will include a one-hour live chat hosted by Mark Abley at noon EDT on Wednesday, April 25, and is presented in concert with the exhibition John Chamberlain: Choices, on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, through May 13, 2012.
Go HERE for more information and instructions on how to experience the live event on 4/25.
After creating the corporate identity system for NBCUniversal in 2010, we set out to rebrand all four initiatives within the company’s Integrated Marketing group (Healthy at NBCU, Women at NBCU, Hispanics at NBCU and NBCU Green is Universal) to establish a consistent look and feel.
Dear to our heart was our work on NBCU Green is Universal (see the video up top), where the goal was to reinvigorate NBCU’s environmental initiative and let people know about their commitment to sustainability across their programming and inside their organization. The new graphics package debuted last November to be featured bi-annually during “Green Week” (which is in November) and “Earth Week” (which is right now!).
Inspired by woodblock printing and stamping, we created this graphics package to evoke a natural, handmade quality. The iconic NBC peacock feather is integrated into the logo as well as into a set of icons accompanying the brand identity.
The warmth and accessibility of the graphics encourages consumers to get involved in Green efforts using the resources available to them within their own communities.
The web has always been prime experimental space for trying out new designs and interactions, whether purely expressive or truly functional. We’ve come a long way from the days of Netscape, blinking links, Flash load bars and animated 3D GIFs (or have we?). Browsers have evolved to let the imaginations of developers and web designers run wild. Google’s Chrome browser led the charge with Chrome Experiments, like Rome and The Wilderness Downtown, by showcasing what new browsers are (and should be) capable of today.
Like web fonts and responsive web design, the simple act of scrolling has seen great advances over the past year. Geared scrolling has become a trendy new way to experience a webpage (we used it when we released our Game Changers report earlier this year). Similar to sideways parallax scrolling from the old school video games of yore, geared scrolling allows multiple layers of a webpage to move at different speeds, creating a rich sense of depth from two-dimensional elements.
Nike Better World is probably still the most widely recognized example of this, with Journey being their most recent addition to the project. Since then many others have explored specialized scrolling.
Born in Brazil and now native to the digital space, Ale Lariu considers herself a “geeky jungle kid.” We see her more as a spunky guru for creatives in digital, marketing and advertising. Our friends at Fast Company would certainly agree; they chose her as #29 of the 100 most creative people in business in 2010, topping Tom Ford, Jamie Oliver and the founders of FourSquare.
Among her other impressive credentials, Lariu was once the SVP, Creative Director at McCann Erickson. While she enjoyed the thrills of agency life, she told us at a recent Share in our NY office that she had a stronger desire to live a “free range” existence. “I just thought, well, if technology and co-creation has allowed us to do all these things, why don’t we take advantage of them? Why are we still working in the same way?”
She left McCann to cofound SheSays, a now award-winning global creative network for women. Her goal is the engagement, education and advancement of all creative people in digital marketing and advertising, but her focus is on women.
The newest venture out of SheSays is Shout, a radical and innovative way for women in digital advertising to work collaboratively and be compensated for it. Think of an online community where everyone is encouraged to give creative input towards a client’s brief and then gets rewarded for their contribution, whether their direction is chosen or not.
Shout embodies all of Lariu’s ideas about cage-free working, or what Wolff Olins usually dubs being boundaryless. People work when and where they want, with whomever they choose to. The profit is shared, the culture is collaborative, the rewards are both financial and non-financial. A lot of the Shout community contributes part time or freelance, Lariu told us, as a sort of supplemental income.
“One insight I had when putting this together was that there are so many clever people out there. For instance, I bet I’d like to work with all of you guys. But when I was tied to one agency I couldn’t.” Once you’re part of the network, Shout has a LinkedIn-like algorithm that introduces you to people with complementing interests and skills, who you might want to work with.
At the same time, Lariu says clients are into it because of its social aspect. “On the public layer, people are always commenting on the work as it’s happening. It’s like real-time PR for them.”
Shout also collaborates with its sister company, SheSays, to educate its members through events, courses, career management and mentorship. To learn more, get involved, or take classes at these two ventures, visit http://weareshesays.com/ and http://www.everybodyshout.com/.
SHARE is a weekly show & tell at Wolff Olins NY. Check out previous Shares HERE.
Wolff Olins is looking for a Strategy Director. Our strategy directors are responsible for delivering thought leadership, client strategy and developing new business opportunities.
This position requires dynamic, self-motivated, opinionated individuals who will have responsibility for both bringing in and managing big, meaty pieces of business. From crafting new business pitches to designing client engagements to leading multi-disciplinary project teams, this person be adept at using brand as the driving influence to guide, support and inspire strategic recommendations that drive growth for our clients.
Successful strategy directors at WO are highly imaginative and creative, enjoy a collaborative work environment, intuitively use design to explain strategy, create trusted relationships with clients, love to help others grow and flourish in their own careers, and want to be personally involved in the work.
Responsibilities
•Crafting a compelling, succinct strategic story
•Defending a point of view
•Balancing analytical skills with cut through insight and creativity
•Creating client relationships at the C-suite level
•Commanding the room with both strong convictions & active listening skills
•Collaborating with multiple disciplines
•Rolling up their sleeves and getting busy
•Making a positive impact in the world through brand
•Contributing thought leadership content through blogs, white papers, etc.
•Entrepreneurial spirit
•Some domestic and international travel required
Required Skills
•Master’s Degree in Marketing or related academic discipline
•Minimum 7+ years experience in brand, advertising, digital or management consultant agencies or client-side experience
•Authorized to work in USA
•Practiced at leading large scale project engagements
•Ability and desire to lead and inspire teams
•“Greatest hits” client work
•Proven new business track record
•Exceptional communication, writing, analysis and organizational skills
•Ability to manage multiple projects in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment
•Proven ability to build consensus and work effectively within a cross-departmental team
Qualified candidates, please email your resume to us at peoplenewyork@wolffolins.com with “Strategy Director” as the subject, and tell us “why Wolff Olins” and “why you” in the email and include your “greatest hits list”.
The world of personal finance is unnecessarily complex and overwhelming. In November, I wrote about Simple, an up-and-coming startup that hopes to turn the banking industry on its head. This week I wanted to highlight a few other startups that are simplifying and humanizing the way we perceive and interact with money.
Need to split up the restaurant bill? Need to write a check to your roommate for rent? Venmo makes transactions between friends fast, seamless and effortless. Add your bank account, and then start sending and receiving payments. Pay a friend back by simply replying with a text message or do it through the app.
My savings account has been collecting dust. For the past two years, I’ve gotten calls from my bank encouraging me to invest my money in a mutual fund.The jargon, opaque fees, over salesmanship has led to inertia. Until recently.
A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon Betterment, a new service that makes investing transparent, simple and painless. You don’t have to be a certified accountant to use Betterment; they translate the jargon and use normal, everyday language. You don’t need to have a lot of money to start investing; there are no minimum balances. Plus, you can make deposits and cash out whenever you want – without paying extra fees.
Don’t have time to track Twitter or Facebook for money-savvy content? Subscribe to DailyWorth, an email newsletter everyday that provides practical tips, real stories and inspiring ideas to help women take control over their finances.
“If you start with ‘useful’ as a first principle, then you automatically place customer need and experience first,” writes Wolff Olins head of strategy Mary Ellen Muckerman in an article in Fast Company this morning.
Muckerman continues:
“The principles and theories of UX have created a new normal in terms of brand delivery and interaction. They state that how people actually use your product is much more important than how it was intended to be used. So engaging your consumer in ongoing, iterative product development is more valuable than holding out for a “perfect” product launch.”
She looks at Apple’s ascendence over the past decade, M-Pesa’s branchless banking system, and Zopa, the world’s first peer-to-peer money lending service as 3 case studies on being useful. Continue reading on Fast Company here.
This story is also part of our Game Changers report, which you can read here.
A “Match Made in Merchant Heaven” was the headline this morning on Forbes, describing the recent partnership/funding announcement between upstart menswear e-retailer, Bonobos and department store darling, Nordstrom.Or as Evelyn Rusli of the New York Times termed it “a symbiotic deal,” whereby Bonobos will aim to illuminate the Nordstrom execs on all things online in exchange for $16.4M in cash and a retail presence in some 100 Nordstrom locations nationwide.
What’s interesting is that, while most companies are desperately attempting (and sometimes failing) to take their offline concepts online, Bonobos (with help from Nordstrom) is moving in the opposite direction – but not for the reason you might expect.
Certainly a brick and mortar presence provides a physical scale that the Internet cannot replicate. But for a company like Bonobos, who has leveraged the limitless scale of the web to grow more rapidly than most (the company launched in 2007 and is now the fastest growing men’s clothing retailer online), this physical presence is more about marketing than point-of-purchase. According to Rusli, “by 2011, [Bonobos] was devoting about 20 percent of its revenue to marketing, about double the previous year. The hope is that the Nordstrom partnership will expose Bonobos to new clients, particularly those who may not be shopping online”… yet.
