Wolff Olins Blog

Wolff Olins Learnshop: Rapid Prototyping

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:11:48 -0400

At Wolff Olins London we are developing a series of LEARNSHOP sessions where we go out and explore an emerging technology, or bring experts in, or teach ourselves.

Last week, we tried rapid prototyping, courtesy of Chalk Studio Islington. We spent the week designing objects that would be useful to us in our daily lives at Regents Wharf. One was an innovation for the fabulous Honey Club, another was both a useful and aesthetic solution to ease our journey through our increasingly confidential work environments.

We were able to create, as a result of our design brainpower here, some beautiful and functional things that we hope to scale up and mass produce. But what we learnt along the way was just as rewarding.

Rapid Prototyping or 3D printing puts factory power in the hands of the individual. The technology itself does not seem so sophisticated. We printed off a non-electronic machine. It feels like a combination of knitting machine, photocopier and MRI scanning device. It will see your object design in negative space and then compose the form in plaster (in our case), or polymers, metal or chocolate – a wide variety of materials. Within the machine two flat beds sit proximate to each other. One moves over the other and over time, the object is built, micro-fine layer by micro-fine layer. From one of the beds of plaster dust, our beautiful object emerged as our expert, Mark, retrieved it, dusted it and hoovered it down. It was a joyful birthing process!

The brilliance of the technology is the idea behind it. Our modern age was so much about standardized processes and products, production line style. Rapid prototyping puts unlimited creative potential in our hands. It will allow us to create endlessly diverse and bespoke products, tweaked to our exact needs and living environments. But like all great technologies it is not it, itself, that is revolutionary (unless it starts to take on a life of its own…) - it is the uses that we put it to, the ideas that we materialise through it.

In this, it is setting us quite a challenge. 3D printing invites us to re-think our relationship with objects much as mass production did in the 50s. (And probably also with place, as we’ll able to produce anywhere, which could eventually put pay to our massive Asian outsourcing dependency.) We’ll need to be hugely creative to take the offer and meet its challenge.

But then again, it is not necessarily the case that 3D printing will wait for human intelligence to set the pace. The RepRap project at the University of Bath has been for some time producing 3D printers which manufacture the parts of other 3D printers – a impressive step towards self-replication. The bar is therefore set high. Should machines find such power and intelligence on their own, we may find ourselves falling behind in the creativity race.

For the meantime though, that appears to be some time away. Geniuses in various part of the world are putting 3D printing to monumental use - to open up access to tools and products in the developing world, to take airline manufacturing to the next highly bespoke level. And 3D printing, in conjunction with nanotechnology, is offering breakthroughs for our bodies - manufacturing skin cells and even organs for transplantation.

3D printing sets a new creative brief on an enormous scale.

Suzanne Livingston is Head of Strategy at Wolff Olins London.

Photo by the author

In the collaborative marketplace, co.'s need to join forces

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:45:24 -0400

Strategist Nick Keppel-Palmer is in Fast Company this morning writing about how “Boundaryless” businesses multiply value. A version of the article originally appeared as part of our annual Game Changers report.

Nick says: “The brands that will have the greatest impact on all our lives are those that see themselves not as citadels that need defending but as causes that need joining. The most important, most effective, most impactful brands are those that have put petty competition behind them and embraced collaboration as an operating principle—it is their core DNA. These brands are clear about their ambitions and are not shy about seeking out others who share those ambitions.”

Read the rest on FastCo:

In Innovation Today, The Smartest Companies Collaborate With Enemies

Touché Disney By Moussa Beidas The iPhone and...

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:07:00 -0400

Touché Disney

By Moussa Beidas

The iPhone and many of its equivalents have generated a whole new perception of digital interaction. Finger-swiping and motion gesturing have greatly desensitized our understanding of these new technologies and enabled new purposes for mass digital interaction. The buck doesn’t stop there however—Mickey Mouse has just added a new angle to interactive technology.

Disney Research, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon and Tokyo University, just introduced a completely new method of digital interaction called Touché, which enables a wider gamut of information relay through touch. Touché works across all types of material, from existing touchscreens to more exotic items like doorknobs, your skin, and even water’s surface. See the video above for a richer explanation.

The understanding and range of these sorts of physical interactions will have huge implications and ripple effects. It will not only affect content structure and visual cues on your tablet, phone or Mp3 player, but also have a huge impact on our ability to decipher social understanding through body language and other parameters that our species has long taken for granted.

Touché works by sensing signals across a large range of frequencies — while the typical systems we know only pick up signal at a single frequency. According to Disney Research, this technology could soon enable embedding different commands for when a user pinches or grasps a hooked-up object.

In short, Disney has used zeros and ones to create a cross-platform game changing approach to people’s interactions with the objects in their lives.

Why Brand Takes a Tweeting

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:59:00 -0400

By Rachel Blatt

This week, in his WSJ column, Ralph Gardner reckons with himself about why it’s taken him so long to get on Twitter and what motivates some of his younger reporter colleagues to tweet in earnest. “I appreciate there’s an ulterior motive here, though I can’t say I fully subscribe. It’s about growing the brand.”

Gardner admits slowly and begrudgingly that Twitter is useful. No doubt, the people and organizations who are active on social media truly do add viewers, readers, followers, etc. by extending their reach on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The point he seems to miss is that today’s media environment is a two-way street, where we’re all the source of each other’s truth. As everyone from brands and celebrities to consumers and Occupy protesters broadcast their opinions on Twitter, they are also taking in a gigantic stream of inputs from the people and groups they follow.

These new vehicles of communication and collaboration have created a host of new uses and users for brands to think about when they consider their offer and outreach. We can think of the traditional “UX” as a metaphor for brand interactions today, with “users” describing anyone who interacts with a company or personality through digital media or technology. In a journalist like Gardener’s case, you could use social media to source topics for future columns, learn about your audience’s interests, and end the week with a chat about the column you’ve produced.

In his book Users, Not Consumers: Who Really Determines The Success of Your Business, Aaron Shapiro, CEO of HUGE Inc wrote that users can sometimes be “more intimate with and influential on a company than anyone who has completed a purchase.” It takes Ralph Gardner a little longer to get to a similar conclusion, but he eventually says it: “It’s all about establishing your presence in the ether.”

Indeed, just being there (and being accessible to users of all sorts) is an important half of the battle. And that applies for both people and brands.

Last week at Wolff Olins New York we held an internal workshop to talk to our own strategists, designers and account managers about how they can develop their own personal online brands. Some were worried that they didn’t have much to say—nothing worthwhile that could be eloquently (or forcibly) expressed in 140 characters. While it’s always important to contribute smart things, develop a unique point of view, and create and curate content that communicates what you’re all about, our workshop stressed a more fundamental point: The first important move with social media is to just be there.

Being there lets you hear what people are saying. It makes you discoverable and accessible to a host of different users. And once you’re there, listening to others helps you figure out what you have to add.

You can follow Ralph Gardner of the WSJ as he figures it out: https://twitter.com/#!/Ralphgardnerjr

Rachel Blatt is the content manager at Wolff Olins.

Illustration by James Kape.

Trends in 2012 Elections Messaging

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:53:00 -0400

The Yahoo! Advertising blog recently asked several agency leaders one question: “What are some key trends you’re seeing in political advertising this election season?” Angela Riley, Strategy Director for Wolff Olins, talked about what brands and politicians can learn from each other to better engage consumers—-and constituents.

Here’s a snippet from the piece:

For Politicians and Brands, It’s Essential to Be Clear, Consistent and Authentic.

Like a short-lived advertising campaign, political messaging platforms can evaporate into the ether without ever resonating with the voting public. Perhaps, like the all-too-common one-off approach of a glossy advertising campaign to appeal to an audience, politicians react to public sentiment and rush to get a message out before they’ve figured out what they really stand for.

Politicians can take a page from well-loved brands, which stand for something clear, authentic and desirable. Think Target and the democratization of chic, or BMW - the ultimate driving machine. Think too of the Obama-Biden presidential campaign of 2008 standing for “Hope” and “Change” — similarly clear, authentic and hugely desirable (given the public sentiment at the time).

So how can a political candidate get at the authentic, aspirational heart of what they stand for? Keep reading the full piece here.

Image via BarackObama Instagram

In NYT infographics, a lesson for brands

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:31:00 -0400

By Mary Ellen Muckerman

We know that the New York Times are infographics geniuses. They visualize data to track sentiment on a topic, while inviting you to participate in the conversation or even start a new one. Sorting features allow you to find “your people” and compare ideas.

The one above was an instant response to an extremely timely topic—that’s NYT’s bread and butter—but it’s a lesson for other brands who trade in social currency.

From media to retail to cultural institutions to healthcare, creating timely, engaging experiences like this can keep your finger on the pulse of what your consumers are thinking, helping you stay relevant and useful.

See the infographic: Your Reactions to Obama’s Same-Sex Marriage Stand

How design thinking finds new answers

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:57:00 -0400

By Campbell Butler

The other day I sat in a brainstorm with a bunch of fellow graphic designers, discussing the future direction of an international business. Someone in the team made a flippant joke about the moment: Most of us had gone to art school, not business school.

As designers we sometimes worry about engaging in the “business side” of things. But today’s businesses are desperate to find experimental and creative solutions and designers are just the problem-solvers they need. We’ve been trained to take a brief, assess the problem, instinctively create different directions, analyse the positives and negatives, reject one, create another, see what works, see what doesn’t.

We can rapidly create visual concepts that test how products, communications, experiences and interfaces can work together. And we can test multiple directions. It allows businesses to take risks they couldn’t imagine, because they can see tangible possibilities. That, is business prototyping.

There’s an opportunity now as designers to get beneath the veneer of subjective aesthetics and establish design, and design thinking, at the heart of tomorrow’s businesses – an opportunity we should grab with both hands.

So, am I a graphic designer anymore?

Campbell Butler is a Senior Designer at Wolff Olins.

Illustration by James Kape.

Salvador Dali's mark design for a bonbon and a stick

Wed, 09 May 2012 08:10:00 -0400

By Marie Succar

I just came across an interesting story that involves Dali creating the design of the Chupa Chups lollipop mark. Chupa Chups started off under the name “GOL,” imagining the candy as a soccer ball and the open mouth a net. The name then evolved to “Chupa Chups,” from the Spanish chupar, meaning “to suck.” The lollipop, invented in 1958 and the first candy ever to be sold on a stick, is a bona-fide design classic. What I didn’t know was that its famous daisy logo was sketched on a newspaper and designed by none other than Dali, who insisted that his design be placed on top of the lolly, rather than the side.

After discovering this bit of the story, it instantly changed my perception of Chupa Chups. Not only does it reiterates the huge importance of storytelling in creating brands, it makes you realise that the mark placement is an integral part of the brand and probably a game changer in its time. Not to forget that the association with Dali adds a lot to the table - think Campell’s and Andy Warhol!

Naturally, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining Dali trying it out, I bet it suited his mustache. Wow - could it be that Dali and I have shared a similar experience!

Illustration by the author

Stick to your 21st century knitting

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:28:14 -0400

By Robert Jones

The book that first got me interested in the whole idea of management was Tom Peters’ In Search of Excellence, and one of its mantras was ‘stick to the knitting.’ But is that still good advice, 30 years on? Kodak, Xerox, Nokia, Kmart and Blockbuster all did, and look what’s happened to them. By sticking to their core activity, they failed to react to rivals coming from somewhere else. Google, on the other hand, has moved from its original search-engine knitting into every other handicraft, including self-driving cars.

We explored this topic at a breakfast discussion I hosted last week, exploring our view of the five habits that make 21st century businesses game-changing – which include ‘experimental’ and ‘value-creative’, by which we mean constantly searching for new strategies and revenue streams.

It’s also the topic of Repeatability by Chris Zook and James Allen, two consultants from Bain & Company. They say, in contrast: identify your core, simplify it, and repeat it.

So who’s right? We asked our excellent breakfast panellists came from Zipcar, Zopa and Google. Their view was that experimentation has always been important, and that the Internet now makes it easy to test new things very rapidly, with a huge population of testers. They believe that this kind of testing is natural to a 21st-century business, and that it’s so common that fear of failure – indeed, use of the word ‘failure’ – hardly exists any more. They also say that open experimentation – trying things out in the marketplace – is a great way to be transparent, to involve customers, and so to earn trust.

Where they differ depends on the life stage of their business. In the early years, they say, experiment around the edges until your core idea is proved, but stick to the core idea. ‘It’s a big enough battle,’ said one, ‘to establish our model’. In older age (and Google is a geriatric 14 years old), it become OK to experiment more widely and more radically. ‘Google is always in beta,’ said a panellist.

All three panellists, though, agreed that fruitful experimentation needs to be driven by a purpose. And that purpose can be hugely ambitious: Zipcar has its eyes on the day when there are more car sharers than owners, and Zopa on the moment when peer-to-peer loans outnumber bank loans. Zipcar, Zopa and Google all want to change the world for the better.

So maybe the answer to the conundrum is that Tom Peters was right. You do need to stick to the knitting – but don’t think of your knitting as your activity (which should change over time), but your purpose (which shouldn’t).

Illustration by James Kape.

Maurice Sendak on Colbert Report We post this in tribute to...

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:00:54 -0400

Maurice Sendak on Colbert Report

We post this in tribute to Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century. His books were essential ingredients of our childhood. Some of his brilliance and irreverence is captured above.

Change the way we shop, forever?

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:03:00 -0400

By Owen Hughes

“Change the way we shop forever.” It’s a big idea, but can it really be done? Marks and Spencer seems to think so.

We know that demonstrating social impact is a big deal for commercial organisations these days, but social commitments can be quite hard to pin down, often too intangible, somehow peripheral to the person on the street.

Quite a lot was made of Marks and Spencer’s Plan A when it launched in 2007, not surprising since their stated ambition is to be the worlds most sustainable retailer. For M&S, Plan A is “not only the right thing to do,” it is “the only way to do business.” The good news is that it seems to be working, and its remit has grown. There are currently 180 sustainable initiatives going on within the business under the Plan A banner – from treating suppliers fairly to being the first UK retailer to charge for carrier bags.

Of course, having the right partners in place makes a huge difference. The most effective commercial and social partnerships are between organisations who share a common sense of purpose. Take Boots and Macmillan Cancer Support – whose aim is to make cancer information available and accessible on every high street, or Orange and Rockcorps – bringing people together with a big dose of optimism for the future.

One of M&S’ highest profile partners in delivering Plan A has been Oxfam, and so far the most visible face of this partnership has been their clothes exchange, where you get a £5 M&S voucher when you take unwanted M&S clothes to Oxfam. But anyone who’s been watching commercial TV in the last week or so will notice that the partnership has been taken to a new level. This new level is called ‘Shwopping.’ Essentially it’s a scheme where you can drop your unwanted clothes at M&S, but it feels like something bigger.

Bigger not because it’s fronted by the new face of Plan A, Joanna Lumley (though it can’t really hurt can it?) Bigger not even because they’ve coined a new name for it. Like other names that seem to fit the zeitgeist (‘bromance’, ‘sexting’) the name ‘Shwopping’ is one part annoying and four parts catchily obvious. But if you’re trying to get people to do something new then giving that thing a name is a smart move.

The main reason it feels bigger is because it’s a statement of M&S’ bigger purpose beyond just profit – an ambition to fundamentally change the way we think about how we shop – but one which we can all contribute to really easily. And the way it’s presented is almost too easy to resist: from Joanna telling us that it’s as obvious as recycling bottles, to the ‘Shwop drop’ boxes in store to the intuitive and interactive website with real time totalisers and step by step guides.

It’s a challenge for big businesses to make their purpose beyond profit visible in everything they do, in a way which fits with their day to day business rather than feels like an add on. It feels like M&S has raised the bar with this.

Photo by Rana Brightman

Connecting people to your future

Wed, 02 May 2012 12:59:00 -0400

By Manlio Minale

Brand architecture can make your future a reality

Many businesses miss the point with brand architecture and see it as an organizational chart and a way of tidying up their brand to save on marketing costs.

However when used in the right way, it can become a powerful business tool for connecting people, both customer and employees, to your future ambition, to help you get there quicker.

It can provide people with the inspiration they need to get passionate about your future vision and the tools they need to make it a reality.

Good architecture can help in 3 ways

Your brand architecture can help your business:

1. Reach customers in more valuable ways

As digital becomes ubiquitous, brands need to work harder to engage people in new ways: brand architecture can enable your brand to stretch further into your customers’ lives and help them find what they need more easily to boost the bottom line.

2. Enable your people to create this future

As the war for talent heats up, the best people increasingly want to contribute to a business mission that goes beyond profit: brand architecture can explain how your people can help create this new future and give them the tools to make it a reality.

3. Get investors excited by where you are headed

Investors are looking for sustainable growth to ensure they buy into a company with an exciting and stable future in this changing world: brand architecture gives you a way of demonstrating your new strategy and getting investors to buy into it, over the long-term.

Good architecture = good business

Two fantastic examples of how companies have used their brand architecture to make their futures a reality are GE and IBM.

GE managed to move from a 20th century industrial conglomerate to a 21st century services provider using their brand architecture. They reorganized 5,000 different businesses into 11 market-facing solution platforms that could connect their clients’ issues to their people’s expertise, to create $5bn worth of new revenue and create amazing new innovations.

IBM moved from a hardware producer to a technology platform for solving the world’s problems through its brand architecture. They first identified the world’s big challenges, and then built their services and capabilities around these client issues. This has resulted in doubling their clients’ likelihood of choosing IBM for more services and expanding their overall market by an amazing 40% or $2.3bn.

So good architecture can mean good business, not just a neater organisational chart.

Occupy the Pop-Up

Tue, 01 May 2012 17:20:00 -0400

By Mary Ellen Muckerman

Popuphood, launched last year in Oakland by Sarah Filley and Alfonso Dominguez, is an urban planning project with an unusual strategy for revitalizing depressed urban centers: the pop-up store.

The WSJ explains:

“Ms. Filley and Mr. Dominguez persuaded a landlord to offer pop-up stores free six-month leases in locations that, in some cases, have been vacant for years. The merchants have a goal of turning a profit during the six months and then signing a longer-term lease, at a price to be negotiated. The landlord, Peter Sullivan Associates, is hoping that the free short-term leases will turn into longer-term revenue.”

Compared to the proliferation of pop-up retail by any big player from Target to Gucci, Popuphood’s approach harnesses the David and Goliath effect of rooting for the underdog - and the sense of possibility that comes with it.

Drawing on what seems like a tired marketing strategy for a solution that’s experimental, transient, urgent, novel and efficient, Popuphood’s strategy is a great example of boundaryless and constant beta behaviors we described in our recent Gamechangers report.

The Popuphood project made us wonder:

+ What can city planners learn from retailers?

+ What are other examples of success being redefined as fluid versus fixed experiences?

+ As more categories look to transform themselves from B2B to B2C – like healthcare and financial services – what can they learn from a pop up mentality?

Related:

+ Artist Julia Christensen’s Big Box Reuse project: how communities are repurpose abandoned retail spaces

+ Generation Sell: “Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business” (New York Times)

+ London’s Boxpark, a pop-up mall made of old shipping containers

+ “Urban culture is retail culture” (Trendwatching, Retail Renaissance)

Image via Popuphood

Q&A with Splash.FM founder Jason Fiedler

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:38:00 -0400

By Sam Liebeskind

Since Splash.FM had its public launch a few weeks ago, co-founder Jason Fiedler has been busy watching the start-up grow and making constant changes. A friend of Wolff Olins, he took a few minutes to chat with strategist Sam Liebeskind about the early-stage site and his plans to engage more listeners and brands.

If you haven’t yet read about Splash.FM in TechCrunch, Rolling Stone, and Gizmodo or stumbled onto it on your own, put it on your radar. This young social startup helps you find new music that you’ll love based on what your friends and go-to sources are loving. It joins a crowded space of sites claiming to do just this (Big hitters like Pandora, Last.fm, iTunes Genius, to name a few), but unlike most others, Splash rejects algorithm-based suggestions in favor of human recommendation, pulling together the best features of sites like Twitter, Klout, and HypeMachine.

SAM: First, the basics. What is Splash and who would use it?

JASON: At its core, it’s a social network— ‘a Twitter for music discovery.’ You create an account, you splash (post) music you like, and you follow others whose taste you trust. It’s an easy way to stay on top of the latest music. Most people don’t like the stress of deciding what to listen to, but they want music they like.

At the same time, it’s a place where artists and tastemakers can prove their influence. We recognized that for everyone who has trouble finding music, there’s someone that thinks they have the best music. So each user has a “Splash Score” that’s based on how successful they are as a recommender. It’s really powerful, and really addicting.

I could imagine. So is that why people should use splash instead of Spotify or Rhapsody?

They shouldn’t use Splash instead of those guys. They should use it in addition to them. We’re not really trying to play in mainstream music, to compete with Spotify or Rhapsody. We don’t want to be an all access music provider for people who know exactly what they’re looking for.

Paint me a picture of Splash.FM’s personality?

The company is really just [co-founder Alex Gatof] and me so the brand doesn’t fake anything. It’s just us, so that makes it easy. You want to be fun and social. But you don’t want to make too much of a personality of your site because you don’t want to alienate any type of person. Look at Twitter and Facebook- they’re innocent. You want to be subtle without being sterile.

On the platform, to splash means to share a song (think ‘tweet’). Ripple means to like/re-share a song (think ‘retweet’). I love the name and terminology. How did that come about?

After trying to just come up with a name for the site for like, 3 days, I stopped thinking on that level. I needed to think bigger- more about the concept- and put that into words. I just talked out loud to myself and I was like, ‘Domino effect, one person affecting another…then all of a sudden I got onto waves and thought, its like someone just splashed [into water].’ Right when I heard that word, I just knew the whole analogy would work.

Right. And the interface of the site carries the analogy through. Can you talk a little about the site’s design?

We never sacrificed the interface and the look. We invested heavily on that. And spent a lot of time on the logo too. I came up with the idea for it after a lot of research. [Some startups] might want to try to skip it but you have to really put time in there early. I audited the logos of all the other music sites out there before designing the concept of ours.

Tone of voice was also really important for us. I took a course [at Penn] on writing copy…It really is an art. You have to always remember that people are reading all this. So I thought, what would I want to read?

I see Barstool U currently has the highest Splash Score. What opportunities are there for other established ‘non-music’ brands to leverage your platform?

Splash gives lifestyle brands specifically an additional channel to express themselves and cultivate their image. If you go with the notion of brand as a personality, the type of music you listen to and like is pretty core to that. You can imagine Nike splashing a lot of workout music, Lululemon splashing tranquil yoga tunes… The goal is the same as Twitter- to amass and connect with a large userbase, build and maintain a loyal following. With Splash.FM, lifestyle brands can add depth to their brand perception that they previously couldn’t.

BarstoolU specifically has influence in the college demographic, and as a result they’ve resonated really well with our current user base. We’ve featured them, and will continue to feature similar brands that make sense.

You’ve read our Game Changers report. Which of the 5 qualities do you think Splash really nails?

Definitely experimental. To be a good product guy you just have to never be satisfied. Actually, if we didn’t have a hard date that we set, we’d still be in private beta, and probably would be forever. That’s how we still think today.

So what’s the future of Splash?

Eventually, we want it to be about more than just finding music.

One way to potentially expand in the future is this “cannonball” idea that we’ve been playing with. In theory, you’d get a cannonball if a song you uploaded or rippled early really went big. They would accumulate and turn into a virtual currency that you could use to get concert tickets. Or maybe it’s just about having a high Splash Score. This might be used to get you into bars/clubs (we’ve already done a few things with clubs where if you have a splash store above 70, you get to cut the line). Ultimately, your splash store is going to be a big deal.

What does success look like for you guys?

The ultimate success is to have people using our words beyond the site—make “splash” synonymous with liking a song.

If you sign up for Splash, be sure to follow Jason (@Jason) and me(@sam_liebeskind). Give us some ripples!

Images via TechCrunch and James Kape

#GameChangers Breakfast

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:47:00 -0400

Last Wednesday members of London’s business community gathered together at Wolff Olins Kings Cross office space to hear Google, Zopa and Zipcar talk about how the five behaviours identified in Wolff Olins’ recent report manifest in their businesses. The lively breakfast produced rich learnings and ‘how to’s’ for the audience to take back to their day to day roles. Better still, we think the discussion might have unearthed a sixth category of Game Changing behaviours …. keep checking back here for more info.

Check #Gamechangers tweets to understand more about the event.

Sacred or profane? Technology in your museum

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:49:00 -0400

By Sam Liebeskind

Visual art museums–Should they be a peaceful sanctuary to escape from the always-on, back-lit, digital world in which we all now work and play? Places to appreciate the spiritual energy of something raw and “real”?

Or, should directors and curators be looking to integrate cutting edge technology into museum spaces- to make the experience somehow more educational and accessible, interactive and fun? And if so, how?

It’s an interesting question, and one we’ve kicked around internally and with a number of clients over the years. It’s also one that big tech guys like Google (Art Project and Google goggles-> maybe Google Glasses in the future?) are rapidly trying to digest and influence.

This month the Louvre followed in the experimental footsteps of the Brooklyn Museum, the Met, and a host of other world class institutions with their own future-looking answer. As part of an ongoing partnership with Nintendo, the museum created a handheld console aimed at evolving the age-old “audio guide” into something more fit for our hyperdigital expectations. If you haven’t seen it, you can check out pics and video here.

I find this incredibly exciting for a number of reasons. On the most basic level, it’s useful. The console simplifies the logistic challenges of a visit to the Louvre, allowing its operator to focus less on navigating the famous labyrinth and more on the art itself. It also offers flexibility in the level of info each user consumes- a nice middle ground between basic didactics and the commitment of signing up for a tour.

But maybe more importantly, it communicates that the Louvre is serious about designing an experience that’s not so far removed from people’s everyday lives. It’s an attempt to shift the institution from a sacred place you visit once a year (or once a lifetime?) to a space for continued learning and relevance. Hervé Barbaret, Managing Director of the Louvre says “the new audio guide is a valuable tool that will help make visiting the Louvre a more dynamic and rewarding experience, particularly for those that are not so familiar with a museum environment.” It’s a conscious move to get fit for the future and it will resonate with new, younger audiences.

Regardless of this program’s success, the Louvre has taken their shot at answering that fundamental “role of technology” question. Considering the way they’ve answered it though, maybe the issue isn’t as black & white as I originally posed. The challenge for cultural institutions might instead be more subtle: How do you integrate technology into the experience in a way that’s useful to those who want to take advantage of it, without distracting those who don’t?

Have you recently visited the Louvre and had a chance to test this thing out? We’d love to hear your thoughts here or on Twitter. And if not, feel free to weigh in on how technology is enhancing/destroying the experience of visiting your favorite museum. @wolffolins

(This is the fourth Future Patrol, a monthly series of macrotrend posts by WONY Strategist Emily...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:44:03 -0400

(This is the fourth Future Patrol, a monthly series of macrotrend posts by WONY Strategist Emily Segal. You’ll see Wolff Olins’ established macrotrends called out with a hashtag.)

#Hyperloyalty

I. What it is:

Loyal3, launching in May, is a new startup that enables consumers to buy shares of companies (really $10 fractions of shares) directly on Facebook, an idea CEO Barry Schneider is calling “the ultimate ‘like’ button.”

Loyalty programs have already become a focal point for incenting consumer behavior, creating personalized perks, and gathering consumer data.

Loyal3’s move to put real stakes behind consumer engagement shows that loyalty is beginning to generate new revenue models. The #Hyperloyalty trend is about precisely this kind of consumer-focused shift from marketing to value creation.

Future Patrol predicts that loyalty programs will become an expectation for every brand –even in industries that have conventionally gone without them – with elements such as crowdfunding, branded currencies and extra perks for good social media behavior as key features.

II. Some examples:

FROM REWARDS TO MICROECONOMY

The line between jokes and innovation has become increasingly blurry. Virgin Holidays’ April Fools’ Day hoax, a branded currency with Richard Branson’s face on it, recalls a trend we discussed in Future Patrol’s #Funny Money post: loyalty and rewards programs are becoming alternative currencies unto themselves, with points that can be redeemed for nearly as many things as cash can.

“Most large companies – from Starbucks to British Airways to Sheraton to American Express – are evolving their reward and point loyalty systems into digital micro-economies, complete with redemption and exchange between systems.” (Cayman Financial Review)

EXTREME CONSUMERS

Frequent flyers are the day traders of this new economy.

“Mileage runners are the high-tech nomadic wanderers of the air. Predominantly male, generally obsessed with flying and miles, and typically employed in white-collar careers that involve significant business travel, they scour the web for cheap flights, phoning in sick or using vacation days to fly the longest itineraries they can string together.”

GAMING THE SYSTEM

Loyalty programs – and games – are both about incenting customer behavior, and both use feedback loops and points to that end. But a loyalty system need not actually be a game to feel like one.

“Assembling a mileage run means deciphering complex fare rules and pulling together information from up to a dozen websites. It’s an achievement that tickles the same satisfying problem-solving centers of the brain as a Sudoku puzzle, and always ends in the deep-rooted human thrills of travel and flight.” (Wired) (“Frequent Flyer” documentary on Vimeo)

THE EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE

Freedom is the best perk.

“Designing programs with an overarching theme of “freedom” can instill incredible power into our initiatives.” …. “Not “freebies.” But “freedom.” The ability to do things, to make decisions, to enhance one’s life, in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The word is telling. Many elements contribute to freedom, and, yes, the freebie is one such element. Others include privilege, convenience, assistance, guidance, choice and ease.” (“Freedom: Perhaps the ultimate aspirational reward” Colloquy Blog)

COERCIVE CURRENCIES

However, “freedom” is not the first word that comes to mind when integrating social media into loyalty schemes. Giving consumers deals or discounts because they have desirable social media influence is a marketing trend, but also can create a coercive situation in which consumers must forfeit deals if they want to preserve their privacy

+ Gilt Groupe provides extra discounts for users with high Klout scores

+ Amex / Twitter: The new Twitter integration lets American Express cardholder receive special offers by tweeting with a special hashtag. Initial partners include Zappos, the Cheesecake Factory, McDonald’s, Best Buy, Virgin America, and Whole Foods. In order to redeem a deal, you send a tweet with a hashtag and the offer is loaded on to the account. The credit appears automatically when the card is swiped. (Venturebeat)

+ Exchange systems like Pay with a Tweet, or Chime.in that exchange goods for social media “love” and personal data from consumers

+ Reputation currencies like Whuffie Bank (where you get discounts and rewards based on your online social reputation)

III. What this means for brand:

+ Extreme consumers and mileage runners have invented their own rituals around current loyalty infrastructures. There’s an opportunity for brands to leverage the subcultures that spring up around the way they architect their companies. What seems like extreme niche behavior today will likely be mainstream tomorrow.

+ Don’t become so seamless and ubiquitous that you slip beneath the convenience threshold. Failure and friction are important elements in building brand loyalty – and put the “social” in social media. Help your customers “play, fail, replay, achieve, succeed and progress” (LS:N).

+ Brands that make customers feel free are powerful, but the feeling of getting away with something may be even more powerful.

(For more on rethinking value download Value-Creative: Change the Game)

Untitled watercolor by Ken Price

“I know it's 2012, but it feels like 1984 in this House.”

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:24:23 -0400

Some facts about CISPA:

Despite a veto threat from the White House on Wednesday, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act passed in the House last night by a vote of 248-168. Its goal is a more secure internet and it’s been endorsed by a lot of the heavy hitters in business, media, social media, and telecommunications. But privacy groups and the ACLU worry the measure breaches Americans’ privacy along the way. The Whitehouse has already weighed in calling for significant changes to protect consumer information.

From the LA Times:

CISPA is built as a mechanism to provide a greater degree of information sharing between the federal government and private companies, from Facebook to antivirus software providers, so that information regarding upcoming threats and ongoing hacking efforts can be spread through the community.

For more details on the bill, click here.

The measure, which some are calling the “son of SOPA” includes the catchall phrase “national security” as a valid reason for turning over the data. The contention is that despite the Houses’s intentions, CISPA could be used beyond its purpose of protecting the United States from malicious hacking attempts, and in doing so infringe on civil liberties. A representative from Georgia apparently said “I know it’s 2012, but it feels like 1984 in this House.”

The ACLU told Wired “Cybersecurity does not have to mean abdication of Americans’ online privacy. As we’ve seen repeatedly, once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there’s no going back. We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity.”

The bill is headed for the Senate now, if it passes there it will go to the White House for approval. Cyber activists are apparently looking to write a sequel to their SOPA takedown with a “week of action” aimed at killing this new act. Watch this space for updates and opinions.

Whoa! In Camberley, UK 2,012 schoolchildren have formed a human...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:23:50 -0400

Whoa! In Camberley, UK 2,012 schoolchildren have formed a human London 2012 Olympic logo covering 1800 square meters on a sports field - setting the new world record for the Largest Human Olympic Logo, according to the World Records Academy: www.worldrecordsacademy.org/.

Apparently last year, 1,900 people, mostly children, broke the world record for the largest human Olympic rings.

Wolff Olins is a Top 40 Business in the GOOD Company Project

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:07:00 -0400

Wolff Olins is a Top 40 Business in the GOOD Company Project:

Get to know the GOOD Company Project’s top 40 businesses in a new way.