Liguria in style.

What is the definition of "Italian"? Is it Sicilian mafia, big gestures, great food or the Salone Internazionale del Mobile (the furniture fair)? Or is it perhaps traditional villas climbing the terraced hills of the Ligurian coast line?

Or maybe it's the perfect combination of old and new, traditional and modern, Italian and Scandinavian? At Villa Rosmarino, where I spent a night recently, it all comes together, and makes perfect Italian sense. Even on a rainy day. The traditional villa is renovated into a stylish and comfortable getaway by Mario Pietraccetta and Fulvio Zendrini, and is positioned on the lush slopes of little fishing village Camoglia.

 

iPad magic saving the paper world.

Read today that Richard Branson, or excuse me, Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin is launching a magazine only for iPad. Tuesday next week there will be a press conference in New York about "Project", the working title of the project.

Virgin has done virtually everything else in media but magazine publishing, and perhaps the timing is connected to a new subscription solution that Apple is launching for iPad. But it's most likely also connected to the fact that Branson wants the Apple magic to rub off onto Virgin and himself.

But Branson is obviously not the only one to spot a business and brand opportunity. Most major news conglomerates are lining up to create iPad versions of the dying paper dittos.

And, by the way, we are still awaiting Rupert Murdoch and News Corp's The Daily, said to launch in December.

Bred development.

As we buy more and more semi- and pre-manufactured food, a counter-trend is simultaneously getting increasingly stronger: cooking advanced dinners and baking bread (particularly sourdough) will get you a lot of brownie-points in front of your trendy city-friends. I have to admit I fell for the sourdough movement and have been baking sourdough bread for the past two years.

The food chains are naturally catching on to the trend of the increased interest in cooking and, more recently, baking. And today I saw these two additions in my grocery shop.

One is a mix for making "lussekatter", a traditional Swedish kind of buns eaten before Christmas, and the other (and a greater surprise to me) is the super-flour Manitoba Cream, well-known in the sourdough subculture. The latter somewhat magical, in the sense that we've heard about this super flour, but very few of us have actually used it, since it's been very difficult to find in Sweden.

And so, today, I found Manitoba Cream in my regular food shop. No surprize, the front of the packet displayed a picture of one of Sweden's top names in baking, Jan Hedh. His brand promoting the flour brand and perhaps helping the brand to position itself among the speciality flour brands. The price? About €5 ($8)…

Peter Saville and the horrible branding people.

A rainy day in November, I listen to Peter Saville talking at the University of Design and Craft in Gothenburg. Peter Saville, the designer behind legendary album covers for Joy Division and New Order and one of the founders of The Factory in Manchester in the 60's. He later worked in fashion, and with Yohji Yamamoto he challenged consumerism in the early 90's.

Peter Saville knows what he likes and what he doesn't like, and one thing he dislikes is marketing, communications and "the horrible branding people", who he feels are steeling our cultural heritage to position businesses.

Obviously knowing a lot about the music industry, Saville dismisses the idea that there is a clear communicative goal when designing a record cover:
– There is no real message that needs to be communicated on a record cover. It doesn't matter. The brief is that the artist is happy, that Madonna is happy. In the case of Joy Division and New Order there was no brief.

Peter Saville at the University of Design and Craft

Saville is today the Creative Director of the city of Manchester, his home city, where he feels he's got a certain obligation to give something back, since the city "made my career in the first place" and it is perhaps a way to continue to make a difference, an idea he holds high. But the position is also a way to reposition himself, his own brand.
– I hated what had happened in design, so I started working for Peter Saville.

Another way of expressing himself today is through art, and he states that the right place for self expression is at an art gallery. He will do a commercial job if he likes the people involved, though.
– It's ok to help someone communicating if they have something worth communicating.

His website is yet to come, or so we hope. I think there are lots of people who are interesting in finding out more about the brand of Peter Saville.

Recycled ideas

It's been a while since my last post. The reason for this is that I've been busy. Not a really good reason, so I'll try to make it up to you from now on.

Today I came across an advert for T-Mobile which mimics the famous Mac Ads, and at the same time ironizes over the lately more and more criticized Apple brand. I'm not sure what I think about it. An avid Apple lover, I too have not been completely unaffected by the latest flaws and stories concerning the Job-run giant.

Here it is, see for yourselves:

A meter of African culture.

Vuvuzela. The word reminds me of African smells, colours and moods. I find it fascinating that a whole world gets so upset over a one meter long piece of plastic. The vuvuzela was not, despite what many people might think, invented for the world cup this year, but has been used for years. Freddie ”Saddam” Maake claims to have invented the vuvuzela in 1965, and it has been popular since th 1990's on football games to annoy the opposite team and its supporters.

I don't mind a ban in other countries, but when in Rome… Or South Africa…

Slow Brands 1.1

A while ago I wrote about Slow Brands, admiring the famous but soon to be extincts advertising murals painted on walls in major American cities, such as New York. Like slow food is becoming increasingly more popular as people start putting value on their time, perhaps we're seeing a new trend of advertising murals appearing.

Design and brand agency Hedlund Noodapera has painted the walls at Helsinki International Airport, Vanda, and Kastrup in Copenhagen for client First Card (payment system for administering travel costs for larger companies). The choice of painting the walls instead of printing on another material was chosen to achieve the brilliant colours that are impossible to get when printing. But Clear Channel, in charge of the advertising space at Helsinki Airport had first to be convinced through example screens made in scale 1:3.

The murals now cover a total area of about 100 square meters. Perhaps a good reason to travel via Copenhagen or Helsinki this summer?

Read article (in Swedish) about the project.

Arnell's oranges and other tips on personal branding.

Brand guru / Mad Man / Brand Genius / Bernie Madoff of brands / one of the great brand impresarios of our age. Peter Arnell has been called many names. Last year his reputation was at stake with the Tropicana packaging fiasco, but Arnell has a long list of successful work for brands like Samsung, Donna Karan, Banana Republic, McDonald's, Home Depot and Pfizer.

A few years ago Arnell lost 250 pounds, partly by changing his diet into an extensive amount of oranges (as many as 50 a day). He has now written a book, Shift, about personal branding. Some of the chapter names: Start Your Own Orange Revolution, Reinvent The Obvious, Un-write Your Life, Go Helium, Create A Fan Club and Making Our Place in History tells something about the kind of content one can expect to find. Foreword by Martha Stewart and endorsed by Donna Karan and Mark Wahlberg among others.

Read an excerpt here.

Over and out – we'll miss you Mac and PC.

A legendary ad campaign has come to an end: After 66 movies with Justin Long and John Hodgman starring Mac and PC, Apple has decided to abandon the famous and appreciated campaign Get a Mac. The "Why you'll love a Mac" campaign has now replaced all the fabulous Mac ads on Apple's website.

The campaign was created by TBWA Media Arts Lab, and it recieved an Effie in 2007 and was named the campaign of the decade by Adweek. It was probably the reason behind Microsoft's decision to hire Crispin Porter + Bogusky to fight back Apple's attacs on PC.

I have used the Get a Mac movies in many seminars and workshops and I promise they'll become even more famous in the afterlife.

Royal place branding.

Sweden is considered one of the most modern countries in the world. Yet we are a monarchy. Perhaps it's by habit, or possibly because it gives people a sense of historical connection. One thing is clear though, the spotlight have been pointed to the members in the Swedish royal family lately, for different reasons.

What I'd like to address today is the royal wedding between crown princess Victoria and Daniel Westling, a boy from a small town in the middle of Sweden, and how their wedding will affect the brand "Sweden". A few weeks ago I laid my eyes on the wedding invites at the printing house who printed them (I did unfortunately not take a photo…), and my reaction was instant: How bland! Take a princess belonging to the royal family of one of the world's most modern countries, a country which is known, among other things, for its design. Result: a new royal (soon to be) married couple, becoming ambassadors for new Swedish design?

Not at all. Instead we see design which is very correct, very well made (it's not bad at all), but oh so boring and safe. But come to think of it, why should we be surprized? The princess herself has wished for her father, the king, to lead her to the altar, a tradition abandoned many years ago by the Swedish Church, as a symbol of old stereotypical gender roles and not worthy any modern woman of today.

Back to the royal design. The pattern that has been created for the royal wedding is now seen on a number of product ranges (by companies that have been approved to carry the stamp "Kunglig Hovleverantör"), from chocolate, to cookies, to coffee. All are part of promoting the royal wedding (and thus gaining from it) and by this shaping the brand image of a country.

Here are some examples from around town:

Slow brands.

I just watched a fantastic little documentary on the men (it's always been and still is men) who paints the murals on walls in New York. I'm fascinated by the patience and love these men convey when performing the artistic masterpieces on walls high above the hustle and bustle of the city.

Slow brands, like slow food, is a fantastic way of displaying and devouring a brand. The murals are taken over by quicker methods, like printed vinyl, but they are still there.

Film by Malcolm Murray. Concept: Mother NY. Production Co: Mekanis.

Up there.

Place branding: South Orange, New Jersey

If you would have asked me in the late nineties what I thought about New Jersey, the answer would have been: "I don't". I was living in New York at the time, and New Jersey was a black hole. Crossing the Hudson river was something you did only when homesickness struck and you took the free bus to Ikea, to eat Swedish meatballs and watch the Scandinavian Airlines planes lift and land at Newark Airport.

Manhattan was the place to be. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was slowly starting to wake up and attract artist souls, like my my photographer friends, but walking there at night was still an adventure. My base was the Spanish Harlem, which also made New Yorkers frown and ask how on earth I could live there, and if it wasn't really dangerous. 105th between 5th avenue and Lexington still left a lot to wish for, but you couldn't beat the location right next to one of the nicest little parks in the Park (Central Park that is).

But New Jersey (or New Joycey as it was sometimes referred to)… Later on it became Soprano land, but then all we thought about in connection to it was house wifes and conservatives.

Yesterday I arrived in Newark airport. Luckily, I might add, considering the volcano ash adventure. I took a cab to South Orange, NJ. My friends from back in the nineties live there today. So much has changed. New Jersey still sports the image of a lesser brother to New York, but there are parts, like South Orange, with a completely modified brand image.

In South Orange you find the New Yorkers who wanted to continue their free minded New York lives and still start a family. The people caring for community gardens and organic food. People of mixed backgrounds, still working on Manhattan.

I've only just arrived but I'm looking forward to find out more and add some pics. For now, see the link.

Puma's clever little bag.

Puma is taking a step in the sustainable direction as they introduce a new shoe box, which is more like a shoe bag: Clever little bag, designed by Yves Behar. The thinking behind it goes along with the Puma vision: Fair, honest, positive, creative.

The brand aims to save 8 500 tons of paper, 20 million megajoules of electricity and 1 million liters of water, and to reduce carbon dioxide by 10 000 tons. Their goal is to change the industry and eventually the world.

I'd like more of this. How about for tooth paste? Or the fast food meal?

Winds of change.

I mentioned a while ago that I'm searching for a new name for my company. I'm also, as we speak, working on my new website. It will be launched in August/September if everything goes according to plan. In the meantime I am going to start using this space to show a little bit of what I do. For a quick look at a project I have been very involved with, look at GLC:s website.

GLC is short for Göteborgs Lastbilcentral (quick translation: Gothenburg Truck Central), and the transport and logistics company has been central to Western Sweden's business life since 1935. I'll tell you more about the change management process they went through as their new CEO entered the scene (from DHL), and the brand workshops, seminars, brand platform and communications work (where the website is but one small but important part) I did together with advertising agency InTime more thoroughly another time.

The 60's is back.

The good old days is an expression used in all kinds of situations, usually referring to some nostalgic notion that today's world is harsher, colder, more stressful, less happy, you name it. Since Mad Men entered our lives the good old days seem to be here again, at least if you are to believe the less than subtle signs around you.

So here are just some: Which advertising agency today does not want to be compared to the Mad Men team? Any interior design magazine with any sense of self respect is reporting about the new 60's trends in interior and product design.

 Another example is the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet) in Malmö, which opened up a few months ago in the old center for electricity building, which was rebuilt into a 60's pop colour shock in orange and bright yellow (both interior and exterior!) by Tham & Videgård arkitekter. They museum opened up with an exhibition called Spectacular Times, which showcases the museum's collection of art pieces from the 60's (there is also a part of the exhibition called Pierre Leguillion features – Dianne Arbus: A Printed Retrospective, 1960-1971).

I wonder which of these 60's brand markers we'll see more of this summer: Swedes skinny dipping in cold lakes at night, house wives cooking dinner with one hand and cigarette in the other… Finally an ad in the paper last weekend, and an article from the latest issue of Elle Interiör (Swedish Elle Decoration).

How to not buy another gadget.

I've got a small sailboat. It sleeps four but you can't stand upright in it (it's a 24 feet Misil II from 1976 in 1970's yellow, for those of you who might be interested). It's the same type I sort of grew up in, and my dad built, so it's a lot of nostalgia for me. So far all I've used for navigation is the sea chart and the compass. But this year I started thinking about finally getting myselt some sort of GPS plotter (reluctantly, I might add).

After investigating brands like Garmin, Lowrance, Eagle and Humminbird I was still not convinced I should buy yet another gadget. What about my iPhone? Wasn't there some clever application I could buy, that would work not on the 3G network (not very reliable on the ocean) but on satellite?

A few days ago my dad told me he had read about a new app, 88 sea, made by a Gothenburg based company. And it's a fraction of the price of a small, handheld GPS plotter for boating. If it's good I've saved myself another gadget, which is good both for my bank account and for the environment. Perfect!

Finding new interpretors.

I spent my lunch hour today listening to Roberto Verganti – professor at Politecnico di Milano – as he spoke about "Design Driven Innovation" at HDK design school in Göteborg. To be honest, I was a bit distracted during his speech – I am quite preoccupied by thinking about my own company and it's offerings at the moment – but some of the things he spoke of caught my attention.

His main topic discussed the fact that lots of companies today use design as an advantage in driving innovation, which makes it no advantage at all anymore (everybody is doing it). The challenge is instead to give meaning or significance to the products we make, in order to create an advantage. This is something I can relate to in my world of brands where the brand core is not about what a company does but how.

Roberto went on to speak about the importance new interpretors of a product/concept when working with innovation. He used Apple as an example (not very unique but a good example indeed) and how the company not only appointed Ken Segall as Creative Director, but also worked with designers who had never designed computers before. The outcome in 1998: The iMac, looking nothing like our idea of a computer (and the name was long debated too before "i" became the most used prefix in the world of technical devices), and the device "Think different" (it was dreamed up by an art director, Craig Tanimoto). The computer was a radical proposal on a market filled with grey boxes, but became a success, by fitting very well in a home environment, at a time when the Internet was exploding and people started surfing from home. (Read more about the birth of the iMac here.)

Roberto's final call to action was to find the new interpretors to create the advantage. Something to think about in the world of branding indeed.

Read more about Roberto and his new book "Design Driven Innovation" here and here.

The book by Roberto Verganti

A brand gathering.

The Swedish Franchise Association gathers franchise companies around Sweden – from Swedish McDonald's to Swedbank – and has been a client of mine for quite some time now. I've helped them mostly with smaller pieces of communication, but a while back the board decided it was time for a new logo, and later on, also a new name for marketing purposes (Svensk Franchise).

After a number of drafts the logo was developed – based on the idea of the dandelion symbolizing a n organic gathering point for numerous individual seeds, or what the association aims to be for its members.

A few days ago the new website was launched, which aims to be a living channel to existing members as well as a window for marketing the organization. The site targets mainly a Swedish audience but a short summary in English is available. The site is maintained and updated by the association.

A brand new decade.

Over the past months (it's been almost nine months since my last brand confession) I've gone through a brand crisis, asking myself what good brands really do in the greater scheme of things. Can brands make the world a better place? Can they help stop climate change? My questions led me to take an indefinite break in writing.

During this time the world has continued on its own. Social media exploded. The climate debate is getting louder. I don't think there are really clear answers to my questions, but I've decided to break the brand break. Below are five brands that are doing their bit in changing the world.

1) Avaaz is a "global web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people want".

2) TOMS shoes is saving the world by giving a way one pair of shoes for every pair sold.

3) Aspen design summit gathered top executives in search for solving global challenges.

4) Cop 15 (15th United Nations Climate Change Conference) failed to create a world wide contract of CO2 emission decrease, but succeeded in raising climate awareness among people all over the world.

5) Creatables is a small Swedish design firm started by an engineer. They design products from industrial waste materials.

6) In November this year, AIGA and Winterhouse Institute organized the Aspen Design Summit, who brought together some 60 top executives (Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO was one of them) with the aim of solving large social problems by applying design thinking.

I wish you all a brand new decade!

A brand at heart

Ronja was my favourite, wild and dreamy, doing what she liked. And Madicken wasn't so bad either, though sometimes the stories around her a bit scary, like when Lisabeth hitch-hiked with the evil man and was left in the snow, before the nice couple picked her up. And Pippi, of course. And the Lion Heart Brothers…

There is no author that has shaped my childhood more than Astrid Lindgren. Just as she has influenced children all over the world.

The brand of Astrid lives on, not just in the hearts of all of us, but also on the Internet. The official website of Astrid Lindgren (run by her family, through the company Saltkråkan AB) has just been updated (in time for the Astrid Lindgren award), eleven years since it was first launched. So far it's in Swedish, but an English version is on the way. And perhaps other languages too.

In my opinion the site is a bit PC (politically correct), but anything for Astrid, hey!