Creative Thinking

Since Obama first beat Hilary Clinton in the Iowa primary those in the know have been talking about his approach to marketing.

Here are just ten things we’ve noticed:

1. Be different - celebrate your differences from what has gone before and turn any percieved weakness in to an advantage (e.g. inexperience becomes change)
2. Stand for something big - don’t get bogged down in the detail and try to elevate
the conversation
3. Be prepared to be flexible - there is no universal panacea
4. Be likeable - if people don’t like you they probably won’t listen to you
5. Have a big personality - have different facets to your personality
6. Embrace the little people too - the influencers only have so much influence
7. Embrace behavioural economics (only say you’ll change the world if you
actually believe you can)
8. Be optimistic - people know it’s bad, they want you to give them hope
9 . Listen - Most brands spend their time shouting about themselves rather than listening to what people actually need
10. Converse don’t dictate - you’ll only move forward if it’s a dialogue rather than a monologue

Influx Insights have also directed us to this:

Taking a page from their customer friendly food service model, Burger King recently took “Have It Your Way” into the realms of D.I.Y. fashion.  A collaboration between 5 designers and artists tasked with reinterpreting elements of Burger King’s icons and logos culminated at an event held in Chicago on October 24th.  The gathering invited participants to take part in the studio creation process by silk-screening the final designs onto their own clothing in any combination they chose.  Essentially, a clever form of marketing that allowed Burger King to subvert their own image, while at the same time maintaining recognizable aspects familiar to their wider audience.  The company has also pushed this idea a step further with Burger King Studio, a site that takes the hands-on experience and introduces it to the online space.  Users have the ability to design their own T-shirts using the same details from the out-of-home event with additional levels of customizable options available, promising the uniqueness you want without fear of “getting ink all over yourself.”  Additional happenings have already been scheduled for November 7th and 21st.

Landing a job at a creative company itself requires some out-of-box thinking, but there’s no need to make things too complicated for yourself either.  Once you’ve identified your skills and the type of direction you’d like to head in, coming up with a thoughtful marketing plan for yourself says a lot to potential employers about the type of imagination that you’d bring to their firm.

Iain Tait offers 7 things to consider when seeking the next step in your career:

• Get yourself a portfolio
• Spend a bit of time making your portfolio nice / neat / test it / proof it
• Be clear and upfront about your role in projects you’ve worked on
• Have an opinion on aesthetics / design / interaction / type / sound design / whatever…
• Brand yourself
• Do some light detective work
• Put your plan into action

[via Crack Unit]

The Travel 2.0 blog has an interesting post on Pepsi’s social rebranding. The fact that they’ve changed their logo is now common knowledge - Seth Godin recently blogged about it as well - but it hasn’t been done in a vacuum. Pepsi has actively reached out to 25 of the most influential marketing bloggers, sent them a set of Pepsi cans that captured the brand’s history, as well a set of the new cans and an invitation to join their FriendFeed room to post their comments. FriendFeed, for the uninitiated, is a site that captures all your social activity in one place - so if you are on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, for example, every time you make an update to these sites, the information is updated on FriendFeed. By creating a separate room on the web to record user comments about the rebranding, Pepsi has shown that they are actively listening to consumers and not just dishing out changes without any concern for how it has been accepted. 

[image courtesy Greg Verdino's blog]

Starting Nov 18, PSFK will be running a series of breakfast discussions in New York City up until the holidays. We aim to host these Good Idea Salons twice a week about different topics that we hope you’ll find inspirational and helpful as you prepare for next year.

Good Idea Salons are part of our Good Ideas initiative - a campaign of positivity in a time when we need a little.

EVENTS
Good Ideas In Mobile - Tuesday, November 18
Good Ideas In Design - Thursday, November 20
Good Ideas in Collaboration - Tuesday, November 25
Good Ideas In Digital - Tuesday, December 2 (details to follow)
Good Ideas In Social Media - Thursday, December 4 (details to follow)
Good Ideas In Brand Experience - Tuesday, December 9 (details to follow)
Good Ideas In Design II - Thursday, December 11 (details to follow)
Good Ideas In Collaboration II - Tuesday, December 16 (details to follow)
Good Ideas For The Future - Thursday, December 18 (details to follow)

FORMAT
The session is really a conversation with a group of about 30-40 readers. For the first 10 minutes, PSFK will present a thought starter then a number of experts will open a discussion and invite the audience to debate for the next 40-50 minutes. Simple. Time: 8.30-9.30am (Doors @8.15am).

SPONSORS
These events are kindly supported by Another Anomaly, thehappycorp and Naked.

DETAILS
http://www.goodideas2009.com

Bizarrely London’s metropolitan transport authority, Transport For London, has been responsible for several of this year’s best and most interesting TV ads. From this clever use of graphics:

To the controversial ‘Do the Test’:

The agency behind this work has now created this film:

Using the “whodunnit” device the ad grips the viewers attention in the same way as the previous films in the series of commercials. However, this ad has a slightly different twist. In the same vein as its predecessors the ad brings the proposition to life perfectly.

It has a broad reaching name and this year Advertising Age and Creativity brought together an equally wide range of speakers for a day of dialog about creativity and innovation. This year’s conference was held in New York City at Terminal 5, usually a concert and nightclub venue on October 30th. Once inside, attendees could congregate in the Inspiration Pavilion which was made up of booths and displays representing most of the days speakers. Notable was GM who had the Volt on display and Yahoo! who featured one of their Purple Pedals bikes. The following are some highlights of the day:

Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Toms Shoes spoke about his company’s efforts to make giving a core attribute of their business. For every pair of shoes purchased, Toms gives a pair to a child in need, for free. Blake announced within the next twelve months that the company will have given 300,000 pairs away. Blake gave some advice for businesses looking to integrate giving into their business practices. First is to make the commitment as authentic and transparent as possible. The goal is always to help people first, not the bottom line. Second, he noted that giving fosters a sense of empowerment from Toms employees. He said that there is a passion that radiates from the office. Giving creates a stronger bond between what employees are doing, and the people their business is connected to.
Blake offered a preview of the new Toms website launching soon. The site will offer new features that allow Toms customers to connect to each other and become more engaged in the company’s field activities. Toms issues an open call for volunteers every two months to assist with shoe drops in Argentina.

Grant Achatz, the owner and chef of Alinea in Chicago told his amazing story. The award winning chef was diagnosed with Stage 4 squamous cell carcinoma of the mouth, a difficult cancer to cure. The diagnosis and treatment potentially spelled the end of his career as a chef. Amazingly, Grant beat the cancer applying some of the same lessons he learned when developing his restaurant Alinea. He spoke about three steps he consistently used to attach and solve problems:

1. Understand your medium: Gain as much information and understanding about the challenges and opportunities that are available.
2. ‘Breaking it down’: Look for even the smallest opportunities to innovate. All of these small opportunities will add up to something much bigger.
3. Rebuilding in a meaningful way: Keep the overall goal in mind. Make sure it is compelling, unique, and personal.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re proud to announce our new service aimed at agencies and small companies. PSFK On Call is a streamlined service that helps creatives, planners, researchers and strategists find new ideas.

The service offers its subscribers access to experts in any sector in any part of the world. This is supported by a PSFK analyst report and a tailored RSS feed.

We’d love to know what you think. For more information please contact our Business Development Director Jeff Weiner at jeff.weiner@psfk.com or at the office on +1 917 595 2401.

Japanese design company Muji wants to be clear with the latest message on their website: they are “not a brand.”  They simply develop “products with a view towards global consumption of the future.”  Curious.

On one hand, their vision is to be commended for offering an intelligent response to unchecked consumerism, where fads and cheaply manufactured goods are too often easily discarded when they go out of style or break.  To combat this trend, “MUJI aims to raise the standard of ‘enough’ to the greatest extent possible.” They plan on accomplishing this by creating universal products made with dependable materials and smart designs - a means of fulfilling their customers’ needs without forcing them to compromise on taste.

However, hiding beneath all the rhetorical trappings of enlightenment and collectivism, lies the notion that “if you buy our values then why not buy everything we’re selling in our stores while you’re at it.” An ingenious piece of subliminal marketing that puts lifestyle choices front and center while positioning the desire of owning these ideals as the natural next step.

[Via Racked Via CoolHunting]