More on Graffiti - Art or Crime?

Was getting arrested for vandalism a PR stunt for his museum show or denial of freedom of speech for Shepard Fairey? Fairey, famous for the Obama poster, (New York Times story) was arrested on his way to the museum opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Boston recently, but there was no proof that he was responsible for the posters of his work that had been put up in public spaces all over town. I guess this is like Martha Stewart going to jail for selling her stocks at the same time that the real criminals like Madoff are robbing people blind - but then I just posted that I found charm in graffiti on a gray day so I guess I have come to the conclusion that graffiti is no crime. At the end of the day, I still find that graffiti is a nuisance and should be controlled.

Was this instance more of a publicity stunt on the part of the authorities to say: "We are watching out for the public," while real crime and defacement of public and private property goes on unabated?

Germany's graffiti problem has reached a tipping point - at some point they must have unofficially declared graffiti as art and they have left it to fester everywhere in frightening amounts. But no where was it more frightening than in the New York subways before Mayor Guiliani cleaned things up there.

historia de un letrero (video original)

It is not what you say, but how you say it.

What does modesty have to do with the economy?

USA Today regularly gets the zeitgeist right. An article entitled "Retailers widen options, including more modest clothes" says we are covering up more because we want more versatility and longevity from our fashions.

The article features a group called PureFashion.com, a group of teen models. Founded by Brenda Sharman in 2006, she "already knew public sentiment was starting to lean in favor of her modesty mission. However, she didn't think there would be much concern about low necklines and high hemlines in a time of staggering economic pressure and spiraling unemployment. But now, she believes the economy has become a boon."

It will be interesting to watch to see if the new modesty has a relative impact on the bottom line of such retailers as Aberchrombie and Fitch or whether the retailer will change its emphasis in response to the trends.

What do Acela and Louis Vuitton have in common?

Having spent the snowiest day in 5 years in New York traipsing around SOHO, I was happy to be on the Acela looking out from behind my long down coat. New York to Boston is such a spectacular ride along the shoreline, I always make sure to get a seat on the Long Island Sound side. On this particular day it was the graffiti that caught my eye and seeing it at the "speed of Acela" I was charmed by its appeal - it cheered up a dreary, dismal and colorless afternoon for me.

I have previously taken notice of and reported on the crossover of graffiti and tattoo art to luxury items, but never personally could see it. Today I could, or maybe it was just my memory of seeing the Stephen Sprouse revival in the Louis Vuitton window in Soho - it too was more noticeable on that snowy morning.

For an engaging riff on the artistry of handbags see Handbags of the Apocalypse.

How the Zaha Hadid look arrived

Now that the "Zaha Hadid look" has become a part of the American design vocabulary, I dug through my image file to find how the look became a part of our language. Despite the fact the we don't have any of her buildings in the US, the New York Armani store staircase mentioned several entries ago shows how her influence is being expressed. In 2006, she designed a "Futuristic Kitchen" in conjunction with Corian® for the Milan Furniture Fair in April. At the end of that year she was the first woman to be honored with the most prestigious prize in architecture - the Pritzker Award. In 2007 she showed a collection of tables at Art Basel Miami in her signature shapes. With the Pritzker comes the status of starchitect and she has build for major clients in Europe such as Vitra and BMW.

Corian® Europe has an uncanny way of picking winners, the following year they worked with Jean Nouvel for the Milan Fair and he later that year also won the Pritzker. Architecture and design are truly global arts and as both companies and media are global, both European and Asian influences will continue to be felt, however the time span of influence to implementation will continue to be as unpredictable as ever.

Meet trend prophet Li Edelkoort

euronews | Meet trend prophet Li Edelkoort
Listen to an interview with the "wise woman" of the trend industry. She says that in our recent buy-buy-buy society "creativity was stalled." As she looks forward to a new era of creativity, we can already see the changes taking place in the architecture and design worlds. I don't think it was so much that creativity was stalled - there has been an ongoing undercurrent of ideas flowing freely, but the marketplace only wanted more and more of the same opulence thereby stalling much of the implementation of creative ideas since luxury items have always been highly conservative in any era.

Giorgio Armani Opens 5th Avenue Store

We may be past the Bilbao era, but there is always something new around the corner. The opening of the new Armani store in New York heralds the landing of the Zaha Hadid era on U.S. shores. Armani stores have previously been clad in limestone from top to bottom, so this store marks a visible change in aesthetic for Armani. Keeping the opening simple in the spirit of the times, Armani donated $1M to New York public schools instead of having a splashier event. The exterior is clad in the oft-mentioned LED's, that now frequently replace other materials as exterior cladding in the retail environment.

On GreenBuild

I was finally prompted to comment on GreenBuild when I found Nathan Shedroff's presentation which conveys my sentiments on sustainability - exactly. In reality I found only one booth at the November show that truly conveyed the spirit of what GreenBuild should be about - no further comments are needed. Antron gets it!

Getting Branding Right

The Forbes Wealthiest List has been great fodder for thought. Seeing the Mars family on the list, I wonder how important their vigilance at branding is to this 4th generation family-owned business is to their success. The Branding Strategy blog's entry: Don’t Make A Naming Compromise reminded me of Mar's Milky Way Midnight - their is no question that is a dark chocolate Milky Way, and that is the way naming should work, yet too many brands allow confusion in their naming. Visiting the Mars website you entire their galaxy, complete with a spinning globe (that can be viewer spun) to show the extent of their reach. Mars brings a rigourous consistency to their brand presentation.

Power over Brands

After realizing the mass-market retail has created some of the greatest wealth globally, it is interesting to note that the blog Branding Strategy Insider has an entry titled: Why Retailers Call the Shots that analyzes the current power of retail chains over manufacturers. The numbers are staggering, The still growing Aldi chain does not sell Coke products in Europe, while Coke is losing millions in sales. P&G refused to make private label diapers for Costco, consequently were delisted as a supplier - estimated to be losing over $2M in sales annually according to the article. Survivors in today's economic climate are playing hardball and those closest to the consumer - retailers hold the power over manufacturers brands.

Is the Bilbao Age over?

Blair Kamin writing the the Chicago Tribune thinks so in his article entitled: "Goodbye, icons; hello, infrastructure: Obama inaugurates a new era of architecture." As an architectural critic he finds a lot to like about "starchitecture" "...yet, icons divorced from infrastructure are nothing more than empty set pieces, objects divorced from the fabric of everyday life."

As The Donald finishes America's tallest building since the Sears tower, I have to mourn the passing of an era that brought us Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. In both direct and subtle ways, this icon had a huge influence on the way our interiors products and spaces looked.

The raw material suppliers had pearlescent pigments available, but it was not until the brilliant reception of Gehry's building that pearlescence and metallic looks made their way into interior finishes.The end of this exciting era speaks to the fact that there will be little "material" innovation during this recessionary period. Judging by the recent GreenBuild, there is not much in the way of aesthetics to get excited about. My post and images of GreenBuild are yet to be processed, as I found it to be generally uninspiring.

Creating Iconic Brands

The website of the Zyman Institute of Brand Science at Emory University has an excerpt from How Brands Become Icons: The Principle of Cultural Branding, Harvard Business School Press (Sept. 2004)

In his research for the book, author Douglas Holt was unable to find a single example in which conventional consumer research contributed to the building of an iconic brand. Iconic brands are created by playing off cultural texts that other culture industries have already put into play.

Icon creation is about myth building - as only a few companies such as Budweiser, Nike and Harley Davidson have been able to create. Creating a mythic experience is not about consumer behavior "truths" or emotional hot buttons-the usual language of consumer research. It goes beyond documenting people's attitudes and emotions to acquire an embedded sense of what life really feels like if one were in their shoes. The kind of knowledge required to build an iconic brand is more like what an author requires to write a great novel or screenplay. Holt says that managers must get close to the nation-the social and cultural shifts and the desires and anxieties that result in order to give specific direction to their creative partners in order to build an iconic brand.

Forbes shows us the Money

Throughout my entire career I have witnessed companies ignore the needs and desires of the masses - aesthetic and otherwise. The excuse was always that it would cannibalize the high end products, and all the pundits even had me believing the most recent excuse that "there is no middle." It was the rising tide that kept everyone in the gravy, meanwhile those catering to the masses were shoveling in the money with little competition. All you have to do is take a look at the Forbes Wealthiest List. You will find the founder of IKEA at #7, the (Trader Joe's) Aldi brothers at #10 and #16, and the WalMart family at #26, 27, and 29. If their father were alive today, he would top out with Warren Buffett and give the USA 4 billionaires in the top 25 instead of just the 3 there are in the most recent list.

Bernard Arnault alone represents the luxury business at #16, his diverse LVMH group held up surprising well in 2008 given the amount of competition in that segment. What is most obvious about this list is how few Americans are on the list - anyone who tries to put the brakes on free trade will quickly discover exactly where the power/money lies. In this Olympics of Billionaires, Forbes list shows that the USA is no longer the dominant financial power.

Legos are forever

The Forever Young line is Atlanta artist JacQueline's Sanchez award-winning signature collection. The diamond is discrete enough for today's understated look. Rumor has it that Hermes is offering to wrap purchases in a plain brown wrapper for those customers that can still afford to buy their luxury goods.

Trendease DesignVision Episode 4: Heimtextil Trends 2009/2010 (from www.trendease.tv)

2009 Anthem Redux

HEADLINE on CNN Money: Retailers That Survive Can Expect A $20 Billion-Plus Boost In Sales. (Article is no longer available, but the headline says it all.) That is the upside of recessions.

HIP - not the body part

When did over-used 60's lingo that I think of as a body part become a design style? Just noticed it on Portfolio.com, and have been hearing the word bantered around the industry ad nauseum.

I hope that it is not a case of my being a fuddy-duddy. In the 70's when the design studio where I worked divvied up design styles for a marketing campaign, I knew that I didn't want French Provincial or Mediterranean, someone else claimed Contemporary and Early American. I had to think fast and announced I would be doing "Country." I got lots of quizzical looks and the question: "What is Country?"

So dare I ask: "What is hip style?" Someone please help me out, as I am usually pretty on top of this type of stuff.

I did convince the others that "Country" was indeed a style and went about my task of finding products to create the look. The year was 1974 and Mary Emmerling's defining book "American Country" was published in 1980, so finding product was a real challenge. Yes, I figured it out - but this "hip style" has me a little confused. Please send pictures!

Only The Strong Survive --- Jerry Butler

Happy 2009! An anthem for the upcoming year.

Past 64 and an instant hit on myspace.com

If anyone in this world is still questioning the future of the internet - just listen to the man who is now past 64 and his latest album... Paul McCartney under the name "The Fireman" has taken "Electric Arguments" instantly to the world at large. Listen to it on myspace.com and don't forget to read the adoring comments from his fans of all ages. Two days after it was posted 166,000 people had listened to the album - does a quicker way to market exist today?

Brooke Shields Volkswagen AD Commercial # 2

Just in case you haven't seen one of these commercials yet - a little hard to imagine - they appear to be everywhere! My comments are in the previous post.

Pregnant ladies and Brooke Shields

Hilarious, offensive, dumb, irrelevant...just a few of the words used to describe the recent advertising campaign featuring Brooke Shields and lots of pregnant ladies.

Even after just reading the reviews for Buyology, I understand what bothers me about this campaign- it is not the product you remember, it is just Brooke Shields and pregnant ladies. In fact, having seen these commercials at least 20 times, I still can't remember the name of the car that is being introduced. (Although I do remember that it is a VW product, but that could be because I drive one rather than the ad being memorable for that fact.)

As one reviewer of Buyology mentioned, the brain research behind this book informs us that using sex to sell a product sells sex rather than the product. I have to assume that is why I remember only Brooke Shields and pregnant ladies from this advertising campaign. Could it be that this is actually a subliminal campaign by the government to create more future worker bees and taxpayers to support the upcoming retirement of the boomer generation? I am looking forward to reading the book.

HOW TO: Track Trends

Trend tracking is not about looking into a crystal ball and divining the future, rather an observation of the here and now and what the impact of the here and now will have on the future.

The first time a real estate agent told me that banks were giving adjustable rate mortgages with nothing down, allowing 50% of income to go to principle and interest was in 2005, I knew that in 2008 there would be lots of foreclosures. (I am sure that this had been going on even before 2005 but that was the first time that I paid attention - I didn't even know that incomes were not being verified.) Where were all of our astute economists who had the true inside information and whose job it was to keep our economy sound?

Tracking and analyzing trends requires both an open-mind and a keen sense of awareness of your surroundings at all times. Because I am involved with construction materials, the mortgage information held relevance to me, so I processed the information immediately. As a consultant, I made the recommendation that my clients expand their product planning and marketing efforts beyond the residential market. As a consultant, I can only inform decisions, the decisions are the clients to make, and their economists never even sounded the alarm. (The few who did were ignored in the press and considered nervous nellies.)

Trend Watching.Com offers a thorough review of the trend-tracking process as well as trends that they observe. Trend tracking may not be a formal part of your job requirement, but every marketer needs a rudimentary understanding of the process to know whose advice to take. Your own observational skills are still required; the internet should not be viewed as a short cut, but as another tool in the process.

Names have Meaning

"Confusing alphabet-soup names like CLK, CLC, CLS, SLK, GLK, CL, SL and SLR have made it hard for customers to keep track of Mercedes-Benz's vehicle lineup, and to fix that the company is looking at returning to more traditional names based around the A, B, C, E and S-Class names," states an article in Motor Authority.

As I have just finished suggesting names for another batch of products, I am reminded of how important it is that the names connect to something - anything that will help the consumer of the product understand what it is he is buying. I know that it gets tougher and tougher with the number of your own products and those of competitors. Naming your product is a process that should never be given short shrift or handled in a bull session. Names must be especially vetted in a global marketplace in various languages. For example, if planning to sell in Germany, never use the word MIST - it means dung in German. Had to check myself on that one - was it...mist or dust that I just suggested? When Ford launched an advertising campaign in Belgium, the headline ‘Every car has a high quality body’ came out as ‘Every car has a high quality corpse’. Car bodies and human bodies often are different words. If this sort of thing amuses you check for more examples at this website.

Why would you ever name a dark charcoal gray product Mont Blanc if you knew that blanc means white in French? In a global environment, it is more important than ever to have at least a passing knowledge of foreign languages. Even a passing knowledge of geography would have been helpful in this case, because you would know that Mont Blanc is snow-capped year round. English may be the ipso facto lingua franca, but rather than risk embarrassment, make sure to check globally before you commit to the expense of printing literature and labels.

Creativity and the Role of the Leader

An article of interest to those responsible for new product development of all kinds titled "Creativity and the Role of the Leader," in October's Harvard Business Review, shares insights from a recent two-day colloquium at Harvard Business School on the topic. My favorite quote from the article:" 'If there is one device that has destroyed more innovation than any other, it is Six Sigma,' stated Mark Fishman, MD, president of the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research." This fact would be obvious to creative types but must have required verbalizing to the management types at the colloquium. The article offers interesting reading on providing the proper setting and challenges for "managing" creativity on the path to building and maintaining a strong and profitable business.

"Project Runway" Tenor of the Times

2007 BC (before chaos-financial ) Style over Substance wins
2008 AD (after demise-of Wall Street) Talent and hard work win

More than any other "Reality TV" 2008 Project Runway has captured the times in which we live and is a hopeful guidepost to the future. Only in hindsight do we realize that 2007 Project Runway's winner did the same; the winner's "style over substance" captured the immediate times. Did the darkness of the collection foresee what was in store, just a year later? The numbers of viewers of the presidential debate may have eclipsed the viewers of the 2008 Project Runway finale, but we can only hope that these lessons are as prescient as those of 2007 - this would not be the first time that fashion portends the future. And did Leanne's use of sustainable fabrics cinch the deal for her? If Leanne's win of the 2008 Project Runway with talent and hard work - without even a speck of attitude and posturing speaks to the future - bring it on sooner rather than later.