lead/marke | ralf schwartz

Video: Handcrafting the Hermès Leica

"It will cost an eye-watering $25,000 - and this video goes some way to explaining that price." - Via gizmodo.

 

Any interest in Pinterest? Ask yourself these fine questions

I just wrote in our weekly column at German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche that Pinterest - or facebook, twitter, television - is not the solution, but just a medium, and marketeers should not fall for their agencies like in 'the emperor's new clothes'.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself, in case you think about engaging in Pinterest - by Becky Lang from Zeus Jones.

"The point is, sometimes forcing your brand onto Pinterest can backfire. Pinterest is a place for creativity and idealism, not necessarily for all products everywhere. Here are a couple questions to ask yourself before going there with your marketing.

1. Does your product fit with the mood of Pinterest?
...

2. Do you respect Pinterest and its users?
...

3. Do you create media that might otherwise end up on Pinterest?
...

4. Is this just another house for your TV campaign?
..."

Please read her full post.

And have a look at my Visit Pinterest after reading this Post, to understand what Pinterest is desperately missing.

Addendum

 
Via thisisnthappyness.

Dan Wieden on Advertising [video]

 
Via Neil Perkin.

TED: Why Videos Go Viral - by Kevin Allocca, Trends-Manager at YouTube

The Complexity of Simplicity:

 

brandpoems(2): Dear Brand, "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."

Via nocturnality.

brandpoems(1): Dear Brand, "If you want to be an actress, you need to have something the others don't."

Via bastardette.

[L/M NET] Adrian Ho "We Build Modern Brands - Defined By What They Do"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

So Ad Fed have asked me to talk about the evolution of Zeus Jones next week.

While there’s a bunch of things that I could cover, I think the most interesting thing about our evolution is how little resemblance the company of today bears to the company we imagined right up to the day we opened our doors. We weren’t just a bit wrong about things, we were dramatically wrong. In almost all circumstances, our imagination around the specifics of our business was simply more naive and (thankfully) much less interesting than the reality has turned out to be.

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > "10 Projects Changing/Challenging the Concept of Communication"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Do we fail to see the extent of what communication is / has become?

Here are 10 projects that should / hopefully would change / broaden our idea of what communication is:

1. The Copenhagen wheel
The Copenhagen wheel is a perfectly designed combination of a lot of separate ideas, that collectively demonstrates the potential in modern communication. It offers both immediate interest and value through personal benefits in the context where it is used, but also ads a layer of communal value – and taking us one step further in creating the connected cities of the future. It’s an exceptionally complicated idea made into something people could understand and want immediately.

2. Life of George
LoG is a small initiative exploring the interface between technology and reality. It has been extremely well concepted and designed. This might not be an eye-opening revolution, but it is a very well thought through commercial mass-produced product. It has been through all the barriers and ended up as something that could easily, and hopefully, be adopted by the mass (iPhone-owning) market.

3. Sniff
Sniff is only a prototype, but demonstrates with beauty the life an inanimate object can have as soon as it takes on some form of well designed behavior. There has been digital technology inside toys for tens and tens of years, but Sniff approaches the idea of what technology is, not what it outputs.

4. Nokia Push Snowboarding
The way the technology has been implemented into the culture of the sport it is trying to augment is the most impressive feet. Nokia and Burton have pushed the snowboarding culture first – and then designed itself to it – which could not be said for a lot of other commercial technology…

5. Nest the learning thermostat
The objects learns by recording our behavior – and calculating something on top of that recording. Objects are still dumb, but in a very intelligent way. The Nest is an example of everyday appliances becoming a second brain, and a demonstration of how digital objects have gone from furniture you hide away in small offices upstairs to objects you display and want to talk about.

6. Up by Jawbone
How does a wristband with no screen and no sound communicate with its carrier? A vibration in itself says nothing, the interesting thing is how we learn what the vibration means in different contexts. This is a perfect example of the rich unexpectedness of communication – the one without the spoken/written language – and how quickly we adopt and learn new forms of communication.

7. Zeebox
Zeebox is one of several new products being launched to augment the TV experience. Behind it lies the concept of increasing the value of something local by connecting it to the rest of the world – through a parallel system. In this case the linear TV experience. Now any idiot could do that, but it is the tools by which they try to achieve the connection which is brilliant. Zeebox is a first generation concept in this arena, but demonstrates the potential of what is to come.

8. Waterpebble
Ideas don’t have to be big and shiny, they can be small and solve minute problems. It’s the aesthetic of the idea that is the important thing: How does the mechanic of such a small thing change the dynamic of something bigger… Now, if they only could connect it to the Internet…

9. The Wattson
The Wattson gives us access to things that previously where invisible and not present in our consciousness. Just because we can’t see things and talk about them doesn’t mean they aren’t important. The Wattson gives us access to a layer of reality that we haven’t been able to see before but which is highly real and important.

10. Nokia kinect
Now the first nine examples have been impressive, most of them include sensors and things which gives us access to a part of reality that we haven’t explored before. But it doesn’t stop with the invisible data… The next generation handsets gives us access to the layer of communication that emerges as objects becomes haptic and kinetic, opening a whole new world of interaction and behavior, through the sensitivity and richness of touch and force.

In conclusion:

“in the future we will communicate with identities, if these are people or objects doesn’t really matter” – 180360720.no

“Our goal is to first connect all the rabbits, and then connect everything else” – Rafi Haladjian

(ralf says:
This just tells me in its own way and means, that we still do not understand the true scope of the web. We still do not understand what we would sacrifice, if we choke the web with obsolete rules and laws and stuff.)

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

Jelly Bean Animation Video

Via jovoto.

John Cleese on Creativity [Video]

Nothing really new, but good to hear from a successful creative what we all can do to become better.

Via.

We Love @BLYSS_choc - Guess Why!?

01 - Because we love great chocolate.

02 - Because we love a good story.

03 - Because we love fantastic pictures.

04 - Because we admire great branding.

05 - Because we love focus.

06 - Because we love consistency.

07 - Because we love authenticity.

08 - Because we love true entrepreneurship.

09 - Because we love a good strategy.

10 - We love vision. We love passion.

And - last but not least - because we love, we truly and deeply love, to discover a brand, a company, an entrepreneurial spirit NOT following 30.000 people to get 30.000 followers.

This fact - you might judge it minor - made me have a look at the product when CemB retweetet BLYSS_choc.

This small fact makes all the difference between truly building a brand and mere selling a product as fast as you can.

Lyss, we wish you all the best with BLYSS!
Only great people will build great brands! 

Steve Jobs' 10 Commandments to Manage his Creative Process

Via hitenshah.

By Leander Kahney. Click for a larger image.

See also Dieter Rams: "We Design Nature" - Video and his 10 Principles of Good Design.

Dieter Rams: "We Design Nature" - Video and his 10 Principles of Good Design

Please enjoy Dieter's "Objectified" - and reflect upon his below 10 principles of good design.

And please test every principle against the great (or not so great) design which comes to your mind - even (or especially) your own product's design.

These 10 principles - as a poster - should beautify every designer's, agency's and marketeer's wall!

 
Via Helge Tenno, Member of lead/marke NET.

Dieter Rams' 10 Principles of ...

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > The Carpenter

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

The Carpenter from Dimitris Ladopoulos on Vimeo.

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

Steve Jobs: "Products, not the Profits"

"[T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. ... It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything." - Steve Jobs

Via.

@TheThirdClub - or: To All the Brave Entrepreneurial Wo/Men: Creativity & Innovation Desperately Need You!

(Note: This is a cross post with my distinctive leadership blog)

We just founded The Third Club!
Get to know more about it here (ya, it's German).

(Polaroid by Douglas Wilson > available here) 

At the moment we are 12 brave wo/men - but want to allure all brave wo/men out there! Just to give you a very small hint on what we are talking about please inhale the following list.

(Yeah, I know, some 20.000+ great people are not on that list.
But you do know: there is no definitive list of great people.)

This is not about names. The personalities beyond them will give you a pretty good picture what I am talking about. They are the wild-card characters of entrepreneurial personalities and spirit, of motivation, engagement, and dedication I would love to see @TheThirdClub:

[L/M NET] Adrian Ho > Think(ing) Different.

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

I have a long history with computers. I got a Sinclair Z81 for my birthday one year and the 16K ram pack for my birthday the next. I did maths and computer science at college where we learned Pascal on Vax mini computers. My history with computers became intertwined with my history as a planner when in 1992,  I started working on my first account: AST Research, a now defunct PC manufacturer and shortly afterwards Sun Microsystems, a now defunct workstation/server manufacturer.

In 1996,I started working on Microsoft and the next year Steve Jobs returned to Apple. By then, Apple had ceased to be relevant – our sights were set on companies like Netscape, Sun and Oracle. Along with most others I assumed that it would be too little, too late. And when the “Think Different” advertising launched, my assumption was confirmed.

I remember asking my colleagues, “How can an ad about what you are, a thing that everyone already knows, change what you think about a company?”

In fact, I don’t think it did. It was everything that came after that changed how we think about that ad.

And for me, it was everything that came after that changed how I think about computers, about technology, about advertising and about marketing.

Goodbye Steve.

(ralf says: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." RIP Steve.)

Adrian is founding partner of Zeus Jones a branding company believing actions speak louder than words and that modern brands are defined by what they do not what they say. He speaks (and writes) regularly about non-communications based models for marketing & branding. Twitter: @adrianho

CHRIS DIXON: LESSONS LEARNED AS INVESTOR AND ENTREPRENEUR

"1. If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough
... 

"2. Don’t climb the wrong hill
..."

"3. The next big thing will start out looking like a toy
..." 

"4. Predicting the future of the Internet is easy: anything it hasn’t yet dramatically transformed, it will.
..."

"So my advice is:
1) get rejected more
2) climb the right hill
3) create an amazing toy
4) grow that toy into something big that transforms an important industry"

Via youmightfindyourself.

"Jobs taught his entire organization to play in the span of product generations rather than product introductions"

"Jobs is ahead of his time in other ways too: He has taught his entire organization to play in the span of product generations rather than product introductions.

Apple designers say that now, each design they create has to be presented alongside a mock-up of how that design might evolve in the second or third generation.

That should ensure Apple’s continued success for a long time, aided, of course, by the tremendous momentum that Jobs’s leadership has provided the company."

Via.

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." RIP Steve.

 

 

 

 

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Steve Jobs
1955-2011 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The people
who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world,
are the ones who do."

Think Different, via CTurlington.