Wednesday, February 14, 2007

The Social Relevance of Brands (Part 4/ from Ad!dict inspiration book: The Brand issue)

Here is a task for all of us: design
globalisme. As clients, consumers,
brands, designers, manufacturers,
press, and people – thus, as a society,
the right approach should be to rethink
and work on creating coherent
concepts for corporate brands
and for human brands, still fully
utilising the knowledge and findings
emanating from our heritage.
Our cultural heritage includes our
brand heritage. We have to
incorporate a certain level of design
globalisme, to find a balance between
the created concept, the human
being, the environment and society.
Creating – and we all do – thus becomes
a complex yet
challenging activity.

(the brand issue / chapter 5)

Parasite branding (Part 2/ from Ad!dict inspiration book: The Brand issue)

So if you now understand what faces
brands can have, what products they
make... maybe you want more, since
you’re a brand addict. What about
branding in all its extremes?
Check the Parasite Branding
concepts on the next pages.
Here the selected artists try to
understand a brand and go just
that step further: parasitize on what
the brand has become.
Use the efforts needed to create
the brand and its values for other
purposes. A pretty extreme use of
branding, if you ask me.
But it fits our culture of extremes.

Chapter 3 / Addictlab Brand issue / Parasite Branding

Advertising is dead. (Part 1/ from Ad!dict inspiration book: The Brand issue)

Advertising as we know it is dead.
The creative advertising scene is
still somewhat unknown to
the public, yet the public is aware of
their existence. Moreover, the public
has grown up: they won’t fall that
easy for the tips and tricks of
the brands and their marketing
mercenaries.That fact combined
with the current economic situation
makes the processus about
communicating, marketing,
designing and branding a complex
and difficult task.
Today, it’s all about brand
experiences. Go beyond the
communication tools of regular
advertising theories. Best is to start
and rethink the products a brand
should create. The only way to go
is the necessary blurring between
the design & advertising scene.

Addictlab Brand issue/ Chapter 2 / Your product is your brand.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Gaming night



So, yes, I believe it is important to think completely out of the box in order to innovate. That's why I'm open for all sorts of impulses by creative people from any possible discipline, anywhere in the world. At least if I'm able to get into their head, or reflect on their creation.

I admit, if you would be managing a company of 30.000 people, you'll have a hard time imagining why on earth it could be important to go to a performance where this guy is talking about creativity and innovation (eg me...) you see weird objects in their office/lab (e.g. in stead of clicking on the light you had to take your gun and aim at it....), and you are served by Lara Croft like creatures serving you soup coming from the crotch of a sort of Robokok.

End of January Addictlab organised a Gaming night for paperpartners Dalum and Antalis, including innovative food concepts ROBOKOK, lectures on gaming, and awesome DJ sets.

Thinking out of the box starts on the frontier you have limited yourself to.


Gaming Night
Lecture commissioned by Antalis & Dalum
research theme: Gaming
Brussels, January 2007

Friday, February 02, 2007

The Vroom & Dreesmann paradox.

The Vroom & Dreesmann paradox is my way to describe the apparent limitations of Addictlab - not being able to make big money on a short period of time.

V&D approached Addictlab last year, attracted to the level of innovation we showed at the resent 100% Design fair in Rotterdam.
V&D is a supermarket chain in Holland, that apparently lost their innovative way of doing things over the last 120 year.

The concept / briefing was brave. Let's define and produce 120 new products to celebrate this anniversary, and put V&D on the map again as a proactive, caring, and innovative brand. V&D wanted to lead again, in stead of keep on tracking behind.

So far so good. In all honesty, I am convinced that with our addictlab-system we can deliver.
Timing was an issue, complete madness, actually, but speed is one of our assets, so I attracted more labresearchers at Addictlab Brussels to start working on this. We do have a huge database of people and concepts.

For me, however, there were some extra points I wanted to add.

First: the selection of ideas and concepts. My personal view on things is that we should think about the social relevance of our actions. Better not just think about the product we create itself, but also about the surrounding that changes because you create.
With a selection of 120 products, we really could make a difference.
One of the concepts I wanted to push was a USB stick with the housing cut out in wood in a West African country.
The Portugese designer Pedro Alegrià wanted to make a point with this design creating a bridge between western society needing new tools like USB sticks, and production facilities in Sao Tomé. (see also Ad!dict inspiration book on GAMING)
Obviously , you could not start sourcing this in China.

Brings me to another important point in collaborations between Ad!dict Creative Lab and companies like V&D: The importance of honouring the designer/creative and the link to the addictlab-system.
This seems so logic: you attract consumers by showing them innovative products, bring authentic (!) stories, explain the reason why, who did it, why, and make a link to the creative mind or group of creatives who are behind it. All should benefit from that. The consumer, the creator, the facilitator (addictlab) and the brand V&D

Now, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't convince the V&D management on those two points.
We had a couple of meetings - one meeting took me 3 hours on the road from Brussels to Amsterdam and exactly 20 minutes for the meeting and then 3 hours back - and it was clear that from their side, they were struggling with the briefing, the sourcing, the concept. Where as the initial briefing was that we'd go as far as possible.

You had the difficult discussion on the 'owner' of the concepts, or at least the communication of the people behind the concepts.
And you had the budget discussions. They wanted to earn money on every of the 120 products. Making it a mere commercial project. Whereas it was and still is my conviction we should add some products that might not sell too well, but create rumour and proof of V&D's clear will to innovate. in that case, the production of those products is an investment, on a branding level, not an income. On the long run, it would generate more business, in stead of short turn income.
Then you see that those big companies are not structured to have a coherence in their actions: each department works on its own. This was clearly a project that was not running through the whole company as a branding opportunity. A pity, it is.

The project didn't take off. With us, anyway. I believe they even saw me as a threat, as someone wanting to put my own brand on 'their' products. Of course, I would have loved to have this addictlab-shop in the shop concept, where you'd go in your supermarket and find products by Addictlab members. I still do, and it's on my wish list ever since. But it would have gone further then just my ego: it would have given 120 creatives a unique platform, it would have given the press 120 reasons and stories to write about the V&D, and a lot of consumers inspiration, humour and a positive vibe

V&D didn't even wanted to have the names of the designers, their companies, or our link. As 'they had too much subbrands' already. Thinking about it now, I'm quite sure I had to stick with our mission, bringing innovation via our system of labmembers. But I see it as a mistake from my end that I couldn't convince them. And of course, I missed a lot of business.
Hence the Vroom & Dreesmann paradox.

Comes a time, comes a place.
Our ADDICTLAB testshop prooves it could work. We just need to find people with the same vision.