Posts tagged "creativity"

I always want more art in my life. Maybe it’s because I can’t draw. Maybe it’s because my eyes get hungry the way most stomachs do.

Last year saw me being surrounded by more art than ever before and inspired by some extraordinary artists.

Did you see the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward last year? I never went in, but loved each walk over Waterloo Bridge, seeing another isolated statue hidden on a roof top. Inspired, we launched our first Web 2.0 patient site with a mannequin installation around the client’s head offices. Andrew has magnanimously offered to let us keep one here at National House. Thank you so much!

Lichenstein’s Pop Art inspired another great campaign. Characters whose communications were limited to thought bubbles, became the patient voice in the HIV campaign we built.

We’re now working with a famous animation artist in New Jersey – my favourite bit of the day is our lunchtime review meetings. It’s a true art-science collision project. Left Brain. Right Brain. Love it. Satiates eye-hunger like nothing else.

Take a look at this, it’s a parody of a brand with iconic status and iconic ads, from a brand that couldn’t be more different. Its new media meets old in a style all so familiar (that in itself is extraordinary). Brave to do, beautiful in its craft and a minute of your time. I don’t know whether it was commissioned by them or not, but suspect the fact I received this virally suggests it will help both brands. Hope you like it.

 A stumbled across Hugh Macleod’s gapingvoid blog whilst looking for a book for a client’s Christmas presents. Hugh is a cut through illustrator specialising in cube grenades – little anarchic illustrations for businesses.

It features a lovely list for those of us who want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever.

1. Ignore everybody.

2. The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours.

3. Put the hours in.

4. If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.

5. You are responsible for your own experience.

6. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kinder garten.

7. Keep your day job.

8. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.

9. Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.

10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.

12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.

13. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.

14. Dying young is overrated.

15. The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.

16. The world is changing.

17. Merit can be bought. Passion can’t.

18. Avoid the Water cooler Gang.

19. Sing in your own voice.

20. The choice of media is irrelevant.

21. Selling out is harder than it looks.

22. Nobody cares. Do it for your self.

23. Worrying about “Commercial vs. Artistic” is a complete waste of time.

24. Don’t worry about fin ding inspiration. It comes eventually.

25. You have to find your own schtick.

26. Write from the heart.

27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.

28. Power is never given. Power is taken.

29. Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due even tually.

30. The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.

31. Remain frugal.

32. Allow your work to age with you.

33. Being Poor Sucks.

34. Beware of turning hobbies into jobs.

35. Savor obscurity while it lasts.

36. Start blogging.

37. Meaning Scales, People Don’t.

37. When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams.

I might paste this into my NY resolutions. Beats the hell out of “go back to the gym”.

I have been contemplating a pitch Shep’ and I did last week  that for a first-time-for-us covered ‘prosumption’ as part of an approach to develop digital understanding and better resources.

In is woolliest form prosumption is useful when we are developing materials for a sub group of consumers when you just can’t follow the traditional; write/art direct/code/build, test, review and rebuild approach. Whether than be for time or budget reasons.

Prosumption is the mixing of  consumer and the producer to produce a new hybrid – the Prosumer. In what (another new word for me this week) I now know to be a portmanteau – a blend of two words and their meaning.

Reading around what I thought was a new internet thing. I find it’s almost as old as Ian, and much older than I am. In 1972, Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt suggested that technology would drive the consumer to become a producer (‘democratisation of media’ -  I hear Gemma (AD at AMV) shout). In the 1980 book, the term was coined by a futurologist named  Alvin Toffler who predicted this coming together.

The approach results in individuals working together blurring the barriers, between need for something and capability to provide it.

The conclusion of much of this work is that once mass market saturation and standardisation have brought us all happi(ish)ness, the market evolves  to initiate a process of mass customization. Giving consumers exactly what’s wanted with the assumption that this delivers a risk free relationship and a guaranteed happy customer.

Pretty interesting? It does make you think that once we all have perfectly tailored good, where will we go next? Ultimate rebellion should see us go full circle and start buying goods at George at ASDA perhaps?

Anyway fairly standardised fingers are crossed here. We hear Wednesday this week.

PS. I am really trying to avoid puns in headlines. Really sorry.

This week has been one of trains, literally I’ve been to Hull and back. Via Colchester. In fact I am on one now – Peterborough is whizzing by my window.

When I get a week with more than a days worth of travel I make sure I have my bag (the new and awesomely well designed Eastpak Pacer available at their delightful Carnaby St. store) packed with a business read.

This week What Would Google Do? Has been my company. I think Google is probably one of only a few organisations we could seriously ask this question of, without answering; ‘be smug and self satisfied’. Its changed business, moved the rules of market places, and I hate the word but I think a paradigm has shifted. Ahhhhhhh!

Anyways, the book looks at the economy, demand and supply and the whole long tail economics thing that we are all familiar with. But the section that shouted out at me was a statement that has prompted something I think we might try.

Jeff Jarvis, author of WWGD, and made famous for Dell Hell, says that in this world of interconnected customers- kill your ad agency. We produce ads, so get your hands off that door knob and cancel the cab. I think Jarvis is referring to the behemoths, the ‘advertising is at the heart of what we do’, 30 sec TVC are the only love guys, you know square glasses and a 7^th floor pool filled with  moccachoccachino.

With this blood on your hands, he suggests re-engineering the model, (please remember to wash bloodied hands prior to handling models) and making customer service the only focus. He shouts at us to consider this the new marketing. For us to strive for the best and let the interconnected market place champion this awesome service. Let the buzz create and drive your brand. In a market where interconnectness is a bit wonky – then I guess you could encourage it. This is what got me thinking.

It’s a good read, I barely remember Doncaster, and it made me wonder whether we could create a way for our clients to assess us publically, after every job, so that we could share the real us, the experience,  and move away from the powerpoint us. Perhaps it could grow and all agencies could be part of this showing the experience of working with them.

I would love a point of view from anyone who uses agencies out there. Is this feasible? Would it be worthwhile? Could agencies bin their ad spends, and rely on a platform of service visibility?

PS. Want a real example of  this new interconnected world? Now this blog has been published, search for ‘Eastpak pacer’. I’m there – bigging it up  Google P1, 6 down. No need for an ad – just a quality product, provided faultlessly with me and my opinion. How cool is that as a demo?

Ian rocked into the office this morning, fresh from a PM magazine all agencies round table shindig with a number of agency leaders, MDs etc.

These mornings are a feast of fun for us in the office, a usually calm, collected and considered Ian, can barely contain his overnight simmer. He positively is busting for a chat, and Jas and I can almost feel him ready to boil over.

Anyone who encounters Ian will know it’s pretty hard to get a rise out of him (I can lay claim to managing to do this almost once – in an incident, involving my 6^th Nokia N95 in 2 weeks and a pint of cider. Although Vodafone’s dismal approach to customer service is co-culprit)

This need for an outburst lasted all through our first-thing-Friday People meeting until he could take it no longer. No AOB? BANG. The topic of this rare eruption?  Innovation, advertising agencies, the nature of conceptual creativity i.e. the ability to do a different more connective ad, versus innovation – the ability to provide solutions our clients are not expecting. Jas shouted INCOMING and we all hit the deck.

What stuck me – is the clear struggle Ian was having with wanting desperately for the industry, or more specifically agencies to grow up and evolve and stop boring each other with tales of clients, late adoption blah, blah (anyone still awake?), With the pleasure he was getting from seeing innovation being falsely encapsulated by an obsession with the ad, what goes into an A4 page, and whether illustrative style, or a bloody banner can be seen as ground breakingly progressive. blah blah blah.

I think what we were viewing can encapsulated by the term Schadenfreude. In fact I know it is because I have just spent ten minutes on Google trying to spell it. I was eventually able to confirm this is the case and that the term definitely isn’t German for pork chop.

I think one could argue that Communications holding companies buy ‘established innovation’ i.e change that’s margin friendly. Be that agencies that show high levels of creativity, an unusual regional speciality, or  integration model. It certainly was the case with the three I have been under (although I can only speak for healthcare). Their model is set up to buy novel agencies at the top of their game, and make sure that they keep doing what they are good at, never deviating too far from a formula that got them purchased. No risks and certainly no investment without return.

I was told that the agency world’s approach to innovation was ‘bloody stupid’ by a clever  guy, Craig, I often sit  next to at the  Company of Cutlers in Sheffield. He put it a bit like this; his world; the stainless steel industry is split into revenue from commoditized and specialist products. And all the players in the market know this. (To me it’s a bit like artwork, design, traffic and the sexier agency products services). They know that the commodity business is always under margin pressure and threat (when was the last time a page of artwork cost £400?). And they know that the specialist products migrate to becoming the commodised ones (conceptual writers at medical writer rates).

Sheffield steels answer to this reality is to set up R&D, cap the maximum margin and devote the remaining resource to innovation, partner with academia and the great and the good to push constantly what drives ultimate value – providing services and products that are first to market. Find ‘unused to’ products that meet existing needs but do so either more efficiently or in better way.

Given this I couldn’t figure out why agencies don’t have R&D. Why don’t they someone tasked with research, with finding new ways of solving established problems.

Is it because 20% margin and 4 out of 5 on the annual review is fine, and innovation requires investment and less short term returns?

Post the PM digital awards last night what I really needed was a dark warm room, a duvet and to be entertained. Fortunately part of this was possible, unfortunately only after having to go to Brighton to hunt down insights into Nurses/virology/technology for 9am. The skedaddle back to Town for 3pm proved all a bit of a blur.

This entertainment came in the form of an afternoon with Paul Smith, sharing his views on inspiration, business, customer satisfaction and being polite. Equipped with wild gesticulations, vivid facial expressions, and a bit of dancing he provided a total inspiration for us. It was hard not to be enthralled by him and totally hit the mark – a perfect replacement for what could have been an afternoon of Murder she wrote.

Paul built his archetypal British label on a foundation of playfulness, an impeccable eye and a steely business sense. Since setting up his first shop with wife Pauline Denyer in 1970 – he’s been knighted, had his own exhibition and owns 230 ‘individual’ stores worldwide. But more than any of this, he proved to be a total gentleman, true to himself, and elegant in his honesty. Classically quirky to the core.

His views on globalization, homogenization, and characterless multinational organisations were bluntly put. He willed us to strive for character and difference, to not just repeat what is successful, and role it out country to country but to strive to build on that success, to challenge it, or risk becoming yesterday.

His views on success and happiness were nicely encapsulated in him recommending we all ask ourselves “what’s the point of you”, defining what we love doing, and doing it. No more complicated than that.  Awesome.

Thursday saw us in Manchester launching a biggie campaign to help patients discuss treatments with healthcare teams, solve problems with therapy and understand their treatments better.

We took an art gallery in Manchester’s trendy side and mounted an exhibition showing the issues at hand, the thinking behind the campaign, its development and the execution of some of the work of which we are so proud.

Catherine, who was responsible for one of the best briefs we have seen, was our curator for the evening, introducing how the collateral fits into the world. It’s a totally proud moment when you see your work being presented so fantastically, it brought a tear to my eye.

The show travels to three other venues, where it will be rolled out to community groups, opinion leaders, charities and internally.

It was a resounding success despite the usual courier mishaps, lost packages, countless hours hanging and discarded Dewalt batteries we closed the launch with rounds of applause, a real sense of purpose.

The morning saw us discuss with much mirth Jas dropping a 6ft high flower arrangement an hour before the kick-off! How we all laughed.

If you are in-and-around 30, at some point in the next couple of weeks you have to pay your respects to John Hughes by watching his back catalogue on Sky.

Having watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club this week  I was transported back to sunny days, teen angst and North Devon College. Brilliant.

I have just been told by Michael that JH started out as a copywriter working on KFC. Now I know this – I think you can kind of see it. Really sparse scripts that drip with authenticity. Defined characters, superbly handled tone and reality. It smacks of TV commercial talent. That stoned-library-dance-scene still makes me laugh out loud.

I am confident that Ferris Bueller was our James Dean. With this in mind we are giving away a DVD copy of Ferris Bueller’s day off to the best JH film quote submitted via comments.

Digging around for free multimedia content I found this charming little healthcare story. Produced in 1948 by Halas and Batchelor  an animation company founded by John Halas and his wife Joy Batchelor two pretty inspirational people. The company started small and grew to be the largest and most influential animation studio in Western Europe. From small beginnings in 1940, they made over 2000 films and earned an international reputation for fine animation extending the medium to explain complex ideas with clarity and humour.

8 1/2 minutes seems crazily long now given our obsession with the 30 sec TVC and the interuptive nature of much or our marketing. But watching this the charm, execution and humour grabbed me way and beyond my usual attention span. It’s pretty interesting to see that COI communications seems to have taken a backward step when it comes to explaining change to the man in the street.

On Wednesday, Kieran and I went to see the BP ‘Classified’ exhibition at the Tate Britain. Two things stood out for me and really got me thinking. 

The first was an oil painting by Gillian Carnegie. Using only black paint she’s created an amazing picture of trees, which seems to have more texture and atmosphere than a coloured painting would have had.

But what made her decide to do it in just black?

The second was a collection of sculptures by Jake and Dinos Chapman. At first glance they look like traditional aborigine sculptures, but when you look closer there are numerous references to McDonalds. It’s a comment on our lack of understanding and appreciation of the culture that this type of art originates from, and also on our own culture, and the predominance of huge commercial organisations such as Maccy D’s.

Again, it’s such a clever idea, but what made them think of it?

At Hive, our business is built on doing things differently, thinking in a different way. But it’s all too easy to get stuck thinking ‘differently’ – and then different becomes the same. The challenge is to keep finding the inspiration to think outside an ever-changing box.

Every now and then we head out to see an individual talk about some mildly relevant subject. Last night – saw us be invited to Super Contemporary and a few hours with Wayne Hemingway – talking to 50 of us about design, inspiration, and life.

The Design Museum has joined forces with Beefeater 24, to bring a series of talks and gin to celebrate the fearlessly progressive spirit of London’s greatest creative minds, past and present. We were lucky enough to be invited along. Read more about Wayne here.  

Wayne was pretty insistent that us in the creative world;

1.  Stick to our guns and hold on to our principles despite the risk of missing out on short term cash. Do what you want to do, not what you need to do. 
2. Know our customer as well as we can. Research them, be with them, and understand them. For God’s sakes don’t hide in the office. See the white of their eyes. 
3. Understand that environments need to be built that fosters creativity. Gives space to make mistakes. Let the kids do it their way. Expect anyone to be able to do anything, give them the freedom to conclude themselves.
4. Champion the evolution. Humans instinctively want something better. They know when they are making do, OK is not a natural human state. But only very few ‘intolerants’ make a difference and change it. So be one.

At no time did regulatory, PI, sales aids or brand planning feature. But the 2 hours was so valuable and a real delight. How can this be beaten? Well – the next one sees us with Paul Smith. We have a couple of tickets spare – shout if you want to come along –  beapart@hivehealth.com.

Apparently when the Romans used the term Genius they referred to a disembodied thing that lived  in the walls of an artists studio. The artist was a channel for this being  and when their creativity bombed it took the heat, when they soared they were kept in their place by the assumption that they were part of this process but not the foundation for it.

I found this out via this little gem with Elizabeth Gilbert, a writer and loved her view on ego, creativity, struggle and the role of hard slog and luck.

Something both exciting and unique happened to me in 1991…….

I bought my first 12 inc record album. The band was called The Prodigy and the album was called Experience and I had managed to purchase a limited edition white sleeve special. The slick minimalist style of the cover contrasted vastly with the atmospheric colouring and transient use of typography within the inner sleeve. The music was an array of cutting edge sounds and lyrics mixed with mesmerising beats and a unique series of piano keys. Fast forward 18 years and the band are once again proving that they see design as an essential ingredient in expressing their music.

The use of animated graphics in the new video for Warriors Dance  is truly magical and inspiring….

Layer Tennis is a series of live design events on Friday afternoons presented by Adobe® Creative Suite® 4.

What the hell’s layer tennis? Two competitors swap a file back and forth in real-time, adding to and embellishing the work. Each artist gets fifteen minutes to complete a “volley” which is then posted that to a site live.

Way back when in the misty days – Layer Tennis was called “Photoshop Tennis”. A few old schoolers remember that to-the-death match with Derek Powazek against Heather Champ. Anyway, the match was going along well when Heather played this for volley six and then all of the sudden Derek disappeared from the backstage chat-room. In a beautifully creative move, Derek printed out volley six, crumbled it up, took it outside, stapled it to a telephone poll, took a picture of it, formatted that picture and posted it as his volley seven. So cool.

The players may be designers, animators, illustrators or pretty much anything else, and they can use any tool or application they like. The match progresses volley by volley. A third participant, a writer, provides play-by-play commentary on the action as it happens.

The match lasts for ten volleys and when it’s complete, Season Ticket Holders sound off and we declare a winner. Its brilliant and a design joy.

Today sees an All-UK Layer Tennis match featuring Simon Cook vs.Rex Crowle with commentary by Anne Ward.  First serve at 4pm. Get your tickets here.

I am not a loser. But I love learning stuff.  I really delight in finding something that inspires me to alter the way I think or my understanding of things I do everyday. 

The world of online seminars, webcasts, blogs and all the other stuff can often be a source of loads of junk, often presented by some  shiny suited loon, ready to strong-grip-clammy-shake my virtual hand.

It’s not all this way – I love TED, not in a coming out way, but the global community, many million strong which is focused on exchanging and spreading ideas. Whoever you are, wherever you live, you can join the TED community. I would reccomend you do.  

TEDs latest gem – has come from Sir Ken Robinson speaking on Do schools kill creativity?  Sir Ken argues that it’s because we’ve been educated to become good workers, rather than creative thinkers. Students with restless minds and bodies – far from being cultivated for their energy and curiosity – are ignored or even stigmatized, with terrible consequences. “We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. 

In our business – we need creativity, whether that be conceptual, strategic or just a better way of organising the desks. I really like an approach that encourages anyone to give it a go and be prepared to get it wrong and considers this an integral part of any creative process.

As part of my development plan I recently attended an event celebrating Women’s Enterprise Day. ‘Rising to the challenge’ hosted a panel of award-winning women inventor-innovators sharing first hand experiences of overcoming the many challenges of getting a new product idea to market and establishing a young business.

Notebook in hand I was aiming to learn what it means to be innovative – what are the secrets behind it and indeed is there a set formula that can help us to ensure that our work is always as relevant and insightful as possible.

Speaking at the event were 4 successful inventors all well in the swing of marketing and production and on their way to what seemed to be a fairly common goal of making money! What interested me the most was the similarities in the principles and attitudes of these inventors to our industry. So what did I learn…?

The need to have an idea but to accept that it will evolve was potentially the rule that most resonated for me. Ideas – no matter how inspirational they may be, need to adapt and change and most importantly they need to be relevant to the end user. Without knowing your customer, what makes them tick and why they would be interested, your idea is likely to sink. Whilst these 4 inventors were unique in the way they described their experiences, they all had this understanding in common. They demonstrated a vast understanding of the market within which their product/idea sat and talked passionately about who their customer was and how they interacted with their product. Finally the importance of having a brand that wraps the idea and being a true advocate for the brand (with a small air of arrogance and belief) was something that I’m sure has guided their success.

Whilst I am still not convinced that I have a set formula in my armoury to help me to learn the art of innovation, I was certainly reassured that we too are doing something right…

All work is driven by ideas. For us, ideas drive numerous rounds of amends, spreadsheets, all-agency meetings and the odd product launch on a spinning boat in The Thames.

However, the value of these ideas is massively underestimated – it’s rare that agencies are paid on an idea basis. The reason? Ideas are an intangible asset. As vital as they are to business relationships, ideas can’t be easily measured. This is a pity, because great ideas take time to perfect. That lightbulb moment that tells us when an idea is worth shaping, is only the beginning.

I often realise the irony of the best ideas – stunning, clear thoughts received with surprise and delight – being the ones that take hours and amendments galore. But shaping ideas is surely more of a craft than generating them – so why don’t we like to admit that we spend time on the process?

I recently presented an prescription campaign which has taken us a few weeks to get to the standard we wanted, and mentioning this effort felt like an embarrassment. It was really difficult to admit to the challenge of delivering huge – not ad-big, but big idea-big – ideas. OK, it wasn’t a straightforward brief. But more than that, I suppose we fear that “the process” makes our ideas less pure, less special.

The truth is, marketing doesn’t often deconstruct stuff into a single grain of truth. We more often assemble and dissemble things into a desirable outcome. We often collaborate with each other in doing so.

Let’s not be ashamed of that. Let’s admit to the hard work of it, and be especially proud when it has taken several minds to get it right. Without wanting to hang on like a dog with a de Bono, I must add that ideas are never owned by one department. As a great art director once said to me: “Everyone should have an idea, or be able to make mine much better”.

This week saw us pushing the boundaries on training (reps, pharmacists, other HCPs etc). When dealing with a new client, we grappled once again with the limitations of paper-based training or the ‘usual’ ShockWave Flash. Both are fun and interactive, we explained, but struggle when you have anything that requires more than a simple question and check box answer.

With this client, it’s not an option financially to bring everyone in for a conference or a regional meeting series. So we brought in some of our technology friends and got thinking. What emerged, and what we are proposing, builds upon what geeks know as gaming and us marketeers know as just plain cool.

While our version is still in development, I discovered that Virtual Worst Case Scenarios are being used to great success already. They are gameware-like programmes increasingly used to train emergency medical staff in the US. In one worst case, a freight train derails near a heavily populated train station and releases cyanide into the air. Victims pour from the station and the player – as medical commander – must set up a triage area and sort through the patients as quickly as possible, making sure proper treatment is administered. It’s been very successful at making participants develop real time decision-making skills, under realistic and pressured conditions. It forces the participant to act on their feet, make snappy value judgements and succeed in the chaos that ensues.

Can you imagine how far this kind of thing could go in our industry? And all without ketchup and actors…

Kieran wrote a post a couple of months ago called “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. This phrase keeps coming back to me. I have just read another post by Bill Taylor at Harvard Business review which expresses very eloquently the thing that was hounding me.

Bill refers to the concept of “Vuja De”. Credited by Bill to George Carlin, it seeks to explain the need for a different approach. Déjà vu is something we all encounter and are fascinated by; even in film The Matrix attempted to explain it. But in a business context, déjà vu is the dragging sense that we’ve been here before. How often do briefs ask the same thing over and over again? How often do we look to point out small differences that for prescribers, or more importantly patients, make little or no difference.

The art of competing in this increasingly complex, increasingly pressured healthcare environment requires us to be braver about how and what we are asking. More importantly, we need to refresh the ways in which we answer key questions. To stand apart we must be brave enough to be apart. We must approach the same problems with completely different ideas, taking inspiration not from what has gone before, but from what has not. As Proust says “the real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes”. Looking at the same thing from a completely different point of view – hence “vuja de”.

We need to look outside our restrictions and ask what we should do, rather than what we can do. To our minds this means it’s about “who should we talk to?” rather than “who are we allowed to talk to?” As Kieran says, this sort of thing brings risk, but aren’t the risks higher if you keep running with the pack?

When trading becomes challenging, businesses of all sizes generally have two choices. First, cut cost in line with reduced revenue and wait for better times to come (and hope they do before the money runs out). Second, invest to become more competitive and attractive under the new market conditions. Design provides limited advantage in the first scenario, but is essential to the second, as are foresight and bravery.

Change is a good thing! I can’t deny that I enjoy a certain comfort zone within my professional and non-professional lives. Doing something I know and the sense of familiarity I get from that gives me a security which I find both appealing and comforting. However the problem is that security and comfort generally become boring with a significant lack of enthusiasm.

I guess this is the reason that I chose to live and study out of London for 3 years and thereafter set off travelling for 15 months. Exciting these adventures certainly were but they brought challenges too. I learnt that being able to adapt and adjust to new environments/situations (broadening one’s horizons, etc) is one of the most important skills a person can posses. Big rewards often carry an element of risk – and let’s face it, risk is never boring!

Design can be risky when there is time and money at stake. But in today’s world, it is only through creativity and exploration that people can better themselves and their work. So don’t be afraid to bring brand new ideas to the table -if you want to get better than you’ve already got.

The art director fairy breezed into Hive last week and deposited Kieran. He’s a tall, laid back bloke who is fond of cashew nuts and Corona and whose desk at this very minute is peppered with ideas and design of a vibrant calibre.

Kieran, where have you been all my life? Actually, it’s just a few months since we began feeling the need for another full-time workhorse. Since then, we’ve gathered even more exciting brands and are gearing up for some roaring creative.

Kieran and I are not a traditional creative partnership. Forgive me for finding the concept rather insular, somehow greedy – definitely 1980s-like. Maybe I’m just sulking because no-one has never wanted to be my creative partner.

There’s something special about two people on the same mission, hence marriage and comedy partnerships. This helps you raise children and write entertaining stuff, which must both be really hard. Also, we like to see people playing together. But when you’re at work surrounded by loads of different brains, why milk just the one?

Working with others helps people thrive intellectually and creatively, and for me, the more other people, the better. Everyone’s creative. The message is true to Hive’s goals – we all get stuck in. It’s nice.

It’s the way forward. The days of saying “creatives” and “suits” are surely slipping into extinction. It’s my prediction for the decade. (Note: only 2 years left, people!)

Anyway, I’ve completely drifted from the key message of this article which was to say….

Welcome to the buzz shop, Kieran.

Recently we have been working on a brief to improve the provision of information to people with massive mobility and dexterity challenges. We needed to communicate the product, how to use it in a way that is really useful, and most importantly why the choice has been made for them to be on this therapy.

Our initial discussions revealed that beyond who they might be and what they have been diagnosed with, little solid research in terms of their feelings or how they live with the disease was known. As a consequence we needed to get to grips with the patients, not only in terms of information requirements but also their idiosyncrasies and physical disabilities.

We wanted to use an approach that we have come to know as ‘Accessible Design’. This approach is huge with car designers in Japan, who need to feel how the rapidly aging population of Japan experience their cars. As young, progressive designers, they don’t have a problem getting into a car, adjusting seats, twiddling knobs – but the end user might. To combat this mismatch between audience and output Nissan invented the old-suit, an outfit which simulates the effects of aging. Strap it on and you’ll immediately feel stiffer, heavier, less able to balance, and the included goggles will make it harder to see. And its works – their design teams know, empathise and design better for an audience they do not relate to physically.

It’s obvious how this relates to the work we do. Patient materials are too often overlooked as bits of collateral that ticks the patient communication box but mean little to the actual user. While we create more relevant content for our audiences, really getting to grips with the problems they face and the questions they have, it’s essential to package this content appropriately. While product manufacturers make sure their goods are easily accessed, we must produce healthcare information in such a way as to be easily consumed.

Our conversations with patients and professionals unearthed difficulties we’d never have dreamed of (door knobs, envelopes, ring pulls, Velcro, shiny surfaces, stockings etc). Following an accessible design approach proved hilarious and humbling. With no Nissan suit budget in place, we had to get creative and find ways of ‘restricting ourselves’ based on the patient insights we had. Enter ski gloves, mittens, industrial strength elastic bands, bags on hands and training weights on arms. We played, we learned, we were astounded. The result is a range of materials that have been thoroughly tested as ‘end usable’. Alongside a better understanding of what they need and want to know we have solved the problems of this audience in a more relevant way, for a brand that can only benefit from this approach.

This project has been a real learning curve for us. We have looked at real end user requirements, translated this into design and content objectives, and injected these into our tactical material briefs. We have also gained useful insight into what it’s like to live a tiny period of time with a disability that impacts so much.

As far as we are aware this is the first time an accessible design approach has been used by a communications agency and that makes us totally happy. It’s an approach that is now an intrinsic part of our materials generation process.

We loved this, it tickled our fancy.

In most EU states, over half of people are overweight or obese. In March 2005, the EU Commission created a Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health to address the problem. Its aim is to get stakeholders committing themselves to promoting healthy living.

This 30-second ad will reach 80-100 million viewers in 40 countries during each week of Champions League matches. It is totally free content. Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO made it for nothing and UEFA has promised the 30 seconds of match airtime it spares for social initiatives.

Do you like this ad? Is it a big idea – does it define a brand entirely? Or is it just one part of the story? What do you expect to come out of the rest of the Commission’s media plan?