Independent industry news for marketing, advertising & media execs
By Herman Manson (@marklives) Design Indaba 2013 Masashi Kawamura (@masakawa), one of Fast Company’s “100 most creative people in business 2012,” is visiting Cape Town as a guest speaker at the annual Design Indaba conference. The nod from Fast Company is just one of many – Kawamura seem to have won a near endless stream …
Continue reading “Design Indaba 2013: Masashi Kawamura on merging storytelling with technology”
Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) pick of new product, packaging and design launches.
The world’s most famous cookie gets a new pack size; Pakco aims to turn you into a master curry chef; designer commuter shelters provide new brand opps; and a new wine cola drink we’re not quite sure of…
By Herman Manson (@marklives) Design Indaba 2013 Leanie van der Vyver, a South African designer who recently graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, will be participating at the annual Design Indaba Conference (running from Feb 27 – March 1) as part of their Pecha Kucha initiative to give young designers a platform to talk withtheir peers.
She gained international media coverage for her graduation project, Scary Beautiful, which investigates and questions our quest for beauty and how this skews our view of our bodies. The video of the project, in which she made a pair of high heels whilst applying critical design theory, has gained millions of views. We tracked Leanie down before her talk to ask her some questions about the project.
By Herman Manson (@marklives) Design Indaba 2013 London based product designer Oscar Diaz (@OscarDiazStudio) has made a name for himself thanks to his innovative and creative work in on a broad range of products and services including furniture, shop window installations (see Alphabet shoes for Terra Plana below) and limited edition objects like his widely lauded RGB vases.
Diaz studied design at the Ecole des Beaux Arts of Bordeaux in France and took an MA in product design at the Royal College of Art in London. Diaz has worked in Japan and the UK.
This week Diaz is in Cape Town to give a talk at the annual Design Indaba Conference (running from Feb 27 – March 1). We tracked him down before his arrival to ask him what draws him to product design.
MarkLives: You started studying fine art but ended up with a Master’s in Product Design at the Royal College of Art in London. What about product design grabbed you?
Diaz: I discovered that people have an innate understanding of objects that they don’t necessarily have when it comes to art. Art is much more hermetic and needs a bit of knowledge to be appreciated.
It was the accessibility of design, which made me want to change field.
Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) pick of new product, packaging and design launches.
New packaging from Simonsberg cheeses; labels you can scratch, sniff and feel, add an experiential element to packaging from Pyrotec; a Samsung product promo that rewards; and BP wants your old billboards!
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay Of all the silly, naive marketing notions that have accompanied the growth of the Internet, the most pervasive and foolhardy is the idea that the “consumer is now in charge.”
The truth is exactly the opposite. The consumer today has less control than ever.
The web has intensified and consolidated the hold that large media entities and large marketers have on our culture, our economy, and our purchasing habits.
Callow digital utopians believe that because we consult Yelp to find out what some fixie biker in Brooklyn thinks is good pizza, we are freeing ourselves from the power of corporate and media dominance.
For the most part, digital media and traditional media have become indistinguishable. They are driven by the same need to attract eyeballs, which means they are obsessed by the same stories and slaves to the same types of narrative.
You can take Yahoo’s top stories on any given day and be pretty certain they will be identical to the top stories on the nightly news. You can check what’s trending on Twitter and be pretty sure it will be on the evening trash magazine show.
Corporate marketers are learning very quickly how to manipulate technology to leverage the assets of the new media types. Or haven’t you heard of Facebook?
by Colwyn Elder (@colwynelder) Sustainability is one of those big, hairy, honking subjects that everyone is talking about but no-one really wants to talk about, because let’s face it – we’re all guilty! Especially if you work in advertising, in other words: you’re a cog in the wheel of the over-consumption-machine without which we wouldn’t be having this uncomfortable conversation in the first place.
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Eve Williams (@everewilliams) is Managing Director of UK based content agency Cedar (@cedarcontent). The agency also has offices in Shanghai, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Cedar is especially well known for publishing High Life for British Airways, Real Food for Tesco (the UK’s largest food title) and Do Not Disturb for Best Western.
Last year Williams was selected to the Media Week 30 Under 30 – an accolade that recognises ‘the next generation of talent in the industry.’ She was the only winner from the content marketing industry.
Williams will be speaking at Content 2013, the content marketing conference taking place on the 25th and 26th February 2013 at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, on content marketing in the retail space, dissecting how international brands are using content marketing.
“Nike extends its deepest sympathy and condolences to all families concerned following this tragic incident. As it is a police matter, Nike will not comment further at this time.”
Commentators are already questioning the appropriateness of ad collateral produced for Nike including its ‘Nike – My body is my weapon’ campaign that featured Pistorius.
Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) pick of new product, packaging and design launches.
Will this new tobacco legislation hit SA? Kellogg’s tries to make women feel good about losing weight; Jacobs coffee takes to the skies with Mango; and Chivas turns to CID to provide a window on their displays…
