MarkLives.com • Page 530 of 579 • Independent industry news for marketing, advertising & media execs

Going Dutch

Amsterdam has established itself on the international ad arena with its creative upstarts and numerous small but super-hot shops doing international work. It’s also positioning itself at the forefront of industry change with a collaborative model penned by Roger Beekman, founder of 60 layers of cake, the collaborative agency he launched in Amsterdam in 2005 and which last year spawned an office in Cape Town, as well as several competitors.

The model pulls in a wide spectrum of people from agency and client side, as well as outsiders, with relevant skills to work on campaigns.

Beekman – who started as an assistant art director at Saatchi & Saatchi in 1990 and also spent time at McCann Erickson, Y&R, TBWA, DDB, BBDO and BSUR – serves as creative partner at the Cape Town office and visits the city on a regular basis to, well, collaborate on pitches and campaigns with his local partners Ben Wren and Michael van den Heerik.

True to the founding principles of his agency, money doesn’t change hands for his time and expertise; instead it’s a straight swop of time with the Cape Town office, which spends time developing campaigns for Amsterdam-based clients in return.

Having spent his career at numerous large agencies, Beekman realised he enjoyed working with a wide range of people, but did not feel free to do so within the agency environment. He decided to start a new company that embraces an open way of working together and 60 layers of cake was born.

Beekman sees the collaborative work model as a step in the evolution of how we work, happening globally across many industries. For some reason, the advertising world got stuck behind.

The first year and a half was tough, Beekman admits, but he and his team were lucky in that they did good work that was noticed, and through Tokyo agency network ADK (the third biggest agency in Japan), which approached him to share his vision on collaboration with that agency, 60 layers obtained access to work on some choice brands including Nike, Puma and Nikon. It makes the sell for the new office much easier, says Beekman, as big brands are already using collaborative communication and he has a portfolio to prove it.

Smaller agencies with an entrepreneurial outlook are needed by innovators to take their ideas to the next level and take on established brands. They need partners, not ad agencies, says Beekman, as the smaller brands of today aim to become the big brands of tomorrow.

The Cape Town office, one year in, is doing well, and is working on projects for The Body Shop while also holding the accounts for Glamour, Getaway magazine, Zandvliet, Morgenster and Sinnfull, among others.

SABC News “unprofessional”, “reckless” and “duplicitous” – BCCSA

SABC News has been shown to have sunk to a new low. The Broadcast Complaints Commission (BCCSA) has found that the SABC was “unprofessional and actually reckless”, as well as “duplicitous” and deceptive, in its broadcast of allegations by controversial businessman Robert Gumede that investigative journalist Sam Sole was ‘bribed’ with a R900 air ticket by John Sterenborg, a former business partner of Gumede, to investigate him.

The complaint with the BCCSA against the SABC was laid by Sterenborg, who argued that the SABC failed to verify allegations against him prior to broadcasting the interview under dispute; to obtain his input on allegations of bribery made against him; to make contact with other relevant parties (Sam Sole and the Mail & Guardian newspaper) or to give him the right of reply as requested by him.

His right of reply was further skewed by the SABC when it finally did offer his views in a subsequent broadcast.

In a scathing judgement, the BCCSA wrote: “We regard SABC [as] unprofessional and actually reckless in not checking RG’s [Robert Gumede] allegations prior to airing the interview. We regard SABC [as] duplicitous in their communications with Sterenborg, taking an interview with Sterenborg promising to air it and then not doing so, giving false reasons.”

The BCCSA also found that the SABC tried to “deceive Sterenborg” in their communication with him. The SABC had interviewed Sterenborg for his version of events as his right of reply but failed to air the interview on the due date, claiming technical problems. It later wrongly paraphrased his interview and the BCCSA found that “in any event there was no technical problem but that a management decision by SABC was behind not to air the interview or read out the interview.”

The SABC argued that since it obtained and reported on a denial of the alleged bribery by M&G editor Nic Dawes, “there was deemed to be no further need to approach any other parties mentioned in the story regarding the allegation of bribery, as it had effectively been denied by Mr Dawes.” It also argued that since it had a copy of the cheque in question “that in itself amounts to adequate confirmation that a payment was made”.

“Since the reputations of persons are at stake in this case, the broadcaster should have taken every care to ensure that facts were presented clearly and accurately,” the BCCSA found in its ruling.

“Mr Sterenborg’s objection to the way in which his rebuttal was broadcast is justified. People have the right to dignity, and once a reputation is sullied, it is extremely difficult to restore it. News broadcasters have a duty to ensure that facts are presented fairly and accurately, and that people’s right to reply is fully respected.”

The BCCSA found that the Broadcasting Code has not been complied with and reprimanded the broadcaster “for the ambiguity in its reporting of the reply”.

A complaint on the same news item was also submitted by the M&G but has not yet been ruled on. As a result, Dawes told Bizcommunity.com, “We have read with great interest the ruling of the BCCSA in relation to John Sterenborg ‘s complaint. We look forward to the commission’s ruling in the Mail & Guardian‘s complaint about the same story.”

SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said the ruling had been referred to the SABC’s legal department for studying before it would comment on the matter.

Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

Playing games with Helen Zille (Punk’d by Chef)

The long-time face of Mr Delivery, the Chef logo, has officially been dismissed after new management took over the business. Here ‘chef’ calls up DA leader and Western Cape premier Helen Zille.

HELEN ZILLE (first call)

HELEN ZILLE (second call)

Also see story Zapiro Punk’d by cartoon

Agency: M&C Saatchi Abel

Zapiro Punk’d by cartoon

The long-time face of Mr Delivery, the Chef logo, has officially been dismissed after new management took over the business. Here ‘chef’ calls up cartoonist Zapiro (Jonathan Shapiro).

Click here to listen to the audio file: Chef vs. Zapiro

Chef is undertaking a secret media campaign against Mr Delivery after getting fired as its logo. As assistant dropped off an information pack on behalf of Chef at various media outlets yesterday (see image above).

Agency: M&C Saatchi Abel

It’s a (square) wrap #designindaba

Talk about visual overload and you are probably talking Design Indaba by day three of its annual conference. Following two days of talks by some of the foremost designers in the world across a wide spectrum of design interests, and the opening of the Design Indaba Expo where the fashionable are encouraged to part with their cash (feel like a Droog door stop? You can. At Design Indaba.), delegates while enthusiastic as ever, do find their black spaces in their memory of the final day.

Carla Fernandez

Mexican designer and founder of Taller Flora fashion label, Carla Fernandez, did stand out though as she described how she finds inspiration in traditional Mexican clothing design and textiles.

Fernandez points out that while many from the poorest communities in her country work with textiles, she could not get a bursary to design fashion, as fashion design is not considered a priority by the Mexican government. Today Fernandez provides jobs to co-ops run by women in various Mexican villages where she helps keep relevant (and profitable) traditional cloth backstrap weaving methods.

Local indigenous communities make use of squares and rectangles (it requires less tailoring, so less skill and wastage) in their clothing and Fernandez have integrated these designs into a modern and unique line of designer clothing.

She has a PDF booklet out describing her design and production process – click here to download (4.5 megs). For Fernandez handmade clothing tells the story of the maker and her community and empowers rural women by acknowledging their skill and design sensibilities.

Mark Shuttleworth

Billionaires are not as rare as they used to be. When one sits on the stairs next to you (he came in late and could not find a seat) the rebel in you smirks. A less reputable part wonders what he would be willing to pay you for your seat. Mark Shuttleworth has no airs, which was partly where Martha went wrong last year, and the slight English accent he is developing doesn’t detract from his Ayobaness.

Shuttleworth described how he injected design into fabric of his open source Ubuntu operating system to make it take it mainstream. Ubuntu is a case study in collaboration, and designing its interface was also an open source, collaborative process. The focus going forward will be on the user experience – judging from the slides Ubuntu will make messages, toolbars and other bits and pieces that take up your screen real estate disappear when you don’t need them, and re-appear when you do, now only to make people brave enough to skip the pre-installed Windows software on their computers. Oh and the future – search will be the interface for everything – files and folders are just too chaotic.

Oded Ezer

Typoholic, typographic shaman and world famous type designer Oded Ezer talked a lot, and a lot of nonsense, but his typographic design is pretty fantastic. He also inspired the best tweet of the Indaba by @beanbagboy: ‘Oded Ezer: the Lady Gaga of Typography #DesignIndaba.’

Read the rest of the story on BizCommunity

The kids are alright #designindaba #daytwo

The group of graduate design students assembled by the 2011 Design Indaba conference, currently being held at the Cape Town International Conference Centre, for its Pecha Kucha presentations Thursday, 24 February 2011, (where they run though their work in 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds), make up a remarkable collection of young design talent that represents a broad range of design interests.

Lindsay Kinkade has her Master’s in Fine Art degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she also currently teaches. Kinkade, like many speakers at the Design Indaba conference, believes in a collaborative approach to design – also in her classroom. She calls it the open source classroom.

Her class undertook a project to make the Affordable Health Care for America Act – in which the Obama administration tries its hand at healthcare reform – more accessible and easier to understand to the average citizen.

Camille Blin, a graduate from ECAL/University of Art and Design in Lausanne, showcased bottles he designed with various capacities (75cl, 50cl or 37.5cl). The bottles are of a similar shape but a ‘simple removal of material varies their capacity’.

Christine Goudie made the jump from graphic into medical product design with work on a comfortable, ergonomically designed wheelchair cushion that helps prevent pressure sores. Goudie is from Carleton University in Canada.

It was quite obvious South African participant Laduma Ngxokolo was on his home turf, judging by support from the delegates (he is also at the expo which opens to the on Friday 25 February). It helped that he had the wonderful idea of translating traditional Xhosa beading and colours into a range of knitwear for young men designed for those interested in Africa-meets-Pringle.

Joseph Saavedra, from Parsons The New School for Design, created the amazing SOBEaR, a “responsible robot bartender who knows you better than you know yourself” – oh and it’s dressed up as a panda. You blow into the alcohol sensor above the bear’s bowtie and it will decide just how sober you are and how much more you are allowed to drink – then pour you the appropriate shot.

SOBEaR v02 :: the responsible robot bartender from j saavedra on Vimeo.

Dutch designer Dirk van der Kooij designs beautiful plastic chairs from material recycled from old refrigerators. A robotic arm ‘draws’ the chairs from a single long string of recycled plastic.

Adding a dash of eccentricity and the unconventional to the day was Nelly Ben Hayoun. She designs experiences, such as the Soyuz Chair, which replicates the launch of a space shuttle in what looks like a Lazy Boy.

“The Soyuz chair accurately reproduces the 3 stages of the Soyuz rocket launch. Reclining into launch position, you face the sky, put on your headset, and use the control panel to select your mode; just a single stage, or the full lift off experience. 5…4…3…2…1…., Which planet will you land on?” asks Ben Hayoun on her website.

Wherever it is, it’s rather fabulous.

THE Soyuz Chair at SHUNT- july 2009-nelly ben hayoun from nelly on Vimeo.

Seven key design takeaways from #DesignIndaba #dayone

Here are seven key design takeaways from Wednesday, 23 February 2011, the first day of this year’s Design Indaba conference currently being held at the Cape Town International Conference Centre in Cape Town.

Design insight #1: one great idea can blind you

Having one great idea is probably a block to more ideas and can blind you to other design solutions, says Michael Wolff, co-founder of design company Wolff Olins and currently of Michael Wolff & Company. Wolff opened the Design Indaba conference by urging delegates to keep rejecting single ideas to come up with many great ones.

Experience is not necessarily your friend as it allows you to assume you know, when really you should be out there investigating what you don’t yet know. Dare to be curious, Wolff challenged delegates, you might be more that you think who you might be.

Design insight #2: rebel with a cause

Design is about breaking rules to liberate messages. Even corporates ones, says Dana Arnett, CEO of Chicago-based VSA Partners, whose client list includes Harley-Davidson, Coca-Cola and Nike. Charlie Todd from Improv Everywhere reminded delegates that humour (in this case often using improv) allows strangers to interact with one another in a non-threatening way.

Design insight #3: anything goes

In Abu Dhabi.

Design Insight #4: collaborate

Collaboration, co-design, co-authorship – call it what you will – the idea of sharing work with others was highlighted numerous times by most of the speakers who took to the stage on Wednesday. Work with other agencies to become an agency of agencies, Arnett urged delegates.

David Kester, chief executive of the UK-based Design Council, showcased private/public design partnerships and how that collaboration is saving lives and contributing to economic growth in the UK – using simple design solutions to essential issues such as hospital hygiene.

Deborah Szebeko, founder of thinkpublic, reminded designers the people they are designing for often hold key insights and answers to design solutions.

Burkina Faso architect Francis Kéré draws on the community to fill in the canvas of his buildings by allowing them to paint and decorate his structures, giving them a sense of ownership.

Design Insight #5: simple is beautiful

Luke Pearson, a partner in PearsonLloyd, said “design simplifies the world around us.” Kéré pushed this home with simple, relevant and sustainable architectural solutions that embraces local solutions. Designer Dror Benshetrit drew inspiration from four identical L-shaped pieces to create his new interlocking frame technology.

For the last two design insights visit Bizcommunity

#DesignIndaba: contradictions in architecture

As riots and revolution rocks the Arab world, the rulers of Abu Dhabi are building yet another offshore island villa complex for the super-rich. Designer Dror Benshetrit, speaking on the first day of the annual Design Indaba conference, currently underway at the Cape Town International Convention Centre in Cape Town, admits he spent several minutes laughing loudly over the phone during the call in which he was told he’d won the design contract (admittedly approved before the current wage of rage swept the region) that he’d designed in only five weeks.

Nurai Island will consist of luxury villas and a hotel built just off the coast of the Emirate, with the entire island and all its buildings (with the exception of a cube-shaped structure camouflaged by water and a spa underneath the ocean) camouflaged by a green blanket of grass so that rooftops become gardens and homes remain private. They threw in a private beach. Anything is possible – in Abu Dhabi, laughs Benshetrit.

According to his website, Benshetrit designs but engineers will later decide if it can be built. Oil money will provide ample financing. The design takes your breath away, as I’m sure does the budget. But can we pretend there is anything not grotesquely excessive and wasteful about this project, thrown together in a matter of weeks, even if it has the financing to proceed?

QuaDror

At the same time, Benshetrit revealed an innovative interlocking frame technology called QuaDror which is punted for its strength, aesthetic value and potential to provide frames for low-cost housing (locals would fill it in with the material available to them, eg bamboo or wood). It’s beautiful, it certainly holds potential; it’s also not been costed, which makes calling it a low-cost housing solution premature. Benshetrit spent four years on its development.

Of course, it won’t be used only on low-cost housing – though that will be the key point picked out by the media – but also for dividing rooms, trestles, dwellings (across price ranges), window placement and art. The design is based on the form of a chandelier he created for the Swarovski Crystal Palace exhibit. It’s nice to punt design solutions for the poor. Getting it financed is another matter altogether.

Burkina Faso architect Francis Kéré was the undoubted crowd favourite and the only speaker to draw a standing ovation. His work dashes notions of Western design superiority.

Building back to communities

Instead, Kéré draws building back to communities, using local skills and materials, for beautiful, practical and cost effective architectural solutions. The audience reaction was strongly reminiscent of that received by architect Alejandro Aravena when he wowed the audience with his approach to social housing at last year’s indaba.

West Africa has only one school for architecture, Kéré points out, while regional governments draw inspiration from the slick glass and concrete buildings they see on trips to the West or, more likely, China. Towers need electricity to be habitable in a hot and humid region, one where power is not always available, and if it is, not all reliably the time.

Kéré challenges the wholesale import of western ideas about buildings and the people that use them. He notes that African compounds are designed to grow, and sometimes to shrink, as is required. Tell that to a UNESCO official, he points out, who strives for preservation of the structure that exists rather than the preservation of the heartbeat and rhythm of a compound

Read the full story on BizCommunity

No Pants, thanks, this is #DesignIndaba

Improvisation can land you in trouble, as participants in the recent “No Pants Gautrain Ride”, organised via social media to co-inside with the global “No Pants Subway Ride”, found out the hard way.

News reports suggest that the management of the Gautrain prescribes a dress code these days (participants were fined R700 each for wearing the “wrong clothing”) and doesn’t take kindly to people who believe a bit of public theatre every now and again can contribute to our social space.

They probably won’t be amused to know that Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, the group behind “No Pants Subway Ride” and a host of other public theatre performances, is visiting the country as a speaker to the annual Design Indaba where he will be delivering a much-anticipated talk at the end of the conference’s opening day.

Me: Is what you are doing really public theatre or are you just pranksters having fun?

Charlie Todd: I think it’s a bit of both. I come from a theatre background, so when I started Improv Everywhere in 2001, it was very much about creating theatrical moments in unexpected places. The reason I’ve kept doing it for 10 years is because it’s a tremendous amount of fun.

Me: Is there ever a message in the madness?

Todd: I think the indirect message of Improv Everywhere is that creative expression in the public space is a good thing. Citizens should be allowed to create art, comedy, etc in public places without permit or permission, assuming it is done in a way that harms no one. I stay away from adding any direct messages to our projects, as it tends to make them less interesting, in my opinion.

Me: YouTube is playing a significant role creating wider recognition of your work. Any bets on what technology will be driving improv going forward?

Todd:I’m excited about the proliferation of the iPhone and similar devices. I think at some point in the near future we will be using GPS and other technologies embedded in phones to organise and implement our projects. I’m also excited about Internet-connected television. I look forward to the day when there is no distinction between content created for the web and content created for television.

Me: Any message to authorities cracking down on improv in public spaces (as happened recently on the local Gautrain when authorities’ dragged away ‘pantless’ riders organised via Facebook)?

Todd: I think when authorities try to crack down on peaceful public expression they end up looking foolish. There were No Pants Subway Ride events in almost 50 cities around the world, so when the Gautrain authorities became the only ones to react negatively, it made them look pretty lame.

Obviously, laws and societal norms vary in different cities, but it’s funny to me that anyone would feel the need to detain someone in their boxer shorts. We had the same thing happen to our No Pants ride in 2006 in New York, so I guess you can run into someone without a sense of humour anywhere.

Read the full story on BizCommunity

Big in Britain #DesignIndaba

At the head of the Design Council since 2003 stands chief executive David Kester. He previously spent nine years as chief executive of D&AD. Kester is a speaker at the Design Indaba currently taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC).

Bizcommunity: What role are design and designers playing and business innovation?

David Kester: Design is the bridge between creativity and innovation. Most organisations are full of people with really great ideas, but the successful companies are the ones who use design to help understand their customers, encourage the natural creativity within the business and harness that to create innovative products and services.

Biz: How important is design to staying competitive in the global market?

Kester: In an interconnected world, every business – from micro to multinational – has to be able to compete in a global marketplace. Competitiveness means understanding customer or user needs, innovating products and services that cater to those needs and developing compelling branding, web and other channels to communicate effectively. Design lies at the heart of all of those functions – and businesses that put design around the boardroom table tend to be far more competitive as a result.

Biz: How long can design stay a key differentiator, given that worldwide so many businesses are investing heavily in design?

Kester: Great design is more than just about innovating new ‘must-have’ products. For businesses, it’s about understanding the consumer and building value-added services around your offering. Look at how successfully Apple has done that – it’s taken its technology products and innovated whole new multibillion dollar markets out of new ways of buying content (iTunes and Apps). Design lies at the heart of that.

Product life-cycles are getting shorter all the time, driven by technology, materials science, the Internet and social change. The need for innovation has never been greater, and the potential return on investing in good design is higher now than ever.

Read the full story on BizCommunity