Sledge Blog

Fast Strategy

I attended the first half of the IPA's Fast Strategy event earlier in the week. There were a number of great presentation but two stood out for me, the first was Adam Morgan, he of Eat Big Fish fame. Adam spoke about the value of brands identifying a monster to battle, these could be other companies, processes, the status-quo. A great example is Method who's entire business is based around fighting toxicity in the home. Amongst other things, Method created pop up stores where people can exchange their toxic products for Method products, in an amazing piece of theatre, the products they leave behind are removed by someone in a chemical protection suit.

Other examples of brands, people, organisations, identifying monsters are LoveFilm who fight the whole DVD rental process, Channel Four with Jamie's School Dinners and Oprah who has maintained her number one spot by constantly championing community monsters such as obesity.

To help you find a monster, Adam suggests exploring the 7 types of conflict found in stories; men v women, man v nature, man v machine etc. The value of a monster to a brand is that they threaten not just an individual but a whole community. Having this narrative of conflict to rub up against is powerful as it can highlight your own strengths and, let's face it, harnessing your consumers to fight a monster should be fun. 

Richard Storey from M&C Saatchi gave one of the most useful presentation I've ever heard. A simple list of top tips on how to find a strategy quickly, here goes:

Don't goal hog (leave something for the creatives to do)
Don't panic
Don't expect to get it brilliantly right (choose a route and go with it)
Turn the task into a challenge (sell more Shredded Wheat became can you eat three?)
Find the real problem
Be precise about what it is you want people to do
Prioritise one audience
Admire your audience (PG celebrated tea drinkers British stoicism)
Eddie Izzard's Secret (an insight is something you know, but don't know you know)
Find one fact
Redefine the competition (no frills airlines)
No idea, no strategy (develop creative alongside strategy)
Beware of fat words (quality, care trust - use more precise words)
Fish somewhere new (if the client is always looking in the provenance hole try something else)
Switch Categories (100% Pure New Zealand came from imagining NZ was a soap powder)
It's the beat you leave out (edit out the guff)
Scribbles look better when worked up
Keep your arse on the chair until you have an answer

Water Campaign

All too often guerrilla stunts are gratuitous or just plain annoying, but this one from Belgium is both clever and charming.

It was fete

Hope you were able to get down to the innocent village fete this weekend. If you didn't make it and want to see the fete based fun you missed, then check out the fete flickr group which already has 800 photos and the fete videos which are popping up on youtube. Here are three Sledglings having fun in there own ways...

Josiejo hits the main stage.














Nic gets drenched by his daughter.














Paul wears his new hat.

Fete Awaits

A massive fire at the church next to the office, first thing on Tuesday morning, was an unexpected hurdle to organising this year's innocent village fete. Thankfully, no one was hurt but the office was closed all day Tuesday with limited access arranged for Wednesday.

Despite the fire, everything is on schedule, almost the whole office has decamped to Regent's Park whilst the studio are carrying out the last minute requests for the odd bit of signage.

If you are heading down to the fete be sure to check out chief fete talent-booker Josiejo performing in her own right in the Alfresco Ballroom at 12.10 on Saturday. Good luck to Josiejo and everyone else involved with things this weekend!

The Hayward at 40

Took a trip to the Southbank on Wednesday evening to hear a talk celebrating 40 years of the Hayward Gallery. On the panel were one of the building’s original architects, Dennis Crompton, artist Anthony Gormley and critic Alison Rawsthorn.

The Hayward Gallery image courtesy of Marc Cox

The Hayward isn’t London’s best loved building and is burdened with the label of being of the ‘brutalist’ school of architecture. But the more you learn about the building’s genesis and what the architects set out to achieve, the more interesting it becomes. It started as a 1950s urban planning challenge; everyday thousands of people arrived into Waterloo Station and had to make their way to the other side of the river. In between Waterloo Station and Waterloo Bridge was an area of old factories and the remnants of the Festival of Britain site - including the wonderfully named 'Dome of Discovery'. The brief to the architects was to create a building that acted as a concourse at the same height as the platforms at Waterloo Station to help carry people to the bridge and beyond.

The Mappin Terraces image courtesy of Malcolm Edwards

They were inspired by the Mappin Terraces at London Zoo and created this multilayered structure that people could access and travel through at different levels. This was the thinking behind the whole South Bank area - that it should be alive with people but for the first thirty years of the Hayward’s existence it was bereft of people and events and consequently didn’t work as a public space.

The area is now alive with stuff, currently there is a boating lake on the building’s roof as part of the Psycho Buildings  exhibition, an amazing United Visual Artists light installation twinkles nearby and Nokia's Skate Almighty  is in situ. The Hayward was designed not to be a passive art gallery but as a space to host events both inside and outside; the more that is going on around it the better it works as a building.

The Alternative Village Fete

As one of the organisers of the innocent village fete this Summer I was intrigued to hear about The Alternative Village Fete curated by UK creative and performance art production company, Home Live Art, at Theatre Square on the Southbank on Saturday 5th July.  Commissioned by The National Theatre as part of their Watch This Space outdoor summer festival, this free one day event was billed as a ‘traditional village green, re-imagined for the modern age…with an eccentric urban twist’.  A refreshing concept and what a fun filled colourful bag of tomfoolery and child’s play it was too!

The concrete and urban setting of the National Theatre square was transformed into an alternative village green environment complete with fake grass, fete stalls, bunting and street performers interacting with members of the public and playing with the form of the traditional village fete. Interactive arts and crafts stalls such as the carve your own vegetable sculpture or animal and a knitting stall promoting British sheep farming I Knit London whereby enthusiastic knitters attempted to knit panels to cover a large wire mesh sheep sculpture, proved very popular with young and old alike.  In addition cake stalls, farm produce, and the Vauxhall City Farm filled up the cosy (if somewhat over crowded) Southbank environment.  Alternative traditional fete dancing came in the form of The Bollywood Brass Band and The Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris dancers – a dark and menacing Morris side, dressed top to toe in black garments and intimidating warrior masks and swords. Not your average Morris dancers!
Performance artists mingled with the public to prod and probe the traditional fete form and challenge our preconceptions. One such artist collated video footage of members of the public performing their own country dance moves throughout the day (with their consent!) and then he physically re-constructed these moves into a whole dance routine which he performed on the Village Green at the end of the day. The Society of Wonders interpreted traditional fete games including a silent Margaret from the WI (not sure if Margaret is an up to date paying member of the WI or not…) conducting a stare out competition over a table with members of the public whilst, alongside, another actor provided a running commentary describing each and every facial expression and the meaning behind them.

Wacky stuff indeed and the public seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves too amongst all this quirkiness and eccentricity!   Although full on performance artistry is generally not everyone’s cup of tea and WI cake I think we should applaud those who continue to mix it up and challenge us from the daily grind of every day life since its projects like these that remind us of our creative and playful sides that we can tend to forget as adults.  As adults, we don’t tend to make time for proper innocent playtime and being playful with each other.   Its events like these that remind us of our inner child and encourage us not to take ourselves too seriously.

But don’t worry if you missed this alternative village fete, the real thing is coming to Regent’s Park on 2nd and 3rd August where we have innocent playtime aplenty.  There you can witness a very traditional village green complete with a town crier, village idiots and farmers, the Baldock Morris and the Old Palace Clog dancers, duck herding and dog agility, welly wanging and a good old fashioned tug of war.  We’ve got the real WI selling tea and cakes as well as hosting a decorate your own cake stall.  There is also plenty of amazing live music from acts such as The James Taylor Quartet, Son of Dave, Imelda May, Wallis Bird, The Correspondents and The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.  You can get involved in some dancing at the Alfresco Ballroom with line dancing, tea dancing and jiving from The London Swing Dance Society.  And a new feature to the fete this year is The Village Voice – a platform for spoken word, wordy comics, authors, open mic and poetry readings sponsored by 4th Estate publishing and curated by progressive theatre group Nabokov. 

For more info go to the innocent village fete website. Innocent fun and smiles guaranteed.

London Calling

Last week I popped down to London Calling the annual music industry jamboree that takes place at Earl's Court. I attended two interesting sessions, both of which were concerned with creating value, but in slightly different ways.

The first was a panel of agency people talking about examples of great music / brand tie ups. There were some fairly well known examples, such as Bacardi and Groove Armada, but perhaps the most interesting was Absolut Machines. This campaign involves two groups of musicians building sound installations, which people can go online and have a play with; the machines are also part of a touring exhibition. Someone made the good point that brands often forget about their heritage when they get into music. Absolut Machines is a good example of a brand staying true to itself.

Brands also need to convince people that they have a genuine passion for music, Red Bull, through their Music Academy, have achieved this. For the last ten years they have been helping artists get started in the business and now they are setting up their own label to leverage the position they have created. An interesting example of a brand's passion giving rise to a new business opportunity. The only criticism of Red Bull was that they had kept their activity in music too quiet.

The second panel looked at mobile music and asked the question; what is the value of music in the digital age? For handset manufacturers the value is in the user interface and adding extra services. With a ratio of 20:1 for illegal to legal downloads, tools such as Sony Ericsson's Track ID which helps people find out the name of a track they are listening to their mobile's radio and then purchase it are the kind of tools that will add value.

For both brands looking to engage consumers through music and mobile operators looking to make money through music the key is finding new ways for people to access music.

Howies - the Do lectures

A while back a post on adliterate talked about 'dynamic microbrands', companies that exist around an organising idea that reflects a genuine point of view as opposed to a marketing positioning. Howies are one such company and their Do lectures are a great example of using live activity to share, discuss and debate some of the issues that are important to Howies and their customers.

innocent's  AGM  is another case of using live to open up discussion around the brand. A lot of brands claim to be interested in what their customers think, but here are two examples of genuinely engaging people with your brand.

Women who mean business

This week I was lucky enough to attend Gather 2008, the annual WACL forum (Women in Advertising and Communications London) at RIBA.  The daylong event, put on by women for women, is now in its thirteenth year and is recognised as the key training and motivational event for rising female stars in the communications industry.
The event was sponsored by Google, Heart FM and Thinkbox TV. Lindsey Clay, Marketing Director at Thinkbox, and chair of WACL’s training and development committee, was responsible for organizing this year’s event and had invited me along. Delegates were treated to a sparkling array of the industry’s leading female movers and shakers all giving us their top tips for success in the business and illuminating us with personal anecdotes and words of female wisdom.  Industry luminaries at the event included host, Ita Murphy, MD of MindShare and President of this year’s WACL; ballsy Stevie Spring, CEO of Future Plc and former CEO of Clear Channel; Helen Calcraft, the highly successful, charismatic and motivational Managing Director of Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy; Tess Alps, inspirational CEO of Thinkbox TV; and Cath Kidston, UK Designer.

The speeches were informative, honest, refreshing and highly entertaining and the day passed more like a day out with a group of female friends than your average watching-the-clock training conference.  Not that the serious issues affecting women in today’s workplace were in any way muffled or skirted around. Key issues discussed included work-life balance, successfully balancing demanding career and motherhood, bullying, female insecurities at work and equal pay.  Delegates were encouraged to find confidence in the workplace and strive for success in a number of ways with top tips ranging from ‘lose the fear – it’s never that bad!’,  ‘drop the invisibility cloak’ and, my personal favourite, when in times of trouble and adversity just  ‘ply on the red lippy…’. A highly informative and entertaining day – It was one of the most engaging training sessions I’ve ever attended. KS

Bandstand

Not being English, it took me some time to figure out what Corsa (as in the car) meant when they invited me to “an eccentric, eclectic festival” in London’s Old Billingsgate.

On May 3rd, Corsa presented ‘Bandstand’, an evening described as the Mad Hatter meets a traditional English tea party, put on by the people behind Bestival, headlined by Rob da Bank and Mark Ronson . The event’s website is great and set high expectations – illustrating a magical park-like world with fauna, animals and surreal characters. This identity ran through all communications, including actors playing characters from Alice in Wonderland and uniquely branded Corsa cars parked outside. The Old Billingsgate interior was dressed with park benches, super sized teacups, quirky signage and eccentric look-alikes. Bringing Bestival to the city while targeting the core market for Corsa – urban dwellers in their (early) twenties.

Except from a few cars outside the venue and their name on the Bandstand logo, I’m not sure how much there was in it for Vauxhall. With close to 8000 sq meters they could have been a lot more innovative in how they integrated the cars and the brand and still have accommodated the audience, who unfortunately seemed to disappear under the beautiful arches of this listed structure.

It was a great club night out in London and I love the idea of turning a music event into a journey of discovery, exploring secret gardens and hidden corners. Unfortunately though, the event was too spread out to achieve the intention of creating an “intimate” indoor festival. Was it truly individual and totally different as the website claims? Alice in Wonderland seems to be a repeated theme across events recently, and I hoped to experience a more unique and surreal world - more Monty Python and less Mad Hatter!