Hicklin Slade (Crayon) sold for a reported £9 million

Today I learnt my old agency, Hicklin Slade & Partners (now called Crayon) was sold for a 'reported' £9 million, strange emotions, While a ton of water has passed under the bridge since I was there, the experience keeps coming up, not least because I get asked about it all the time - must recently yesterday in a taxi to Toronto of all places!

Not sure how best to comment, but I found the following post I wrote in 2006, sort of fitting in a way

"..Hicklin Slade & Partners the sadness lingers on? 

In 2004 I was forced to leave the agency I helped found; Hicklin Slade & Partners. The relationship between myself and my partner Justin Hicklin had broken down to the point of crisis. The driving force to all our woes being money or rather a lack of cash in the business. Today's news of our ex-Financial Director (Sharon Bridgewater )being convicted of a £2 Million fraud against Hicklin Slade & Partners is  a bitter coda to the whole affair.

 I have always said the future is the answer. The past being stuff that happened. But boy, today is a tough reminder of quite what was left behind in that whole sorry mess of 2004.

What lessons have I learnt from my downfall at Hicklin Slade & Partners? - well apart from the obvious of not appointing convicted fraudsters as your FD (In mitigation she was appointed by our auditors Kingston Smith, who one would of thought need to study there recruitment criteria a bit more)

Slade's Six lessons for any Creative Director going on the board 

1.  Which Business partners? - You are going to spend more time with them than your partner/wife/children. have some values in common, because when it all hits the fan you will need points of reference to each others private worlds.

2. Why are you getting into business together? Again during total melt down you will find the needs of school fees & divorces clash mighty with agency ideals and creative standards.

3.  What does the business mean to you? Call it sad, but at the time the Hicklin Slade brand was the most important thing in my life, ever. We had built it from scratch, together. Why would anyone ever consider breaking it up? Losing it was like a death in the family.

4. Could you step away from success? (see above) In my new role as consultant I often advise companies in crisis to consider a pause or at the very least letting senior directors go on sabbaticals while a fresher team focus on a fight back strategy. But as Seth Godin has so recently pointed out, sometimes you have to quit. Its simply the smarter move.

5. Never stop learning. Everything you do builds on what you could archive tomorrow. Joe Strummers mantra of The Future is unwritten must be used to mend any broken hearts. It took me the best part of two years to get over losing Hicklin Slade. But what drove me on was the excitement of tomorrow and what 'might be' 

6. Can you add Perspective? Advertising is just mucking about with peoples buying habits. No one dies. OK Sharon stole £2+ million quid from me, but at the time we didn't know we had it. I felt  like killing my partners and there misguided advisors when i was forced out. But the relationship was over.

 

Never give up.

Tomorrow will always be better

Pop-ups as a game. Honda & W+K

Interactive son of Honda 'Cog' film making top use of pop-ups.

I guess you really can debate how many people actually play this all the way through to its conclusion. ( unlike the Arcade Fire video from the same people, where you have a reason to see the final 'boom' ) - but suitability aside (!) a clever use of HTML5 with good details and brave to ignore Firefox users on mass

Game in full play here = 

Our world in 2013, a few thoughts.

  • Img_2945
    Shopping dominated by the spending habits of the over 50’s
  • Internet on everything, and everything synced
  • Innovation from the East, tourism in the West
  • We will know more, have solved more

The changing age of world’s population will dramatically alter our lives. From the promiscuous spending of the over 50’s to the globally connected teenagers1.

In developing nations we will see ‘retro-technology’ being used to get round legislative or cultural barriers, From downloadable house plans to electronic payments without banks via 2G phones2

More of the UK’s inner cities will be re-jigged for pedestrian use as planners seek not only to ease congestion, but also to be able to better manage societal ills. (It’s actually quite hard to riot in an area of pavement cafes and sculptured paths)3

Car users will seek connivence i.e. shared ownership schemes while car buyers will demand more personalisation of both look and function4.

In the summer of 2013 you will see a huge number of new tourists in the UK, London will still be the world’s number one inbound destination, but our visitors will be increasingly from the east.5

Will you have an iPad in 2013? Yes, or an equivalent. Tablet style devices will be a default for publishers and consumers of long form text, whether magazines, books or instruction manuals

We will have become digital omnivores consuming a single piece of information, film or story across multiple screens to suit our current location whether bath, sofa, car or desk.6

Shopping will be about collaboration of brands, more devices will be able to speak to each other, more shops will be dual use, more prices dictated by shopper behaviour of the minute.

2013 will be when we stop using the word digital and just talk about being ‘on’

All your devices will work everywhere, with the switch over to digital TV, the UK has large amounts of free frequency space that can fill in WiFi gaps, called White Space, the first transmitters were launched this summer7

But lets not forget in all this, that humans are, after all, analogue beings. We’re playing catch up with the full functionality of our electronic inventions. We like fuzzy stuff, we love products however clever, to have emotion, a soul. Mainstream use of many hybrid technologies will come when they stop looking like hybrid technology products and start just being good to be with.


NOTES

1. Over 50’s. In the UK almost 55% of the population will be over 50 by 2013. But as with just about all trends in 2013 its Asia Pacific where we need to look. Japan will have the oldest population, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan the fastest growing and China will have the largest aging consumer population in the world. (The under 50 population in China will actually shrink by 117 million people over the 10 years to 2018) The big issue about this new generation is there per capita discretionary spend is two and a half times the average younger household spend.  Already in America 41% of Apple customers are over 50. Again in America the 46- to 64-year-old group now spends more money on technology than any other demographic (Forrester Research). The over 50’s over index on luxury items and random spending, even during the recession, driven in part by genetics. “Older brains...more positive emotional bias than younger adults” (Patricia A Reuter-Lorenz & Cindy Lustiz).

At the other end of the scale the school children of 2013 will be learning in not only smarter ways, but will be smarter about the world around them. Worth noting 65% of children entering school for the first time will end up working in careers that haven’t even been invented yet (Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University)

2. Retro Technology being used in developing nations to leap frog Govt. or cultural barriers to change. Social media access will bring more tyrannical governments to account. Open source house plans like www.os-house.org will speed up communities development from default slum zones. Person to person electronic payments scheme, driven by 2G Nokia technology originally from Africa (www.safaricom.co.ke/m-pesa) now in Afghanistan http://www.roshan.af
Bringing light to slums without electricity, with an innovative lighting system from recycled materials, globally spread via YouTube http://isanglitrongliwanag.org

Planning for pedestrians www.intelligentspace.com  et al.

4. Car use changes i.e. www.whipcar.com and open source car design: www.theoscarproject.org & www.local-motors.com

5. Global Travel survey; www.masterintelligence.com

6. Consuming content across platforms: Our current anxiety over which electronic device; tablet, smart phone, net book, Sat Nav? Will pale, as we all become digital omnivores consuming content across a variety of screens appropriate for moment to hand.
 http://www.comScore.com/DigitalOmnivores.>

7. White Space filling in for WiFi = http://www.neul.com  &  http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/09/01/ofcom-progresses-with-new-wireless-techn...

Uniqlo Store opening : Happy Ribbon project

This may be very simple idea, but it is fun. Shoppers write message on virtual ribbon, an actual ribbon, with those messages, gets cut on store opening. Links to both native Korean online store and worldwide Facebook one. The nature of the excution perfectly matches the atittuide of the brand as it appears in the street, fun, instant and er happy..

Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11 Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11 Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11 Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11 Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11 Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11 Screen_shot_2011-11-02_at_11
See the full gallery on Posterous

Brand Lag

In a number of tech usage areas, brands are a step behind actual consumer behaviour. Brand Lag being a neat term of the moment. WiFi in shops and what shoppers are doing with their phones is an issue that a number of brands are not up to speed with shopper wants. -an area I have been working on this last year.

Brandlag
In a similar vein BBH ventures have a new product out (Playground sessions) that fills in a gap where no product existed, but behaviour had already been established, in this case learning musical instruments via YouTube

"...The product was first developed through Zag’s “brand lag” process, where the company identifies areas where consumer activity is outpacing brand activity.

“We identified different territories of brand lag and one was around adult learning,” says Vance, who joined Zag in 2009. “The other was around digital music. YouTube is in many ways associated with music and it was clear that a lot of people were going to YouTube to learn how to play instruments.” The phenomenon of Guitar Hero was also a contributing factor shaping the idea for the new product. “We knew that with technology and scale there was the opportunity to converge gaming and learning,” says Vance. “Can we do Guitar Hero with a real musical instrument; can we do Rosetta Stone with instruments? The challenge was, can we reinvent how instruments are taught. We identified the brand lag, then it became a question of, can we build it?....” More HERE

Google Wallet first big move

I did get really excited by the launch of the Google wallet, the possbilities looked so great, but since launch not much has caught the eye, the no brainer of getting the NFC (Near Field Comms) to work on mass transits systems, basically Oyster on your mobile was launched today in the States. Coins now look so old school plus weigh your pockets down.

The real change will happen when more of this is rolled out with volume handsets like the iPhone5

"...NJ Governor Chris Christie announced earlier today that the third largest transit system in the country has partnered with Google to bring their wireless Wallet payment system to bus routes and rail lines in the Northeast..."

via http://techcrunch.com

Shopper Marketing is Mobile

I must say it everyday, but am so oftern met by stares of yes, yes, later. But for Shopper Marketing to really work instore it must be with an integrated mobile strategy. A recent presentation by Kiddicare really underlined this.

Chris Lake, Director of Innovation, eConsultancy

"...Last Wednesday more than 1,500 marketers descended on Old Billingsgate in London for JUMP, our annual multichannel-focused event..."

Kiddicare

Simon Harrow, Technology Officer at Kiddicare.com

Mobile and NFC will save physical retail. 

Email is the glue across the array of different tools used in digital.

Kiddicare now generates 11% of its revenue via the mobile channel.

Browsing and behavioural data should drive customer communications. Kiddicare focused on this and increased repeat business from 7% to 14% in six months.

Planners -look up!

Good thoughts from Sarah Newman chair of the APG calling for more 'Noisy thinking' the key point being the most powerful work from planners in 2011 was via collabortion and cross displine (and agency) teams.

"We suffer not just from ignorance of the future, but from a limited capacity to imagine what the future might be," John Kay said in Obliquity.

Much as any tourist to London is told 'Look up' the best of this amazing city is above head height, so with planners work, so much is just above/outside the normal round of tasks. We are moving however slowly away from the generation of Google based planning and into a more analogue/digital split view of an activated world.

There are a whole bunch of skilled/informed souls outside of normal agency life that planners must have relationships with from Psychologists to Carers

"Planning is an exciting discipline in an exciting world. But planning needs to stop talking brilliantly to itself and start talking to a broader audience ... and be a more dynamic, high-profile and appreciated agent for change in the agency and marketing worlds." Adam Morgan

New generation instore deals, Asile50

Frankly, life is way to short for cutting out coupons and the like, but everyone loves a discount. A bunch of such like-minded souls have come up with a solution; Asile50

"..Aisle50 have partnered with supermarket chain Lowes Foods, utilizing their existing customer loyalty card. Customers are alerted with the deal of the day by email — usually around 50 percent of the normal price — and then purchase the item at that discounted rate online via Aisle50. The credit for that item is automatically loaded on to the customer’s Lowes Fresh Rewards card which, when swiped at the checkout in-store, removes the item wholly from the bill..."

Looks like it's the over 50's who are driving social media growth on mobile devices

New report from Nielsen (HERE) looks at social media trends, within this report are some neat insights about the over 50's. The rather forgotten, by most brands, but hugely significant sector (UK 50% of pop over 50 by end of 2011) Really important to understand the emotional outlook of a group who may be physically old but display spending patterns more akin to teenagers. Budget aware but prone to irrational urges to satisfy pleasure. I did a briefing paper on them late last year, specifically looking at drinking habits.

MatureMarketNov10.pdf Download this file

 

 

We all want to be loved, its not the same as being 'liked'

Tens of thousands of Facebook likes are not the same as a handful of customers who personally recommend your brand.

We feel the warmth of human endeavour in giving smart advice, a joy to see one of my favorite brands (LEGO) focusing on this above all else

The CEO of LEGO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was interviewed after presenting really positive financial results for 2010/1. He was asked

“..what market share do you aim for worldwide, and where should the growth come from?”

Jørgen answered: “I have no specific market share goals for LEGO. We are measuring our success on customers satisfaction and on how many recommend LEGO products to others – so our growth and market share are just a result of this strategy.”