A New Way of Thinking & Working
It’s increasingly obvious that the world needs to change and change quickly and radically. It needs to find new ways to work and new ways to do business.
Five years ago I used to spend at least three hours a day in a car, driving around 120 kilometers (70 miles) a day to and from work. I’d sit in an office with around 50 other people all of whom had made similar journey’s to ‘the office’ by one mode of transport or other and had consumed energy, in one form or another, doing so. In a typical day I would truly interact with no more than four or five people, and then have to face the commute home again, to arrive home late, tired and not particularly happy. Something needed to change in my own life.
As individuals, we all need to consider the impact humankind is having on our world and start to re-balance the effects of two hundred years of industrialization. We have to be realistic however, and appreciate the very real and positive benefits of globalization, economic growth and development. We can’t turn the clock back. We just think there has to be a better way to work and that part of the answer lies in the digital world. Mankind has always found solutions to major problems by his own ingenuity. The digital revolution has impacted how we all interact and work, and it’s making things possible now that weren’t just a few years ago.
Similarly companies and brands today need to think about their wider role in society if they wish to build a truly sustainable business. Brand building is about reputation and that must be built on something substantive and real that goes to the very roots of the business and is not just the responsibility of the communications department.
So in June 2010 we had an idea. We asked ourselves if it would be possible to create a completely new type of organization for delivering strategic and creative services using cloud based technologies?
We know that using today’s technologies, we are capable of delivering an ever-higher standard of service, with enhanced flexibility from experts whose goals are to deliver results. That’s the simple idea behind *UP There, Everywhere and it’s one of the things that makes us totally unique.
It is a completely new way of working. The dream of teams of people working remotely has been around a while, but only now is that dream becoming a reality. Our connected-community approach is helping shape this totally new way of working.
Our mission is to help change the way the world works. That’s a big mission we know, but one we believe we can achieve.
Our clients include the world’s leading scientific journal, Science, based in Washington DC. The Nobel Peace Prize Concert, in Olso Norway, and Airport City Stockholm, a major development focused on sustainability and the promotion of cleantech industries.
Maybe it’s time you looked us UP*.
www.upthereeverywhere.com
Should Sweden make a bid for the winter Olympics?
Swedish winter Olympic bid.
A Moment in History. December 10th 2011 & The Nobel Peace Prize.
This years joint winners of the Nobel Peace Prize gave three powerful lectures yesterday in the impressive setting of Oslo City Hall. It was a moment in history and I was fortunate enough to be there and witness it in person.
This year’s award was won jointly by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, Leymah Gbowee, the Liberian peace activist, and Yemeni pro-democracy campaigner Tawakkol Karman.
They were recognised for their “non-violent struggle” for women’s safety and for women’s rights to participate in peace-building work. I felt however that there was a fourth woman present on the stage. A woman who represents all woman on earth who have suffered through domestic and international conflicts. That for me was the significance of the prize this year being given to these three courageous woman.
UP* & The Nobel Peace Prize Concert
I was there because *UP There, Everywhere has been working with the Nobel Peace Prize Concert since March this year. We have developed a new graphic identity for the concert as well as a website with social media interface for this globally televised event. The Nobel Peace Prize Concert is one of the world’s great events and the opportunity to work on such a prestigious project and play a small part is without doubt a highlight for us at UP*.
I’ve spent the last six months going over to Oslo at regular intervals and heading UP our international team, which has been based in Scandinavia and the US, who have worked on the new identity. The new logotype in black and red features the Gold Norwegian Nobel Peace medal. We had to work hard to maintain the heritage of Nobel, whilst creating an identity that’s appropriate for such a contemporary musical concert and celebration.
The new website (www.nobelpeaceprizeconcert.org) reflects the new re-designed brand image of the Nobel Peace Prize Concert and presents an updated, modern public face for this annual contemporary music concert. The new site incorporates interactive features such as videos and social media sharing options, with Facebook and You Tube, that were not part of the previous site as well as working on the SEO.
For more information about *UP There, Everywhere visit www.upthereeverywhere.com. UP* can also be found on Facebook at UpThereEverywhere, Twitter at @UP_For_It and Linked In: www.linkedin.com/company/up-there-everywhere. Read more about the where the name *UP There, Everywhere originated on the web site’s blog “Being Different. Want to see what makes UP* truly different from other advertising agencies- even international ones? Watch the film. www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZVyiSw4Sng
Nobel Peace Prize work
I’ve been down in Switzerland for the past two days at a client’s company meeting, where I’ve been giving a presentation on The Value of Brands. And it’s been an exciting day, as I have been waiting for the announcement regarding this years Nobel Peace Prize winner. In fact it turned out to be winners as three women were jointly awarded the prize this year. For my own company, *UP There, Everywhere, it’s especially exciting as we can now show the work we have been doing for the Nobel Peace Prize Concert company. The concert happens on the 11th December every year in Oslo and we have been asked to create a new identity for this world-wide televised event, including the design of a new website. The concert attracts stars such as Paul McCartney, Sting, Will Smith among many many others.
I actually get to go to the concert so that will be pretty cool in itself.
City in the Clouds
At *UP There, Everywhere we’ve been working for several months now on a new brand strategy and identity for Airport City Stockholm. We launched it last week at a real estate event called Business Arena in Stockholm, at the Water Front Arena.
Traditionally airports were seen as a gateway for the transportation of people and goods from one city, region or country to another. This definition is now giving way to a much wider concept of the airport, and the businesses and communities that surround it, as a destination in their own right. Over the past several years airport cities have been developing around the world as powerful economic commercial hubs. A number of international airport cities are already well established around the world such as Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Amsterdam’s Schiphol. Frankfurt for example already has 500 companies established at the airport complex employing some 70,000 people and is further developing their site with facilities encompassing retail, commercial offices, cargo, entertainment as well as hotel and conferencing to name a few.
These modern multimodal transport hubs are paving the way for similar developments and as airport cities grow around the world, finding a focus will become increasingly important in order to establish a true competitive edge and positioning.
Over several months *UP There, Everywhere conducted interviews and workshops that enabled us to develop a strategy for Airport City Stockholm that we believe fits perfectly with the regions natural strengths and the unique advantages we have to offer. A focus on sustainability.
Understanding and caring for the environment as well as developing sustainable industries is a critical issue facing all nations today. Stockholm and Sweden already have an impressive record in this area and the region is one of the most knowledge intensive and innovative in the world.
The vision for the future with the development of Airport City Stockholm would see the current employment base grow from approximately 20,000 jobs up to 50,000 jobs within the next ten years. The development area covers over 800 hectares of land which is owned by the three partners behind the development of Airport City Stockholm; Swedavia, Sigtuna Kommun and Arlandastad Holding.
To learn more about Airport City Stockholm and see the new website we developed for the project visit:
www.airportcitystockholm.com
The Global Cloud Based Advertising Agency
Over the past two or three weeks you’ll have noticed, unless you’ve been walking around with your head in the clouds, that the technology world has had the equivalent of some pretty huge seismic events. The acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google. HP throwing in the towel in the personal computing business. The knowledge that Apple has more available cash than the US Government and could solve the Euro debt crisis on its own. All this followed by the resignation of Steve Jobs.
Technology is a great enabler and I’m a huge fan. Possible addicted. My wife once challenged me to go twenty four hours without all of today’s modern ‘toys’. A twenty hour hour non-technology day. We even established a Facebook page (there’s contradiction to begin with) dedicated to the topic. Just twenty four hours with zero technology. A day of darkness. No iPod, iPhone, iPad. Well, iFailed. I cracked after just eighteen hours, which considering I was sleeping for six of those eighteen hours is pretty pathetic.
Anyway this brings me all nicely to the subject of this piece. The cloud. Several years ago we started hearing this term and now it seems ubiquitous to our lives. It was this thought that launched *UP There, Everywhere less than nine months ago. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in, run and own a number of advertising and branding companies over the past twenty years and the thought struck me about a year ago that, like the events in the technology business this past two weeks, seismic events were happening in my own business. Applications such as Facetime, iChat, skype, Base Camp, Drop Box, Sprend along with FTP sites enabled by broadband width gave us the capability to work in a completely different and much more productive way than ever before. I was using all these tools and working internationally every day of the week with distributed teams around the world. That was the inspiration for UP*.
*UP There, Everywhere. The Global Cloud Based Advertising Agency.
The world has changed.
Non-technology day page on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/nontechnologyday
Word Embezzlement
Following on from my last blog approach of ‘Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal ‘ this month I happily embezzle a few words from a person I have the great pleasure of knowing well – John Simmons. John is an inspiring creative business writer, who was one of the founders of the Dark Angels writers courses.
His contention, rightly, is that business writing is far too often dehumanised and lacking any emotional content. Businesses struggle to find their own voice. This is something we encounter at UP* all too often with corporations. It’s as if they feel threatened by actually saying something in a unique way that could actually make them stand out. So they resort to writing in a way that is similar, if not identical, to the way their competitors write. Safety in numbers I guess.
Anyway, some words from John below.
‘Banish any thought that you are writing for a business – either that you are writing on behalf of a business or writing to be read by a business. Ban the phrase ‘business to business’ writing along with that thought. I’m making a simple point: a business does not write to another business. A person writes to another person. Don’t ever think that you’re writing for an amorphous mass, a faceless organisation made up of groups. A business is made up of individuals – you are an individual too. Reach out through your words, make a human connection.’
Recommended reading is John’s book ’26 ways of looking at a blackberry’. More on John at www.26fruits.co.uk/
E is for exclamation mark!
Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal. The great Steve Jobs himself has attributed that quote to Pablo Picasso, and I’m happily stealing this blog entry from fellow Dark Angel, friend and all round brilliant writer Elen Lewis. Elen and I were both on a Dark Angels Writers Master Class at Merton College Oxford earlier this year and I’ve happily lifted one of her posts for this blog.
By Elen Lewis
In the first of a regular series on better business writing, some thoughts on exclamation marks. Unless you live in Westward Ho! or Saint-Louis-du-Ha!Ha! in Quebec, use them sparingly.
In Chekhov’s short story The Exclamation Mark, a civil servant trying to get to grips with the rules of punctuation develops a paranoid fantasy, in which everyday objects transform themselves into malevolent exclamation marks.
I’m with F Scott Fitzgerald who wrote, “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.” Elmore Leonard wrote of exclamation marks: “You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.”
An exclamation mark is like shouting or whooping. It’s like screaming, ‘I REALLY MEAN THIS’, after you’ve spoken. And in business writing exclamation marks are not to be encouraged, aside from special occasions.
Too many emails use exclamation marks, and they’re especially irritating when used in groups of two or three. Admittedly, email has seen exclamation marks make something of a comeback. Before the 1970s, typewriters did not have anything akin to an exclamation mark on the keyboard, which may have been another reason for their rarity. It was a lot of effort to type a full stop, then back space, push the shift key and type an apostrophe.
So, when to use exclamation marks? Use them sparingly and then they will have the impact you need. They should be used to demonstrate surprise, anger or joy. That’s all.
And, if you’re not sure, use a full stop instead.
So is ‘Thanks!!!’ more grateful than thanks? I don’t think so.
Barcelona & the Beautiful Game
Today Barcelona is one of Europe’s, if not the world’s, most successful destinations for both tourism and as a business location. People even talk of adopting the Barcelona model when it comes to redefining a post-industrial location.
However, it was all very different forty years ago. In the 1975 series Fawlty Towers, Manuel, the hapless Spanish waiter who lived in fear of Basil Fawlty, was cast as coming from Barcelona. His home town was chosen with great care – as at that stage Barcelona was considered by many to be a run down, dirty, industrial black hole. It wasn’t until the death of Franco in 1975, that a new regional focus could be put in place to get the city back on a path to regeneration.
Arguably Barcelona has more brand assets than most places. The stunning architecture, famous artists, a successful Olympics in 1992, a wonderful song about the city and one of the world’s greatest football clubs Barca. Which brings me rather nicely to the beautiful game, football – or soccer to our colonial cousins.
Famous Catalan icon #1
May 28th saw the final of the Champions League 2011 between Barcelona and Manchester United, respectively the champions in their own countries domestic competitions. Josep “Pep” Guardiola’s team not only beat Manchester United 3-1, they made them look like they didn’t even play the same game. It might only be football, but it’s actually a lesson in sound management and brand management.
TEAM IS KEY
First and foremost Barcelona play as a team. Look at the majority of the UK’s Premier League Clubs and they are filled with exotic foreign and domestic players, who are all too often prima donnas- and more interested in their own particular brand than their clubs. Barca play the most compelling passing game, involving the whole team and when they celebrate they celebrate together. A lesson for business if ever there was one.
The Barca team also has more home grown talent than most others. Arsenal or Manchester United’s first eleven rarely has more than a few local players, preferring to recruit expensive overseas stars. Or look at Manchester City’s billion pound team – a wholly artificial construction brought about only with money. By contrast eight of the Barcelona first eleven were groomed through the clubs own football school, La Mesia, and that includes Lionel Messi, probably the world’s finest player at the moment.
Famous Catalan icon #2
This creates fierce loyalty, a genuine team spirit and a real passion in representing the city and region the club comes from. The team’s manager, Guardiola, himself came through the same school before going on to play for the Barca first team for seventeen years. If ever there was a lesson for brands it is contained in this real enthusiasm and shared values that creates team spirit and belief.
Many brands today live in fear of the new rules of engagement they have with their customers in the internet age. Today’s two way dialogue has forced many to involve the consumer more in their own brand and how they should develop it. But none has gone as far as Barcelona in letting their core fans have a direct say in major decisions. The club is even owned by its members, again unlike the majority of UK clubs who are owned by wealthy, often foreign, tycoons who have little true feeling for local pride or passion and the role football plays in people’s lives.
As with many great success stories the key ingredient is also having a long term vision. The success of both Barcelona, as a destination, and their team has not happened overnight.
Having a long-term plan and sticking with it pays off. Reaching the position Barcelona is in today has taken thirty years or more.
I once jokingly remarked in a magazine article that a destination brand had to have three things to be considered genuinely great. Proximity to water, an outstanding sports team, preferably with the destinations name in it, and a famous song. Think New York, San Francisco, Liverpool and Barcelona – which each has all three. I guess The Manchester Ship Canal and their club’s song Glory Glory Man United was just not enough on the night.
Dark Angels
A month or so ago I was fortunate enough to attend a creative business writers course at Merton College Oxford. The company behind the course is called Dark Angels ( http://www.dark-angels.org.uk/index.html ) a UK based organisation dedicated to improving business writing. There were just eight fellow writers attending, amongst them some of the most creative business writers I’ve ever met. Too many corporations struggle to communicate in human terms, and I’ve always felt it’s part of my job to help them find a voice that is both their own and human. As part of our Oxford session we also had the pleasure of an evening with Philip Pullman author of the well known Dark Materials Trilogy. Truly inspirational.
The BBC Radio 4 program In Business was also there to cover the course, and I was asked to contribute to the program. You can hear the episode and interview at the link below.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010y316
Peter Day, the presenter of In Business, described UP* There, Everywhere as the world’s smallest global advertising agency. I rather like that!
Today UP* has 60 members and we are in 18 cities around the world. When will we reach 100?
