New Year, New Focus

With the passing of 2011, it’s easy to fixate on what’s next; forgetting all that’s been accomplished in the last 12 months. I tend to make resolutions when and where I need them, not always around the beginning of a new year. Sometimes it’s when I decide I need a change with work, to refocus my priorities, or to - yes indeed - shed a few pounds. What I try to do is remain grateful and present with all the neat stuff that’s actually be achieved to-date. Perhaps it’s a mini State Of The Union; a personal catch-up; sometimes I even take myself out to coffee to compile it. First I make a little list of things I really happy about or even proud of, and then I go on to make a list of where I see myself in a year’s time. It usually works, and even when I’ve made some pretty spectacular bets, have come up good 12 months down the line. 

In the last year, I have made some incredible girlfriends. I can’t believe that at this time last year, I didn’t know TC, Eryn, Claire, Gem, Arabella and even those I knew before like Sarah, Josie and Big Ring Burner Rachel Turner… I feel a lot closer to. For this, I am super grateful. In a year’s time, I hope I can be an even better friend, and especially to not let work or couple-dom get in the way of these amazing relationships. 

I’ve started my own business. Yes, as a consultant, so it’s not like a bricks and mortar shop yet, but it’s something. And even though it scares me shitless on a daily basis, I love almost every minute of it. Being a bit of a strategic gun for hire has meant getting to meet some incredibly creative, talented and extraordinarily smart people. I’m very very grateful for this. I feel smarter because of them. I’m also sort of proud of myself… if cautiously so… for not being afraid to do this. In a year’s time, I’d like to be doing more work overseas… particularly in China and North America. I’d also like to make more money, but I want to learn to live on less, and really appreciate the stuff I already own.

I’ve fallen in love. As trite as this sounds, love is awesome. In a year’s time, I want to be even more in love. I don’t ever want to take love for granted. But I know that I couldn’t have found love if I didn’t find myself first, and it took a deep and at-times sad period of loneliness to do this. As work has taught me, it’s like a roller coaster: falling to the depths of the unknown are what allow you to create momentum to get to new heights. I think I had to learn how to be happy alone to learn how to be happy with someone else, and yes, for this I’m incredibly grateful. Grateful as much for the loneliness as for the love. 

I’ve learned how to bike race. I can’t believe that at this time last year I had never lined up on a start-line, never been dropped by a peloton, never sprinted for a finish line. All of this is new. And yet it feels like I’ve been doing it forever. Reminding myself that it’s new puts things into perspective. There is still a lot to learn, there’s still room for improvement. It also reminds me of all the women out there who are going to be heading out for their first races in the early spring, and who by the end of the season we’ll think of as old-hat. In a year’s time, I would really like to have my Cat 2, perhaps even my Cat 1 license. This is ambitious, I know, but I’m in better shape than I was last year, and I know how to race now. However more than points chasing, I want to help a lot of other women find what I’ve found in the sport, so I want to do a lot more group rides and skill sessions and let other people learn through my failures, and let my failures become permission for them to also go out and try something hard. 

In the coming year, there are a few things I will do. 

1. I will ride the route of the Giro Donne with some of my closest friends. This will be hard, but it will be an experience of a lifetime. 
2. I will race and complete the Cape Epic without any major injury. Knock on wood.
3. I will buy less, but better. Coffee, meat, clothes, bike kit, furniture. 
4. I will turn my phone off at night. 
5. I will read more novels.
6. I will actually read all the magazines I have subscriptions to. 
7. I will continue learning how to be more present and listening better. 
8. I will spend more time with my girlfriends, new and old.

Raise Your Game: Sports Marketing to Women on @thisisYCN →

“Always wear lipstick. Never get married.” In the words of novelist and feminist writer Danzy Senna, there are two sides of the feminine power coin. On the one hand, there’s the power which comes from being sexually attractive to men, and on the other the power that comes from being sexually invisible to them. In the instance of the former, women compete with one another; but in the latter are very good at working together (1). But all too often, women succeed in the first at the expense of the sisterhood which comes from the second.

While I may face knee-jerk criticism over this statement, it’s worth saying that one of the most important jobs demanded of women is to look good. Though there is some biological validity to this statement, what is particularly interesting is how it is perpetually exploited and amplified by fashion, the media and marketing. For good reason: it works.

But that second form of power - the kind found in the bonds of sisterhood, rising above the need to attract men - is far more difficult to grapple with. It’s not like the desire to look good just disappears when we want to be able to play on the level of the guys - whether in work, our social lives or in sport. However, the media stories out there seem to make it more and more challenging to see the two as anything other than mutually exclusive.

It’s no wonder sports brands face such a challenge designing for and marketing to women. Almost every female athlete who trains and competes with men faces that moment of appearing “in civvies” to the gawping stares of guys with whom she was previously sexually invisible. In the company of these men, she has either one form of power or the other, but rarely both at the same time.

By now, it’s become a cliche to say ‘women dress for other women’ but understanding why we do so is less obvious.

Perhaps one reason for the success of a blog like The Man Repeller is that she frames fashion in a context in which looking good is not determined by one’s ability to attract men. Fashion should be about having fun and exploring one’s personality through the things we put on our bodies. This irreverent philosophy is extremely liberating. No wonder @themanrepeller has over 40,000 followers on Twitter: girls just want to be her friend.

And the fashion industry is slowly waking up. If there’s ever going to be a change, the road will be paved by more avant garde brands. Lanvin’s latest digital campaign http://youtu.be/cwwcnUBY9Zg (A/W 2011) has been a relative hit (in terms of gaining popularity in the mainstream online world that is YouTube) compared to the kind of attention garnered by other fashion brands. The campaign video shows two high-profile models, Karen Elson and Raquel Zimmermann, awkwardly dancing around in front of what is presumably some form of a Dance Nation game. They look silly. But they also look like they’re having a brilliant time. They never appear in the throws of love with a man. They never get swept off their feet and carried into the sunset or to the edge of some Paris balcony. They are simply goofing around and loving every minute of it. We want to be there with them. We want to be their friends. And we really want to wear what they’re wearing.

Lanvin have recognized - if inadvertently - that by speaking to women on a level at which their models are not competing against other women for the attention of men, they’re able to tap into a deeper and more effective desirability. They’ve tapped into sisterhood.

Perhaps when women dress for women, it’s specifically to attract other women. Having fun with fashion makes it about sisterhood not sexuality.

So, back to sports marketing. In full transparency, I am currently a consultant to Rapha, a cycling apparel brand (these views are entirely my own and not necessarily those of my clients). Cycling, like virtually every sport, suffers from an overwhelming focus on men, who make up about 80% of the sport’s participants. Marketing sports brands to women becomes a nearly universal afterthought. And in most cases, sports brands will approach their female market in one of three ways:

1. Take a page out of the lads’ mags and conventional fashion imagery to market to women through highly sexualized imagery which likely operates more as entertainment for male shoppers than as genuine marketing to women.

2. Market to women in exactly the same way as one markets to one’s male market, without considerations for different needs. This often includes the tactic of using recognizable professional athletes as models.

3. Showcase the “empowered woman” alone. Out on the road. In the gym. Up the mountain. In the ocean or lake or wherever she gets her feet wet. Always in isolation.

Of the three, the most effective is typically the third. Employed by Nike, Patagonia, Sweaty Betty and lululemon athletica, this tactic seems to understand that when women compete, we compete against ourselves. This is true. And to an extent, the move is a wise one. Particularly considering the obvious alternatives. Their stories revolve around independence, adventure and sometimes even toughness. Athlete models are often shot in dramatic lighting, independent goddesses on a pillar, spotlit, on the top of a mountain. Always alone.

This third tactic gives women permission to be fearless and awesome in the face of adversity and loneliness. And it sort of works.

Falling back on one of these three orthodox tactics of communication with women in sports marketing highlights two underlying issues. The first issue is that the people doing the marketing (mostly men - but even a lot of women trained to compete professionally in the male-dominated ad industry) suffer from little more than a superficial knowledge of women. We should, as marketing strategist Bridget Brannan so aptly puts it, ‘treat women like a foreign market’. We have our own rituals and rules, languages, behaviours and value systems; so if these marketers put as much effort into understanding women as they do trying to understand, say, the Chinese or Indian markets, they might learn something (2).

Without the confidence that comes from deep knowledge of a market, it’s nearly impossible to innovate. Or lead.

The second issue is deeper and more subtle. There seems a bizarre aversion to portraying groups of women together, having fun doing something really really hard. Obviously there are occasional exceptions but they seem to rather prove the rule. What is it about groups of visibly strong, powerful women that is so difficult for popular culture to digest?

Yes, when women compete, the race is typically against ourselves. But when we compete as a group, we thrive; we love to share our success with others because the success and even the failure forms the bonds of sisterhood. We don’t need to win to feel powerful.

The media and popular culture have been really effective at defining and stereotyping women. We’re athletes. We’re mothers. We’re business women. We’re flirty. We’re serious. We’re bookish. We’re bubbly. But heaven forbid we’re perceived to be all of these at the same time, which most of us actually are.

Is it possible that portraying us as a group feels dangerous because our many sides, our many contradictions and our many personalities are revealed? It’s not just power in numbers or power in sisterhood, it’s also power in confusion. We are both sexually visible and invisible when we play sports. How confusing we must be….!

Women still want to look good when we play sports, not necessarily because it’s how we think we’ll attract a mate. Fit and quality aside, we want to look good because we also associate looking good with having fun. When it comes to sports marketing to women, don’t be afraid to take men out of the equation, this is one place we don’t feel the need to compete for them. But don’t forget to put women back into the equation and let us have fun; we will anyways, with or without you. Your move.

References:
1. Rebecca Walker, ed. To Be Real (1995)
2. Bridget Brennan. Why She Buys (2009)

Two sides of the coin. 

"The Ageing Continent": written for YCN Online →

"Fanatics": written for YCN Online →

Don’t make something beautiful and then think about what makes it culturally effective and evocative. Think about what is culturally effective and evocative and then make it beautiful.

Brand Humility & Closing the Chasm of Appeal

A lot of brands at the moment are facing exactly the same problem as each other: they have a very loyal, interested, listening and active core market. 

This is supposed to be a good thing. They have surged to initial success because of their popularity in their respective cultures. They seem to do all the right things. They tell the right stories. They are switched on. They are social. They are also completely and utterly stumped as to why they their businesses aren’t growing. 

I’ve written in the past about Culture Gaps, and in the last couple months have been trying to unpack this idea a bit more. I’ve described Culture Gaps essentially as cultural opportunities for a brand, something bigger than a brand - something that drives the way people think and feel about the world around them - and this is then something the brand and its offering becomes a residual champion for - an expression of.

Following this line of thinking, what so many of these successful niche brands are failing to do is understand how to translate their success in a very focused narrow market into success with a mass market. 

I cannot emphasise how important it is to recognise that your brand - as it is right now - might be really off-putting to most people. It’s not that they don’t want to be a part of your brand’s culture. In fact, they probably are already a part of your culture, but what you haven’t realised is that your culture is much bigger than your very specific version and vision of that culture. Success requires humility.

People don’t buy a brand because they buy into a brand’s story. They’re buying a brand because they’re buying into the culture the brand is doing a good job expressing. 

Niche appeal to a mass market seems non-sensicle… except we see it all the time. Starbucks, Patagonia, Innocent…. They all did it. And most continue to do it. They set out with specific, niche focus, but somehow translated into having much wider appeal. 

1. Humility: recognise your brand is lucky to be a part of something bigger

2. Get better at championing that culture. No, be the best at championing that culture.

3. Know the people who populate your culture (this means accepting that not all of them are part of your obvious niche market… most of them will look and feel a lot more “mass”. That’s okay. Love them too.)

4. Use that knowledge about your people not to design explicitly to their “mass” tastes, but rather to have enough confidence to have a unique vision and way of doing things that cuts through the crap but doesn’t put them off while you do it.

In a nutshell, putting culture at the heart of your brand allows you then to grow the culture in the vision of your brand. It’s not about being user-centred, it’s about be culture-minded. 

… just a thought.

Image from North Meets South by Li Edelkoort

A map of unreals. This is one of several tools I’ve been putting together as a part of a project for designing a sense of wonder into every day life. Depending on cultural context and scientific knowledge exposure, topics on this map change position. 

I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter… and perhaps do some exercises where we place different ideas on here and watch how and why they might move…

On lateral believing

Utopia is not a distant thing but an attitude with which you try to transform the world.

Our job is to create this attitude. Optimise utopia. 

Effective lateral thinking is only possible by those people who can imagine and are excited by possibilities, not by those who fear change.

We call the space, between not knowing and wanting to know more, the magical gap. Beyond Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, our need for a sense of wonder rises above self-image and authenticity, through a threshold of referentiality to a higher latitude of possibility.

Image via Trendtablet

Protection

via Surface Architects

The Burning House

I love projects like this, asking people to condense those things most important to them down to a handful of belongings. 

America, according to Selfridges Food Hall

Lucky Charms, Jif peanut butter, Betty Crocker cake mix, Aunt Jemima, Shake n’ Bake, Crisco, Pop Tarts, Goober jam, microwave popcorn. These are among the products apparently most-missed by American ex-pats living in London; or at least this is what Selfridges’ “American” Food Hall selection tells us. 

To those who aren’t familiar with Selfridges, it’s London’s rather grander department store version of Barney’s, and of its many departments, its food hall is probably the best. Food from all over the world, the best place in London to buy fresh fish for sushi, cheese, deli foods like no where else, perhaps a bit like a larger, more comprehensive version of Dean & Deluca. And they sell Lucky Charms. (Note, Lucky Charms is the only cereal on offer in this section).

But I do wonder who had the interesting job of choosing 20 SKUs of American products to meet demand. When people leave America, are these really the 20 products they miss the most? All highly-processed, relics of a 1960s America defined - it seems - by foods most of us longed for as children. 

There are dozens of other foods I’d love to see on these shelves, but yeah, on some infantile level, this selection of brands has homed in on our desire to buy all the stuff we probably couldn’t (read: weren’t allowed) when we actually lived in the states.

Infantile urges for pink, sugary, artificially-flavoured food seem to have defined this particular “ethnic” food selection. But I also wonder about Selfridges’ cultural role as a permissive parent. It fits with its store-wide indulgence positioning. I can’t speak on other “ethnic” food sections, but I wonder if the selections are equally indulgent, submitting to the infantile urges of …wherever… somehow, I doubt it.  I’m probably reading too much into this, but if they’re stocking it, it’s because it sells. And knowing the buying prowess of Selfridges, they probably buy these products specifically because they’ll sell better than any thing else. hmmm…

Learning from Makers

I really like this list from Wondermark, especially “Projects are Stackable: It’s not that I’m starting something new before finishing something old — I’m nesting the new project inside the old.” Ideas nest too. 

One of the differences between the US and the UK is precisely on this [US] side of the ocean we own our emotions, even the ones of which we are not especially proud.

— Grant McCracken

Why strategists & marketers should think about fabric

I’ve made a habit over the past few years of following textile trends, not because I want to know what people will be wearing or how they’ll be decorating their houses, but because anyone with half a brain can decipher shifting cultural codes from the stuff we cover our bodies in. It doesn’t require a degree in textiles or fashion to realise that how people dress themselves and their homes is directly correlated to how they feel about the world around them. 

Instead of laboriously scavenging through various textiles books, fabric shops, trend books, Style.com or religious reading of the Sartorialist (most of which I do, anyway when I have time), I also attend a twice-a-year go-to trends presentation by the incredible Li Edelkoort. 

The former president of the design programme at Eindhoven, former Creative Director for Jil Sander, and venerable consultant to most major brands (most of whom deny following her advice as closely as they do), Li is pretty much as close as it comes to being a cultural dowsing rod. 

While I’m as cynical as most when it comes to trend forecasting, believing that with enough influence, the industry leaders might be capable of producing virtually perfect self-fulfilling prophesies, Li continues to out-pace these assumptions. And I’m not just saying this because I also write for her magazine, Bloom, but because she has an incredible knack for pattern recognition and sensing the way people feel long before anyone has the nerve to express it. 

Some call her a guru, which doesn’t really do her justice. If our job as strategists and culture makers is understand where cultural gaps are about to appear, Li’s job seems to be to clarify what might otherwise be a cluttered set of thoughts and random notions. She identifies, in the words of Shopenhauer, what everyone has seen but not yet noticed. 

Your job, while sitting in her audience and afterward, is to think laterally. Let your imagination wander. What does it mean for the cultures of washing/driving/eating/love-making/communicating/drinking when we are obsessed with fossils? Or water? Or birds? It is not as simple as this, but when Li expands each topic by variations on a theme, suddenly the patterns will appear. You will notice influences, you will notice culture gaps, you will notice icebergs before the ship needs to turn. If nothing else, you will spend a few hours being inspired to think visually - a skill most strategists and planners could improve.

Most of Li’s presentations cost about £300, but on 25th of May she will present her 2011 work called ‘In Flight’ for £36, organised by the lovely folks at KMAUK. I highly recommend any students of planning, planners, strategists and creative directors-in-training to check it out….  TICKETS HERE