Introducing Lowe’s First Agony Aunt

“I got back to my desk this afternoon and discovered a knife in my back. Now I know that in this dog-eat-dog ad world this isn’t uncommon, but what’s the best way for me to remove it?”

Do you have a question? Any question? Best route to Singapore from New York? Which is best for kissing ass: lipstick, gloss or lip balm? How do I make my boss notice me? Is Duty-free really cheaper?

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing Lowe’s first, very own Agony Aunt. “He” stepped into our New York agency this morning with a daredevilish mission in mind: “Let’s invite the Lowe world to ask me anything. There’s nothing that I can’t answer. No subject is off limits.”

Hmmm. What makes him so sure?

Our Agony Aunt is a man who lives out of a suitcase. Knows his way around every minibar in the world. And is a household name in every airport lounge. And yes, he’s globe trotted, fire fought, dibble-dabbled in just about every nuke and cranny in the world. But will his claim to know the answers to just about any rant, injustice, world exploration conundrum that you - Lowe - might have, be true?

Who is this international man of mystery?

Can we trust him?

Let’s put our Agony Aunt in The Pothole and see what he stirs up.

How To Defuse A Ticking Bomb

For a closer read and to download this PDF, go to Lowe Go or click on the images below. 

Let’s put crowdsourcing to the test

written by Peter Preisler 

Electrolux is re-launching the brand based on a new brand platform and a new range of products (the premium category).

The new brand platform leverages the professional experience within Electrolux (Electrolux Professional Division is the leading supplier to the worlds best restaurants and hotels) and the Scandinavian mentality summarized in four values (empathy, insightful, progressive, ingenious).

- The brand promise (note: not message but the internal mantra):”We give you freedom to accomplish more through thoughtful design innovation”.

- The proposition for the new range: ”For the first time, there is a consistently designed range made for the contemporary home, with a clever user interface you can personalise and professionally endorsed short cuts, that deliver the result you aspire to achieve.”

Who are we communicating to
 

People that delights in creating “social moments that matter” with confidence and certainty. They revel in the recognition received from those they care about

A target group film

https://www.senditsafe.com/d/3c40f5fa337a2e7cca8b68d5c88e94a3 

Three conceptual territories have been identified.

# 1 ” Electrolux gives you more time do to more things you like to do”

This thought is not about saving time but about getting time. Think of it in terms of Electrolux provides the 25th hours for you to explore new things, try new recipes, try on more clothes you would like to wear when you would like to wear them etc.

Insight: Today, time is more than just money – it is something fantastic. It is what we do of it and the more we had of it, the more fantastic things we would do with it. What if someone could give you more time, more time to explore new things?

# 2 ”Electrolux look after the things you love”

This thought is not about Electrolux taking care of the chores but about the things you love, your favourite clothes, your friends or your favourite time of the day. If Electrolux can be your partner for this you can focus on being yourself and expressing who you are instead of being worried about your appearance or hospitality.

Insight: You are what you wear, what you serve and how your home looks like. It´s almost like an obsession and the more we focus on it, the more we get restrained by actually being who we are. What if someone understood this and could partner with you to take care of the things that make the real you shine through, so you get the freedom to accomplish more.

# 3 ”Electrolux expands your comfort zone, and lets you be curious of life”

With Electrolux products you can finally dare to be curios about testing new recipes, being more spontaneous or trying that outfit you so seldom wear because you are afraid of washing it.

Insight: Today we are expected to know all, do all and surprise all. But we are not that creative, or at least we don´t always dare to be creative when it comes to cooking a new meal for your cynical friends or wear that special vintage t-shirts afraid of it smelling chemicals. What if someone could help you to relief the anxiety through short cuts that could validate a perfect result since it already used by professionals today.

Please use this space to post your ideas. 

You are free to explore any formats or executions you wish and that you think is relevant.

All ideas will be channelled through Rickard Villard (ECD) and Allan Fraser-Rush (Communication Planner) at Lowe Brindfors.

All ideas need to be submitted this week.

For questions on the brief, please don´t hesitate to contact Peter Preisler (

peter.preisler@lowebrindfors.se) or Allan Fraser-Rush (allan.fraser-rush@lowebrindfors.se).

Good Luck! 

The Dinner Game

by samina.

Picture this: Sight is but a figment of our imagination.

If food had no visual references,  how would we stimulate and process our tastebuds? An avocado soufflé might be mistaken for a banana shake, and the decadence of a melting dark chocolate cake perhaps perceived as a gooey sticky cream mousse.

Does the sound of crunching carrots stimulate your tastebuds? Can you decipher the difference between white and red wine? What about a chilled Tapena Rose, and a white Albariño?

Last week, I attended a dinner game. Created by blind people, and served by the blind, the dinner game called Dans Le Noir is a dining experience inviting the complete re-evaluation of the notion of taste and smell through a gastronomic and pedagogical process.

The concept is simple. Diners enter a pitch-black room, lead by blind servers to whom they must trust entirely with their 3-course mystery food offering. Everything is eaten with one’s hands, foods are deliberately confusing, and nothing is revealed until after the meal is complete.

Aside from the obvious initiation into a sensory shifting paradigm, I had many other surprise observations.

The first was the power dynamics that developed between the blind and the sighted. The blind waiters were animated, leading our experience with complete confidence and charisma, whereas we were – at first – hesitant, suspicious, vulnerable. It was as though a magic switch occurred between both parties; a transference of trust as the blind became the eyes for the sighted. 

As we developed a jovial rapport with the wait staff, it was only when our meal was over did it fully resonate that this was not a game for them. Our dynamic with them would shift as we entered the light, however they would remain with the same experience of our interaction in both environments.

Another powerful insight was that although we couldn’t see objects, I found myself spotting waves created by energy movements of my boyfriend’s hands. Although pitch black, it was possible to know exactly where his hands where and what they were doing. We were even able to successfully toast with our wine glasses.

Finally, there was the sheer confusion we faced when tasting foods and wines that were entirely unrecognizable. Kiwis, avocado and duck were almost impossible to decipher, where as anchovies, carrots and coconut ice cream were sharper and more obvious to the taste.

Dans Le Noir is an exceptional insight into the exploration of our senses, the relationships we have to our bodies, and how we can relate this in a consumer context. With restaurants in Barcelona, London and Paris, and one slated to open in New York in the coming months, it seems apparent that there is a dire interest for this sensory stimulation.

In fact, last month Lowe Counsel published their latest trend “Extreme Sensory Stimulation” positing that people crave new, more memorable experiences, and a need to push physical sensations to the limit. 

Do you have any examples of sensory stimulation from your markets? 

Have you entered a dinner game before?

www.danslenoir.com

Cloud Power

“Cloud power gives you the power to think big. And be small. It’s going to change your definition of power. The power to play like an optimist and pay like a realist.”

These fine lines are part of Deutsch’s latest content driven campaign for new mega client, Microsoft. The work includes Digital, Print, Poster and TV and aims to specifically convince CIOs and senior IT workers about what “cloud power” is, and why it even matters. 

What is Cloud Power and how does it work?

According to webopedia “cloud power is a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications.”

To do this,cloud computing networks large groups of servers with specialized connections to spread data-processing across them.

Here’s where it gets interesting: 

 Systems offered by companies, like IBM’s “Blue Cloud” technologies for example, are based on open standards and open source software which link computers together. While some embrace open sourcing, others are simply petrified. 

As with every technology idea, product, even evolution, a series of questions arise that trigger unsettlement of our current behavioral practices. This time, it’s about trust. How can we trust where our information is stored? What about privacy?

The Economist’s featured debate on Cloud Power lay out some of the key concerns businesses face as they steer into the “All In” mindset. Principally, it’s whether or not to trust a public space over one’s hard drive.

One the one hand, computers simply conk out, so Google’s cloud is much more trustworthy than the windows operating system. Then there’s the question of whether or not all data and applications fit in the cloud.

President of Microsoft Business Division Stephen Elop suggests, “The reality is that some scenarios are ideal for the cloud, and some are not, while others still are best served by a hybrid environment.”

“Microsoft is approaching cloud computing with interoperability in mind. We are giving customers a solution that is agile, not closed behind an impenetrable cloud.”

How does Cloud Power impact the advertising industry?

We are becoming a non-tangible world where importance on physical collections is replaced with band width and easy access to data. That device that connects us to all our possessions will become increasingly important, opening a huge opportunity for furthur sophistication and reliance on mobile devices.

Our need for less physical stuff means that we are indeed saving our resources, becoming more sustainable. Some economist see the move towards de-materialism as providing the next step in human evolution, as well as a solution to the issue of sustainability and growth. 

Got an opinion about Cloud Power?

Send us an email here and we will start a debate of our own on The Pothole.

Crystal Waters

by samina.

Last night I had the incredible honor of dining with Dr. Masuru Emoto.

Referenced as the world’s water guru, Emoto brought the magic life of water to the world stage in 2005 at a United Nations Conference called the Spiritual Dimensions of Science and Consciousness.

Japanese born, Dr. Masaru Emoto’s principle ethos is that our intentional thoughts directly impact the patterns formed when water is frozen. Both author and scientist, his discovery of crystals formed in frozen water reveals changes when specific, concentrated thoughts were directed toward them. For example, water from clear springs and water exposed to peaceful words show complex, and colorful snowflake patterns, while polluted water, or water exposed to negative vibrations presented asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.

Since 1999 Emoto has published several volumes of a work titled Messages from Water. He is also part of the United Nation’s International Decade for Action, contributing actively to this in an effort called “ The Emoto Peace Project.” (http://www.emotoproject.org/)

The implications of this research is poignant in affirming how each of us can positively impact the earth, as well as our personal world.  

I met Dr. Emoto in a non descript vegetarian hideout in Barcelona’s Raval quarter. There we chatted about his upcoming lecture at the University of Barcelona, made some small talk about his nostalgia for a lost Spanish love, before I was finally able to nail his sporadic free flowing mind with 3 short talking points:

Three questions for Dr. Emoto:

You work principally with water, as the subject of vibrational energy. What about other matters and forms in the universe that can transform and affect this?

ME: Everything is water. Light, snow, air. Even diamonds have extracts of water. Everything contains particles of water so water is the fundamental element of everything in the dimension that we live.

How do we transform the water in areas that do not create beautiful particles? Do they have the potential of also becoming elegant and dazzling creations?

ME: First you must understand who you are. And understand the world. And understand water. Most of the world doesn’t understand water, mainly because of capitalism. We haven’t been educated to understand water.

I feel very unhappy that we don’t have enough education about water even though it’s the most important thing. I also believe the scientists in the world are not very serious about researching or studying water and that’s why I feel discouraged and disappointed. Learning about water is the most important responsibility we human beings have.

Water can heal everything. Water can transform us, and can shift our consciousness but we don’t understand or know about it.

Hi I am water. Nice to meet you. We are water. We are surrounded by it and the world is made of this.

So how do the small groups that want to transform and change things do so? 

Only 1 out of 10 people need to understand water and this will bring a vibrational energy shift. Out of every 10% of bad bacteria, there is 90% good. So we always have a chance of this.

The images that we see from your work, is this is reflection or a projection? Is this real or is this a manifestation of magic?

It’s both. We are living in a 3.5 dimension. I believe in a 3.5 dimension where things are in between. What’s to come is the animals will start to question the humans and a plague could even break out. We have to recognize this. We have to understand water. This is the key to our shift in consciousness.

What an inspiring guy. At the end of the dinner, he was singing spanish tunes in the rain outside, and talking about time being only and completely in one moment. 

While some think the work of Dr. Emoto is just a scam to attract new age floozies, the back end of which is a huge money making scheme, his central point seems valid and obvious: vibrational energy.

Thoughts?

Rage against carrots

by samina

“Munch your face off, “Baby carrots eat ‘em like junk food,” “Crunchier than chips,  orang-ier than cheese puffs”

Introducing a 25 million dollar experiment in advertising.

Agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky launches a campaign that pitches carrots as little orange, crunch snacks that are daring, fun and naughty.

It’s the industry’s first ever marketing campaign. “This campaign is about turning baby carrots into a brand,” said Jeff Dunn, CEO of Bolthouse Farms, the nation’s top baby carrot producer with 50 percent of the market, and the most to gain if the market grows. “We think ultimately long-term here we’re going to turn it into a very vital brand in the mind of consumers.”

On their agenda are carrot vending machines, Scarrots as trick or treat delights for Halloween, and the website www.babycarrots.com which features metal music and some dark futuristic voice that chants “baby. Carrots. Extreme”

While marketing reviews have raved about this initiative that entices consumers - mainly school kids -  to munch on something nutritious, there is certainly another perspective to this debate.

Why are carrots posing to be junk snacks in the first place? Frankly this seems like an enormous fallacy, even a bastardization of vegetables. Why are we trying to “junkify” vegetables?

And what’s next?

Chocolate covered carrots? Soon they will be artificialized to tantalize our tastebuds in some way. In fact, baby carrots are already oddly slimy.

What is a baby carrot anyway?

It’s not the youngest carrots of the bunch, but rather it’s a grown up carrot that has been cut up into something bite size.

The broader question is whether or not health food will ever stand on its own merit, particularly for school kids.

Instead of feeding the junk food beast perhaps we can approach goodness from a different perspective, treating the root attitude around it. Instead of making carrots a bad bunch, how about showing all the cool stuff that goes on inside our bodies when we eat healthy food?

How about creating a campaign that shows how happy our insides are eating healthy food? How cool we look from the inside, rather than the outside.

Thoughts? Ideas? Opinions? What country examples do you have that illuminates any different perspectives?

Fancy some sliced up dolphin with your tuna sashimi?

by samina

Courtesy of Lowe Bull for South Africa’s Sustainable Seafood Initiative.

This is what happens when a fish is taken out of the water in a careless environmentally unfriendly way  - one big mess. This poignant print ad from our Cape Town agency aims to navigate consumers around the wishy-washy waters of fish consumption.

It’s about awareness, education, and a call to action.

Creative Director of Lowe Bull Cape Town, Kirk Gainsford says “This campaign is essentially a call to action – urging consumers to take ownership of a global issue. As a result, the print ad had to convey the direct impact of irresponsible fishing practices and evoke a strong emotional reaction.”

Did you know?

The ocean supplies food or income for 2.6 billion people worldwide.

80% of the world´s fish stocks are either overexploited or exploited to their maximum

Bluefin tuna is an endangered species

Only a tenth of the catch in long line tuna fishing is actually tuna. 

An enormous resource base found on their website, our client the South African Sustainable Seafood Foundation (SASSI) has taken some brilliant initiatives to inform and educate everyone involved in the seafood trade - especially us sushi junkies - about the harmful practises of fishing.

Introducing Fish SMS.

Users SMS the name of a fish to a specific hotline, and the service replies to say whether the fish is a green light, orange light, or red light.

Green light species are those that have well-managed populations:

examples: hake, yellowtail

Orange light species are prone to over-fishing

examples: jacopever, kingklip 

Red light species are protected and cannot be legally sold

Examples: bluefin tuna and galjoen 

Lowe Bull Cape Town really proves how advertising - even a simple print ad - can bring awareness and a call to action. Do we have any other examples of this around our network? Fishing? Gaming? Global Warming? What has worked? Hasn’t worked?

painting vs. poster: art vs. commerce

Meet Georgia Taglietti. She’s Head Honcho International PR and Media Boss for Sonar Music Festival, (www.sonar.es) and has been helping to build Sonar in Barcelona for 14 years.  

Georgia and I often meet for lunch conspiring about what it is that creates sound, what inspires new creative movements in the experience of sound – and silence - and how Sonar has reinvented itself and its programs to maintain its creatively stimulating agenda.

Since we’ve been talking about the creativity crisis faced in the US, I invited Georgia to be our first guest speaker on The Pothole, talking about creativity trends in sound.

Sonar is credited as a bastion in sound creations. What is Sonar’s approach for keeping creativity spinning in this area?

“What we do at Sonar is we study sound, the invention of sounds, and the many different platforms that create sound. Even using silence is a type of sound at Sonar. All the sounds that we showcase have to be original and inspiring, and ones that create sound in a deep artistic way. For example, sound created from a plastic sculpture, or sound created by using the human body.

From this pursuit of authentically discovering sound, we are successful in creating trends in this industry. For example, there was no electronic music culture back in 1994 and now it’s very popular. There was no multimedia performance in 1998 and we did it and now it’s very popular. There were no electronic music performances - such as in a mass presentation - not being a rave, and now it’s all over the map. We always have to set the pace. This means that we never repeat ourselves, and we never get back to the past.  We feel the responsibility of having to project creativity in the future.“

You talk about creating sound in a deep artistic way. This is an interesting point related to all aspects of creativity. Sometimes there is a confusion between the commercial representation of creativity, and the artist conception of it. What are your thoughts on how that is related to sound?

“There is a mass conception of sound and an artistic conception of sound. It’s the difference between a painting and a poster. The artist that works with sounds just to play to the audience - that’s a poster, and you can see many posters. However, you can just see one painting. That is an artist that creates one sound in that moment, for you.

We work with this concept in a special section of Sonar called Sonarama. It is the presentation of installations of sound for that moment. They are not performances or songs. These are creations of sound that you can even see through lasers, or images, or playing with tables to create sound. This is art of sound. It’s like being in a museum. That’s the proposition of art.

Music is a composition of sound, however these installations are a structure of sound, how to deconstruct sound, how to manipulate it in lots of ways.

There is sound as material, and then there is getting sound out for the masses.”

How has Sonar adapted its agenda to keep the experience of sound creatively inspiring and evolving?

“We introduced Sonar Kids to the agenda last year. Making the experience for kids. There are workshops on how to play sounds, and how electronic music can be played with computers. And we have a dance school. We try to mix the human touch of dance with the game and computer intervention. If you feed kids only with computers, it’s too passive. However, in order to really learn something actively, there has to be a balance of both.”

Thoughts on the creation of sound, the experience of sound, painting vs poster, how kids learn creatively?

Share your ideas here! 

Creative Diminuendo

by samina virani.

America is facing a “creativity crisis”. Well, the US publication Newsweek declares it so! In a recent article revealing all sorts of alarming statistics such as, since 1990, creativity scores (CQ) in schools have plummeted – particularly amongst kids from kindergarten through 6^th grade.

Here is a link to that article: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html

What’s going on?

Distractions. Well, that’s my opinion. We are living in a matrix of distractions  - bombarded with stimulations and choices that superficially entice us but, for the most part, unnecessarily over exercise part of our brain, while numbing the other.

Our minds invaded by ice cream choices, senseless TV shows, FACEBOOK snooping, too much of stuff that doesn’t mean anything. No wonder there’s no time for creativity. These distraction have seeped into the US schooling systems too where institutions actually open attest that there is no room for a creative curriculum! 

What is creativity anyway?

For me, creativity is a wobbly line between irrational inspiration, and its synthesis into a form, any form. It comes from passion, silence, taking a step back from the world and decoding it to reach into a little portal of something sparkly.

According to our Newsweek article “The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful. Creativity is both divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).”

Why is it important?

Around the world, governments have woken up to this thing called “creative consciousness” and the potential of that in solving the world’s disorder.  It might not be high art that they are rallying for, but at least someone is figuring out that our brains have a wonderful capacity for more than paper pushing and hyperactive consumption.

In 2008 British secondary-school curricula—from science to foreign language—was revamped to emphasize idea generation. The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity, financing teacher training, and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. http://create2009.europa.eu/

This creative drought can be a really interesting space to get creative: to inspire and provoke people’s internal creative inferences and build platforms to synthesize them.

Thoughts on any of the above?

How does your country measure on the creative scales? 

Have you yourself lost the elusive muse?

Any tips on how to find the trickster?