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August 20, 2009
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June 29, 2009
June 27, 2009
June 24, 2009
PICNIC - PICNIC Goes New York
I'm very excited to be a part of the PICNIC Salon being held here in NYC next week. Amsterdam is one of my very favorite cities and it's events like PICNIC that help make Amsterdam the creative city it is. My experience at PICNIC two years ago introduced me to some great work being done around the world and I certainly look forward to attending PICNIC again in the future. During this workshop, we are being asked to participate in one of three discussion tables:
- The Augmented Cities table is all about how our cities can be enriched with virtual services and entertainment that merge with the cityscape and adapt to the ever-changing dynamic of the city and its people. As technology pushes forward new possibilities arise to create new urban services and experiences that engage & stimulate residents in new ways.
- The Connected Cities table deals with new ways to connect the growing number of city dwellers to the communities that they choose. And not only the people connect - the Internet of Things enables communication with your car, the traffic light & your favorite coffee machine. How to find, meet, bond, collaborate within people & objects who might be around the block or on the other side of the planet. Issues of trust, privacy and information overload compete with efficiency & serendipity. What is needed and what definitely not?
- The Sustainable Cities table deals with reducing the ecological footprint of a person, a block, the neighborhood and the city. With new visualizations & techniques we can expose patterns & suggest new ones to facilitate a new lifestye. But this change itself needs to be sustainable and this is more difficult to achieve. Bottom-up merges with top-down strategies when we provide the platforms, not the applications, that help people to help themselves. What can we learn & what should we do?
If you have any questions or thoughts that you'd like me to share with the groups, please leave them for me as comments here and I'll make sure to post them to the appropriate group. I'll also be blogging from the event and make sure that I get the discussions up as they're happening. I'm sure that it will be a very provocative and inspiring day. Look for #picnicsalon to follow me on Twitter on Monday.
PICNIC Salon New York is a gathering of world-class creatives, brand innovators, thought-leaders and city officials from both Amsterdam and New York. This high-level networking event is a unique opportunity to reinforce our cross-cultural relationships, make new contacts, and further creative and commercial collaboration between the two cities.PICNIC Salon New York is a one-day event that will offer a taste of the PICNIC '09 program, including a special presentation from the Green Challenge, as well as a Creative Workshop & Brainstorm session with leading innovators from Amsterdam and New York. Featured speakers include Russell Shorto, author, contributing writer for the New York Times and Director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam and Carolien Gerhels, Deputy Major of Amsterdam.
PICNIC - PICNIC Goes New York.
June 16, 2009
A Tribute to My Dad
Five years ago today, my Dad passed away. While he had been sick for a long time, it was still a surprise when he died and it seemed like it all happened pretty suddenly. I still miss him every day and especially when things are going rough. He was a lot of fun, although I may not have known it at the time. I think of all of the times that he dragged me to do things with him and how much I sometimes resented it at the time. Couldn't I play with my friends instead of helping work on the car, I remember thinking back then. Now I'm grateful for the time that I had with him. Or maybe I'm hoping that Sydney feels good about all of the time I drag her to things.
We always had a lot of fun with my Dad. Well, maybe not always, but hey, who did really always have a great time with their folks! But a lot of times, we had a great time. He was a depression era child, and he brought that into his life for sure. There were things that just didn't happen in our house, we certainly didn't do things very extravagantly. But don't let that sound like a negative.
There were a lot of laughs in our house and our house was almost always a focal point of the neighborhood. We had an above ground pool and in the summer, our house was the frequent center for everyone. We had lots of pool parties and fueled by Uncle Tom's mystery jungle juice, we had a lot of bbq's when the adults decided it was easier to stay at our house then go home and cook. And, in the winter, my Dad would flood the back yard and we'd turn in into a skating rink. No jungle juice then, but we still had lots of fun!
Our house was always open for whoever stopped by and it seemed like there were always people there. I wish I had a bigger place now so I could open my house like my parents did. The spirit of hospitality that my parents showed us growing up has stayed with me today and I'm thankful for that. I hope that we'll pass that along to Sydney as well, it would be one of the best legacies of my Dad & Mom.
Dad could make me crazy to (something he's already passed along from me to Sydney!). One time, while I was visiting them with Sydney in Florida, I lost the car keys at a concert and it took me a long time to find them in the field. I got home later then I was expecting and there was my Dad, sitting up & ready to give me a lecture about being late. I think that I was 42 and he was still lecturing me about things like that.
One of my favorite stories of Sydney & my Dad actually occurred after my Dad's funeral. My father passed away when Sydney was just over 3 years old. My folks lived in Florida, so we didn't see them all the time, but Sydney spoke to my folks on the phone all the time and she has some remarkably strong memories of him. My Dad was sick for about a year before he passed away, but his death was pretty quick & unexpected when it happened. We went down for the funeral and it was Sydney's first time dealing with death, so we tried to keep her calm as much as possible.
After the funeral, Sydney & I went for a walk through their neighborhood, just the 2 of us. Near the end of our walk, she looked up at some clouds and said "That cloud looks like Grandpa watching down on us." She paused and then added "Or maybe it's a goat."
When we got back to my parents house, I told my Mom what Sydney said and we all had our first laugh of the day.
Another thing from my Dad was that we never, and I mean never, passed a cemetery without my Dad saying "You know, people are just dying to get in there." And it's really fun for me that today whenever we pass a cemetery, it's Sydney who says that!
In the five years since my Dad has been gone, a lot has happened in my life. But what I'm most saddened by is that he's not getting to watch Sydney grow up and become the great kid she's become. That's the hardest thing for me. Thankfully, my Mom is still around and doing very well and she'll be up near us in NJ this summer, so Sydney will get to spend a lot of time with her and her new beau, Bob, who we all like a lot. We're certainly happy to see my Mom happy, that's for sure.
I miss being able to talk to my Dad every Saturday when I walked to meet Kristen & Sydney at work, even if sometimes we only talked about the weather. I miss watching him play with Sydney and how excited she was when she got to fly planes with him on the computer. I miss his sense of fun and his enjoyment of life and I miss just goofing around with him.
So, rest in peace Dad. I'm sure that you're arranging all kinds of fun things for people to do in heaven and making sure everyone up there has a good laugh. I know that you look down at us and especially Sydney and you would love the person she's becoming. I miss you.
Sydney & my Dad would play on his flight simulator games for hours!
June 06, 2009
June 04, 2009
June 02, 2009
Rethinking the Mall - Allison Arieff Blog - NYTimes.com
If you haven’t seen this piece by Allison Arieff and you're in the mall business, you should certainly be taking a look. Many of the things we’ve been talking about for years are things that people are just now exploring. The key take away is that the business model of the big mall needs to change, both from a back-end and a front end.
I think that back in 2005, iTunes became the 7th or 8th largest music store in the United States. Think about that. They have no real estate, at least none dedicated specifically to iTunes, and carry no inventory. They don't have to pay for sales staff or worry about returns. And if you look at the typical Apple store, a great deal of its space is dedicated to social functions, not traditional retail functions. Now, if you're a large record store chain, this has got to be a huge challenge. You've got all of this real estate dedicated primarily of the inventory management of music and yet more and more people are buying their music online.
What's always interesting to me is that people in one industry can look at another and say "How can they not see that every thing's changed and they need to change" without looking internally at their own industry. We think that mall developers need to look at their business model in addition to the redesign on the physical space. Many work on a rent + a percentage of sales model, but will that still play in a world where people do more window shopping in the mall and more actual buying online? And, as we ask retail clients all the time, what happens to your retail space if you take away inventory management? Look what I said back in 2006:
So, if the retail space might become more of a showroom and if people don’t mind shopping and having their purchases drop shipped, then what’s the impact on the real estate itself? We see it becoming a much more vibrant and alive social space. A place for people to gather and share their experiences through the brand, rather then sharing their experiences of the brand. Look at the Apple store. Lots of people talking to one another. The theatres where you can learn together as a community. Even the Genius Bar. It’s much more of a social space.So, what is the value of real estate for retailers today? Does a record store really need to exist as it's been for the past 40+ years? Or banks, grocery stores, fashion retailers? If, thanks to the internet, people are much more comfortable getting their purchases sent to them, rather then getting them right away, do we need that much space dedicated to merchandise? So, if we can do away with the inventory portion of most retail spaces today, what else would you do with the space? How could you make it a much more social environment, rather then being a retail environment? After all, this is exactly why places like Starbuck's or the Apple stores have boomed -- they created a social space, rather then a retail space.
Had a conversation recently with some friends a few weeks ago and we were talking about the economy and everything happening. A couple of us thought that if this was a really hot summer, people would be looking to places like malls to stay cool and keep their own a/c costs down. If I can walk around the local mall for a few hours on a weekend, I won't have to run my own a/c and that will save me money. We're already seeing people go to the movies more, it's a pretty good entertainment value these days.
Here's what Allison thought was the best entry:
Malls will not only generate sales, they will “grow food, create crafts, manufacture products, generate energy, and provide education.” As an antidote to time spent online, argue the CommArts folks, the mall becomes a social center, a “spectacle of hands-on demos, lectures, performances, classes, tastings, parties, and shows.” Further, the national sameness we now experience (Gap? Check. Victoria’s Secret? Check.) will morph into something more one-off, more local, more cause-oriented.Utopic? Perhaps, but with dried-up financing, minimal consumer demand and the Chapter 11 filing last month by the second largest mall-operator in the country, it’s time to think differently. So bravo to ICSC for holding this competition in the first place. We’ve seen tremendous shopping innovation with online retailers specializing in uniqueness and craft like etsy, sustainable materials and business practices like Nau or customer service like Zappo’s; now it’s time for that innovation to hit the strip. And not just the Vegas one.
In fact, I’ve already seen something akin to Crossroads City implemented on a neighborhood scale. The Ainsworth Collective, a group of some 50 households in Portland, Oregon’s Cully neighborhood that came together out of a mutual interest in sustainability and community, have created a micro-economy within their few square blocks. They’ve published a directory of services provided by neighbors (from tax preparation to massage services to cat-sitting), encouraging local transactions. They’ve instituted tool-sharing, car-sharing, bulk food-purchasing and even own a farmer’s market that sells produce, baked goods and other items made by its members. There may always be mega-malls, but developers and architects would be remiss in not exploring grassroots solutions like this.
But, while people look at Starbuck's or the Apple stores and say "Yea, that's great for them, but it doesn't apply to me," they're missing a huge opportunity today. I think there's a coming trend to socialize the retail environment instead of just merchandising the real estate space. And the more we try to use the space for our purposes rather then our guests, the more they'll stay away...
CommArts Entry
Hobbs + Black Entry
Colman Architects
May 29, 2009
Virtual reality isn't just about technology, nous still counts. (28-JUL-95) Campaign
Was using the Google search timeline function (which is pretty cool, BTW) and came across this article from 1995. I said some pretty smart things, if I do say so myself! And this was really a fun gig to work on, kinda' miss my event days sometimes.
"When Joe six-pack can sit on his sofa," a delegate at Apple Computer's recent New Media conference in Los Angeles, said, "with Cindy Crawford in one arm, perhaps for $2.99 an hour, virtual reality will make crack look like decaffeinated coffee. "Virtual reality., with its 3D picture of a made-up world, is a godsend in persuasion, since it provides the user with his own path through an information universe. But are advertisers ready for virtual reality as a marketing tool yet?
Virtual reality can be a simple three-dimensional world on a computer screen, through which the customer moves using the keyboard or a joystick. Or it might be "immersive", requiring a headset that displays a panoramic world. Either way, objects on the screen can be viewed, queried, selected or bought.
J. Walter Thompson took up the virtual-reality theme in a Kit Kat commercial this year. The film's director, Matt Forrest, set the action in a virtual-reality shopping mall, which a character flies through on a hi-tech magic carpet looking for a snack. "Sooner or later, someone was going to do a virtual-reality ad," the JWT creative director, Jaspar Shelbourne, says. "And I am very pleased JWT got there first."
Involvement is important, but a more measurable facet of interactive media is the feedback it offers on how a product is perceived. By letting a potential customer drive a "virtual car", for instance, the manufacturer can find out how attractive it is before the car is even built, perhaps giving the customer a discount guarantee if they commit to buying at such a nearly stage.
From her base in California, Aimee Rosewall, an independent marketing consultant, has watched virtual-reality technology develop. She sees it as a fragile extension of the traditional one-to-one selling relationship. "Rather than coming and talking at you, I can involve you in my message." she explains. "The problem with the way most modern technology is handled in marketing is that it is too complicated, or expects too much from people to make it happen. The danger is you have customers who are more confused than they were at the beginning."
One of the most impressive virtual-reality marketing applications to date is the Cutty Sark rum stand. currently touring the US. Rosewall helped Anheuser-Busch put the project together with the New York-based tour managers, CyberEvent. A visitor to the stand wears a headset while sitting on a small wooden bench with a boat's tiller in one hand.
In this virtual world, they experience the voyages of Captain William McCoy as he sailed his rum around the world. Steering the ship with the tiller, the Cutty Sark -- with brand name prominent -- is guided into harbour. On either side, other rum traders unload their products and, the soundtrack explains, water down their rum before selling it. Captain McCoy insisted on keeping his rum pure and, in doing so, coined the phrase "the real McCoy".
Dave Polinchock, the president of CyberEvent, thinks the Cutty Sark campaign is successful simply because it does not confuse the brand with the technology. Early experiments with virtual reality made a point of showing off the latest state-of-the art developments, but campaign managers found they were outshining the very product they were supposed to sell. "In the early 90s, people were using virtual reality as the story, rather than using it to tell the story," Polinchock says.
The first lesson for using any technology in marketing, he says, is to make the technology invisible and work on the content, not forgetting that people like to have fun. (Emphasis mine)
And entertainment is one of the three core values Paul Holt at CIA Interactive puts forward for virtual reality. As a consultant to British Telecom's ICE (Information, Communications and Entertainment) project, which is researching how to deliver commercial services into people's homes, Holt sees the technology providing a new angle, but it remains secondary to the message. "Inform, communicate and entertain. As long as you do one of those, you'll be fine," he says.
There are some significant obstacles to using virtual reality, not least the fact that badly understood technology results in an uncertain message being communicated to the user. Over-complicated technologies, or computers for their own sake, promote technophobia and turn people away from the message.
To this end, Holt suggests that anyone considering virtual reality should be thoroughly familiar with two-dimensional interactive media, such as the Internet, before moving into three. Learning to be creative with the online medium is a valuable lesson in how to construct a path around information that would be too dense in a linear format. The user must also be able to retreat still carrying a clear image of the brand.
It's obvious really. Polinchock uses what is becoming a wellknown metaphor in North American marketing: "If you went to a book conference and said you thought content was important, they'd look at you as if you were a moron. Yet we're talking like content is something new." (Emphasis mine)
Europe has an especially reserved approach to cutting-edge technology. Rosewall thinks it could be an advantage: "Europe will take a different route, and a little reservation could be beneficial. America is always pushing for the new, but faster may not be the answer anymore."
This is not a warning to keep away, however. "Mix the technologies," she says. "You can't just invest in one technology because you'll miss someone, and that doesn't make business sense."
COPYRIGHT 1995 Haymarket Business Publications Ltd.
Virtual reality isn't just about technology, nous still counts. (28-JUL-95) Campaign.
May 28, 2009
August 2009
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