Last summer I got on a train leaving Stockholm for Gothenburg. Together with freelancing project manager, planner and colleague Caroline Karlström I had a meeting set up with diving brand Poseidon. This was the start of a project where I truly had the opportunity to work with all aspects of branding and creative communication.
A dream project.
Ingvar Elfström, the founder of Poseidon back in 1958.
The Background
Back in 1958 this brand was founded by a young Swedish diver, Ingvar Elfström. Since then the brand has become famous for unique, different and great products. However over the last couple of years they’ve lost speed when it comes to innovation and marketing initiatives.
But then something happened. The company was bought by a small group of investors three years back. Headed by visionaire Kurt Sjöblom they set out on a journey – to develop the first ever automated rebreather for recreational divers.
This was why we were there. About a year from launch Kurt and his team felt they needed to do something about the brand. And after a successful meeting that actually started with me diving [click to continue…]
This last year, 2009 has been a blast in many ways. Almost every day I’ve received interesting news from friends, other bloggers and my RSS feeds. Even thought we’ve seen one of the most severe economical downturns this year it seems advertising, communication and technology has been the business to be in.
Brands seem to have learned from the history and brand spend has rather gone up than down for a lot of brands. We’ve also seen Twitter and Facebook continue to grown faster than anything else on the planet and social media and open technologies has prospered due to that fact. The iPhone has continued to grow and Android is picking up it’s pace. Google has released lots of new cool products even though the Wave didn’t really become the clean double over head a lot of us expected.
Most brands have been looking for one-offs and as I look back at the 2009 Cannes Lions winners it strikes me that I can’t really remember one single campaign that stood out and changed the world of advertising. We’re slowly moving away from bought space to earned space, this is most certainly the reason why my brain plays these tricks with me.
I’m not gonna spend more of this post summing up 2009. Other people, papers, bloggers and personalities has done a great job doing this already. Instead let’s move on to 2010.
Click for a larger image
Here are the Brand and communication predictions for 2010 by Johan Ronnestam
REAL
This is more of a change in how we live, consume, work, advertise and communicate. We will of course use all technology available to become more real but we will strive to make things more realistic, true [click to continue…]
The Mobile Revolution. Have you heard that one before. Well, just when it’s about to happen thanks to the iPhone and the Android OS I’d like to launch a thought about the next revolution – ‘The Revolution of the Screens’.
A couple of month back I got my Amazon Kindle. I blogged about the Microsoft Courier interface earlier this year. Others and me keep buzzing about what the Apple Tablet will be like, if there will ever be one (of course it will). Google launched their Chrome OS just over a week ago. Last week I read that the new Barnes & Noble Nook has sold out for the Holidays this year. And a couple of days ago I blogged about the New York Times Skimmer interface.
The Nook – Barnes & Nobles answer to Amazon Kindle
People and companies keep talking about how we all will move our behavior and communication onto the mobile when in fact my firm belief is that in 2010 we’ll see [click to continue…]
You might be one of the lucky ones finding yourself logged into your brand new Google Wave account? Then you, just like me, might also think something must be wrong with you since you’re not getting what all the hype is about.
Google themselves has launched a couple of videos showcasing the possibilities with the Wave but now when it’s for real the tool just doesn’t live up to the promises. The video from Epipheo Studio might be a better alternative but it’s still just a short video raising expectations without really teaching you how to do stuff for real.
Don’t worry! Here comes The Complete Guide to Google Wave!
The website features 10 sections and I especially like that they’ve also outlines what the Wave cannot do. This is according to my experience one of the main problems with many guides – you’re not getting the negatives. And usually when you don’t find the instructions to how something is done it’s due to the fact that it cannot be done, only no one tells you that so you keep searching for ever.
Lot’s of techie posts lately by the way. Soon I’ll switch to love and emotions!
En optimal webbnärvaro går generellt ut på att placera sig ett steg före konkurrenterna på en mognadstrappa som står i förhållande till den egna branschens, substituts eller andra framåt- eller bakåtintegrerande aktörers digitalisering.
En mognadstrappa där översta steget är total digitalisering av såväl affär som, marknadsföring, organisation och operations. [click to continue…]
Creatives all over the world do their best to visualize their ideas when pitching clients, preparing for photo shoots or simply putting their ideas on paper. Apart from sketching with Sketchbook Pro I’ve personally been using Flickr and Google Image Search combined with Photoshop for ages. Lately I’ve added Bing and iStockphoto to the list. It’s a time consuming process but it’s usually getting my message across.
Today however I’ve seen the light. A new web based application(down at the moment due to high traffic) that I found on Mashable let’s you draw your ideas and then it composes an image out of that doodle of yours. It’s made by five Chinese Computer Science and Technology students at Tsinghua University and the National University of Singapore and it’s sick!
Whatever kind of ides you’ve got in your head – it’s now easier than ever to get a matching photo. Draw and you will conquer! Here’s a video explaining what this mind-boggling thing does:
We live in the best of times. It’s all happening now!
Thomas Traxler has got his shit together. Powered by nothing but sunlight and some threads, Thomas Traxler’s “The idea of a tree project” shows us how objects can grow during the course of a day. His project more or less mimics the way a tree grows and changes shape due to weather conditions. Amazing.
Thomas got exactly the characteristic you need in order to create future communication. The competence of combining art, technology and while caring for the nature into ideas that get noticed.
And now to a very sensitive issue – monitoring. As some of you know my profession is leading brands into the future of communication. One of the more important parts of this is teaching them how to keep track of their own brands in the jungle of conversation. What are people saying about my brand, where does the conversation take place and how can we respond to it – simple questions really.
However, quite many brands don’t have a clue on how to do this or even worse – they haven’t even started to think about tracking conversations related to their brands.
When I speak about this we often end up talking about me and how I track my own brand. I try to keep track of every conversation out there that in one way or another has my name or brand in it. As often as I can I also listen to, respond or in other ways take the conversation into account – just as any brand should.
One of my Netvibes dashboards that I use to monitor Ronnestam online
Since sharing is caring – here is how to track keywords online on a daily basis without paying for it. NOTE – this doesn’t give you a 100% guarantee and the more generic your brand is the harder it is to monitor it, then professional help might be your solution. It also applies better to smaller brands rather than large ones. But you will gain some [click to continue…]
Spotted this wonderful video showcasing a series of round balls that generate different sounds as the audience bounce them around.
It’s a great ’stunt’ performed by Intellijel in collaboration with Danjel Van Tijn at the Siggraph 2009. Give people something fun and innovative to interact with and they’ll do just that. Listen to the audience laughing [...]
As I was browsing the ‘best of the week 63 on the Abduzeedo.com blog (abducted by design) I fell in love with this image showcasing how the Virgin logo has been stretched into different business areas.
Isn’t it cool when someone has created a logo so simplistic that it can be put into any context without [...]
Mark this weekend in your calendars. TEDx is coming to Sweden and it’s thanks to Teo Härén & Fredrik Härén and Henrik Ahlén who’ve been the driving forces behind getting TEDx here.
The first event is beeing held north of Stockholm with about 40 people attending the party and I’m honored to be one of them. [...]
The Matsu’s wine triology, ‘El Pícaro’, ‘El Recio’ and ‘El Viejo’
Today on TheDieline I ran into the company ‘Vintae Luxury Wine Specialists’. Vintae is Spanish based company that specialize in top of the range and luxury wines.
Not only do they have a great wine portfolio. Together with Spanish agency Moruba, they’ve designed some wonderful bottles [...]
ronnestam.com was voted Sweden’s first blog on Innovation, future trends and digital communication. It’s written by Johan Ronnestam. He's widely regarded as one of Sweden’s leading speakers and authorities in the field of modern creative and conceptual thinking and skill of innovating brands and their communication.
