Winning clients is hard. Keeping them over time is even harder. Many of you might read this blog in order to do just that – win and keep clients. Then let me share my point of view on the subject.
How to hit your target
Innovation is what awards you with new accounts.
This is key. If your in a pitch situation you will not win by simply telling the client about your process, thoughts on strategy etc. The client have decided to try new blood and that means he/she wants just that – new blood. You will win clients by showing your [click to continue…]
I have always been a great fan of Dyson. A company truly based on innovation. First famous for their vacuum cleaners they’ve now released a fan(updated) without any blades.
This video below shows people being confronted with the hairdryer for the first time and it’s a perfect example of true innovation and the consequences of it. When was the last time your product made people react like this?
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…]
I‘ve spent some time this evening browsing my favorite packaging site The Dieline. That’s when I suddenly realized I should blog about packaging today.
When I speak about creativity and innovation and how it must be a part of every interaction (especially packaging) you have with your customers one of the most common replies I get is: “How can I make use of what you say in my business. We don’t have a sexy product”. Wrong question!
Today no one, no matter what kind of product you market, can overlook the fact that your customers lead a stressed life. People want to be entertained. We want drama. We want smiles. We want to feel. Everything is about entertainment and drama! Brand owners – inject emotion into your products or eject yourselves from your position!
The one question you should ask yourselves when it comes to packaging is: “Does my packaging make people smile”
Here are 10 brands that obviously have understood that you can make something out of anything.
1. Rellana Wool – Making Yarn Come Alive
This wonderful wool packaging concept called Wolly Heads was made by Ogilvy Frankfurt- It’s one of my absolute favorites. They’ve turned something very ordinary into something [click to continue…]
Last week I was contacted by Superbrands. The company that releases a book with the same name. I was asked to write a post on their blog about Branding. I know I’ve got some followers interested in that subject so I’ve decided to post the same article here too.
Back in 2000 a flash based message containing the phrase ‘All your base are belong to us’ spread like wildfire through emails and internet forums. Back then most of you had probably not heard about viral marketing, web 2.0 and social networks. Facebook and Twitter were still 6 years away from being established and most brands didn’t bother to much about digital marketing.
About the same time Nike took their first stumbling steps towards a digital brand strategy. Back then Nike would probably not know that their global strategy would be [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!
This post is probably most stupid post one can write since CEO’s and board members seems to have decided to stay behind with the dinosaurs while the rest of us look for new ground where we can thrive and prosper. Basically on average they read three local newspapers of their own choice, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and watch a couple of TV channels. They haven’t got a clue about blogs, feed readers and social networks. But I’ll give it a go anyway.
Dear CEO and board member. In most cases you’re probably +40 years old. You have a wife, two kids and live in a house that cost above average. Two cars in the garage and a [click to continue…]
This weekend I was one of the privileged ones attending the second TEDxStockholm with among others Hans Rosling speaking. TEDxStockholm is a place for people who believe in the power of ideas and inspiring talks to help shape the face of the future.
A great picture by Gitta Wilén from the first TEDxStockholm. Can you spot me?
Together with another 200 people(who like me created their own name tag) I spent the sunny Saturday inside a cellar and I’ll tell you – if I could have turned myself into a Bat I’d still be there hanging up side down, still inspired still amazed. Thank you Teo Härén and Henrik Ahlen for turning my Sunday into a joyride !
My TEDxStockholm name tag
Once home I spent the evening with some friends who had never heard about TED and once again I realized how few people in this country who actually know about the whole TED.com thing.
Nobody, absolutely nobody should spend their life on this wet bowling ball of ours that we call Mother Earth without having spent at least 10 hours of their life on TED.com.
TED is about sharing thoughts on innovation, ideas, research, knowledge and passion. And since I’m personally all about passion I’d like to share one my favorite speeches from TED before you go on and explore on your own. Here is Isabel Allende telling you tales about passion in the most passionate way one can imagine
So, even though this post feels like the most obvious post I’ve ever written I just have to make one thing sure – ALL OF YOU! GO TO TED.COM now if you haven’t been there before. Learn and become inspired.
A great site for finding inspiration is Fubiz. Their tagline ‘Daily Doze of Inspiration’ says it all. This morning when I was preparing for a speech on the ‘DNA of Creativity’ next week at an event arranged by Cap & Design, one of Swedens leading design magazine I stumbled on this wonderful video below from [...]
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.
Innovation is a strange thing. The best of innovations usually happens when someone takes something established from the world of culture and ads a twist or adapt it to future needs. Weiden & Kennedy’s great Honda COG pastiche on Peter Fischli & David Weiss’s art expression ‘The Way Things Go‘ is the perfect example on [...]
About 2 month ago this video below showing the next generation controls for XBOX360 – The Natal – was uploaded to YouTube. It was first showed at the E3 Expo in L.A.
The question is – can the XBOX 360 Natal really be this good. I mean, look at how it senses small arm movements, hands [...]
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.
