Just in time for Spring, DesertX lured us to Palm Springs, a city rich in mid-century style, architecture and retro signage - three things we love and tend to seek out. On through April 21, 2019 in the Coachella Valley, this freshly minted biennial is a brilliant fusion of art and environment, where contemporary artists stage their works against the dramatic landscapes, leaving us in a state of hypnosis.
Read MoreThe experiential grounds of The Vitra Campus is a thrilling place to discover modern architectural and built environment concepts. The Campus is open to the public via tours of key structures and the architects behind them. With over 330,000 visitors a year, this special campus has the most concentrated collection of buildings by world-famous architects, than anywhere else in the world.
Read More“Design is an expression of the purpose.” Charles Eames // As the most important exponents of organic design, Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated how good design can improve quality of life and human understanding and knowledge. One of their top lessons here are the Case Study Houses - built in 1949, No. 8 was a celebration of indoor-outdoor living, and for the Eameses it became a laboratory for their shared life and work.
Read MoreAssouline’s ‘In the Spirit of...’ series may cause severe cases of wanderlust (and should be read with your travel planner in hand). This iconic book publisher is known for the best of the best editorials on iconic travel destinations and specialty subjects. From Gstaad to Rio, Harlem to the Hamptons, we’ve found great design inspiration in these beautifully-curated pages.
Read MoreWe’re in a Gerhard Richter frame-of-mind, and this gorgeous book, Panorama is the most extensive representation of his career to date. Including his work from the 1950s to present - from paintings to sculptures, drawings and photographs - it’s a fantastic deep dive into the artistic journey of Richter. And when it comes to squares, they haven't been the same since Josef Albers applied his spectrum of colors to them.
Read MoreWhile in Venice exploring the Architecture Biennale, we enjoyed a private visit to the Furnace of Orsoni - the only mosaic tile furnace still functioning in the historic center of Venice. Orsoni has revived the city's Byzantine mosaic style and remains an icon in the artisan craftwork communities. They use the same techniques since 1888 to produce 24K gold leaf mosaics, colored gold and Venetian smalti in more than 3,500 colors.
Read MoreA lot of companies treat their brands as "stories to be told". In this post we explain how this framing makes brands overly reliant on third parties, typically media companies, to keep them in the public eye. We also show why this approach is so damaging to long-term brand health, and propose a different way of understanding your brand that can lead to long-term growth and success.
Read MoreThe so-called Shirky Principle states that institutions only survive by NOT solving the problems that they set out to solve. In this post we explore what this means for brands. Specifically, we look at how framing a brand promise that's forever slightly out of reach might well be the best path to success for a business.
Read MoreThe inexorable march of the software industry across the global economy continues unabated. Incumbent and after incumbent goes from skepticism, to panic, to obsolescence. It's now apparent to everyone not living in a bunker that the level of disruption, great as it has been, will only increase. There will be no more "status quo", at least, not for the rest of my life, or yours. What's a business to do?
Read MoreTraditional brand metrics are too slow, internet era brand metrics are too superficial; brand managers need a third type of metric for a complete and actionable view of brand health.
Read MoreA lot of ink has been spilled (and money spent) on trying to convince companies that the goal of having a brand is to get people to fall in love with your business. While nobody's going to argue that having customers who love you is a bad thing, too much focus on this from the outset could distract brands from more important work that creates more enduring sources of value for customers and the companies that serve them.
Read MoreHaving points of difference is the lifeblood of branding. Without it, you're a commodity. Finding those points is the easy part, the hard part is finding ones that others are unwilling or unable to imitate. Differentiation is exponentially harder in professional services, where the barriers to entry and imitation are almost non-existent. One of the ways we have achieved differentiation in this market is through a greater willingness to stick our necks out in an industry that's notoriously risk-averse. It has taken us places others are unwilling to go, and it compounds on itself by giving us unique learning experiences that others in our industry are not being exposed to.
Read More...In almost every category of business, the current approach leads to managers seeking to squeeze a few more percentage points of revenue out of business practices that they have already optimized, over and over again, in many cases going back decades.
Managers end up ignoring bigger opportunities because they don't fit neatly into the established paradigms implied by existing measurement systems. Put simply, the needs of the measurement system start to outweigh the broader need of the business (to grow, to add value, to win).
Read MoreMany brand managers are happy to talk about disruption. Talk, as the saying goes, is cheap; too often, actions fail to keep pace with good intentions. Until more brand managers embrace the transformational opportunities of mobile, social and the emerging Internet of things, the future will remain un-evenly distributed.
Read MoreHighlights from Social Media Today's Expert series, featuring Mary Elise Chavez, discussing 2014's notable trends in the tech and social space.
Read MoreHighlights from a MillennialTalk wearable tech panel featuring Emotif's Founder, Simon Pearce, and ECD, Mary Elise Chavez.
Read More"The internet has squeezed the end user to the product" - this has fundamentally changed how brands are built today. My presentation, originally given at the WinWin Business Accelerator Conference 2014, explores the many facets that make up a truly great brand of today.
Read MoreFirst there was WoW, then there was Second Life, now there’s Oculus. Exploratory worlds can be a place of escape, but also a place of great inspiration. When Linden Lab created the platform for Second Life, it was exactly that, a platform on which to build - this is a great study of where a passionate audience can take a platform. Literally building out this virtual world brick by brick, the documentary Life 2.0 takes you inside this world in which many people live many hours of their real lives.
Read MorePanelists at Social Media Today's #SocBizShakeup Breakfast discussed how to build a socially-engaged workforce today, utilize big data, and empower employees through relationship-building tools. Here are a few highlights from the panelists.
Read MoreI caught up with IBM's Sandy Carter at this year's South by Southwest Interactive conference to talk about the ROI of social media, overcoming the social "fear factor" in the boardroom and what it takes for an enterprise to be ready for social.
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