blogs.conchango.com

Last week, a creative called Paul Arden lost his battle with a long-term illness.

While you might not realise it, you probably know the man’s work even though you may not recognise the name. Remember the hundreds of people walking from the sea to converge as a big smiling face for British Airways? Or the iconic branding device of a slash in purple silk? These are just two examples of Paul’s great work, created while he was creative director at Saatchi and Saatchi.

In later life, he defied his own words, “I am not a writer. I am afraid of words” and penned two great books, Its not how good you are, its how good you want to be and Whatever you think, think the opposite. I call books like these ‘bathroom books’ – they are easy to read from whichever page you hit first, they can be read cover to cover before the water gets cold and the content is more important than their waterproof qualities. Both are thought provoking, providing any creative with that often-needed burst of optimism and inspiration.

Apparently in life, Paul Arden insulted and inspired in equal measure. Read the books for a taste of the latter.

 
http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-How-Good-Want/dp/0714843377
http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-You-Think-Opposite/dp/B000JMK8R4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208241823&sr=1-2

So here I go. The first blog. I had said that there was no real reason for me to blog in order to achieve what I wanted to in 2008. How wrong that was! Now more than ever, it feels that communicating through this channel about what we are doing is more important than ever! Why? Well, there is a lot of activity going on in Conchango's creative studio and its hard to market it directly - both internally or externally. Some of the work is pretty confidential. However, we can talk about some of the general principles and I can get some valuable feedback from you. So this will be a 'work in progress' kinda blog. I'll ask questions and make the most of the answers I get back.

Right now, I am thinking about what 'brand' means and more forward thinking, what Total Experience Design could mean - both to the team and to our clients who might develop it with us. The reason for this? So that I can be clear about the our goal and the strategies that will help get us there.

I am starting by describing what a brand platform is. You can see a diagram of a brand platform here.

It starts simple but there's another level or two of granularity to go down to when I have time. For example, corporate identity is made up of about a dozen elements and each one needs to be managed.

The next step will be to layer on the services we provide (e.g. Performance Measurement reports) and some aspects of our methodologies (e.g. aspects of User Centered Design - like journeys). This should give us a multi-dimensional view of what brand experience design and management really means. After all, thats what Conchango really does.

So here are two questions. Why is blogging software so counter intuitive and secondly, what do you think might be in each aspect of the personality wheel? And if you're really keen, do it from a Conchango perspective.

You never know. You might be tested on this later!