Objects in Relation – A Spring bike ride through Barcelona architecture and design
Out my window I see these wonderful ovals that remind me of Cameos.
Like this Bottega Venetta Cameo necklace via shopstyle
Or…
Like a dress by by my favorite designer, Manoush from Paris
trop mignon! here’s another…
These Manoush earrings look very Barcelona, actually very Spain.
which reminds me of these girls in front of me at the Fleet Foxes show during Primavera Sound
Oh look! Mesh like hairnets around street lamps on Calle Ferran, Barcelona
like this NOOK chair by Henry Sgourakis via @Contemporist
or the filigree-like latticework of this one-off chair by Louise Campbell via @ bonluxat.com
Another street lamp seen on my bike ride today. I couldn’t find a design counterpart by the time of this posting.
Can you?
Look at this painted wall outside an architect’s studio in barrio gotico,
a bit like a Jonathan Adler design
And reminiscent of the mad-men-esque designs of Se this past season, like this “I only have eyes for you” coffee table by James Hayon for Se in stainless steel
Look at this fantastic vignette:
reminds me of this Cumulus modular lamp by Sebastian Jansson
Part of the fabric of design in Barcelona are the markets. They are iconic and epic. A fish head, even a gigantic fish head, is not an uncommon site. (photo by visiting friend and photographer, Michael Sharkey)
Inspires me to find a much smaller fish – to put into this delicate aquarium by Amaury Poudray
And that’s what I spied with my little eye on one of the first hot, sunny, skirt-and-flip-flop days of the season here in Barcelona.
All Barcelona street photos by Chauncey Zalkin
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Paint By Numbers: Why Marketing TO Women Makes Me Uneasy
Fast Co is on my shortlist of go-to news sources for innovation and new ideas in business. It’s also a go-to place for design. They have columnists who I really respect and admire, people with experience and associations I continually learn from – so I was surprised to find a really simplistic ‘top ten ways to market’ type article on how to reach women because I don’t think women can be marketed to in a paint by numbers way – but also I like to think we are moving beyond the idea of ‘marketing to’ and instead thinking about catering to – meeting needs, enhancing lives, engaging with authentic and meaningful stories, which is a very different thing then marketing. Development by design rather than development by changing the message, that’s what I believe in.
The title of the article is: Women Dominate The Global Market Place; (yes, true) Here Are 5 Keys To Reaching Them (already smacks of sinister intent). I’m going to now go through some assumptions within the article that I think need addressing and then arrive at the surprise ending where the author lists beliefs that I think are totally true and where I think the article should have begun, instead of ending. Maybe the author, like me years ago, feels she has a lot more to say but instead worries that these paint by number articles of well worn facts are the only thing that people will read because it’s what they expect and what her shareholders and clients expect. (Not that I ever really did that. I just thought I should.)
Okay so how do you sell to these unsuspecting women? Here’s how:
First this pull quote stuck out like a sore thumb: To reach women, Sprint has refocused away from tech industry jargon.
When I was working at a well-known and revered ad agency way back in 2005, an individual that I shared an office with had the nifty idea of reviving a first generation consumer PC brand by marketing it to women. They too thought we should steer clear of any technical jargon that these pink-and-shopping-loving women didn’t want to be bothered with. I went to work trying to prove that this was an insulting misstep. I looked through my friend Andrea Learned’s Don’t Think Pink book that came out at the time, also about marketing to women, and another book by Marti Barletta that is cleverly entitled Marketing To Women. (I interviewed Marti at the ReThinkHer conference in 2009. You can read that interview here.) All of my efforts with said computer company strategy were in vain. Of course women could only understand computers if they were packaged as fashion accessories, you know, like in Legally Blonde? My research was looked upon as a complaint of sorts, and a dismissible one at that.
The Sprint example goes on to say: (Women are) ‘juggling so many roles that we have an opportunity to help her be as productive as possible.
Now, in-store communications tell a more lifestyle-focused story with imagery and customer-centric language that helps customers understand the benefits and relevance of the technology, rather than focusing on the pure tech specs of the devices themselves.
We’ve also increased the personal service levels in our stores, with programs like ‘Ready Now.’
Great. But isn’t that not just about women but about how the Internet and technology is becoming a seamless part of our lives and not some newfangled wires and bytes gadgetry for famed IT nerds in dark rooms? Isn’t it 2011? Don’t you people have ipads and twitter accounts? I’m working on an upcoming conference and one of the speakers will talk about the Outernet, another word for this online/offline merging. Its not women, it’s modern life.
Number 2 on the list is “Join Her Circle.”
Something is just not right in that kind of language. It reminds me of pedophiles hanging on the schoolyard fence. Personally, I have noticed a handful of new @whatwomenmake (twitter) followers who are interested in selling things quite overtly or are SEO experts who can increase your followers by three turtle doves and a partridge and a pear tree. Why are they following What Women Make? Because I have passed the 1000 follower mark. That’s why. Not because they are interested in what women create or innovation or business or any of the other values and interests I share daily on Twitter.
The fact is if you come from a good place, you can enter someone’s brain space. If you are being strategic and that’s not who you are, you’re taking a big risk personally and professionally.
Another point made in the article, on the point on the list that dictates “Understand her similarities” (and then later ‘Understand Her Differences” phew) is that companies should be offering unique ways to make the shopping experience easier and more fulfilling. Yes, of course they should. That’s the beauty and delight of good design and services and products that are integrated into real people’s lives, the lives of both men AND women.
Point number 5 starts to wise up advising:
* Respect that she is not a niche group with a single answer
* Join her circle, listen to what she is saying and ask her opinion
* Acknowledge her influence and include her above and beyond the point of purchase
* Understand that she is a holistic thinker when making every purchase decision
Now what I say to that is, Her, him, everyone.
You can find the article here. via Fastcodesign
Happy Sunday
Chauncey
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Recipe for Business Opportunity: Include the Practitioners — Ethnography at work for Innovation
Research companies, like everyone else, are questioning their value. Like everyone else, they are struggling to push beyond the boundaries of their current deliverables. In their case, information is too fluid to rely on one definitive report. At the same time, I imagine that ad agencies might wish they weren’t called ad agencies. It’s like naming your medical practice by the diagnosis. You can’t give away the ending in the title and know you’re doing the right thing for every client. Surgeons cut. Ad agencies make ads. And last but not least, design firms prioritize physiological and aesthetic relevance but they do take the time to understand people and groups. They engage in ethnography to get context and use mapping techniques to spur innovation even if their business model does not allow for completely open-ended non-prescriptive discovery.
There are only one or two innovation firms that I’ve come across in my search for a job home that are really ideal settings for ethnography. One of those is WhatIf; they use experts with long backward trajectories in various categories to solve problems. They also listen with purpose. But WhatIf isn’t hiring.
I was recently asked how I would approach bringing innovation for new product development to a traditional quantitative and qualitative research company with most of their DNA in brand and advertising research. Here are the initial thoughts I offered. Though I didn’t have enough time to develop them further, I thought I’d share them.
‘The Constellation’ I talk about in this blog post calls for a shift in approach
A Shift In Approach #1
Look beyond the super-users and early adopters trend and insights experts tend to seek out. Everyone with an Internet connection is an influencer. The single idea or authoritative voice has been replaced by a constellation of conversations, ideas and stories.
Influence is multilateral. Everyone is pinging around from fact to fact, story to story, idea to idea. Those facts and stories are disembodied most of the time. The antecedent is not always important.
The constellation of input is what we have to look at.
A Shift In Approach #2
We’re living in an age of ongoing experimentation. Reach across disciplines and cultural phenomena for answers. I did this naturally but was really taught to do it working at Crispin. You look to other categories not just for inspiration but for insight into cultural resonance.
Recipe – the Secret Sauce
Traditional Quant
+
Traditional Qual (as needed)
+
Ethnography (deeper open-ended cultural exploration) that includes designers and other ‘makers’. Find those with a pertinent process-knowledge base and bring them into your research in addition to the end-user you are trying to learn about (not only as the experts they are but as people to learn from, observe, and explore with.)
Triangulate as needed.
Tools & Tenets
Consider all social, economic and cultural factors that effect business and consumers (locally or globally or both):
Visit innovative hubs in emerging markets to look for fresh ideas
Listen to world’s greatest problem solvers and cross-reference findings with best thinking
Engage in innovation research praxis: trends and best practices + practical concerns of the business at hand + research into behaviour and emotion –> put into test scenarios.
In a Nutshell
Innovation starts with observation.
A diversity of well considered perspectives increases the depth and in turn, the value of the proposition.
It is vital to involve makers (designers, engineers, developers) – those versed in design thinking and iterative process – for richer analysis and problem-solving.
Drawing fresh ideas from related cultural phenomena further shapes thinking and brings ideas to life.
Stuff I Like to Do or Lead
Self-documentation / digital ethnography
Journaling, Videography, Brainstorming
Sketches, mock-ups, scenario building, co-creation
Map the Marketplace, Category, Competition, Trends
Shopalong
Develop an ‘app-along’
Workshops for Clients
Designer / Developer/ Engineer/Creator panels
Guided tours
Also Incorporate
Protyping – 3d ideation or narrative booklets and videos of findings and innovation exploration
So…
Trends
Observational Research
Workshops
To create best products, brands, services, business opportunities.
The End
I think I’m now off to do more What Women Make stuff and combine my anthropology and truth-seeking with Peter Crosby’s human geography landscapes. More later from Barcelona.
Women in Sustainability Part I
*Work of textile designer Marit Fujiwara, graduate of Chelsea College of Art and Design via Behance
I asked a handful of thought leaders about the top women in sustainability. Answers came from marketing expert and author of “Don’t think Pink” (Andrea Learned), the award-winning social entrepreneur and innovation strategist who launched the Creative Graduate Prize and now New Frontiers (Melissa Sterry), and an agency CEO who left it all to better the world, giving inspiring TED talks and most recently launching a plan of action in the form of ifwerantheworld.com defn worth a look (Cindy Gallop) — Here’s what they said:
First, former head of BBH NY and internationally recognized creative superstar
Cindy Gallop
1) What is your definition of sustainability?
A virtuous circle.
2) Why does it matter?
Because everything should work that way.
3) Name 1-3 women on the forefront of changes in the way we approach business and innovation?
June Cohen, TED
Rosabeth Kanter, Harvard Business School
Ursula Burns, Xerox
4) Name one sustainable product or service that you’ve come across in your research.
SHE, a fabulous example of what I’ve recommended to founder Elizabeth Scharpf which she calls Ragonomics
Elizabeth Scharpf created ingenious sanitary napkins out of banana leaves for women in Africa
Find her at cindygallop.com
Next: U.K.-based social entrepreneur extraordinaire:
Melissa Sterry
1) What is your definition of sustainability?
My definition of sustainability is an approach which acknowledges and addresses both environmental and social challenges using informed, intelligent, innovative, interdisciplinary and inspired solutions. Truly sustainable concepts are developed when the interactions between humans and their environment are fully understood. While many goods and services are labelled ‘sustainable’, ‘green’ or ‘environmentally-friendly’, in reality few actually are, some are the result of deliberate greenwashing, others are the result of a lack of research and due diligence in the design process.
The best design solutions are built on the most robust research, not off the back of cliches and assumptions. But at a time when most investors are focused on ventures that can potentially provide a quick return, significant R&D will be compromised. Until such time as the international investing community acknowledges the fact that stable and ‘sustainable’ future markets will be built engaging pioneering and at times radically innovative ideas that have been carefully crafted to meet both society’s existing and future needs, the world’s most promising sustainable innovators will find the tide is against them.
2) Why does it matter?
It matters because if we don’t act now and act to the very best of our ability, our species may not walk this Earth by 2150. (read the rest of Melissa’s passionate and articulate answer after the jump.)
3) Name 1-3 women on the forefront of this issue?
Naming just one or two is difficult but three inspirational women from the UK are:
1.) Multidisciplinary scientist Dr. Rachel Armstrong , a senior research fellow at University College London exploring the potential of living architecture and self-repairing buildings with their own metabolisms
2.) Joanna Yarrow, one of the UK’s most senior green living experts and a presenter, broadcaster, journalist, writer and founder of sustainability consultancy Beyond Green.
Joanna Yarrow
3.) Servane Mouazan – founder of Ogunte – the UK’s foremost organization for women leading the Social Economy.
All three are working hard to develop a blueprint for a sustainable society – all thinkers and doers with the creativity, commitment and courage to throw out the rulebook and set out on a journey to find the new frontiers. Often facing adversity and opposition to their ideas, these three women innovate their way around the obstacles, no matter how overwhelming or great they may be.
4) An insight on the future and advice for the female creative entrepreneur.
My insight – the future isn’t going to be easy, whichever way you look at it, the challenges are enormous. My advice – never under-estimate the value of the role you have to play in creating a better future.
5) One sustainable product or service you love or that caught your eye
.
The Aptera epitomizes what sustainable innovation is all about. The Aptera is uber efficient – achieving 300 miles or more to the gallon through minimized air resistance and drag, as a result of having a bullet-shaped body and three wheels, not four. The vehicle has interior and exterior LED lighting and a solar assisted climate control system. The Aptera also features recycled materials and comes in both electric and hybrid versions, achieving a top speed of 90mph and 0-60 in around 10 seconds. While it’s the most sustainable vehicle coming to market in the foreseeable future, it’s founders have pledged to continuously improve the sustainability of the vehicle as more innovations become available to them. Beyond it’s environmental credentials the vehicle is iconically beautiful and a design classic destined for the history books. My only regret about The Aptera is I wont be able to drive one in the UK any time soon.
Find Melissa Sterry at About Me.
Next Expert in Female Insights and Marketing:
Andrea Learned
1) What is your definition of sustainability?
To pursue a state of life/work in ways that mean what you do now will flourish and develop without taking away the resources that others, in future generations, will need to do the same. I love the awareness raised by something Paul Hawken wrote – there is a difference between “growing” and “developing.” Developing/development is the sustainable approach.
2) Why does it matter?
It matters because we’ve hit a brick wall – the perfect storm of bad economy, huge environmental problems due to waste of resources, and an emerging more relational, less linear (all about me) way of thinking by citizens. People are starting to face the facts that endless growth and consumerism for the sake of it doesn’t really feed and nourish our daily lives – and greatly harms the environment. If it continues, we will actually leave hugely negative effects for our children and grandchildren to deal with. Now – that’s a realization to contend with!
3) Women on the forefront:
Eileen Fisher – Fisher and the women’s apparel company she launched in 1984 have been successfully (and fairly quietly) operating with a sustainable approach. The materials and supply chains used in manufacturing her clothing and the way the company treats employees and contributes more broadly to women’s empowerment has become what I’d call “best practices” long before “sustainable” or “socially responsible” were trendy terms.
Joyce LaValle – Some have heard or read about Ray C. Anderson, CEO of Interface Inc., and his evolution toward sustainability (he is now considered a pioneer in the “movement”). LaValle is the former Senior Vice President of that company and is credited for originally inspiring Anderson’s vision on the topic. She also co-founded the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future, which should get more notice (in my opinion) because it brings sustainability thought leaders and best cases to light so conventional businesses might learn (and it is not just about and “for women”).
Kira Gould – By way of the interviews conducted and synthesized in Women in Green, the book she co-authored with Lance Hosey, Gould’s influence has been key in my personal move to study and promote the concepts of sustainable business development. She is an architect and the director of communications for McDonough + Partners (founded by another quite recognized sustainability pioneer/author, Bill McDonough).
4) An insight on the future and advice for the female creative entrepreneur
Businesses can do well and still “do good” with regard to people, planet and profit – the oft-mentioned socially responsible, “triple bottom line.” The future is already here in that consumers have become very savvy and are much more intentional/deliberate in their buying. Businesses, however, have been slow to catch on to that. So, entrepreneurs that authentically believe and commit to the journey toward more sustainable business practices – in materials, supply chain, human resources, community support, energy use and so on – will have a significant advantage. Women, in particular, have a natural tendency toward a more holistic perspective. “Just business” really doesn’t exist, because they naturally know there’s a lot more to it.
Find Andrea at http://www.learnedon.com/
Read More…
1 CommentFull of Grace: Questions Raised by Vogue Documentary “September Issue”
1947 Vogue, one that I own, still wrapped in its plastic, somewhere in storage.
Half a review of the documentary “September Issue.” The other half a review of how differently I see things now from 15 years ago.
I wrote my thesis on Vogue magazine. Up there in that old Vogue library on the top floor of the former Condé Nast building, I lived and dreamed in the pages of Horst P Horst and Man Ray’s dramatic lighting, in the whimsical pithy fashion prose of Diana Vreeland with her face painting and pony fantasyland. From Edna Woolman Chase’s days of the corset to WWII fabric shortages, from the New Look to Grace Mirabella’s power suit, I was fascinated.
But just as Anna Wintour said in the tedious bedraggled documentary, September Issue, some are not let in. But far from making me envious and mournful of all those lost years not spent at Vogue, I was ultimately empowered by fate. I thought about all of the broken hearts and broken spirits of the young girls who went there full of dreams and came out beaten and diminished and possibly anorexic and I wondered, ‘what do you do with that?’
If a girl has any sense (but who does at 21? And why should she?), she’d never get wrapped up in the first place. She pursues her dream whatever it may be, undaunted. Hopefully it’s something noble, helping mankind, that sort of thing, but if not noble, something personal, something that takes discipline, dedication, some measure of purity of intent.
Now that we’ve opened up a whole new platform for people to create and be heard without any golden gates barring entry, what will become of Vogue’s primacy? Or maybe we should be looking at the real monster these days - the ghastly tasteless celebrity circus with its gobs of drooping collagen-implanted lips and tight foreheads with forced squirrel eyes. That whole ordeal makes Vogue look like Glenda the Good Witch — or maybe Hollywood and Us magazine are so vulgar and absurd that it makes you yearn for a high priestess arbiter of taste again, the kind they had in the old days, the kind that, well, it seems Grace Coddington carries with her in her disappointed expression looking out over the Tuileries on a grey Paris day. ‘Maybe I’m just a romantic’ she muses, and you feel sad for her, all those lovely frocks and dreams on glossy pages and for what? Surely there is something more she can do with it all. If she couldn’t then, she can now. Create a book of all the fantasies in her head without Anna’s veto power. Or costume a ballet or an opera like Chanel, Picasso or Cocteau. Or move to a new medium and have an exhibit of her own work, her own vision, without the dress price tags. Write a book… It’s ironic that her face in that scene, the only one that resonated for me, reminds me of all the women and girls out there I want to promote, applaud, and support. A spirit that needs saving.
There’s something lost and something gained in every generation. I’d take autonomy and freedom of expression any day. Let the curators and editors find their artists and let the artists find their curators and editors among the millions of profiles and networks and shouting voices out there, politics and pecking order be damned.
-Chauncey Zalkin
Here’s the TRAILER:
0 CommentsEthnography: Immersive, Dynamic, and Unscripted
Image by Swedish Illustrator, Linn Olofsdotter
Some of you are curious about the foundation of what I do aside from my passion for innovation and writing about women who create. I’m an ethnographer. I was an ethnographer long before I even knew the term. When I ended up in advertising, I would get frustrated with highly regimented approaches to understanding consumers (people basically, consumers makes me think of lever pulling and manipulation which I am dead set against).
I have always approached insights and strategy/concept building with honest, open curiousity and interest – and I’d like to think a strong dose of savvy from weaving in and out of different social and cultural situations. I studied Cultural Studies and Semiotics in school and then attended the school of life where I set out to find the patterns and rhythms of New York City’s inhabitants. Then I went deeper. And I went broader as I worked with diverse clients with subtle nuances and micro-cultures that required abandoning all preconceptions. (and moved country. twice.)
The basic questions that make this work worthwhile are: What do people want and need? How can we make manifest products and services that will make lives better/easier/more pleasant/more connected? How can we bring ideas and the narrative of business’ social role to life in ways that matter and are sustainable? How can we add instead of take away, drain, deplete? And how can we surprise?
I gave a one day workshop hosted by a consulting firm in Barcelona called Brain Ventures. Antonio Monerris, the partner in the firm who approached me about the project, is just one of those people on this earth that keeps growing, evolving, learning, always with an open mind and an eye on the future. Among those present were representatives from Pan Rico (bread), Gallina Blanca (soups), and Chup Chups (candy). Here’s the gist of the presentation part.
‘Ethno day’ can also work in two to three day workshops where we roll up our sleeves and go deep into your brand/product/service/business model – not just looking at the consumers but the folks that make up your company. That’s where the real work begins.
Taiwan: Red Dot Design Award Winner Breathes New (Plant) Life Into Chair Design
“Re: Industrial Design graduate Yu-Ying Wu, Tatung University, Taiwan
“Taipei-based industrial designer Yu-Ying Wu’s Breathing Chair resembles a block of aerated tofu. Closer inspection reveals that the triangular voids vary in size, and their placement has been carefully calculated; the large triangles at the top-front-center “give” the most, creating a chair-like shape when compressed by a human body.
Wu’s chair, inspired by plant cells, took home a Red Dot Design Award in the home furniture design concept category earlier this year.”
via Core77 via cctv
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