6.5 Seconds

That’s the time you have to make a connection with consumers, according to draftfcb’s executive creative director, Beto Nahmad. Those 6.5 seconds are more then every defined by the digitally driven society 2.0. Digital changes everything and with consumers having increasing control of the mediated world, brands need to become friends with consumers. To do this advertising must feel like anything but advertising. It must make connections by being cleaver and compact –relevant and real. Yet, for as much as digital shapes us, advertisers must think digital rather than be digital because end the day we are all human and long for personal connections.

Beto and account director, Laura de Luque, presented a dozen blockbuster cases to my Global Brand Tracking class in Barcelona, last week. They walked us through their work for Tunisia Air’s “Seven Days/70 People” initiative, which just landed draftfcb a gold at El Sol. Congratulations! Next he introduced work for Gui Repsol. Both brands live in the tourism category, and everything draftfcb did from them feels authentic and true to their spirit – and nothing like advertising.

Beto also showed us seven cases from the spirits category featuring Rom Barelo, Tia Maria, Sailor Jerry and Siboney 34 and Hendricks. These were particularly interesting as in Spain alcohol cannot be advertised on television. In fact, none there is no advertising allowed in mass media whatsoever. The campaigns they developed for these brands leverage social media and promotional events in highly imaginative ways that garnered new audiences and secured a passion among existing audiences use techniques that surprised and engaged them.

Smint mints, River Plate and Action Against Hunger rounded out the presentations. Action Against Hunger was the agency’s 2011 commitment to the community. Raising awareness about hunger the agency partnered with Reebok as they helped citizens in rich countries burn calories to feed citizens in poor countries. The campaign was so successful the agency plans to move into South and Central America.

The agency harnesses the power of collaboration to generate ideas that push beyond traditional boundaries and into the world of imagination – building blockbuster brands along the way.

Jean

Deliver Surprising Truths. Create Deep Connections.

I recently took a group of students, to Euro RSCG, London. Russ Lidstone, CEO, was our gracious host, providing a transformative afternoon with eight speakers – each sharing wisdom, insight and creative magic.

According to planner, George Roberts, “the enemy of insight is observation.” As the fledgling student ethnographers began conducting in-culture exercises there could have been no better words to guide them. For observation without analysis leads to insights that are simply rubbish. The planning frames he presented illuminated the guiding Euro principle – surprising truths create deep consumer connections.

Four cases illustrated this perfectly: Santander, Chivas, Durax and VO5. The poetic copy by Russ Schaller, Creative Director, for the Santander 123 campaign highlighted the humanity of brand. How often can you say that about a bank, especially in these economic times? The Chivas case, presented by Global Account Director, Elisabet Jonsdottir, highlighted the essential sweet spot at the intersection of consumer, product and brand category. What could be more shareable for a whiskey brand then to live chivalry? Durax Vinyl showcased the power of imagination, with Tech Director, Michael Olaye, taking the lead. Vinyl used a social media led television campaign to launch Performax Intense and brilliantly connected couples. Caroline Saunders, Business Director, introduced the Pliktisijiteur Pageant for VO5 Extreme Style, which set up a perfectly targeted campaign launched with teasers leading to wickedly funny television that broke the mould. Each case offered lessons on insightful creative rooted in spot-on strategy, driven by imaginative innovation.

The afternoon wrapped up with discussions on creativity, PR and social media. Dom Gettins, Head of Copy, turned the students’ notions about creativity on its head. He challenged them to think about advertising creativity as a conversation. Paola Nicolaides, Associate Director of PR, introduced the idea that it’s not about what you do or why you say. It’s about what others say about you. The day wrapped up with Claire Adams, Head of Social Media. She reminded the students that the heart of any campaign, across any platform, remains the idea. But with social media the value proposition is inherently driven by emotion and utility coming together to create value.

Value is exactly what the day produced. Pearls of wisdom, some with uniquely British leanings, others that spanned the global marketplace – all invaluable. Clearly delivering surprising truths leads to deep consumer connections.

Jean

Screw It.

Harley-Davidson is an iconic American brand. The free wheeling American Harley rebel was recognized across the globe, with its bold take no prisoners brand persona. Yes, Harley had an aging problem. Yes, Harley had a gender problem. But, it had one hell of an image and a solid platform from which to tackle its aging baby boomer boy problem.

Like the Marlboro Man, Harley was iconic. It screamed freedom, which screams American. It leveraged every sensory experience to create a great brand experience and its advertising sang it praises. You didn’t have to ride a Harley to love the brand. It was as American as, well, apple pie.

A year after breaking up with Carmichael Lynch and having a wild fling with crowd sourcing, the brand is still playing the field. It feels wrong. For as in your face and raw as the old brand was, I trusted it. It was real. It was American.           It was mine – even if I don’t own a bike.

No Cages. is preaching to the choir. And the choir is getting old. It’s not what the brand needs. It doesn’t embody the American spirit. It doesn’t ignite passion. The Harley I once knew was the embodiment of raw American passion.                 No Cages. is not Harley. Screw It, Let’s Ride – again.

Harley in JSonline Check out what Rick Barrett, a Harley blogger, and I have to say.

Windows

Italian windows are purposeful. What they keep out is as important as what they let in.

Heat, light, air and people, too, all are closed out or welcomed in depending, in part, upon the season. Each window has multiple layers. From within one sees top to bottom curtains, long slim simple natural-colored panels of cotton with perhaps a hint of lace. Behind them are long paneless sheets of glass, which rattle in the wind. Beyond are rolled slats of wood or aluminum or folding wooden shutters creating a protective barrier against the outer world – light, heat, sound and people. If one lives on a lower level, between the long sheets of glass and the rolled slats lays gridded metal bars.

Open only occasionally, Italian windows keep the heat of the summer sun out and trap the fleeting winter heat within, no doubt, a functional visual expression of Mediterranean life. In summer the sun blazes casting long hot, sweaty shadows that invade interior spaces. In winter, if you live in a communal flat, heat visits only during the day and must be trapped within for nighttime warmth.

All the day they remain closed. Wondering down Italians streets, save for the multitude of voices that rise and fall (mostly rise) and the clatter of dishes long preparing lunch or dinner, it seems that no one resides within the flats that line the street. Blocks of windows with wooden slats rolled down or shuttered pulled closed.

All the night they remain closed. This time wondering down the street there is silence. Only later, long into the morning hours, can one finally say “bouna notte.” For in Italy dinners often do not end until well beyond ten and then still it is “bouna sera.”  In le notte, there is a visual silence that is strangely repetitive of the afternoon, windows rolled shut.

Day or night, a sort of visual silence permeates Italian streets, a longing for security. But, in brief moments the windows fly open – and then wide–open. A moment, perhaps a few hours, as if washing hot winds out and sweeping cool breezes in, or welcoming some light that they had not previously noticed. Then, again, they fly shut. The open windows appear like periods at the ends of long Italian sentences spoken with flying Italian arms.

Flatted frames of brown, like long sentences, repetitively dot exterior walls. By night they sing a silent lullaby. By day their voices echo emptiness. Yet the closed windows of Italy belie a deep cultural warmth – or perhaps they exemplify a cultural irony. For as warm as Italians may be it is a warmth felt, only, once on the other side of their cultural window.

All photographs copyright: Jean Grow

Mobile Community

In Italy bikes are essentially a form of community – mobile community. In this sense bikes form a cultural marker that intimately reflect Italy’s culture. However, I begin with two comparative points of reference, the United States and the Netherlands.

In the United States bikes are an expression of physical virility. At a young age we are introduced to bikes as a form of play. However, play for Americans is often an extension of, or a seedbed for the embrace of, sport and competition. Lance Armstrong’s Live Strong brand is the perfect example of the American cultural code for bikes. Yet for as much as America is a physical and competitive culture, it expresses strong tendencies toward closure and protection. Thus, Americans are usually found biking along with the highly symbolic bike helmet.

In the Netherlands, bikes are an integral form of transportation expressing the practicality of Dutch culture. Certainly those who ride bikes are often in good physical condition, but the act of riding a bike in the Netherlands is a reflection of functional resourcefulness, not physically conditioning. Thus one often finds huge bike parking structures (akin to American auto parking structures) outside rail stations in major urban centers. Bikes, locked in place, also line quiet neighborhood streets in most Dutch cities. While bikes certainly offer a form of connecting Dutch people together their use is much more rooted in utility, connecting people to work and home and the resources that support home-life.

In Italy bikes mark a distinctly different cultural space. Surely they function as a form of transportation and clearly they help Italians stay in relatively good physical condition. One only has to see the 80something men and women biking down Italian streets to note their utility and physical benefit. However, transportation and physical conditioning are simply residual effects of Italians need to maintain their sense of community – and this they do, in part, with bikes.

Bikes are an inherently embedded point of community connection. It is not uncommon to see a someone stopped, bike straddled between their legs, engaged in a conversation with someone in a car, on foot, or on another bike. While some cities have carved out spaces for bikes along the roads, other cites have simply accommodated them as a part of life. Children grow up on bikes in Italy – literally. The smallest of them on seats in front of their parents with the middle sized children on seats behind. And as families grow, they often move in unison on bikes. Any walk through a market will find Italians strolling with their bikes, their baskets full. Italians ride in snow and rain with one hand holding an umbrella. In one moment you might see an Italian riding along, a cell phone glued to their ear, and in the next moment they are locking their bike beside a coffee bar or concert hall. Bikes propel and engage Italians within community.

Bikes also offer a glimpse into Italians powerful gender cultural codes. During my time in Italy I have been riding a man’s bike, an ancient loaner from the uncle of a friend. As an American, I initially saw it as simply my bike. I quickly realized its straight middle bar was a powerful cultural code for masculinity, and I had crossed the line. That bar was an endless source of discussion and an immediate signifier for me as non-Italian. For in Italy bikes are highly gendered, as are many other things. A further articulation of gender can be observed in the clothing of the people riding bikes. It is not uncommon to see women in beautiful dress with amazingly high-heeled shoes and men wearing elegant suits. In Italy bikes brings people to together in community whether at concerts or clubs, work or school and they dress accordingly – and always along strongly articulated gender lines.

I close with a branded articulation of the impact of bikes on Italian community life – Vespa. The representations of community inherit in biking explains, in part, the explosive success of Vespa. The brand understood the cultural codes inherent in bikes and it offered a fasters mode for mobile community connections. Its small size, easy room for two, and quieter engine (relative to the hyper-American Harley) signify the modern extension of the Italian bike. Vespa will never replace the bike, but it has successfully leveraged its culture codes of mobile community.

All photographs copyright: Jean Grow

Hip. White. Men. with iPhones.

It has been a week since Cannes. I needed time to think. This was my first visit to Cannes, but not my first to advertising awards shows. I’ve been in and around the ad industry for years. In the end, I think, awards shows are awards shows. They may get bigger and more expensive and express a global venue – but little changes. Hip. Casual chic was everywhere in the same timeless way advertising hip has been demonstrated for years – jeans and tee shirts with funky shoes. Of course, as it was Cannes and so the optional khaki shorts and sandals appeared. Youth, the iconic marker of hip, was also abundantly apparent and, as usual, encouraged by the excessive flow of alcohol. Hip translated smoothly from people to images and ideas. But, this too was not new. Youthful hip is a perennially postmodern phenomenon bred within and well articulated by advertising. White. For as global as our world has become the advertising images were inherently western, even if the agencies were from Singapore or San Paolo. In print small logos, resting quietly in the lower right corner, with minimal copy along side small headlines and dominant visuals predominated – just as they have for years. There were winners from Brazil and India, and China snagged its first gold lion, but most were from global multi-national agencies who have moved into emerging markets anxious to help spread global capitalism. Despite the diversity of winners almost everyone was a polished hip western, “white.” For a global marketplace it was discouraging to see such homogenous blending of constructed shades of white. Men. They were everywhere, just like in the agency world where they make-up virtually 80 percent of all creative departments. The judging panels continued to play out the 80/20 game – perpetuating a style and a way of working that is defined by masculinity and not by the people who make the lion’s share of consumption choices – women. The surprise, though it should not have been, was the “New Directors Showcase,” with 17 new directors – all men, if my memory serves me correctly. Here too history repeated itself with hyper-masculine imagery of boyhood remembered, violence, and sex, with a few rare exceptions. Of the 17 directors only five featured female characters and of that four were sophomoric and sexualized representations. The greatest differentiating factor was the dazzling technological executions. iPhones. Make that iEverything. This group of influencers is infatuated with all things Apple. This too, is not a surprise. Millward Brown, in its annual valuation of global brands, named Apple number one – by a mile. Apple’s change in value from 2010 to 2011 was 84, nearly 4 times greater than its nearest competitor (McDonalds). Its brand value was nearly 50 percent higher than the number-two brand (Google). Apple has become the iconic symbol of hip and the ultimate technological tool for social connection – embraced with gusto by advertisers as they chase after consumers driving social change through technology. This seems a story with a predetermined ending. Apple makes the products that enables creatives to make creative executions, while creatives embrace the products that Apple makes. Which takes me back to where I began. Hip, white men create advertising, which (ironically) speaks to hip white men – who award hip, white men  – who hire hip, white men – who…

Fotografia Europea: an intimate meshing of antiquity & postmodernity

For the last six years Reggio Emilia has hosted Fotografia Europea, an international photography festival. This year, “Verde, bianco, rosso. Una fotografia dell’Italia” (Green, white, red. A photography of Italy), was featured in Italian Vogue. Last year the focus was female photographers. The exhibitions themselves blend the architectural grace of the city with the postmodern conceptions inherent in photography. Across the city dozens of cafes, shops and a multitude of pubic spaces host exhibitions. Most are free though a few are juried requiring an admission fee.

The exhibition spaces physically express the texture of the community across time, using historical monuments and everyday spaces to display postmodern artist expressions. A small café may exhibit a series of rural portraiture, while the newly restored historical monument, such as Chiostri di San Peatro, may host an exhibition of historical images of papal life. Both spaces offer communal gathering reflecting one of the hallmarks of Italian life, historical and contemporary life co-existing. The festivals iconic pink frame is infused into the fabric of Reggio’s physical spaces. Regardless of the season, the icon an be found stamped on the ground, pasted to a window or hanging from a ancient wall. It has become a symbol for “Reggio Emilia Città Creativa,” a city with an extremely vibrant creative life, which per capita has far more creative enterprises than many larger cities in Italy.

Just outside the cloisters of Chiostri di San Peatro were a series of photos commissioned to document everyday life, all on the same day, across all of Italy. The images were hung in succession in an open public space. They wrapped around an old pealing wall, tucking under lush vegetation, living next to a street vender and a huge rack of bicycles. The manner of the presentation, framed within a communal setting, literally engaged the viewer in a walk through a day in the life of Italy. In the process it exposed and expressed both interior and exterior Italian life, symbolically articulating the interweaving of public and private, of old and new.

The sense of interweaving, of wholeness is also implicit the fact that the exhibition spaces are open late into the night when people flow onto the streets. Thus, the exhibition spaces become embedded extensions of community. The juxtaposition of postmodern imagery juxtaposed to ancient and modern architectural spaces visually articulate a universality of Italian life. Further, citizens across a wide socio-economic strata engage with work, exemplifying the perennial marriage of art and culture with everyday Italian life.

From a methodological perspective, the use of historic spaces often lent themselves to artistic expressions that engages all the senses in a contrast of time and space. In one such exhibition the scent of dried roses wafted upwards as the sound of flowing water from a video of the photographic process filled the space. It was a stark juxtaposition of postmodern against ancient. There was, of course, the obvious visual dimension of the photographs, which were displayed against ancient wall around a circle of dried roses that rustled against my hand as I bend to examine them. Yet another juxtaposition of postmodern against ancient, of death against life.

Yet amidst this immerse of artists expression were brands – alive and well. As I left the final last exhibition, which featured photographers from five different countries exploring aspects of labor on three continues, I found the branded embodiment of labor and the issues that surround it – Nike. There sat two greeters, she an architect and he a soccer player. His Nike hat tossed to the side and atop a stack of exhibition brochures. His cell phone resting beside it as they sat playing Carte Piacentine a traditional Italian card game. The intimate meshing of local and global, artistic and commercial, traditional and postmodern perfectly expressed by the blazing green Nike tagline – “Just do it.”

All photographs copyright: Jean Grow

il profumo d’Italia

Perhaps there is no sense more important to an ethnographer then the sense of smell. Unfortunately, we often get caught up in what we see. Sight is our default sense. For an ethnographer there can be no greater pitfall, for our eyes often lie to us. We see what we expect. Thus, the work of an ethnographer must be balanced by all the senses working in concert to help build an understanding the subtleties of the culture under study.

There is, perhaps, no better place to explore with one’s nose then Italy – to take in il profumo d’Italia. The streets of Italy team with life. And so it is here that our nose can explore what it means to be Italian, which changes by season and region, city and village. In the north near Bologna tigleo (linden) trees line the streets providing a sweet perfume. Jasmine hedges and ever-prized roses line the streets, while cascading bogenvelia fall from balconies. Thus, the experience of strolling or slipping quickly past on one’s bicycle is an aromatic delight with textures changing by season and location.

In Italy, food is often introduced to the nose before the tongue. A colleague recently returning from Siena came bearing gifts. He tenderly unwrapped a bulbous salame and held it up to my nose for my first experience of its delicacy. The pungent scent of the cured pork laced with garlic wafted upward.

Long before reaching a shop – il negozio – that sells meat and cheese one is greeted by its rich array of scents wafting out the door. Fruits are selected as much by their scent as their sight, but only in the protective hands of the shopkeeper – il ortorlano. And no kitchen or balcony is complete without an array of herbs whose scents fill Italian flats. In many ways the scent of food signifies the bond Italians have with the land.

Walking along the streets the yeasty sweetness of baking bread wafts down the block from many a local bakery – il forno. The complex scent of an Italian street is a comingling of bread and Jasmine, garlic and tigleo, along with the bitter bite of excessive cigarette smoke, which frequently curls into your nostrils. Though smoking is banded in nearly all buildings, the ban does not seem to have squelched Italians’ passion for smoking.

Italy’s crowded urban centers are also marked by other pungent earthy, and far less elegant, scents. In Rome where buses can be so packed that you could literally lift your feet off the floor and remain standing, the heat of the summer brings forth the musky scent of humanity in close proximity to one’s nose. And in the summer, the huge trash bins resting along each block viscerally signify the close proximity that most Italians share. On hot days the scent of jasmine and roses can be tempered by the stench of decaying refuse as one passes a bin. And in Naples, trash collection has become such a problem that one might suggest the scent of refuse has cast a long shadow over the aromatic gardens that line the balconies of its quiet streets.

The sea provides yet other sensory experience, its salty air floating above beaches up and down the coasts – its fragrance defining both heat and light. Yet, beaches are but a small part of the Italian seacoast. In fact cascading mountains, some with looming Cyprus, mark its jagged coast. The herbs and flowering shrubs that also grow on these craggy surfaces suffuse the air with a loamy smell that floats along the coast signifying Italy’s association with the sun and sea.

Interestingly, unlike the toiletry and household cleaning aisles in American supermarkets, Italian supermarkets offer a far smaller selection of scented products. Conversely perfume shops are far more common in Italy than in the U.S. It would seem that Italians are not easily lured into purchasing artificial fragrances, when their world is so rich with natural scent. Finally, the Italian words, which define scent, are as specific and emotive as the fragrances that drift past by – buon odore e profumo meraviglioso per good – cattivo e puzza per bad.

From city to sea, from shop to flat, scent naturally and with great nuance defines Italian life. La vita in Italia è complessa.

All photographs copyright: Jean Grow

1000 MIGLIA – the tradition continues

Mille Miglia is a luxury branders dream partner with a tradition rich in Italian and racing history, a global following, and a website populated with Italy’s ultimate luxury brands.

Mille Miglia established by the Brescia Automobile Club in 1927 evolved out of a racing rivalry between Brescia and Milan. At the time, the club had significant political influence because of board members with ties to the ruling national Fascist Party. At its origin the race was elite, with only marginal benefits for the general population – improvement of roads.

Early organizers understood the need for publicity and turned to an influential sports writer for the Gazzette dello Sport. With his help, and in an effort to flatter the government in Rome, the race was designed to begin in Brescia and end in Rome. The symbolic seeds of luxury and prowess were well sown and their efforts were immensely successful. For thirty year, from 1927-1957, Mille Miglia was the ultimate auto race successfully competing with the French Grand Prix and building a worldwide following.

However, in 1957 a tragic accident in the village of Guidizzolo killed five spectators and signaled the end of competitive racing in the Mille Miglia. Then, in 1977 Mille Miglia was revived as a historic race with the addition of antique cars parading along the original roadways across three days. Since then the race has come to symbolize the rich history of Italian culture, calling citizens into the streets to celebrate.

Today the elite tradition lives on, though reaching far beyond those who drive the coveted luxury Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche cars that pass by. In the finest of Italian tradition people fill the streets, sit in cafes to “take a coffee,” or pose as street performers. Above the streets fly old (horizontal stripes) and new (vertical stripes) Italian flags (the significance of which is the subject of a future post). And red remains the symbolic color of luxury and prowess – the most coveted color car a photographer can capture as it slides past on its way to Rome. Last Sunday, as I stood on Via Emilia, having just captured what I thought to be a wonderful photograph of a yellow car with its driver waving from the window, an Italian friend said to me, “Oh no, you must have a red one.”

Only one question remains – why is the distance measured with the, oh so American, mile? According to a charming story on official website one of the original Mille Miglia creators remarked that as the Romans measured distance in miles, they would simply follow Roman tradition.

Tradition is the essence of Italian life.

All photographs copyright: Jean Grow

Doors

Stepping through them we begin our journeys.

Some call us to places beyond the known or draw us within to memories of the past, just as with this gate in the Cinque Terre.

Others call us home and wrap us in warm shades of rose, as is so often in the case in Italy. Terrace vines draping over the top licking our brow as we enter. We are home.

Italian doors do not have windows and the shutters are often closed to keep out the hot summer sun or retain the heat in the damp winters. It often seems as if no one is home. So we climb the stone steps, ring the bell and wait. Avanti!

Roman doors open us unto history, like this one in the forum. Its heavy bronze glimmering with the patina of age stands as a stark contrast to the roughened dull hue of the ancient stones beyond its supporting columns.

A baby is welcomed in Ferarra. The thick chestnut door, protecting the privacy of the newest arrival, is adorned simply. While historically Italians may have tended toward the ornate, today it is simplicity that marks the elegant Italian culture.

Taking in these doors in Portofino Frank Sinatra’s voice echoes in my head. The house could quiet or bustling, but almost always, the shutters will be drawn. For me, it is an irony that Italians keep their homes so closed while their hearts are so open.

A bicycle is left beside what was once a leather shop and is now a real estate office in Ferarra’s medieval market. The bike’s owner, cell phone to ear, bends to pick up an article she has dropped. Bikes and cell phones – in Italy few leave home without them.

Glided doors to the baptistery in Firenze tell the biblical story of salvation, symbolically reminding the newest Christian of the perils of life here and the purported blessings in life in the here after. Today it is guarded by a gate of spires of leaping flames, lest we wish to caress its magnificence.

Weather and time have marked this door in Reggio Emilia. As with many doors, in towns throughout Italy, the luster of its heavy wood has long vanished. Yet, it stands durable to time framed by a wall that also knows its age.

Doors. Stepping through them we end our journeys.

All photography copyright: Jean Grow