Beauty, design, love.

When it comes to products and services there's nothing more you can ask of a company than to truly love what they do and then share that love back with you.

You can spew out all the jargon in the world about value propositions, competitive advantages, and product differentiating you want, but nothing in the world can compete with good old fashion love for your craft.

Then what takes it over the top, is when love is coupled with design. I mean next to of a few long swigs of water on a sweltering afternoon...nothing is more satisfying. 

And then to make you just throw your hands up...and say "ok...wow", beauty sneaks into the picture. At that moment there's nothing else to do but to put a fork in it folks. It's a done deal.     

When I came across the video below of the custom, high end bicycle shop indyfab, in collaboration with bodega and baileyworks, the first three words that popped into my head: beauty, design and love. You can tell by the end product that these folks have a serious adoration for their wheels. Now for me...this is what a brand is all about. 

Dreams and infinite possibilities

As inherently creative beings, our imagination is where we dream and the inconceivable happens.  As children it was the room where we laughed and frolicked and the playground we amused ourselves in. We pretended to be superheroes, daring space explorers, and travelers to distant lands. We were passengers, excited about our ongoing rides to the place where 'it can't be done' was usually nowhere to be found. 

As the years passed our pretending withered, we dared ourselves less, and distant lands became figments of our imagination.  We regimented our lives and limitations would define us as we arranged our days in well organized and efficient spaces. Living in squared shaped boxes that rarely shifted.

I was inspired to write this post because yesterday I came across a truly imaginative endeavor by design studio Charlex, called Shapeshifter. It was pure, genuine and unadulterated creativity.  The very essence of what drives inspiration and breeds new thinking.

Reading about the process behind this extremely creative project, gave me an even deeper appreciation for the story they so brilliantly produced.

Even though it is impossible to travel back in time to our childhood, where often our imagination ceaselessly ran wild, it becomes valuable from time to time to step out of our boxes, shift our shapes and ponder the possibilities. 

ShapeShifter, by Charlex…

Brand...new space

As we move forward, with 2010 in our rearview mirror, we prepare for new possibilities in the upcoming year and beyond. What these opportunities are, we don’t know just yet. Nevertheless 2011 lays before us: unexplored and undetermined.

So for creative thinkers in the marketplace, and particularly for us here at Cnvrgnc, the question is: how do we maintain focus and continuously create new spaces for brands and their communities to engage them?

Well, when we talk about ‘innovation’, what are we really discussing? Let’s toss out all the buzzwords. Let’s strip away the jargon. Let’s put aside all the complex concepts that often determine the frameworks in which conversations about ‘breakthroughs’ typically happen.

Let’s boil down this typically complicated space into one simple word: Language.

More often than not when we have packed our bags, oriented our compasses and planned our itineraries for traversing the world of innovation, this word and the value around it, often never makes it into our luggage.

Language is the collection of words that structure the ideas we communicate with, the concepts we interpret and the understanding that shapes how we negotiate the world around us. We often take for granted language and how we use, manipulate, and structure it. Often though, it is in many ways one of the single most influential ways in which actions, reactions or inactions plays a part in our everyday decisions. 

The ability to fashion language in a way that re-positions meaning, comprehension and perception is a talent that cannot be understated. Whether it’s advertising, marketing, communications, narratives, or storytelling the power of language is undeniable.

Now not being in step (or ahead of the curve) with new language doesn’t mean all is lost. But it does pose a potential problem. A quick hypothetical situation:

There's an opportunity with a new client to explore  new entertainment markets by looking at how to utilize transmedia narratives for deeper audience engagement. There's one problem, though, the expanse of your vocabulary is dvd videos...

What this equates to...flat-footedness. In an everchanging marketplace agility, fluidity and awareness are essential for being amongst those who lead the packs.

Part of your innovation potential is about being fully aware and even entrenched in the emerging spaces (often determined by new language) and embracing the need to transition from what’s staid to the new value paradigm. This means that constructing 21^st century thinking requires letting go of 20^th century logic.

It is vitally important to understand this: the unconventional use of language (i.e. brand ethos, new country as a startup, magical art) creates new possibilities, new ways of thinking and new spaces for brands to relate to people and for people to relate to brands.

Is language the only material in the innovation shed? No, of course not. But when used effectively, it can truly create new places for our minds to go and new spaces for us to engage in.