This is the new logotype of Ivy Communications. We offer in-depth knowledge about how to influence people and make them start using new products or act differently.
We are using effective communication to help organizations to influence.
We are outstanding when it comes to innovation marketing. We know almost everything about environment, energy and health. And a lot about IT, telecom and retail.
Just to let you know.
A few days ago I was passing a rather weird mix of antique shop and men's beaty store in my neighborhood. And discovered this fabulous piece. A quite badly maintained child seat for the car with the attractive price of zero (the sign says "Gratis" which means "Free" in Swedish).
Who think this is a good deal? Would you put your baby in this seat, feeling you have made a responsible choice?
Sometimes low price is a bad thing, even if your own resources are limited. And "free" is rather useless if it leads to a bad experience. Like all those free publications littering our cities. They are free, but far too often they contain nothing but crap. I wish advertisers also would figure that out.
(Click the image for full-size)
In Nikolaj Nyholm's story about WIFI (previous post) he tells us one access point in the plane went down. And the WIFI still worked fine.
That reminds me of an old times funny story I just couldn't stop sharing with you. Even if it's totally irrelevant (Why what's relevant and irrelevant is important could be studied in this great post by John Yunker).
Here's the story:
Two Norwegians flew over the Atlantic in a SAS airliner. Suddenly the plane shaked and a flame came out from one of the engines.
The voice of the Captain appeared in the speakers: We got one engine damaged. There is nothing to worry about, as we still have three engines going. But because of the incident we unfortunately will be one hour late. We appologize for the inconvenience.
The Norwegians felt relieved.
After an hour the plane shaked again. The Captain in the speakers: Another engine has gone down. However it is still nothing to worry about as we can fly on our two remaining engines. But we will now be two hours late. We appologize for the inconvenience.
The Norwegians were a bit upset, but still calm.
But when suddenly the third engine got wasted they really became worried. Once again the Captain took the microphone. "Ladies and Gentlemen, yet another engine is out of order. However there is still nothing to worry about. But we now will be four hours late".
Shaken, one of the Norwegians opened his mouth: "Let's really hope the last engines won't break, because then we will have to stay up here all night".
Perhaps not so funny. And totally irrelevant.
CPH127 is a new Danish weblog on Design and Innovation, written in English. A great initiative which I will visit daily.
Eventhough it's more design than innovation I must ask everybody to watch the art of Matt Siebel featured on the blog. He has shot billboards and logo signs rather familiar to all of us but left out the poles. Pretty amazing.
One of the toughest bottlenecks in the process of changing people's behaviors is the current norm. What is perceived as normal can effectively kill your idea if you don't find support for it with strong opinion leaders and envangilists.
And the strongest norm-builders, and norm-keepers, are the media. There for it was so nice to see the fresh take today on the Swedish version of Computer World, Computer Sweden (only the paper issue). As a celebration of the international womens day (tomorrow) their Monday issue only features women. Not a man in sight.
And you know what - it feels pretty normal.
More than a decade ago Apple ran ads saying "what's in your Power Book?" Maybe that's something for T-Mobile to think about. So far we have seen what one of their customers can do with the handy device. And sure it can give some inspiration to all of us...
The hack of Paris Hiltons cell phone shows there are only winners in the world:
But most of all chip makers with new secure solutions are the winners. I think T-Mobile pr
obably aldready made the call. But actually who knows. Because something in this T-Mobile ad tells us what has happened isn't something that worries them too much.
Among the world´s brands that most of all influense our lives seven of top ten are what could be considered "innovation brands". The list generated by Brandchannel.com´s readers is topped by Apple because of its unparallelled success with the Ipod, now in the hands and ears of more than 10 millions people and part of a creative solution on how music may be purchased in the digital age. It's then followed by Google (innovative primarily in its ad-solution business), IKEA (both an internal and external innovation making us, the customers, the assemblers and transporters) and Starbucks (bringing quality coffee into our mobile life while providing others a second home or office in their mobile lifestyle).
Other brands based on innovation are Mini (making small cars cool) and Nokia. Only three brands based on mature business concepts did make it: Coca Cola, Virgin and AlJazeera.
What does that tell us? Does innovation build stronger brands? Perhaps not, who would argue that brands such as Porsche, Louis Vuitton, Microsoft, Nestlé and American Express aren't strong brands, although they are not driven by innovation? A better explanation is probably that innovation drives publicity and among brand experts publicity is perceived more important that is actually is for us, the customers.
More interesting is the wide difference among the geographic regions. In the US, the top 5 in the survey consists exclusively of truly innovative companies including Target that are challaging Wal-Mart with new kind of partnerships not least in its fashion range to add quality perception to a low price strategy. In Europe/Africa (since when did those two continents become a pair?) only three innovation companies made top 5, in Asia/Pacific two did and in Latin and Central America none made it. Does that mean the US market is the most innovative? The simple and not to complex answer to that question is yes. And I think it is the correct answer.
Today Cynthia L. Webb unfortunately authored her last "Filter" Column in Washington Post. That's a petty. Better is she continues to cover the tech industry on her brand new BLOG. Read her last column in the Post here, a teriffic summary of what has happened in the industry the last two and a half years. Which is pretty much.
