08/12/2009 11:13:57 AM 
The Hundreds
Via PSFK
Now is not the time to flaunt and display your logo.
What's next, the demise of the car badge?
Posted by Ed Cotton
08/02/2009 03:30:51 PM (4)
(4) 
For the last six months, it's been the talk of the town and way beyond, because it shows an almost telepathic understanding of what the twenty-something crowd is looking for from food right now.
Here's how it works.
MSF "leases" a Chinese restaurant on Mission Street for two nights of the week and invites guest chefs to come in and create menus and prepare meals.
What Can Brands Learn from MSF?
1. The Power of Surprise
MSF is based on a pretty smart assumption, people like to try new restaurants all the time, which makes it hard for a single concept to gain traction and gain a group of loyal customers. In a world of hyper-instant gratification, people are constantly demanding for and seeking out the new.
How does your brand surprise its audience?
What are you doing to prevent brand fatigue?
2. Partnerships and Collaboration
MSF partners with a Chinese restaurant to host the events, it gets access to its kitchens and staff and it also partners with guest chefs every night. MSF is really a facilitator to the process.
Who is your brand collaborating with to add value?
3. Understanding the Audience
MSF gets who it's audience is and what they want. They know this is an audience that is easily bored and is looking for culinary surprises. They know they are prepared to trade off ambience for food quality.
Does your brand know its audience?
Do you know what they are looking for from you now?
4. The Concept of Value
MSF gets value right. This is of course not about low prices, but instead the combination of price and quality. The interesting items on the menu are priced perfectly to acknowledge the audiences understanding of value. There's no sense you are paying for the priviledge of eating there.
Does your brand have its pricing right?
Do you know what people are prepared to pay?
Do you have value add and do you know what it's worth?
5. Giving Back
MSF gives back profits to local organizations and non-profits giving diners another reason to eat.
What is your brand giving back?
How are your causes tied to your brand?
How open are you about your contributions?
6. A Story
MSF has enough layers to build a great narrative including its original incarnation as a taco truck.
What's your story?
How do you share it?
How are you building on it?
Posted by Ed Cotton
07/20/2009 05:32:07 PM
Nokia is a really smart organization which has become truly global by listening to user needs especially in the developing world, but it's in trouble.
It's nice to tick the box in the C21st marketing text book and make some effort to be open, but if it doesn't drive business success, then it's simply a nice to have.
Can Nokia turn its openness into something more powerful?
It's certainly one area that they lead Apple, a company that's widely recognized as being controlling and secretive.
However, Nokia needs to turn its openness trait into something more powerful.
Could Active Openness help Nokia to become the "people's phone company"
By listening more and opening up more it could seize some advantage, but it needs to make this openness bigger, more active and more broadcast worthy. Simply seeing what Nokia employees are doing is no good if you can't interact. Also, if you don't having a rich understanding of the potential of mobile technology, it limits your ability to participate.
Nokia can do one thing that Apple can't, it can educate and invite a global audience inside its company. It can embrace the whole idea of openness and invite all kinds of audiences to help make a truly mobile life a reality for the globe.
While Apple will continue to control and dictate, Nokia has the opportunity to provide an alternative point view, one that's powered by a broad community who are working together with the corporation.
Nokia has a real chance to bring the idea of openness to broad media and encourage two way dialog, debate and discussion about the future of mobility.
Of course, it's obvious Nokia needs killer products, but Active Openness could help them engage.
Posted by Ed Cotton
03/08/2009 10:48:28 AM (1)
(1) While Twitter has been dismissed by many as a passing fad that just creates a stream of useless information, others like Kogi and Wesabe are embracing its power and fusing it into their business models.
The other smart idea about Kogi is how it embraces the low overhead model for a restaurant start-up; using a mobile van, instead of a costly space to build a following and a nice size business.
Mission Street Food is doing something similar in San Francisco, by renting space in a Chinese restaurant for a couple of nights a week.
Posted by Ed Cotton
04/28/2008 01:18:07 PM
The game’s main production studio is in Edinburgh, and Rockstar’s leaders, the brothers Dan and Sam Houser, are British expatriates who moved to New York to indulge their fascination with urban American culture.
Their success places them firmly among the distinguished cast of Britons from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through Tina Brown who have flourished by identifying key elements of American culture, repackaging them for mass consumption and selling them back at a markup."
NYT
Posted by Ed Cotton
01/06/2008 08:03:32 AM
People have been marveling at the entrepreneurship and creativity coming out of the place, which is due to the deep pool of talent and the emergence of a new “can do” attitude.
In the last year or so, digital agencies Farfar and North Kingdom have been setting the world alight.
Acne is perhaps the godfather of this latest phase of Swedish creativity.
It’s a company that defies conventional wisdom, because it creates both products and communication in a variety of formats.
The “Factory-like” collective is best known for its Acne Jeans brand, was founded in 1996 by four friends, Jesper Kouthoofd, Thomas Skun Skoging, Mats Johansson and Jonny Johansson.
Acne’s empire now spans a film company, an ad agency, a web design company, a toy company and even a magazine.
The jeans brand is the beacon of the group. It sets to the tone, the mood and the trends and helps build the connections and relationships for the rest of the company, but it also reacts and responds to what the other units are doing. Think of it as a dynamic feedback loop. The jeans brand has its own stores across Europe, including a flagship in Berlin and is sold in over 400 stores worldwide.
The ad agency has worked for MTV, Virgin and even a competitor to its jeans brand, H&M.
Acne Film is a commercial production house and has created ads for the likes of Comcast, Dodge, Garmin and Nike.
The magazine, Acne Paper, documents the worlds of creativity, fashion and style.
The digital agency, one of the newest ventures, has already worked for the likes of SAS, VW and Volvo.
With ad agencies currently struggling to define themselves, their stragey appears limited to focusing on driving revenue by owning every element of the communication mix.
Acne starts with creativity and ideas and works it out from there, a nightmare proposition for most senior agency management and holding company CFOs. However, perhaps the time is now right for new Acnes to emerge, led by individuals with limited or no real agency experience.
It appears that Acne’s secret is to leverage the cult of cool across a variety of different creative disciplines and areas.
It’s a concept that would be way too risky for most agencies to conceive because there’s always an inherent concern for any brand trading on cool, how long can it last?
Here’s how Acne explains its vision.
When Acne was created in 1996 the initial idea was to build brands, own as well as others', within the fields of fashion, entertainment and technology. Although all members of the collective are independent entities acting in their own right in various fields of creativity, they all share the same vision and culture. This vision combines art and industry in equal measures, whether this is through clothing, film, printed matter or a global advertising campaign.
Posted by Ed Cotton