Ptotheright

Ptotheright, originally uploaded by pat_the.

Area code 281

Area code 281, originally uploaded by pat_the.

Bleeding stairs

Bleeding stairs, originally uploaded by pat_the.

Mr T. could drive a truck as well as turn lawnmowers into cabbage firing machines and kick arse.

Mr T. could drive a truck as well as turn lawnmowers into cabbage firing machines and kick arse.

I assume the is why the new concept of T shaped people was so named. Once was, ok so upto about year ago, if you didn't fit into a planning/creative/account/digital/direct/traditional box you were a pariah.

Now it is almost a necessity to have a core vertical skill with complimentary horizontal skills. As agencies struggle to cope with the changing communications channels and how to navigate them cost effectively the need to have smaller teams of more versatile people who link together across their shared skills will increase.

The term was coined by David Guest in "The hunt is on for the Renaissance Man of computing," in The Independent, September 17, 1991.

I would however agree with the people who have said that this is overly simplistic and the agency of the future will require people of all different shapes integrating across a variety of levels but we are starting from a low base.

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Banana Green

Banana Green, originally uploaded by pat_the.

Black Winter Teaser Standard Films

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Yes Signs Tadashi Fuse

Yes Now Board has beefed up its team with Japanese slayer Tadashi Fuse.

According to a post by DCP on Yes’s blog:

Tadashi Fuse is right now in Japan about to release his new Hearth Films Production movie and we just signed him on YES NOW BOARD, we want to welcome him on board and we are all very exited for the coming season . Tadashi will be developping a pro model line for 2011 season and a limited edition TADASHI board should be available this fall.

YES is So International now and found
Romain de Marchi representing Switzerland
Jp Solberg representing Norway
David Carrier-Porcheron representing Canada
Vince PAges representing France
Tadashi Fuse representing Japan

We are happy to have found an other member who shares the same passion for snowboarding as us!

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tws

How To: Discount Wisely

Cutting prices, and therefore margins, is never an easy decision, but in this day and age as many retailers and manufacturers struggle to get inventory levels back to a healthy level, it has become a necessity.

Business Week recently featured a few tips from Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, which helps companies rekindle growth, and the author of When Growth Stalls.

Rules for discounting wisely

Discounting should be rarely used and carefully managed. Let me suggest three rules of thumb that should be kept in mind if (when) you begin flirting with the discount beast.

First: Discount briefly. Discounting is like a drug. Employed for a limited time to treat a specific condition, discounting can have its place. But like a drug, it’s addictive. Companies that get hooked on it do little more than drive their value proposition down, sometimes past the point of no return.

This is one reason why department stores have been in decline over the past two decades, launching Red Tag sales as soon as their Red Apple sales are over. They discounted so often that they trained customers not to shop if there wasn’t a sale going on.

Second: Discount credibly. Handled carefully, discounting can be used to achieve specific business objectives without compromising your brand’s overall value perception. The key is to make the rationale behind the discount credible (and obvious) to consumers, so they don’t perceive it as an act of desperation.

For instance, Apple’s (AAPL) student discount on laptops doesn’t damage the brand because it’s based on a rational corporate reason (get young computer users hooked on its products) and a credible consumer need (students are poor). The company also offers 10% off a new iPod when customers recycle their old one, which not only encourages upgrading but makes Apple look like a responsible corporate citizen.

Third: Discount creatively. Smart companies understand that price is just one element of the value equation, and find ways to “discount without discounting” by focusing on other elements of the marketing mix. Luxury leather goods maker Coach (COH) did just that by adjusting its merchandise inventory so that half of its handbags are regularly priced between $200 and $300 (compared to its historical average price of $325). While this will have a negative impact on the long-term equity of the Coach brand name, it’s less damaging than hanging a “30% off” tag from the handle of every purse.

Or consider video game retailer GameStop (GME), which is pushing the sales of more used games (that have a naturally lower price point) while times are tough. That will keep customers in the habit of coming to its stores to find what they want. GameStop understands that when the economy comes back, so will the sales of new games. Rather than hurting its future pricing power by discounting new merchandise, the company has found another way to satisfy its customers in the short term.

The bottom line: In your customers’ eyes, your product is either worth regular price or it’s not. In tough times like these that may be a more difficult case to make, but if you’re not winning the value equation in their eyes you should focus on finding a way to meet their needs without reflexively taking a percentage off the top. If you do choose to incorporate discounting into your strategy, it must appear sensible and smart, not irrational or a result of panic.


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tw-mike lewis

U, V or W for recovery

T HAS been deep and nasty. But the worst global recession since the 1930s may be over. Led by China, Asia’s emerging economies have revived fastest, with several expanding at annualised rates of more than 10% in the second quarter. A few big rich economies also returned to growth, albeit far more modestly, between April and June. Japan’s output rose at an annualised pace of 3.7%, and both Germany and France notched up annualised growth rates of just over 1%. In America the housing market has shown signs of stabilising, the pace of job losses is slowing and the vast majority of forecasters expect output to expand between July and September. Most economies are still a lot smaller than they were a year ago. On a quarterly basis, though, they are turning the corner.

This is good news. The first step in any recovery is for output to stop shrinking. But the more interesting question is what shape the recovery will take. The debate centres around three scenarios: “V”, “U” and “W”. A V-shaped recovery would be vigorous, as pent-up demand is unleashed. A U-shaped one would be feebler and flatter. And in a W-shape, growth would return for a few quarters, only to peter out once more.

Optimists argue that the scale of the downturn augurs for a strong rebound. America’s deepest post-war recessions, they point out, were followed by vigorous recoveries. In the two years after the slump of 1981-82, for instance, output soared at an average annual rate of almost 6%; and this time round, output has slumped even further, and for longer, than it did in the early 1980s.

Pessimists, meanwhile, think this downturn’s origins favour a weak recovery or a double-dip. Unlike typical post-war recessions this slump was spawned by a financial bust, not high interest rates, and when overindebted borrowers need to rebuild their balance-sheets and financial systems need repair, growth can be weak and easily derailed for years. Japan’s 1990s banking crisis left the economy stagnant for a decade; a premature tax increase in 1997 plunged it back into recession.
V for vulnerable

Neither of these parallels is exact, because today’s global slump combines several types of downturn and an unprecedented policy response. In formerly bubble economies, it is largely a balance-sheet recession. Debt-fuelled consumption has been felled. But the scale of collapse was broadened and deepened by the freezing up of the machinery of global finance, a dramatic collapse in confidence and stock-slashing. It was then countered with the biggest stimulus in history. The shape of the recovery depends on how these forces interact.

In the short term that shape could look beguilingly like a “V”, as stimulus kicks in and the inventory cycle turns. In emerging Asia, the unfreezing of trade finance, a turnaround in stocks and hefty fiscal stimulus are powering a rebound. Government support, especially employment subsidies and incentives toa buy new cars, has cushioned demand in Germany and France (see article). With export orders rising and confidence growing, the next few months could be surprisingly buoyant. Even in America, the fiscal stimulus is kicking in, the “cash for clunkers” scheme is a big, if temporary, prop to output and firms will, sooner or later, stop cutting inventories.

Yet a rebound based on stock adjustments is necessarily temporary, and one based on government stimulus alone will not last. Beyond those two factors there is little reason for cheer. America’s housing market may yet lurch down again as foreclosures rise, high unemployment takes its toll and a temporary home-buyers’ tax-credit ends (see article). Even if housing stabilises, consumer spending will stay weak as households pay down debt. In America and other post-bubble economies, a real V-shaped bounce seems fanciful. Elsewhere, it will happen only if vigorous private domestic demand picks up the baton from government stimulus. In Japan and Germany, where joblessness has further to rise, that seems unlikely any time soon. The odds are better in emerging economies, especially China. But even there an array of reforms, from a stronger currency to an overhaul of subsidies, is needed to boost labour income and encourage consumption. Until that shift takes place, the global recovery will be fragile and probably quite feeble. A gloomy U with a long, flat bottom of weak growth is the likeliest
shape of the next few years.


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te

éS & Crooked Tongues Present The Foothills Project

In a departure from their usual collaborations involving major athletic footwear brands on mostly running silhouettes, Crooked Tongues partners with éS on The Foothills Project. With almost 10 years under the Crooked Tongues name, the team over London put together a solid package beyond just footwear which also includes products that compliment each design. Each model gets its own exclusive accessory including a 3-layer jacket, ripstop cap and backpack.

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BuildingCastle

BuildingCastle, originally uploaded by pat_the.

Bursting the branding bubble

“Branding doesn't work any more...You need another branding solution like you need a hole in the head.” Considering that he makes his living as a branding consultant, Jonathan Salem Baskin is a brave man. In his iconoclasm, he reminds of a routine by Rich Hall, in which the American comedian questions why Coca-Cola is willing to spend millions on brand advertising, only for diners in a restaurant to reply “Whatever” when the waiter asks “Is Pepsi OK?”.

Despite his profession, Mr Baskin is nothing if not consistent, as followers of his website and blog will know. His lively new book challenges the brand gurus—and indeed, the entire subculture around the concept of branding, to prove things at the most fundamental level—that their campaigns, no matter how clever or how “viral”, actually make customers buy more of a company's products.

Although a rabble-rouser, Mr Baskin is no Naomi Klein. His book is aimed at chief executives, asking them why branding “isn't held to the same standards as the activities of the rest of the enterprise”. He believes that companies can no longer rely on vague image associations in a world where consumer choice is heavily influenced by information and opinions found online. “People are harder to find, more difficult to convince, and less likely to remember what they're told… We need brands to do more, only we're getting less from them”, he writes.

With this challenge, he takes on a “multi-billion creative Media-Industrial complex dedicated to maintaining the status quo,” making good use of an analogy with the Ptolemaic system (which for centuries placed the Earth at the centre of the solar system). Money is squandered “in perpetuation of a charade that hasn't been remotely relevant since the mass media days of the mid-twentieth century”. As with Ptolemy's idea, Mr Baskin is dedicated to gathering the evidence so the charade can, finally, be refuted.

In chatty, bumptious style, Mr Baskin calls the bluff of some traditional branding assumptions. He disputes that people buy products on the strength of brand alone: once distribution, product quality and salesmanship are taken into account, the brand may have very little impact on sales. He also waves away evidence that brain scans reveal high levels of brand awareness, responding that those brand-aware brains don’t necessarily go on to buy the product. “All we can say for sure is that branding might help create awareness, and that awareness is generally better than non-awareness.” But not all publicity is good: “a dumb commercial …is still dumb the third time I see it.”

Mr Baskin does not simply rail, but redefines branding. “For branding to mean something, it has to do something.” In other words, branding must be generated directly by the experience of the user. At a basic level, straplines such as Nike's “Just do it” and Las Vegas’s “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” work, he says, because they play to feelings that are related to how a product might be used. His notion of branding goes much further, taking in, for example, the way an airline deals with its stranded passengers. The amalgamation of all such company-wide actions emerge to create a brand, he argues.

Action-based branding can be a highly creative process too. Mr Baskin cites a restaurant that only opened for 23 days, (a “pop-up restaurant”) and was a roaring commercial success. He recalls a corporate party where only those who could find it could attend. Indeed, anything from loyalty programs to clipping coupons or even searching for sale items in a store bin can be made into a branding game. Unfortunately, they seldom are. The biggest missed opportunity is in online gaming, a field which should be a marketer’s dream—it's immersive, addictive, involves spending lots of money, and is easy to build. And yet “the best we can do is muck up games with ads”, he rages.

Mr Baskin's thesis is compelling, if repetitively made. Ultimately however, it is unproven. The effectiveness of traditional branding may defy rigorous calculation, but he does not prove its ineffectiveness either. More research, hard data and more in-depth case studies on branding campaigns would have strengthened his case.

Mr Baskin asks readers to imagine a world without brands, and suggests our lives would be little different. But those who experienced life in Soviet-bloc countries might disagree. Branding has its place: it can provide consumers with some reassurance of quality so they don't have to research every item they purchase—even in the internet age.

Generally, Mr Baskin sensibly avoids such social commentary (though he has does indulge in occasional philosophical rambling). However, beyond bursting the branding bubble, he might have gone further: have brands become yet another form of hoodwinking, and if so is the consumer angry enough to demand change? But in worthy and brave fashion, Mr Baskin has at least started a debate. He will undoubtedly provoke a vociferous response from many in his industry.


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te

Danny Way's exclusive Big Air shoes.

Danny Way's DC Big Air shoe, which comes pre-made with a click over lace saver and a reinforced heel for support (a lot like a snowboard boot).


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Muhammad Fight

Muhammad Fight, originally uploaded by pat_the.

Citybike

Citybike, originally uploaded by pat_the.