On The Mark

Two if by sea

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 12:54:00 +0000

Cities are the lifeblood of the creative economy. We get much inspiration from the pace, mix and movement, the diversity and density of urban life.

Getting in and out of those cities, not so much. Commuting is just a necessary evil for most. More perspiration than inspiration.

But for six months a year, as often as I can make it to the dock at 7:00 am, the sense of wonder and reflection is also in the journey.

If the weather is good, I bike from Marblehead to Salem for the 45 minute ride into Boston. Buzzing across the open ocean in a catamaran is not commuting.

To invoke the famous line from Longfellow’s “ Paul Revere’s Ride”... One if by land, two if by sea, I will take the latter everytime I can get it.

Following is a visual travelogue of one day’s journey…

An Interview (not yet in chinese)

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:08:00 +0000

Our office is being featured in an international compendium on Branding that is being published in China and will be distributed worldwide in June of 2012. Following is an except from the publication interview.

What made you start Minelli? Do you remember what most difficult and what brought you the most happiness when starting the firm?

My business plan was essentially coming into work one day and saying, “I quit”. I had worked in my professors’ design office while in school and it was a terrific experience. When I was offered a job in Boston, while I loved the city, the firm was not a great fit. It was not the kind of environment where the work really mattered. I just wanted more than that and was dumb or naive enough to just go for it. I was also young enough that I didn’t know what it would really take to start a new office so it wasn’t as scary as it should have been.

Since founding Minelli, what is your greatest achievement?

What really excites us is when our work helps drive real change. Just a small number of people working together with passion and creativity can really make a difference. We have the great opportunity to develop tools that really affect how people think about and act on behalf of an organization. That’s how we think about brand. A good deal of our work revolves around arts and culture, land conservation, and global health issues. When the work achieves its full potential, it can drive participation and momentum. These tools can be instrumental in creating internal alignment with staff as well as building external engagement with audiences. We want our work to be about something whether it’s for a non-profit or a big corporation. It doesn’t always happen, but that’s what we strive for.

Could you share with us some details of how Minelli runs a project? What is the process? How does your team work together?

We talk a lot about “Vision Made Visible.” We have developed a rigorous framework that is fairly organic in nature so we can apply the thinking flexibly as needed. Over the years, we have developed a nice set of tools to help us understand how an organization sees itself and how others see it. A great deal of complicated information has to be distilled into a simple, elegant idea that will be at the heart of the brand.

Of course, then the real trick is designing comprehensive program that captures that idea and shapes how an organization is perceived. Design gives us this amazing visual and verbal vocabulary that can convey a huge amount of information in very short real estate.

How does Minelli motivate its team members? How do you deal with problems when your team faces difficulties?

I think this is an ongoing issue for any firm. How do you keep generating new ideas and continue pushing creative boundaries? It’s the lifeline of an organization like ours.

We work in small teams of 5-7 people. I think that helps to ensure that everybody has the big picture. The intent is to have methodologies in place that allow the team to be their most creative. You never know where the inspiration is going to come from. We encourage staff on the research and account side to gather images that strike them and for the designers to write out their ideas. I think consistently good work needs both sides of the brain working hard.

Could you share your latest project with us? What are the concept and the process behind this?

Perhaps giving two brief examples of current work will provide a better sense of the diversity and challenges of the studio today. I will speak generally since they are in process. Both are broad-based comprehensive branding programs for two very different clients. One is for the patient safety organization for all the Harvard teaching hospitals. We are working to build awareness and create a movement among the 13,000 physicians to create the safest health care system in the world. It’s a huge challenge since doctors are probably about the toughest audiences to engage. They are very busy and pulled in a million directions at once.

At the same time, we are working with a very innovative contemporary art museum in southern California. They are really transforming into an organization that can have international impact and reshape the cultural landscape in that part of California. There are some very interesting things happening on the west coast as they collectively challenge New York’s dominance of the contemporary art world.

Do you have any advice for small, growing design companies and young designers?

Do what you love, hire great people…and oh yes, get a good accountant. I assume I may have been like many other designer types where we look at financial spreadsheets and see grey value. That can get you in trouble pretty quickly.

Really, the common thread for absolutely any business is that it is built on people. I sat for three years on a CEO roundtable. The companies ranged in size from 12 to 4,000 employees and the most common issues by far involved people… how they worked, or failed to work together.

Having run the office for over 20 years, that chemistry ebbs and flows. It’s really dynamic. Sometimes it’s amazing, sometimes amazingly challenging, but you just have to keep at it and build teams that can really complement and extend the individuals skills.

What books have you read lately?

Here are a couple of relatively recent books that I love:

The Thing Itself by Richard Todd.

A wonderfully personal narrative about what is true in ourselves and in the world around us. Terrific ruminations on objects, places, and the modern media.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain De Botton

A gorgeous book on how we respond to architecture, and how it can embody (or fail to) values that contribute to personal and societal well being.

I am currently reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. It’s an insightful and often terrifying read on the importance of applying a simple checklist into the complex world of medicine today. It references the successful application in other complex industries such as airlines and the construction of skyscrapers.

At present, what are you most interested in?

At this precise moment, it’s snowing very hard so I am wondering why I am stuck inside writing and not snowboarding somewhere. More generally, I am really interested in how people process information and what causes them to shift their behavior. I think it is really the Holy Grail for a branding firm. Our society is getting more and more visually driven. It’s a new kind of iconic language that is emerging and we are in a unique position to leverage that to move and inspire people.

Design Imports

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:09:00 +0000

My wife and daughters just returned from Israel last week. My college age son and I stayed behind this time for a few weeks of bachelordom. My wife is Israeli so there have been many trips over the years. Those journeys are always filled with many rich experiences but this time they also returned with some very cool designer-type things too.

Design Museum Holon

First, impressions of the amazing new institution designed by Ron Arad that just recently opened in March of this year.

The vision of the institution as described on its website. Good stuff.

“Design Museum Holon will serve as a leading hub for innovation in the field of design.  Committed to pioneering a creative arena for the exploration and examination of design principles and interpretations, Design Museum Holon will serve as a leading hub for innovation in the field of design.  Design Museum Holon will provide an exciting, engaging and encompassing design experience for all, regardless of age or design background. It will also foster an international dialogue highlighting the importance of quality design and its relevance to our lives, develop an interactive archive with a digital component for the theoretical and practical research of design and include a historical collection of Israeli design.

True to its guiding principles, Design Museum Holon will investigate the impact and relationship of design on urban spaces and living, using the city of Holon as a case study.”

Cars

They also brought back a lovely book on 21^st century design as reflected in the automobile. Cars by Steven Bayley. It corresponded to the exhibition on display at the Tel Aviv Museum.

Flipping through a century of these rolling objects of desire, I was surprised to find ones listed on subsequent pages that also happened to be the first 2 cars I owned. Mine were also in the same colors as the ones in the book but a couple model years later. They were both used, of course. I loved them for their very different but equally quirky, iconic personalities. They both came to take on water and leach oil but were fun to drive and always easy to pick out in the crowd. Especially the bug-like Saab.

It seems we have lost a lot of that quirky nature in cars these days. Perhaps it is because we are approaching the end of the century of the petrol car. This is a very good thing. Still looking for that next (first) icon of alternative transportation that is also an object of desire. Sorry but the prius bean just never did it for me.

Signs of Confusion

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Perhaps because we spend so much time wrangling simplicity and elegance from complex communication issues, I am curiously drawn to bad/unintentionally funny signage. Here are a few from recent travels...

Alaska

National Park trail sign regarding bears at hanging glacier. It seems to me that starting to fight back once you are being eaten might be too late. What am I, wolverine?   

Jerusalem 

Why take the regular exit when you can take the holy stairs? Sorry, no sacred escalator.

Southern Israel

Aside from the curiously descriptive icon, this sign was placed over the precipice so you had to lean over the edge of the abyss to read the sign.

A fine whine

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:46:00 +0000

I am departing from my usual attempt to be thoughtful and thorough with these blog entries to just toss something out there. Or this may only serve to reinforce the perception that all previous posts clearly fit into the latter category.

We really love what we do but there are things that seem to be inherent in the human condition (or at least humans working in a creative field) that can be truly maddening.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Why is it…

…Easier to let an idea get watered down, messed up and convoluted than it is to keep it beautiful, simple and powerful?

…We bemoan the lack of time to explore the potential of an idea yet we do our best work when we are totally busy?

…Hucksters who generate only smoke and mirrors manage to vaporize most (or all) of the money before they are discovered?

…Any group of people gathered together possesses an equal ability to accomplish the unimaginable and define the dysfunctional?

…The more successful and proficient we become, the more we endanger the spirit that got us there?

On the other hand, we get to do what we love, work with some amazing clients and people, and occasionally, even get paid for it. So I guess it all balances in the end.

Branding as change management

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:38:00 +0000

Change is inevitable

There is a quirky little shop tucked along the commute from my home to my office in downtown Boston. The owner’s business card reads, “miller of precision machining, keeper of arcane knowledge.” In the front of the shop there is a sign that allows for customized messages to be dropped into its slotted tracks. I guess it’s not surprising that this particular sign does not herald conventional sales offers. A recent posting proclaimed, “Change is inevitable, except in vending machines.”

Okay, it’s goofy, but it also rings true. Change is inevitable. It is also critical and difficult. Managing change within an organization so that it creates momentum and alignment while responding to the dynamics of a fluid, volatile world is kind of the Holy Grail for any business. This is as true for small nonprofits as it is for Fortune 100 companies. Success will always be based in the people who work for and support the organization.

Often the path ahead for an organization is mired in a haze of complexities: departments that have grown and spawned other divisions; the introduction of new products or new markets; deeply embedded notions of how things are done; hybrid “Frankensteins” that are the result of previous re-organizations or mergers. It’s pretty easy to get deep into the weeds, and this makes managing change very hard.

The role of branding

There are numerous established processes and approaches to change management. One discipline that is seldom viewed in this light but that can provide a powerful complement to traditional change management stems from the brand development process. It’s a much more design-centered approach that focuses on holistic, conceptual, and empathetic problem solving.

Getting to the core of why an organization matters now and in the future is at the heart of all good brand development. And it requires very careful listening: to the people who work for the organization; to current and potential audiences; and to changes in the world around us. The nature of the branding process is one of synthesis and simplification. Complexities are filtered, clustered, and wrangled into a single, elegant notion. Other strategic planning exercises may touch on many of these areas, but branding differs fundamentally in how it translates those findings.

A unique language

Branding employs a unique visual and verbal language. Ideas are expressed at their most primal, symbolic level. Branding is about both clarity and sacrifice. It is a language that is emotional, minimal, and portable. That language is becoming ubiquitous. We are living in world of communication based on symbols and shorthand encoded in images, taglines, tweets, and YouTube videos.

While many may bemoan this phenomenon as the demise of the world as we know it, it works and works very well, Think about how much you know about a great brand and how simple and powerful the cues are that have shaped that perception. Those symbols build associations about who we are and who we want to be. This is powerful, and can affect not only perception but behavior as well. And managing organizational change must clearly embrace both.

A two-part harmony

The output of the branding process must be captured in two related parts: the spirit of the brand and the rules of the brand. The spirit of the brand is the essence of an organization’s vision and values and must be available and understood by every individual associated with the organization. The rules of the brand provide the guidelines and tools for the organization to police and measure the dissemination of ideas into the marketplace with consistency and clarity.

Education and training

A critical and under utilized aspect of branding is staff and board training. These workshops allow for the spirit of the brand to played out with staff so they can see how it relates to their role in the company. It doesn’t work for management to say, “We are changing. Here’s your new brand.” In our client engagements, we have employed a variety of techniques including role playing and peer review to help individuals re-imagine their roles in the organization, identify potential roadblocks for management, and create a much broader climate for receptivity to change.

A way forward

In our work with complex, mission-driven organizations over the past 22 years, we have seen a gradual evolution in their understanding of the role of branding. The simplistic notion was, "We're going to change our logo." But our approach to the work makes it clear that branding is much more about making the organization's vision real and visible inside the organization. Only then can you map this vision into the public expression of how you look, sound, and act.

Understood in this way, branding can be a powerful lever for managing change. Helping organizations create the internal alignment they need and understand their true value provides clear rules and guidelines for decision-making. It also creates a more powerful and visible connection to the people they want to reach. Finally, it offers the means to measure if it's working and the tools to make adjustments in order to continue to build connections and trust among all stakeholders.

How we see

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:30:00 +0000

The Vision@minelli blog has been on hiatus over the summer, but we’re launching into the fall with a three-part series on perception.

Part One
Humans are complex. This is fairly evident for anyone who has ever been in a serious relationship, worked collaboratively with a team, or parented a child. Did I mention that parenting a child is a solid illustration of human complexity?

Looking at a single aspect of the way that people actually function…how we SEE…turns out to be remarkably complex, too. In fact, human physiology dedicates a lot of resources to the sense of sight. Roughly half of our cerebral cortex is used when analyzing visual information.

How we see is dictated by a host of factors. Some are culturally based, others rooted in the mechanics of how we process visual information. Explorations into perception are endlessly fascinating, and there are plenty of good insights into the subject…some covered in doctorial research papers and others (equally compelling) in old children’s books about optical illusions.

Our work at Minelli relies on our ability to help guide the way that people see.

Interstate is a font and a highway
Let’s start with simple visual cues that are encountered by the average person hundreds, if not thousands, of times every day. These cues are collectively known as type. Type is everywhere. After all, it makes up the central component of reading. At the office, of course, we adore the stuff and revel in its history, meaning, form, and amazing power to express. By contrast, the average person-on-the-street tends to be less enamored with type, which is simply not a burning topic at sports bars or (most) dinner parties.

But despite the average person’s indifference to the subtleties of typefaces, she or he has incredibly specific, though probably not conscious, expectations about what particular letterforms convey, depending on usage. We expect one kind of font when we are reading a newspaper, another when we read a wedding invitation, and yet another when peering at a highway sign.

Things get really interesting when we start to mess with people’s expectations. Cursive-style font on the homepage of the nytimes.com? Slim and gentle serifs along the roadside? Chunky, blocky type on the menu at Chez Vous?

Now, the average person may not be able to articulate why she or he feels uncomfortable, but flying in the face of tacitly agreed upon typeface usage can really make a person’s skin crawl. Alain de Bouton references a similar phenomenon in The Architecture of Happiness, describing people’s reactions to miscues in the built environment.

“We don’t generally experience chronic pain when the fine-grained features of design have been ignored, we are simply forced to work harder to overcome confusion and eddies of unease.”

Seeing is not a passive reflex
What we “see” is not the pattern that actually passes across our retina, but rather, our interpretation of it. And these interpretations are not assured, constant, or stable. Consider our experience with color.

The amazing color studies in Joseph Alber’s landmark book The Interaction of Color, beautifully convey the relative nature of color. The book was originally developed as a teaching aid for artists and teachers, but the revelatory content is now a standard part of almost every design curriculum. Below is one example taken from Alber’s book.

The purple in each square is made up of identical RGB formulas. They are exactly alike, even though most of us perceive them as quite different. Most of us simply cannot see the two purples as the same because the colors exist exclusively in relationship to their backgrounds.

The fact is, colors do not actually exist. Wavelengths of light are not indigo, crimson or azure; the sky is not blue. We just perceive it that way. Or, for a more metaphysical way to think about it, remember what the psychic bald child tells Neo in the movie The Matrix: “Do not try to bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth... there is no spoon."

continued...

How we see (part two)

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Please step forward
In order to process visual information we need to form a gestalt from the random set of information that hits our visual cortex. We need order, and that’s what our process of perception provides.

“Without the organizing process of perception we would not see objects, space, events, people or relationships but would drift through a world of meaningless, random sensations,”
--Psychology and Life, Glenview IL 1988

Put another way, we need to peel out the foreground from the background in order to identity objects, patterns, and assign meaning to the things we see. Without perception, we are drinking from a visual fire hose. Without perception, it gets real tough just walking through a doorway, pouring water in a glass, or stepping off a curb.

The success of optical illusions relies on a clever re-jiggering of the expected order of things. When done well, they present irreconcilable conflicts that prevent us from determining a set order. Our perceptual process starts screaming, “Enough already!”

The impossible triangle below is just not content to keep its lines in the expected fore- or background.

United we stand
Equally remarkable is our perceptual ability to assemble a limited number of visual cues into a pattern of meaning. Even when given precious little information, we can cross-reference what we do know to fill in the blanks.

The famous Dallenbach image from the 50’s presents us with a stark monochromatic image that has been stripped of the critical cues to establish foreground/background. It may be interesting in the abstract but the patterns just don’t connect to form a literal image.

See below…

What’s really fascinating is that once the cues have been fully established, it is very difficult to not see our bovine friend in the original image when we revisit it, whether today or a year from now. Once something has been “seen” it is almost impossible to “unsee” it.

continued...

How we see (part three)

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:18:00 +0000

A rose by any other name
We humans are needful creatures. Order, itself, really isn’t enough for us. We also need to assign meaning to the things that we see. This need is vividly conveyed in an exercise about visual metaphors that was developed by Dr. Angela Dumas in the UK, and revisited in @issue magazine. In the study, participants were presented with paintings created by three modern masters, Picasso (A), Mondrian (B), and Kandinsky (C).

Instead of asking the study’s participants to comment on the formal composition of the paintings, or speculate about the artist’s intent, they were given a series of unrelated questions and were then asked to map the paintings to those questions.

The responses? Utterly remarkable. The participants were perfectly happy to assign both meaning and personality to the images…meaning and personality that almost certainly lie far outside the artists’ original intent.

Below are just a few of these puzzlers.

1. Imagine each airline is a painting, which would you choose?

Mondrian (B) is the very clear winner here. To paraphrase one participant, “Order and efficiency. You don’t need an airline to be creative, you need it to not crash.” Oh, and absolutely no one wants to fly with Kandinsky (C) airline. Apparently, the participants agreed with the late, great George Carlin: “I don’t want to be on a non-stop flight. I want it to land one day.”

2. Each of the painting represents a presidential candidate, who would you vote for?

Responses were mixed, but one participant noted, “I will vote for Picasso (A). I like the positions of Kandinsky (C), but they don’t stand a chance of getting elected.”

3. Imagine each painting is a company. Which one do you think you would like to work for? (Obviously, this survey was last done when there was an economy, and companies hired people instead of laying them off.) Mondrian (B) may run a fine airline, but is apparently going to be no party to work for…check out these paraphrased comments. “Very corporate, no room for breaking out of the box, no new ideas, highly structured….rigid, conservative… strict hierarchy, heavy handed.” Picasso (A) seems like a good choice here. “A lot of room to move and try ideas, but with clear limitations.” We do issue special warnings for young, attractive women planning to launch careers at this corporation.

Seeing is not a passive act. Rather, it is a constructed and proactive one. Our overriding need to create order and meaning out of chaos is perfectly mirrored in the way we shape…and ultimately are shaped… by the process of interpreting the endless amounts of visual stimulation that comes flying at us every day. By nature and nurture, we’re on an eternal quest to establish context and meaning.

For everyone working in fields associated with the visual arts, our thinking and investigation into how we see must be equally proactive. If we wish to be able to positively shape perception, we must have a good sense of how it actually works.

Survival mode

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:30:00 +0000

In this post, I would like to share the results of a series of interviews conducted by one of our staff members. We recently spoke to a group of arts and cultural leaders around the country about the recession’s impact on their organizations. Please see our compiled findings below.

Introduction

Recent economic indicators do not offer a clear picture regarding the duration of the current global recession. While the stock market has slowly risen since mid-2009 and the US economy is showing signs of growth, consumer confidence remains low and unemployment high. In addition, state and local governments are facing huge deficits, and corporations are slashing budgets. This continuing economic uncertainty is having a significant impact on arts and cultural organization across the United States. During the summer of 2009, Minelli, Inc. interviewed a number of US arts and cultural organizations in order to hear first-hand about some of the impacts that the economy is having on their institutions. Although the group of institutions we interviewed is diverse with respect to audience, mission, size, and budget, each is being affected by the recession in similar ways. This report looks at the recession’s impact on revenue, programming, and operations.

Minelli, Inc. would like to thank all of the institutional leaders who were so generous with their time for the information they provided. We look forward to working with them again in the future.

Revenue

In general, public and private donations to the organizations we interviewed declined throughout 2009. One organization we spoke with experienced a 50% drop in its total contributions. This is consistent with other research that suggests a huge falloff in contributions from corporations, governments, and individuals, all feeling the strain of the financial crisis. According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, organizations that rely heavily on government or corporate support have been particularly hard hit (Hoye, S, “Recession Hits Arts Groups Especially Hard”, January 2009).

In addition to sharp declines in contributions, the value of many endowments among the organizations we interviewed shrank, sometimes dramatically. One institution reported a 32.5% drop in its endowment. The arts leaders with whom we spoke reported that they have put most capital campaigns and other high-profile fund-raising efforts on hold. Expansion projects of all types, except those in progress before the recession, have been suspended. Our findings are consistent with a recent survey of museum directors by the American Association of Museums that reports the end of a boom period of physical expansion, with the cancellation or postponement of a number of significant capital campaigns.

Many arts and cultural organizations also experienced declines in attendance and ticket revenue, although this was not universally true. Some museum directors, in particular, reported seeing attendance remain steady or even rise. However, these same directors also reported that visitor-generated revenue — gift shop and restaurant sales, new memberships, and onsite donations — has declined.

This widespread revenue loss is taking a toll on arts and cultural organizations around the country. While none of the organizations we interviewed indicated that they were at risk of closing soon, the declines in revenue nationwide are threatening many small and medium-size institutions. An American for the Arts report estimates that 10,000 US nonprofit arts and cultural organizations may be forced to close in 2009 with a loss of up to 260,000 jobs (Hoye, S, “Recession and the Arts: Act II”, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, May 2009). For example, a recent article in The Washington Post reported the closing of several organizations including the Milwaukee Shakespeare Theater Company, the Connecticut Opera, the Las Vegas Art Museum, and Opera Pacific in Orange County, California.

Programming

Nearly all of the organizations we spoke with have made some programming adjustments as a result of reduced revenue, barring any contractual obligations precluding such adjustments. One organization reduced its number of programs by 75%, moving ahead with only one out of four scheduled programs. Many museums cancelled traveling shows and other scheduled events, instead opting to curate exhibits from their permanent collections.

Several institutions reported that tightened budgets are forcing them to develop more strategically targeted programming. “Young people” are the audience most often cited as critical to the future success of any arts and cultural organization, while most current audiences (excluding school children served by educational programming), continue to be predominantly older.

In several instances, the economic crisis has compelled organizations to form strategic partnerships with other cultural organizations. The cost-savings strategies often involved sharing operational (particularly marketing) resources with the goal of increasing visibility while allowing both organizations to reach more people with fewer dollars. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported on one such collaboration resulting in three joint productions this summer between Opera New Jersey in Princeton and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in Newark (Hoye, S, “Recession and the Arts: Act II”, May 2009).

Operations

Revenue loss is also causing organizations to take a careful look at their operating budgets. In larger institutions, marketing departments in particular were singled out for budget cuts. These cuts frequently included staff reductions or reconfigurations resulting in layoffs, furloughs, job-sharing, early retirement, or a proliferation of unfilled positions.

The recession is providing an opportunity for managers to carefully assess the skills offered by their current staff, and to make strategic decisions about the types of skills and workers needed to meet current and future needs. For example, there was widespread agreement among the institutions we interviewed that a critical staff hiring or training objective is to ensure the successful development and implementation of a social networking strategy.

Money spent on traditional print communications, brand management, and advertising was also reduced. Organizations reduced the amount and complexity of print media for customer development. Fewer websites were redesigned and fewer advertisements placed. New, large-scale branding initiatives were postponed, and even small projects involving audience or development-related research were tabled. Marketing materials associated with annual giving, however, did not suffer a commensurate expense reduction. Many organizations also increased utilization of tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr.

Looking ahead

Most of the institutions we interviewed are facing enormous challenges, now and in the future. Uncertainty about the rate of economic recovery and how this will continue to affect revenue streams is making program and budget forecasting somewhat difficult. Many leaders talked about developing two plans for the future — one that assumes a return to more predictable revenue streams, and another that takes into account the very real likelihood that the arts sector is in for a long and painful recovery.

It is not all doom and gloom, however. The arts and cultural sector has long grappled with challenges posed by changing demographics, shifts in audience desires and behaviors, and the difficulty of working within the nonprofit funding model. Many of the leaders we interviewed recognize that the economic downturn presents opportunities to make more informed, strategic decisions and to develop new ways of thinking. It is clear from our interviews and from research conducted by other organizations that the arts sector has historically relied on innovation, creativity, and flexibility to survive, even during the best of times. These same skills may now allow it to respond faster and better to the financial crisis than other sectors in the economy (Madden, C, “Global Financial Crisis and Recession: Impact on the Arts”, D’Art Topics in Arts Policy, No. 37, International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies).

Creating distinction in a noisy world

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:22:00 +0000

We are constantly evangelizing about the holistic nature of brand. Brand goes way beyond logo, we tell almost anyone who will listen. “Way beyond the idea of identity, in general. A brand is a promise that must be seen, heard, and felt by everyone an organization touches.”

What we say may be true, but there is no getting around the fact that the LOGO is the most potent of all lightening rods faced by any organization that is undertaking a branding initiative. Why, just get close to the topic and…zap!

The confusion between brand and logo is actually quite understandable, and results from the mixing up of cause and effect. Great symbols have power because they are imbued with meaning. When we know the context that these symbols are meant to represent, we associate our understanding with the symbol itself. And when symbols take on the collective associations of many…associations built by the recognition of great actions and strong reputations for following through on institutional promises…then they can become iconic.

Of course, a bold, and beautifully conceived symbol can help move an organization in the right direction, but it can’t carry the weight of the institutional world on its graphic shoulders. Still, its cues really only need to point the way. For example, if an organization wants to be seen as current, innovative, and approachable, having a symbol that feels stuffy, claustrophobic, and dated probably won’t help them move off the block and onto the road they want to travel.

In the loud, information-soaked world in which we live, it is also increasingly tough to “own” a symbol. The economy may be shrinking but the gross output of logos worldwide continues to grow exponentially. This immense proliferation of symbols and logos highlights an even greater need for organizations to own meaning rather than just symbol.

Have a look at some of these symbols. You’ll see very similar marks chosen to represent completely different entities. The similarities may illustrate one of the great tragi-comedies of our icon driven age…without the underlying institutional meaning, how could we ever know what these symbols represent?

Please send me more examples, if you can find them (and I know you can).

A city in Ireland, or a town in England?

Air conditioners or autos?

Computers or outdoor clothing?

What is old is new again

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:22:00 +0000

Olympus is the latest big company to revisit one of its iconic products in an effort to make what was old seem new again. Over 17 million of the original Olympus PEN series cameras were sold. These were just terrific cameras, sweetly compact with interchangeable lenses that produced very high-quality photographs. Regular folks loved the PEN, and they became the second camera for many professional photographers.

The original is arguably more beautiful, but the new model releasing this July is lovely in its own right. It draws nicely on the visual cues of its predecessor and promises a great tactile experience. The PEN actually has distinct contours, making it look like a camera instead of a bar of soap, as do so many other cameras today.

In terms of branding, the idea of revisiting a classic has a lot going for it. Already familiar to its audience, the product evokes not just memories of the thing itself, but more importantly, it evokes the personal memories that dwell within the people who once used it…first loves, unforgettable trips, and unique discoveries.

After all, the heart of brand is emotion, not intellect.

Of course, with potential reward comes risk as well. If you screw up the ability to deliver on the nostalgic glow associated with a revamped, loved icon you will be absolutely reviled by your audiences…not just ignored. In other words, your brand will still evoke emotions…just different ones.

There are many examples of icons, revisited. Some of them work quite well while others fail horribly. Here are a couple notables. I would love to hear from you. Please add your own, whether adored or reviled.

New convergences, intersections and implications on brand

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:21:00 +0000

There are some pretty amazing influences converging that are radically shifting how we think about organizations, communities, and brands. These forces present new opportunities and challenges for organizational leaders and marketers seeking to distinguish their brands. The old rules of branding are being challenged and it is more important than ever that organizations have clearly defined values and an appropriate platform for expressing them.
We are seeing some of these convergences begin to play out in our work across a diverse range of clients. The origins are quite different but they are creating increasingly interwoven spheres of influence. I will highlight three here.
The first is the heightened awareness of corporate social and environmental responsibility. We have a long way to go to walk the walk, but it is very clear that it is no longer enough to proceed with business as usual while merrily reeking havoc on the planet we all inhabit. With consumers increasingly demanding that companies consider the environmental impact of their operations, this is no longer a nice add-on, but a core business and brand consideration. And as the current economic crisis makes clear, the unbridled generation of assets that accrues to the few with enormous environmental and social costs to the rest of us is no longer a sustainable business model. Increasingly, brands will be judged by how well their internal values reflect and respect ones that are shared by an expanding set of stakeholders.
Secondly, amazing work is occurring to rethink fundamental assumptions of Western culture. The values, traditions, and perspectives of indigenous cultures create important alternative narratives that challenge the meanings of “markets”, “progress”, “success” and a host of other critical areas that have been narrowly and stereotypically defined. Broadening these definitions to include a non-Western understanding can strengthen the reach and impact of indigenous cultures and create broader perspectives that educate and inspire people everywhere. If a brand is the means for communicating the spirit and values of indigenous people, it is not necessarily about bringing something to market, but rather an opportunity to share knowledge and ideas that express a deeper set of human desires and aspirations.
The third area is the emerging impact of social media. Organizations and their brands are no longer built from the top down but from the bottom up. Communities (of supporters or detractors) build quickly and organically. They actively participate with and shape the character of the organization and its brand as opposed to passively consuming it. This new model of shared ownership of the brand presents remarkable opportunities for organizations to listen to, learn from, and empower their stakeholders to have a powerful (and often immediate) influence on brand perceptions.
All of these examples are based on a set of values and ideas that form the central premise and promise of organization. That premise is developed in a comprehensive, emotive and visually dynamic “vocabulary” that allows for engagement and participation. The organization must be credible, open, and responsive to living that premise in order to thrive.
Branding can sometimes be viewed as manipulator or mask. We can probably all think of instances when it has earned that reputation, but as these pivotal factors become more dominant, brand must take on its critical role as catalyst, helping promote the values and ideas that shape the organization, communities and people they touch.
This will make for a more complex equation in terms of branding, but as we learn in so many areas of life, the things that are really worth doing are never easy.

Brand management for mission-driven organizations: Sustaining the mission by managing the brand

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:46:00 +0000

In the 20+ years I have been running this office, much about the way we work with complex mission-driven organizations has changed.

At the beginning, marketing…the “M” word…held a nasty connotation among most of our nonprofit clients and seemed downright unspeakable to the rest. To “market” the institution meant selling out, nothing less. And the concept of branding? Forget about it. Not even on the radar.

Attitudes about the “M” word have changed considerably in 20 years. During that time, together with our colleagues and competitors, we have worked hard to bring the best of what we learned from our for-profit clients to bear on the important work that we do for nonprofits. And, just as marketing is now a core component of every major mission-driven organization, branding is now the buzzword among many of them. Today, sophisticated organizations understand that they must differentiate and position themselves in the marketplace, and that they must do so by employing the same rigor and diligence exemplified by their market-driven counterparts.

A couple of years ago, I gave a presentation about branding for one of the biggest community foundations in Boston. This was my first time to personally discover just how much attitudes about the “M” and “B” words had changed. Over 400 people attended my presentation…in fact, the organizers had to run video to an adjacent conference rooms to accommodate the overflow. To be clear, it was certainly not the charisma of the speaker that accounted for this unexpectedly high turn out. Rather, it was the panic that seemed palpable among the attendees…those harried souls responsible for governing mission-driven organizations…as they scrambled, somewhat desperately, to carve out a distinct institutional identity and gain attention in an increasingly noisy, competitive world.

Today, the increased financial strain caused by an ugly and ailing economy only increases the need for organizations to raise awareness and create engagement with their audiences.

And, just as it was initially important for nonprofits to embrace the concepts of marketing and branding, I believe it is now critical for those same organizations to develop their thinking regarding another hugely important concept…ongoing brand management.

Look at a company like Apple. Its brand is its most valuable asset. As such, it is protected, nurtured, invested in, and maintained with absolute dedication. The reason is quite clear. What Andrew W. Savitz calls the “triple bottom line,” (economic, social, and environmental success), may very well become the new standard for measuring a company’s health. But it bears noting that one of those three attributes is still about old-fashioned return on investment...ROI. For Apple, no asset returns on its investment more profitably than the organization’s brand.

I would argue that this is equally true for nonprofits, though ROI is often viewed a little differently among them. As Jim Collins points out in Good to Great and the Social Sectors, for nonprofits, the notion of ROI is expanded to include the combined drivers behind each organization’s resource engine…time, money, human energy, passion, and, yes, brand. In this brave new world, maintaining the brand is essential to sustaining the mission.

If branding is developed holistically and thoughtfully, if it resonates from the inside out and from the outside in, then it can be the ultimate means for sustaining the institutional vision and mission. (The fact that some organizations still do not undertake a deep and rigorous branding process is a topic for another blog…working title? It is STILL not about the logo, folks!)

We’ve witnessed a number of leading organizations beg, borrow, and steal the funding to pay for the initial branding development. But where is the operational line item allocated for brand management? Most museums, for instance, maintain an allocation for ongoing PR consultation but that’s about it. PR is an important discipline but not at all structured to address brand management. Without dedicated resources both financial and intellectual, these organizations will invariably lose brand equity.

A successful company like Apple would consider it the ultimate business folly to take their eye off of, and their investment dollars away from, their most valuable and valued asset…the brand.

Our mission-driven organizations can certainly afford no less--for their own sake and for the sake of the audiences who engage with, and often rely on them. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 20 years for nonprofits to recognize that there is no more dividing line. Mission = Brand.

A branding primer: Green is a color. Sustainability is a practice.

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:18:00 +0000

Suddenly, green is everywhere. Overnight, this color and all that it represents have become the topic of almost every conversation, news article, and company press release. We’re poised on the cusp of a movement with truly great importance. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the Internet revolution of the late 1900s…but is a lot more crucial. After all, it’s going to be tough to shop, work, and build communities online if we have no planet from which to sit and click.

Still, there are quite valuable lessons to be learned by looking back at that technology revolution. Let’s flash back to the mid-1990s. Overnight, every institution or business that mattered had suddenly become, or was about to become, a dotcom. It seemed easy: buy a domain and join the dotcom club. Bricks and mortar looked dead as dinosaurs. The mandate? Change the way the world works, let the gory details be damned. Actually, aside from a URL, the other chief requirement for joining the dotcom club was to adopt some variant of a swooping elliptical logo…bonus points if the organization’s name could begin with a lower-case “e”. Do those things and…voila!...your dotcom was positioned for success.

Of course, a decade later, we know how the story unfolded…or rather, is unfolding. The dotcom movement matured and splintered, sending its shards to infiltrate and forever alter wide-ranging aspects of international business and social life. Yes, there were amazing successes along the way, but there were even more colossal failures. It quickly became clear that qualifying as a player in the online business age required more than standing up and saying, “We are an Internet company with a sexy website.” The general public…hyper-vigilant and hypercritical…soon demanded to know what each particular dotcom was doing and why it mattered to them.

The truths we knew about branding and its role within organizations had not changed. In fact, following the rules of branding seemed more important than ever. Understand your audience. Create distinction. Promote a unique promise. Back it up in everything that you say and do.

Fast forward to today…Now the club is focused around sustainability and to join it, all a business or institution has to do is plaster its collateral and messaging with references to the color green (bonus points for adding a leaf form). Again…voila!...positioned for success. And the funny thing is, for the short term, adding this bit of greenwash to the business might just work. But it won’t work for very long.

Sustainability involves such a huge, important, and multilayered series of issues that it will soon mature, splinter, and infiltrate our world in ways we can’t yet imagine. It also covers a much broader spectrum of ideas than the Internet revolution possibly could. Sustainability is not even close to being one thing. It spirals through ideas about the environment, social justice, technological innovation, indigenous peoples’ rights, education, cultural and behavioral change, equitable wealth distribution, and more.

Just a quick look at some of the projects our team at Minelli has been working on lately provides a glimpse of the sort of programmatic complexity and diversity that already fall within the sustainability realm:

We are rebranding a truly amazing Native Alaskan social services agency. This organization is rooted in cultural values that have existed for thousands of years. Those values have always been about people, community, and respect for the environment but they never called it green.

We are branding and developing a marketing strategy for an early stage contracting company implementing renewable energy solutions into residential markets. In order to succeed, this firm needs to restrict its focus and concentrate on applicable, practical solutions that meet consumers' needs today.

We rebranded a well-known conservation organization that moved its ideas about land trust beyond conservation for its own sake to conservation as a way to awaken people’s relationship to the land and broaden its audience reach. By expanding their values to include quality-of-life issues, they were able to incorporate the provision of a sense of place, recreational activities, and community building into the essence of their mission.

At Minelli, we talk a lot about our philosophical approach to branding. We want to “do better by doing good.” The current and emerging issues surrounding “greenness” and sustainability create urgent needs and strong motivations for us to do our very best work. As always, that means fearless questioning, incisive strategy, and emotive design that will position our clients not just for today, but also for tomorrow, with whatever growth and transformation it may bring.

Doesn’t that sound simple? And it is simple…but it’s neither easy nor simplistic. Elegant, heartfelt solutions are born out of thoughtful and deliberate effort. No greenwash required.

When brands go wrong

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:21:00 +0000

A brand is a promise that must be seen, heard, and felt by every person an organization touches.

This is a very simple idea, right? Unfortunately, it is a very simple idea that many organizations seem to have forgotten about lately. In fact, when it comes to broken promises, we’ve recently seen some real doozies out there. Here are a just a couple notable candidates for absolute brand catastrophe. Instead of naming names, let me stick to discussing categories of organizations to protect the not-so innocent.

Financial institutions

These folks created complex derivative swaps that made us feel we were too stupid to get how the system worked, when in many cases there wasn’t all that much substance to get to begin with. To quote from the movie Spinal Tap, “There is a thin line between clever and stupid.” And (for balance), here’s Warren Buffett at his annual meeting, quoted in the New York Times, “(they) eagerly sought stupid assumptions that enabled them to do clever mathematics.”

When things fell apart for the financial institutions, and boy did they ever, the organizational promise…in their case, to take care of our money…was broken, over and again, big time. And what happens in any relationship after one party consistently breaks promises? Well, the other party…and that’s us, their customers…simply stops extending trust.

To make matters worse, many banks are now looking to their customers…the ones still standing…to make up their institutional losses by slapping on lots of new fees, initiating strict reporting requirements, and doing a neat vanishing act with credit lines. This one is personal! As a business owner, I’ve recently had some very odd and troubling conversations with our long-term banking partners. We use their services and loans just as we have for the last decade or so, we always pay on time, and we hold perfect credit.

But perfect credit just isn’t enough in “the current banking environment.” When I communicate with our bank these days, I don’t feel like a customer at all, but more like someone shackled and dragged in front of the Spanish inquisition. When I’m asked to cough up newer and more obscure documentation to support our case for running the business, I feel like shouting, “Excuse me, but we didn’t do anything wrong! You did!

These demands to justify reasons why our business is staying solvent are hard to swallow coming from an organization that just lost $4 billion. That’s chutzpah. What would Warren B…or their mothers…say?

U.S. car companies

Wow. For several years, these organizations seemed determined to focus on developing cars specifically designed to destroy our planet. (Had the economy not tanked, it was only a matter of time before GM introduced a new model named Armagedon.) This woefully misdirected intent was only made worse by bad, bad, bad design. A few years ago, Pontiac was trying to right itself. During one senior management shakeup, an incoming executive asked a very good question: “Why do we keep making cars that resemble angry kitchen appliances?” Google Pontiac Aztec for a good laugh (or a good cry).

Lack of foresight + ugly design + poor reliability = bad product. Let’s face it, even the best branding just can’t make up for that.

Barry Schwartz presented at this year’s TED conference, giving a powerful speech about why organizations need to return to a state where they exemplify virtue. He used the bottom-up example of a hospital janitor’s written job description. Every aspect of that description focused on tasks…mopping, schlepping, wiping, toting, etc. Not one word spoke to the human and humane aspects of this job…in a medical care facility, for god’s sake!

Sure, a janitor has to get the garbage out, but what else is she or he really doing in this job? These janitors come face-to-face with patients and their families. They interact with people in times of need. Whether written in their job descriptions or not, these janitors must be sensitive. They must know not to vacuum in the waiting room because a family is finally sleeping after a long, agonizing night spent waiting for news about a loved one still in critical care. They must wheel elderly people to the window so that they can see the park outside. They must smile at young cancer patients who may never see the outside of the institutional facility again.

Sorry, but that dry, task-oriented, narrowly-defined job description is simply wrong…and not because the janitor doesn’t have to clean, but because it leaves out all reference to the janitor’s role in fulfilling the central institutional mission and promise…to take care of people.

If organizations get the virtue part right, if they understand and are prepared to deliver on their promises to their stakeholders, they will be a lot less inclined to make decisions based on greed, stupidity, and an absolutely terrifying lack of foresight. And if they don’t, taking a stab at revising the logo or coming up with a swingin’ ad campaign sure as hell won’t fix it.

It takes a lot more effort to rebuild trust than it does to maintain it.

Seeing with new eyes

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:59:00 +0000

We work with museums all over the country. Through each one, we can assume, runs a high level of aesthetic sensitivity, as they rank among the nation’s leading institutions lucky enough to possess our most valued artistic works. (How the “value” of art is determined and by whom is another whole series of blog entries.)

…but back to my original point…museums and the aesthetic stuff.

These institutions keep millions of beautiful things housed in architecturally significant buildings, so we would expect them to offer gorgeous ways to photograph and otherwise represent the fabulous objects, environments, and spaces within. What we often find, however, is something quite different.

First, let me say that I have enormous respect for curators and other scholars. But often what they “see” in the objects is very, very different than what the rest of the world sees. Also, the base of photographic imagery that most museums have at their disposal can be pretty disorganized, and even anemic or sterile. They are photographs of works being documented, not experienced.

If you want to see breathtaking images from most Museums, go to Flickr.

We have great jobs. Our team gets turned loose in these wonderful institutions, occasionally off hours, just to get a better sense of the place. What we end up perceiving often completely surprises, delights, and challenges those people more accustomed to taking a scholarly approach to viewing the collections.

Sure, we come in as strategists and consultants, but we are also designers, artists, writers, and just plain visitors. We come, as the Car Talk guys say, “unencumbered by the thought process.”

We are kids in the ultimate candy store, reacting viscerally and visually to the things that touch us…exquisite details, juxtapositions…crazy visual cues and miscues.

It’s about seeing with new eyes.

And while this is just one small aspect of what we bring to our engagements, it can be quite powerful. It’s also a wonderful practice to carry with us into our daily lives…taking time to reveal in the richness of every visual environment that we encounter.

There is a wonderful book that recently made its way into the office, entitled Art for the Rest of Us. I love the book’s central notion, urging us to indulge ourselves in nonjudgmental, unconditional collecting. Just gather stuff, the author says…not in the mergers and acquisitions sense, but in the joy of a kid collecting sea shells sense.

Don’t say no to stuff, the books suggests, just begin to gather up discarded packages, round things, dollhouses, anything that grabs you. A grasp of the logic, value, and connections between the stuff will emerge, organically, over time.

The world really is our visual oyster and we should slurp it in at every moment.

What are we trying to do?

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:49:00 +0000

Our small firm works with complex organizations that offer complex initiatives targeting complex audience types. We work hard to strategize, synthesize, crystallize, and symbolize their meaning and intent. Layer in factors of pre-existing public biases, existing market conditions, the role of social networking, and the will to strive for lofty goals…

Ouch! My head hurts.

This morning, I was reminded of perhaps a simpler, humbler way to think about what we should hope for and expect our work to do. I stood in the subway station coming back to our office in downtown Boston after visiting a client at Harvard…much to do, process, prioritize…a million thoughts spiraled through my head. Amidst the screech and hum of the moving trains, I suddenly became aware of the music that swirled through the slightly musty platform air.

Looking around, I saw him…a musician, crouched around his cello, playing one of Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites, and playing it very, very well. I love all kinds of music, but this is the stuff of the gods…a single cello that mimics the human voice, more closely than any other instrument ever created. The melody soared and wove around the hard station columns.

Most people streamed past the musician without even looking up. I stopped, listened, and found respite. The million things banging in my head melted away until it was just the man, the music, and me. We made eye contact, and then I placed money in an empty instrument case while giving a bow of appreciation to acknowledge the maker of these magical sounds. Then a train pulled in and he silently mouthed, “thank you.” I replied, “Just beautiful man, thank you.”

The musician smiled broadly and returned to his art, happy that it had been received. And in that moment I believed that he felt more joy from my acknowledgement than from seeing me toss money into the velvet-lined case.

As I stepped onto the train that idled by the platform, a woman said to me “good for you.” And it was good for me…good for both the musician and me, in fact. What had really happened? There had been a pause in the chaos of the day, a point of exchange, and a briefly shared experience of meaning. Technically there was a financial transaction, too, but this moment represented something much truer and more valuable than that.

Hmmm. Not a bad goal for the strategy, symbols, and brands that we help our clients forge. If we can give every organization we serve the tools to create a similar pause in which people can experience exchanges that lead to shared meaning at a very deep human level…then maybe we really can do better by doing good.

Okay is the new terrific

noreply@blogger.com (VisionAtMinelli) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:45:00 +0000

I want to let you in on a secret. It is quite closely held, but I have a reputation for being almost clairvoyant when it comes to sniffing out undercurrents like this one.

You heard it here first: the economy sucks.

Oh wait…you’ve heard that, too? Wow, word does travel fast in the Internet age.

These have been trying times for many people, and I feel for the ones who are really struggling, losing jobs, home, and hope. Our office has been blessed to stay busy, focused on what we do well, and what we believe in. We have just had to be creative, to do more…and sometimes a lot more…with less.

I have occasion to interact with many cultural, civic, and business leaders, and lately whenever I ask them how they are doing, the reply is invariably, “okay.” There is a gurgling undercurrent of “I am terrified and paralyzed by fear.” When greeted this way, I typically reply, “Hey, okay is the new terrific.”

In times like this, especially in times like this, we must stick to the things we believe in, what our organizations stand for, and push like hell to develop the ideas that emanate from those beliefs. Burying our heads in the sand and waiting for a better day won’t make it happen. It will only cause undue facial irritation.

Irrational exuberance, greed, stupidity, and an absence of values may have gotten us into this mess, but it is going to take an unwavering commitment to what we stand for to lift us out of it again. To do that, we must possess incredible clarity about who we are and how we express ourselves. For us, it is still very much about vision made visible. I think returning to values-based management is the only way we are going to turn okay back into terrific. And I do believe that it is going to be a much better version of “terrific” than the fake, stage-front version we had before.