Maps of Barcelona, Brasília and Paris were redesigned using a laser cutting technique. The results were dozens of paper and acrylic displays that showed just the streets and avenues of each one of those cities. The whole thing was reinforced by a special illumination that shines the light in a way that the shadows of the maps were all over the walls.

“Besides showing the city in a new and different way for those who drive a Nissan car, these maps represent the care and accuracy Nissan takes in designing cars. The point of sale helped to enhance the association between high-end technology and Nissan.” says Felipe Luchi, Lew’Lara/TBWA’s Creative Director.

This is a campaign Lew’Lara/TBWA has created for Nissan Brasil. If you want to know more about it, send an e-mail to Felipe Luchi.

Last week in during a public lecture in Moscow Jean-Marie Dru, Chairman of TBWA Worldwide, covered three critical areas for the future success of brands: (1) big brand ideas, (2) brand content and (3) brand initiatives. Now P&G’s former CMO Jim Stengel rewrites the marketing textbook, as Advertising Age puts it. Stengel is leading a revolution already well under way toward purpose-driven marketing.

Mr. Stengel is looking to reinvent marketing education along the way, scrapping most historical case studies for live ones presented by top creatives from BBDO and TBWA/Chiat/Day and executives from Dell, Procter & Gamble Co. and PepsiCo. He and Sanjay Sood, UCLA marketing professor and collaborator on the class, plan to pitch it as a model to the Harvard Business Review.

Part two in Mr. Stengel’s plan is his long-awaited book, set to be published by Crown Books next year, for which he’s enlisted a platoon of UCLA students, WPP’s Millward Brown and TBWA/Chiat/Day executives to help quantify and dissect the 50 brands that have added the most brand and financial value in the past decade and the purpose that drives them (hint: the top two are Google and Apple). The book’s working title is “Grow: How the World’s Best Businesses Use the Power of Ideals to Outshine the Competition.”

“When his book comes out, it’s going to be one of those touchstone books, and not just because we’re working on it,” said Rob Schwartz, executive creative director of TBWA. TBWA CMO Laurie Coots is the primary agency executive working on the book.

(Source: AdAge.com)

Do you know why some companies are performing better in the crisis than others? And do you know why those same companies will emerge from the crisis in an even healthier position than before? It’s because they have strong cultures.

It is about having a vision, a belief system, an attitude and a worldview that is shared by the entire company. More than a simple guideline, it is a set of values. When a company has a strong culture, everyone in that organization not only supports decisions made by the CEO – but could have made the same decision in his or her place. In our digitalised, open-sourced society the culture is the brand. You cannot fake it.

Some of our clients have the strongest cultures of all. I have to mention Apple, because it’s such a great example. Thanks to the vision of Steve Jobs, Apple has a culture of creativity and innovation. ‘Think different’ was far more than an advertising slogan. It went to the heart of a way of thinking that has transformed the company. By thinking different, Apple shrugged off the notion that it was a mere computer maker and embraced the idea that it was a provider of tools for creative people. The result, of course, was iTunes, the iPod – and later the iPhone. These were radical new departures for Apple, but they were perfectly in tune with its culture.

Apple is well known for the loyalty it engenders among consumers. Needless to say, its employees are equally evangelical. When you go to an Apple store, you can tell the staff love working there. Why? Because a strong culture attracts the best employees. And when the economy crumbles, you want those people by your side.

So how do you build a strong company culture? For one thing, it takes time. You can’t just bolt it on. When you start a company, the culture is already taking root. In fact, very often, company cultures are created by strong leaders. The system may stay in place long after that person has left, but usually it can be traced back to a single inspiring figure.

At TBWA our culture is based on Disruption, which is all about questioning conventions in order to find a new path towards a larger share of the future. But when we organise Disruption exercises (we call them ‘Disruption Days’) for our clients, we do not ask them to change their cultures. In fact, we ask them to look deep within their cultures and identify their key points of difference, a vision and belief-system that sets them apart, makes them likeable or creates a campfire. In this way, we can unlock untapped potential. Companies often tell us that they have ‘found themselves’ after going through the Disruption process. It’s a liberating experience for them.

Take Kraft, who we recently invited to attend a Disruption Day when the company was reviewing the strategy for its Tassimo hot beverage maker. We transformed our Berlin office into an apartment, with a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, a kid’s room. Read more…

Roustam Tariko, now a famous Russian billionaire, started out as a distributor of imported premium alcohol brands, including Martini and Johnnie Walker.

As the company grew, he realized that the Russian vodka market – despite its long heritage and the large number of brands on offer – lacked a genuine premium vodka brand with Russian origin. So decided to launch his own product, and in 1998 the result was the first Russian premium vodka brand: Russian Standard.

Because vodka advertising was highly restricted and banned from TV, Tariko came up with a smart trick by creating generic copy for his Russian Standard brand. The following year, 1999, Tariko opened a retail bank, as this was also very young and profitable sector. The bank was also named Russian Standard and Tariko’s company became the Russian Standard Group.

All communication activities, had no direct link to either vodka or banking, instead focusing on the idea of “Making the Impossible.” Only at the very end, in tiny print under the logo, was the bank mentioned. The copy’s main aim was to build awareness of the name and the logo and link them with a premium lifestyle image – which was successfully achieved.

Recently, both the bank and the vodka have followed a more conventional marketing approach. Yet the original trick was so smart and successful that other companies tried to emulate it – such as a brand of mineral water and even chocolate candies with a vodka brand name. That’s one way you can be sure that you’re an innovator: you attract imitators. But only innovators that do not fall into the trap of convention will be able to build sustainable results.

Author and Mad-blog contributor Mark Tungate writes about a brand with a Russian heritage – Fabergé.

When I heard a few months ago that a mining group called Pallinghurst had acquired Fabergé, I wondered what had happened to the brand since the 19th century, when it was associated with fabulous jewelled Easter eggs. The story was even more intriguing than I’d hoped.

Peter Carl Fabergé was born in Saint Petersburg on 30 May 1846. He joined his father’s jewellery business in 1864 and took over the running of the firm eight years later.

The Easter of 1885 was a turning point for Fabergé. Tsar Alexander III wanted a 20th wedding anniversary gift for his wife, the Tsarina Maria Fedorovna, so he commissioned Fabergé to create an exquisite egg. The jeweller delivered it to the palace on Easter morning. At first it appeared to be a simple enamelled egg. Inside, however, there was a golden yoke. In Russian doll style, the yoke yielded a golden hen. And nestling within that was a miniature of the imperial crown, encrusted with diamonds, and an egg-shaped ruby.

Each year, Fabergé was commissioned to create another egg. When Nicholas II ascended to the throne after Alexander’s death, he continued the tradition. The Imperial eggs were exhibited at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, transforming the House of Fabergé into an international brand. The orders poured in for fine jewellery, silverware and tableware.

During the revolution, Fabergé fled with his family on the last train to Riga – and then to Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Lausanne. He died in 1920 and was buried in Cannes, France. Fabergé’s sons Eugene and Alexander set up shop in Paris, where they ran a small workshop called Fabergé & Company. However, they were forced to take legal action against a businessman named Sam Rubin, who had begun marketing cosmetics and perfumes under the Fabergé name.

Rubin had got the idea for the brand from one of his acquaintances: the oil tycoon Armand Hammer, a collector of Fabergé eggs. Lacking the finances to pursue their legal action, the Fabergé heirs eventually ceded the name to Rubin for US$25,000. He later sold the business to another company, Rayette, for US$26 million.

Renamed Fabergé Inc, the company sold products like the aftershaves Brut (‘Splash it all over’) and Denim (‘For the man who doesn’t have to try too hard’). Another company, McGregor, briefly owned the Fabergé brand before Unilever acquired it for US$1.5 billion in 1989.

Having fallen from intoxicating luxury to mass market, Fabergé was ready to be revived. A lifeline appeared in 2007, when Pallinghurst announced that it had purchased the Fabergé brand name. A new collection of Fabergé jewellery (not including eggs) was unveiled online at the end of 2009. See www.faberge.com

But what happened to the original jewel-encrusted eggs? There were fifty in all. Nine were acquired in 2004 by a Russian energy tycoon from the family of the late publisher Malcolm Forbes. Ten are housed in the Kremlin. Five are at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Queen Elizabeth owns three. Most of the others are divided among collectors around the world. And eight have vanished entirely.

This post is adapted from Mark Tungate’s current book, Luxury World: the Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands.

Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of Disruption and Chairman TBWA Worldwide delivered today a speech at the State Tretyakov Gallery on the occasion of the official housewarming of TBWA Moscow. Here are some sound-bites for all of you who couldn’t attend:

“We are in the grip of a terrible recession. And recessions are always times when we isolate and withdraw into ourselves, when we do not take risks, when we become more cautious.

And yet every day you ask yourself: how to grow, how to create more organic roles at a time when you have less resources.

This is where we can contribute. This is where creativity can contribute. Provided that creativity focuses in the right direction.”

In his first public lecture in Moscow Jean-Marie Dru covered three areas, that he believes are essential for the future of our business:  (1) Brand Ideas (2) Brand Initiatives and (3) Brand Content.

“First I will underline the importance of brand ideas, then the fact that brands must take more and more initiatives, and last but not least that brands must create new content.

At his return to the company in 1997, Steve Jobs decided to remind the world of what Apple stood for.  You all know the “Think Different” film, it works as well today as it did 10 years ago.

This film has stood the test of time.  It works just as effectively at the depths of the worst crisis we have never known. In fact, it may even be more inspirational today

You surely know that the person behind that film is Lee Clow, the creative soul of TBWA. He is at the origin of all our campaigns for Apple.  And here is what Lee likes to say on ideas such as Think Different: Brand Ideas Win, Good Ads Don’t.

What he means by this is that we cannot be satisfied merely with advertising ideas. What is needed now are big brand ideas.”

“In fact, communications strategies can sometimes contribute to reinforcing companies’ business strategies. By “reinforce”, I mean that strong communications can create great enthusiasm and more conviction around the companies’ strategic direction. And this happens more often than we think.”

“The old saying « actions speak louder than words » has never been more true. And that’s why we’re not just in the business of telling brands what to say, but also in the business of guiding them in how they should behave. (…) All initiatives that go beyond the mere products and services you brand delivers, initiatives that reinforce what a brand stands for.”

“My last point is that we are going to create more and more brand content. This is a consequence of the end of repetitive advertising.

So we have to come with unexpected or entertaining ways of communicating. All the stunts we are doing for adidas are good examples.

The first one is a billboard campaign in New Zealand for the All Blacks. A drop of blood taken from each player on the team – thirty of them in all – was mixed into the ink used to print the posters.

You can imagine the impact in a country where each citizen sees himself as an All Black. Rather than just being a slogan, “Impossible is Nothing” is actually a declaration that you’re ready for anything. Like playing vertical football: Slide One CNN journalist called it “Sky soccer”.

“For the soccer World Cup in Germany, Slide the Cologne train station ceiling was painted in the style of a Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, featuring the world’s greatest players. And we also built this huge bridge with Germany’s famous goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, at the exit of the Munich airport. This gives you an idea of the scale of the installation.

Then, at the last European football cup, we imagined this spectacular representation of the Czech goalkeeper, on the giant wheel in Vienna made famous by Orson Welles. The goalkeeper was able to stop all the shots thanks to his numerous arms.”

“We should not underestimate the importance of ideas like these. They accelerate the penetration of the central idea. More than that – they bring it to life. And they make it bigger. And the bigger the idea, the stronger the brand.”

In this series of posts, Tatyana Strashnenko (Strategic Planning Director TBWA\Moscow) celebrates Russian innovation with disruption stories from the country’s past and present.

The final part of our look at innovative Russian ideas.

The exploits of Peter the Great (ruler of Russia from 1682 to 1725) can be seen as a good illustration of how having a strong Vision can totally re-shape a system.

Peter changed the country by having a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve: to turn Russia into a progressive European state and to shed its image as a medieval “northern neighbour”.

He invited foreign specialists to the country and sent young Russians to study abroad. He constructed a port city on unpromising marshland, but with an opening onto the Baltic Sea that connected his country to Europe. He built Russia’s first fleet and strengthened its army. He encouraged the introduction of modern fashions (encouraging noblemen to shave off their beards, for example). In short, he led a technological and cultural leap that put Russia in line with the strongest empires of the world. He did this by overturning conventions and adopting a new behaviour.

Far more recently, Roman Abramovich demonstrated disruptive thinking by buying Chelsea football club in 2003. At that time, his rivals were plunging millions into natural resources within Russia. Abramovich’s move not only paid off financially, it also propelled him into the gossip columns and made him a leading figure in European life. He could have remained the wealthy governor of an obscure province. His foresight recalls that of Peter the Great and proves, once again, that when it comes to innovation, we Russians know how to play the game.

To read part one, click here. For part two, click here.

In this series of posts, Tatyana Strashnenko (Strategic Planning Director TBWA\Moscow) celebrates Russian innovation with disruption stories from the country’s past and present.

Continuing our dip into Russia’s culture of inventiveness.

Examples of Russian innovation emerge throughout our history. For instance, in the 19th century the inventor Dimitri Mendeleev literally cleaned up chemistry.

Before Mendeleev came along, chemistry was an inexact science. It was known that mixing certain chemicals produced certain reactions – but nobody was entirely sure why.

Mendeleev’s disruptive idea was to suggest that there were no more than eight groups of elements. All the elements in each group shared characteristics. This simple idea turned an art into a science. It was called the Periodic Table, and it was officially unveiled before the Russian Chemical Society in March 1869.

You can see what I mean when I suggest that innovation is in our blood. It explains why, in 1950s, the Soviet Union introduced a special holiday: the Professional Day of Inventors and Innovators. There was even a prize (created as a Soviet response to the Nobel Prize) awarded to the most innovative ideas. The solemn ceremony took place every year on the 26th of June.

More recently, we’ve continued to take pride in our disruptive approach to science. Some time ago an interesting fact was published online: “Americans spent one million dollars creating a pen that will write in zero-gravity conditions. Soviet cosmonauts just use pencils.”

Part one, click here. Part three, click here.