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.”
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.
Resourcefulness is one of the key traits of the Russian mentality. Since life has never been easy and the state has always tended to smother initiative rather than stimulating it, we’ve had no choice but to innovate. The saying “necessity is the mother of invention” could have been coined for us.
One of our most famous novels, of course, is Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Perhaps this is not surprising, because in battle, Russians have often been innovative. They’ve disrupted conventional military theory and defeated superior forces with unexpected tactics.
Perhaps the best example was the decision by General Kutuzov in 1812 to leave Moscow open to Napoleon. After the brutal battle of Borodino, the Russian army was in no state to defend the city. And so it was quite literally abandoned. Napoleon entered a dead metropolis. The few remaining provisions soon ran out. Napoleon was forced to move further south, where he was met and defeated by a fortified and morally superior Russian force. Kutuzov had been criticised for abandoning Moscow – but his unconventional strategy won the day.
On a lighter note, in peacetime Russians are famous for being able to make practically any object out of the materials at hand. Cotton, cable and a box of matches will get you an electric water heater. A record can be copied onto an X-ray photograph. And there is practically no car part that can’t be replaced by something concocted from a few items bought in a hardware store.
Humorists say that this is why Russians are not afraid of any crisis or calamity. Click here for examples.
TBWA Worldwide has been recognized by Fast Company as an Innovation All-star. As part of the Most Innovative Companies issue, the 59 Innovation All-stars were culled from past Top 50 honorees, as companies that have “fought a dour economy with renewed creativity and bold initiatives.” TBWA Worldwide was first cited in Fast Company’s Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2009.
The Innovation All-stars report specifically calls out TBWA for getting “huge props for its work over the past 10 years – Adweek called “Get a Mac” the Campaign of the Decade; and iPod “Silhouettes” the Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade. Ad Age named TBWA the decade’s third-best agency also citing its work for Pedigree and Mars.”
Fast Company’s annual Most Innovative Companies issue honors major brands including Cisco, Disney, and GE along with such rising newcomers as Spotify, Gilt Groupe, HTC, and the Indian Premier League. Facebook leads the annual ranking of the Top 50, after growing its user-base from 150 million to 350 million in just one year.
Overall, Fast Company recognized 250 plus companies, including more than 75 non-U.S. businesses.
To create this year’s Most Innovative Companies issue, Fast Company’s editorial team analyzed information on thousands of businesses across the globe. The result is a package unlike that of any other business media. It’s not just about revenue growth and profit margins; it’s about identifying creative models and progressive cultures – to define the many forms of innovation that exist across the business landscape.
“It was invigorating to engage with so many exciting new ideas and developments,” said Fast Company editor Robert Safian. “Our goal was to offer a snapshot of the creativity at work in the global marketplace, and to inspire the Fast Company audience with illustrations of how powerful and effective business can be.”
Last week Jeremy Clark from Adobe and I unveiled the first glimpse of the Wired Reader at TED. Below, you’ll see a video, narrated by Jeremy and Wired Creative Director Scott Dadich, who led our tablet team, that shows more. It explains why the tablet is such a groundbreaking opportunity for magazines such as WIRED.
As Chris Anderson continues in his blog EPICENTER on wired.com continues: much is still to be answered about magazines and other media on this emerging class of devices, from the business and distribution models to the consumer response. But what is already clear is that they offer the opportunity to be beautiful, highly engaging and immersive, going beyond what’s available on the web.
Is this the future of magazines? No, I guess it’s a future scenario for media brands.
WIRED’s future is digital and a perfect example that reflects how people today and even more tomorrow will digest media. It will change how content is consumed and it will change how brands have to behave.
But one thing is not changing: The people that edit great content, people that manage to entertain and audience, people that curate content and have great creative ideas are back in power. That is a bright future for our trade.
The death of the fashion designer Alexander McQueen is disturbing partly because it seems so apt. There has always been a shiver of darkness running through McQueen’s brand: from the shocking Highland Rape collection – recalling the bloody history of the English and the Scots – to warrior women on the runway with live wolves, or a menswear collection that alluded to spooky Victoriana, with a touch of Jack the Ripper. It’s as if the designer famed for his sharp cuts was always aware that the ultimate cutter lurked just over his shoulder.
Yet McQueen was also provocative and spirited. When he worked as a tailor on Britain’s legendary Savile Row, he allegedly sewed the words “I am a c***” into the lining of a suit jacket destined for Prince Charles. He created the “bumster” jean, which deliberately showed a large crack of the wearer’s rear, and even flashed his derriere at the audience on one occasion. As he grew older, he learned to channel this insolent streak into fashion that was bold, brave and challenging. The dumpy bad boy of the early years had grown into a risk-taking designer admired by his contemporaries.
There has already been much speculation about the reasons for McQueen’s depression. But they are none of our business. What matters is that another talent has chosen to end his story far too soon – in an industry where this happens far too often. McQueen may have calmed down in recent years. But this time, his many fans wish he’d given the Grim Reaper the finger.
The theme of the TED conference this year “What the World Needs Now…”. PUR believes the world needs water. Working with TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, is providing all attendees at TED with a Sigg water bottle and water filtration stations throughout the conference in an effort to exclude bottled water from the event and the waste that they produce. Once attendees receive their bottle, they will be encouraged to go to a photo kiosk and have their picture taken with their bottle to post to social media sites.
Every time a photo is posted, clean water will be donated to people that need it. Every time someone tweets about it, water will be donated. And when you visit the PUR Facebook page, you can click to donate water (at no personal cost) on a daily basis.
Here are a few facts about why it is important to get behind this initiative.
(1) A billion people have no clean water to drink.
(2) PUR’s goal is to raise 200,000 liters of clean drinking water during the TED conference.
(3) 200,000 liters = enough water to provide a village of 250 people clean water for an entire year.
(4) 200,000 liters = enough to avert 8,000 days of illness from dirty water.
(5) 100 liters, which is given for each photo taken at the conference, can provide 50 days of clean water to someone who would otherwise go without.
Rob Schwartz is the Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\CHIAT\DAY in Los Angeles He writes an “Inspiration is Everywhere” to the LA creative department every week. Sometimes, he shares them with us:
Amigos,
I watched the Golden Globes last night. I don’t usually watch the Golden Globes but I happen to love comedian/writer Ricky Gervais and he was hosting.
Yet is wasn’t Ricky or George Clooney or even the ever-prolific and brilliant Meryl Streep or for that matter the ever-prolific and brilliant Martin Scorsese who appeared as a flash of inspiration.
It was Robert Downey, Jr.
First off, he had by far the most genuine and funny acceptance speech of the night. Yup, in a show flooded with tears, thank yous, and seemingly endless shout-outs to various and sundry agents, studio muckety-mucks and hangers-on, ol’ RD,j bounded up on the stage and admitted that he “didn’t have anybody to thank.” And that everyone involved in the production needed him!
Of course, this was simply a rhetorical device. He used the negative to be extremely positive. See his disruptive speech here:
But it wasn’t simply RD,j’s sense of irony or spontaneous energy at the Globes that I find so inspiring. It’s deeper than that.
What really inspires me is his talent, his dedication to craft, his overall creative exuberance and excellence. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he had a few rocky years in there. In fact, from 1996-2001, Robert was mired in a black hole of substance abuse, suicidal tendencies and general shit-bag behavior. Yet to his credit, he sought the help he needed and is now enjoying one of the best comebacks in Hollywood history.
Now I won’t dive too deep into his career here. You can go to wikipedia Or imdb to find out more.
I will list some of his most inspired performances that you might want to download and check out:
Sherlock Holmes
Ironman
Tropic Thunder
“Family Guy” (Patrick Pewterschmidt episode from 2005)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
“Ally McBeal” (episodes from 2001)
Natural Born Killers
Chaplin
Saturday Night Live (He was a cast member 1985-1986)
Less Than Zero
Thanks for reading.
~Rob
If you have any comments or suggestions please email Rob Schwartz.
In response to the terrible earthquake in Haiti, Textuel La Mine (BDDP Unlimited) has put together a bilingual (French and English) website to help families and friends more quickly restore contact and exchange news with survivors.
In this emergency situation, the Internet promises to be the most effective means of communication, as the services provided by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook show. This inspired the agency to create a site totally dedicated to centralizing and sharing information about people being sought.
Very easy to use, the site serves as a center for search notices (with a description and photo of individuals being sought). It lets survivors declare themselves, others to recognize a person being sought, information to be posted, etc.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and relevant NGOs have been asked to furnish the data they currently have.
The site is already online and its effectiveness depends on awareness of its existence, which is why it is so important to publicize it to the maximum. Please go ahead and share.
Resourcefulness is one of the key traits of the Russian mentality. Since life has never been easy and the state has always tended to smother initiative rather than stimulating it, we’ve had no choice but to innovate. The saying “necessity is the mother of invention” could have been coined for us.
