Apple’s VP Industrial Design about the change of design and the new challenges they are faced with. First time to watch and hear details about the development of Apple’s product design. The design of a product is an essential part of the brand behavior, just like an ad, the layout of the shop or the CEO’s speech.

This year, TBWA is proud to announce we are supporting Movember, a month-long mustache-growing event held every November. Get it?

Originally started in Australia, the aim of the now-global Movember movement is to positively change men’s attitudes about health issues. Men rally together to grow mustaches over the course of a month, while raising funds for the most serious of men’s health issues, prostate and testicular cancer.

In the spirit of Disruption, the most legendary beard in advertising (heck, it even has its own Twitter handle!), will be on the chopping block. Lee Clow has agreed to shave his entire beard off if 1000 TBWA employees register for the event and join the TBWA Movember group.

Go HERE to learn more about Movember or join the TBWA group HERE (be sure to enter ‘TBWA’ as the company/organization/promo code or your registration won’t count towards our official tally).

Stay tuned and starting growing that ‘tache!

A book review by Mark Tungate

This book is tougher than it looks. At first glance it resembles yet another theorizing tome written by an experienced adman – in this case John Hunt, a giant of South African advertising and worldwide creative director of TBWA. But it soon transpires that the book has little to do with advertising: the word is never mentioned. Instead, “The Art of the Idea” has more in common with Paul Arden’s “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be”. It’s an inspirational tool, a guide to the creative process for when your back’s against the wall.

Hunt is a copywriter and an award-winning playwright, so the short book is stuffed with memorable epigrams: “No-one orders a bouquet of beige flowers”; “Change doesn’t keep regular hours”; “Trust your instincts or they will go away.” Some of the content is familiar – for example the theory that ideas often come to you when you’re thinking about something else. Other sections are more personal – such as Hunt’s musings on the correlation between diversity and creativity.

The copy is clear and lucid, deliberately avoiding doublespeak. Hunt has enough of a sense of humor to realize that fake intellectuals just end up looking dumb. “Original thinking comes from making a complicated thing simple and not the other way around,” he writes. Actually, fake intellectuals are one of book’s many targets.

And here we get to the crux of the matter. “The Art of the Idea” has an edge. Under its cool prose and beautiful illustrations – by the South African artist Sam Nhlengethwa – there’s a sense that Hunt is seeking to vindicate original thinking. The title could just as easily have been “In Defense of the Idea”. Ideas are portrayed as delicate, ephemeral beings that should be given space to thrive. They are allergic to bureaucracy, politics, over-analysis, compromise and bland furnishings.

What’s packaged as gentle pedagogy is in reality a full-throated cry for creative freedom. It is a defense of instinct against statistics, a call for risk-taking, and a protest against expediency. Hunt famously advised Nelson Mandela during the first multiracial South African elections, and allusions to freedom of thought versus closed minds crop up throughout the text: “Free thought is what [authoritarian governments] fear the most.” More broadly, he warns that cold logic applied too early, “can stop dreamers dead in their tracks”. In that respect, the corporate world will get more out of the book than creative types, who will simply say “Yes, yes, very true” and nod their heads sagely in agreement.

Don’t get me wrong – “The Art of the Idea” is not a rant, far less a whine. Hunt’s tone rarely deviates from one of calm reflection, with occasional recourse to the wry aside. But the book is a reminder that ideas are as fragile as bubbles, and that too many people take pleasure in bursting them. Hunt is simply urging all of us to give ideas room to soar and catch the light. “The real value of an idea is to see how far you can push it,” he suggests. In other words, if you’re looking for an early gift for your client, you may just have found it.

Mark Tungate is the author of several books, including Adland: A Global History of Advertising.

Jean-Marie Dru is the Chairman of TBWA\ Worldwide. He writes a “Thursday” to TBWA’s worldwide staff every week. Sometimes, he shares them with us:

We all know that, sadly, a very large number of advertising campaigns are mediocre. And this is what most people outside of our business believe. But they have not realized that good advertising can inspire people, and great advertising, though rare, can impact the world.

This is why The One Club, the organization that recognizes excellence in advertising in the US, has asked Director Doug Pray to shoot a new documentary feature to promote those ads that are truly innovative and inspiring. It’s called Art & Copy.

The film also celebrates the people who made these ads. It is not only about the craft. It’s about artists. It’s about pioneers. And it’s about people like Lee Clow who come along and change the way people see advertising.

“What’s different and perhaps surprising about this movie, is that it isn’t about bad advertising, that 98% which so often annoys and disrespects its audience,” says Doug Pray. “I didn’t want to make a doc that just trashes trashy advertising. Too easy, too obvious, and why bother? Instead, [I was]granted access to a handful of the greatest advertising minds of the last fifty years. I felt it could be a more powerful statement to focus the film only on those rare few who actually moved and inspired our culture with their work.”

Doug Pray takes an in-depth look into the creative processes involved in some of the most renowned American ad campaigns of the last half century such as “Just Do It,” “I Want My MTV,” “Got Milk?,” and “Think Different.” He delivers this through the eyes of some of the most influential people in the business including George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Hal Riney, and of course, our own Lee Clow.

Here’s what Lee had to say about his involvement with this film:

“Being in a movie was fun. Going to Sundance, hanging out with Robert Redford, signing autographs, what can I say! But seriously, if you see the film it will make you proud to be in this fun creative business. I think it will inspire young people to want a career in ‘Advertising.’”

Art & Copy recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently making its way throughout festivals and cinemas around the world. I encourage everyone to watch the film. Hopefully it will inspire you to do better work. To watch the trailer and find out more about the film, click here.

I’ll end with another quote from Doug Pray:

“Yes, I’ve made a positive film about ads. I’d once believed that our systems of commerce might go away, and with them, all unwanted commercial messaging, but they haven’t yet, and won’t soon. Advertising, in fact, may actually be an innately human act itself. But like all creative endeavors (books, paintings, movies, architecture) most of it is mediocre. Ultimately, I hope ‘ART & COPY’ inspires artists and writers to strive to make more meaningful, more entertaining, or more socially uplifting ads. With so much advertising surrounding us these days, it would be great to get that 2% figure a bit higher.”

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

The Khede Kasra campaign used nothing more than a strategically placed kasra, the Arabic word for a distinguishing mark, on a letter to address the gender imbalance in Lebanese society. And what the seemingly benign accent does is it alters the predominantly masculine Arabic language to feminine.

“Arabic words by default are written and read as masculine. Khede means ‘take’ and Kasra also means ‘habit’. It was a play on words. We did this for the Women Empowerment Program for the Hariri Foundation,” says Bechara Mouzannar, regional executive creative director, Leo Burnett Beirut, Lebanon, who worked on Khede Kasra said in an interview with The Gulf News.

This is probably the strongest idea I have seen during this years Golden Drum Festival in Portoroz Slovenia. Last night during the award ceremony, I was lucky to seated next to the big winners from Leo Burnett in Beirut. The complete team involved deserved every prize presented to them by this years jury, including a Grand Prix. Congratulations

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Another Golden Drum: oh yeah, that means a whole week with a hangover and meeting new people who’s names won’t remember after the party. I love coming here – it’s like a week of holiday somebody else is paying for. It’s almost normal this year, only less crowded. The patio at the Hotel Bernardin is almost empty. Last year finding a place to have a drink there was almost a miracle.

Yes, it’s crisis time. But more important than the lack of money is the incredible shortage of good ideas. If you look closely at the works presented you’ll find that most of the inspiration comes from YouTube, and the rest from other ads. And that’s very sad for a profession that has “Creative” as a job title. All the shortlists are very short this year – and not only because the number of admissions was smaller.

What the hell has happened? I don’t know, I’m not the part of an advertising agency, but when I look around, I have the feeling that CREATIVITY with a big “C” is moving from the West to the East. And yet somehow Central and Eastern Europe are getting overlooked in this process. Maybe it’s because we have never learned to use the freedom to create? But we can still admire great art, paintings, poetry and so on created in the region – so why is no good advertising being produced? Please, will somebody explain to me this phenomenon, before I decide to change my profession? I’m so bored!

Agata Malkowska Szozda is a regular guest at the Golden Drum Festival. Agata is a reporter for Media & Marketing magazine from Poland.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Agata Małkowska Szozda.

In music you have it, in art you have it, in film you…well, had it, if you think of French film noir, Czech fairy tales and the still very strong “Bollywood” style of India. I’m talking about a country-specific influence.

But in design and art direction today there seems to be a universal language. I suspect that this is due to international advertising festivals like Cannes, the One Show or the Clios: the winners of these awards set new standards and suddenly everyone follows. Designers and art directors all want to imitate the “winning style”. For example, the influence of multi award-winning creative Erik Vervroegen and his team was very apparent during his time at TBWA\Paris.

Creating stuff by simply following a “winning-formula” – I find this disappointing and sad.

Last year I was the president of the design and art direction category at the Golden Drum festival in Portoroz. I could sense the potential of this region. And yet I couldn’t see it. Most of the work followed international trends – about one year behind.

Rather than blaming the region’s creative talents, I would like to challenge them to show us how, by exploring their artistic roots, they can make design and art direction part of a country’s culture and history.

Imagine you open the archive-magazine and you don’t see the sea of sameness but ads strongly influenced by local styles: the typical Slovenian art direction, the famous Czech design or the unmistakeable Russian style.

The ad world today is a little bit like entering a restaurant from a global fast food chain in New York, Moscow or Tokyo: same food, same style, same standards. But tomorrow I want to enter local places – for a taste of chevapcici, borscht or just vodka.

Kurt-Georg Dieckert shares his experience judging international award shows exclusively with the readers of mad-blog.com. Last year he was leading the Art Direction and Design jury at the Golden Drum Festival. Kurt-Georg is Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\Germany  in Berlin.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Kurt-Georg Dieckert.

This is the 200th post on mad-blog.com. Congratulations and a big hand to all those who have contributed so far. Over 20,000 absolute unique visitors from 134 countries joined us, spending an average of 2:59 minutes on the blog. Over 4,550 people have subscribed to our rss feed. Thanks for all the interest and support.

This is the perfect opportunity to share the most read stories celebrating Media Arts and Disruption. Enjoy and pass them on:

(1) The audience is always right. (by Michael Zorn)

(2) Some brands don‘t like change. Change doesn’t much care. (by Michael Zorn)

(3) Cannes Lions 2009: Who will be the big winners? (by Rob Schwartz)

(4) Disruption is liberation. (by Sven H. Becker)

(5) Let‘s do things we think we cannot do. (by John Hunt)

(6) Change: What business can learn from politics 2.0. (by Frank Striefler)

(7) The age of media arts. (by Lee Clow)

(8) The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar Campaign. (by Gavin Heron)

(9) Act like lovers do. (by Stefan Schmidt)

(10) adidas Originals: Connection with the original tribe. (by Moritz Kiechle)

(11) Images travel but disruptive ideas thrive. (by Perry Valkenburg)

(12)  The beauty of big. (by Jean-Marie Dru)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.