RETHINKING THE SOULFULNESS OF PLACEMAKING
When you make a place, what gives it soul? Authenticity, material utility, legacy of use. Humanity in play, ingenuity of unexpected applications. Soulfulness wouldn’t support a clinical cleanliness or synthetic manufacture, soul— by its very etymology—refers to sea,...
BRAND WONDERMENT | ARCANUM MAGICÆ
JJ Abrams shared a similar telling—going where you’re not supposed to—as a storyteller, film-maker and “holder of surprises.”
GO GO RODEO | AMAZON’S GO GROCERY
STRATEGIES OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, JOURNEY AND RETAIL PLACEMAKING. Everything’s boarded up, downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill. As Seattleites, we protest. We don’t like something, we will let it be known. Things do get out of hand—by some, not the others. There are,...
FAST RETAIL RETOLD
SLOW BUT SURE Meditations on focus and acceleration—you are here, you are where? We preach that directed attention is a meaningful strategic pathway that brand teams need to use towards the most focused clustering of ideals and inspiration, soulfulness and integrative...
BRAND SOUL AND THE ETYMON OF FIRE
Your browser does not support the video tag. EXAMINING THE JOURNEY OF THE WORK, THE DEEPER MEANING OF BRAND Isn’t it so, to each your own in the way you make? I was talking to a team—a brand team— about their business, their story, their movements which came to: one,...
DEEP FOREST | THE METAPHORS OF THE WOODS
The Ecology of the Forest as an allegory for community, audiences and customers. We spend a lot of time studying people—watching them, listening to them and studying them in use contexts wrapped around brands. We look at how people use things, bring brands into their...
THE DESIGN OF PERFUME | THE SCENT OF SPACE
THE LAYERING OF STORIES In decades of work in the market space of fragrance, there are stories in the construction of perfumes—the tiering of memories; there are stories in the layering of ingredients and there are stories in the marketing of how scents are delivered,...
POINTS OF LIGHT | THE QUEST FOR INSPIRATION
MY MEETINGS WITH MILTON GLASER t h a n k y o u ––––––– A voyage of inspired imagination. Milton Glaser passed onwards after 91 years of creativity. What a legacy that he has left behind to us all. When you are young, you recall points of connection that are...
BRAND MAPMAKING: NAVIGATING IDEAS AND IDEALS IN THE COMPASS OF DIRECTION
The soulful pathway, brand journeying—studying the modeling of the deep space of branding, metaphors, storytelling and innovations in a time of change. Everything’s changing, as well we all know. Life speed—living accelerates and complicates, death speed—death and end...
DEEP BRANDS | THE QUEST FOR SOUL AND TREASURE
WE MANAGED BRANDQUEST® SESSIONS —ALL VIRTUAL—THIS PAST WEEK, THEN OTHERS BEFORE THAT, A WEEK BEFORE— THEN THERE’S ANOTHER THINK-SHOPPING BRAND CHARRETTE EMERGING WEEK NEXT. ALL ONLINE, VIRTUAL. WE’RE THERE, BUT WE’RE NOT, WE’RE TOGETHER, BUT WE’RE THOUSANDS OF MILES...