If you are looking for interesting marketing blogs to read Todd And’s Power 150 list is worth a visit. His new list was unveiled a couple of weeks ago and consists of the top 150 marketing blogs in America. The Power 150 provides a stable, unbiased ranking foundation with a pinch of subjective measure for creativity. This means that the objective ranking from Technorati, Google Page rank and the numbers of Bloglines subscribers is one part of the foundation. The other leg is Todd’s own ranking system Todd And is a somewhat more subjective ranking which values frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content.

At the moment it seems like Todd will continue with just putting US based blogs on the list. But if he will change his mind, maybe you will be able to see the David Report blog on the list in the future as well!

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Andra bloggar om: marknadsföring, reklam, bloggar, bloggosfären,

Two of my favourite paper magazines recently started digital issues as well. I’m talking about Dazed Digital (called Dazed and Confused in the real world) and Frame Digital (a.k.a Frame…).

Frame Digital is an exact copy of the print version of Frame magazine, but offers lots of extra features. Zoom, search and click to articles from the index. Bookmark and download your favourite pages and images.

Dazed Digital on the other hand is its own content platform, sharing the same ideology as the magazine but with its own program of contents.

Jason Campbell from JC Report recently interviewed editor-in-chief Jefferson Hack about the new Dazed Digital. He explains the new Dazed Digital as an ideas sharing network. They are opening up the flow of ideas to contributors from all around the world, enthusiastic young people to influence and direct the content on the site. Jefferson Hack doesn’t believe that print is dead. He says that magazines just need to react to how people are changing the way they consume their media. He thinks it’s a great time for print because there hasn’t been much innovation in magazine design since the mid-’90s, and now it’s really exciting as the web is pushing editors and designers to really hone their points-of-view as competition for people’s attentions gets more intense.

We discussed this issue in an earlier post concerning the new magazine Monocle by Tyler Brule. Monocle will consist of both a paper and a digital version. Tyler Brule is seeing them as complements to each other. As we can read above Frame Digital is an exact copy of the paper version and Dazed Digital is completely different. More or less three different ways to combine print and digital.

Will people continue to by traditional paper magazines also in the future? What do you think?

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Andra bloggar om: media, tyler brule, tidning, tidningar, digital tidning

The David Report bulletin is my quarterly trend report which I have been producing for little more than a year. It has a design perspective and a humanistic approach concerning the intersection between culture, business-life and global society. I’m trying to make a difference by challenging the conventional mindset. Claes Foxerus from the blog foxerus.com has been my co-pilot from the start. Everything written in the bulletin are unique material and not duplicates from the David Report blog.

What’s best of all? It is free! Apply for a subscription in the left column at my start page. You can choose between a regular e-mail or a RSS subscription.

Here is a short encapsulation of the five last issues:

Issue 1: Liberate Design - Time to kiss the copyright goodbye?

Is all plagiarism and copying bad? Is copyright and patents just old rules from the past? What about using a new mindset from a new industry in a old one? This is some of the questions in our discussion in this first report.

Issue 2: Supreme Regionalism
How interesting is it to travel to another country or continent, just to realise that you for a moment don’t know were you are; Tokyo, New York, Moscow, London or….? Wherever you go, you find look-a-like airports, shops or hotels. The interior is exactly the same in the hotel in Seoul as it is in San Francisco. You find the same fast-food-chain or superbrand flagship store. And naturally, you find a “popping-up-everywhere” shopping mall nearby, with all the same retailers as you find in every mall around the world. Boring, absolutely life-killing boring.

Issue 3: Design (in) the future

What is design then? And what will it be in the future? Some simple questions, but so hard to answer. To give the future some help and direction, we asked some of our designer friends to give their ideas and visions. Design is certainly a visualisation of a company´s strategy, but it is also a magic tool that create possibilities to make life better, safer and more fun.
See what Eero, Ilkka, Karim, Konstantin, Oki, Satyendra, Stephen and Tim have to say about Design (in) the future.

Issue 4: Welcome to the Credibility Loop

During a long time we have wondered why so many excellent business executives have such trust in advertising, and we deeply challenge if that enormous amount spent on advertising couldn’t be spent more useful? Today advertising is a questionable effort to build recognition and to build a brand. The academic elite as well as business professionals have a second thought how to do. It’s all about building a trustworthy and reliable partnership with your (future) customers. It’s to become a part of their mind so to speak. And when most people are sick and tired of all advertising everywhere, there must be a better way to communicate with them, mustn’t it?

Issue 5: Communication Through Product

Issue five consists of an interesting development of our initial thoughts from the previous issue (Welcome to the Credibility Loop). Ideas that could save our fellow business men/women billions of dollars. This by using a marketing strategy based on design, creativity and innovation that we have named CTP, an abbreviation of Communication Through Product. On top of this you will find an interview with the Swedish fashion brand Acne jeans and some in-depth thoughts from the founder of Ikepod watches, Oliver Ike.

Finally, please don’t forget to check out my tip-off section with smart and interesting communities, blogs, newsletters, books etc plus a calendar of the most interesting events worldwide. David’s dozen is updated regularly and consists of twelve fresh favourites from different categories.

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Andra bloggar om: trender, design, innovation, marknadsföring, reklam, kreativitet, framtiden

In the news is a rumour that Toyota is about to build a new car factory in the US. It is a remarkable journey the Japanese car producer has made (on the US market) over the last decades. Today nobody is underestimating them any longer. Everything from the launch of the premium brand Lexus to the smart hybrid vehicle Prius has been made out from a smart tactics. At the same time the three major US car producers have made a lot of critical mistakes. Toyota went for smaller cars with low fuel consumption while the US companies like General Motors, Ford and Chevrolet developed even more and bigger pickups and SUVs.

By using a smart product strategy Toyota had a 12% growth in turnover last year and is today number three on the market soon to be number two. According to me it is just a matter of time until they will be number one, a reality that was unlikely just some ten years ago.

Good, attractive and diversified products (and services) are the heart of every strong brand. Then the marketing is like the blood circulation telling the world about your products. Attractive products tell a looser from a winner. And if you in a smart way will communicate directly from your products you have every chance (if you have attractive products that is…) to be an important part of the mind of the consumers. I have developed this theory and even developed an idea for a communication strategy in the latest issue of the David Report bulletin called Communication Through Products.

Some of you may have noticed that I have been writing quite a lot about the recent launch of the iPhone by Apple. That’s because I think it is really clever to develop a product that makes consumers (all over the world) yearn already six months before it will hit the stores. I will repeat the question from Tim Powers post here at the David Report blog the other day - why aren’t there more Apples?

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Andra bloggar om: produktutveckling, designstrategi, design, varumärke, varumärken, varumärkesstategi

Dell’Acqua

English elegance meets Italian chic: a little sixties James Bond (Gucci), a little post astronaut Stanley Kubrick (Dolce & Gabbana), a little artsie toy boy (Prada), the trend for men this fall/winter 07 that was shown last week in Milan seemed amusing from brand to brand with a supersonic speed!

Eventually, it might be a little early to talk about trends in general when each brand seems to want to develop their high end ‘’sur mesur” wardrobe. You find more often then not black again, in practically all collections and a specially at Armani: “it’s just difficult to put colour in a men’s collection. And lighter colours always make you look bigger. Young men want to look great when they dress up. And black just looks hot, guys- it looks hot!” It’s what Armani is saying, so give credit were credit is do!

Neil Barrett

Of course it should be in moderation and mixed up, you find this desire with all stylists. In after thought, you can actually also say that silver and gold will have a good season as well and that klein blue and bordeaux also will be a part of next winter.

In this re appearing trend with geometric variations, you find again also the strong desire for elegance, this season in line with the big come back of the melon hat, that is doing it’s absolute elegant entry at Bottega Veneta and more relaxed at Neil Barrett.

Bottega Veneta

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Andra bloggar om: mode, herrmode, kläder, milano, modereportage

The other day in this post we took a look at the Naoto Fukasawa Ideal house at the IMM Cologne fair. Today I would like to show you some images from the Zaha Hadid Ideal house at the same fair. Same brief - two different minds and complete different approaches.

Photo: Koelnmesse.

By the way. Here are some Cologne faire highlights from Frame magazine.

Edit: Frame did just put up a “share your thoughts” section where everybody who visited the Cologne fair can write there opinion. So far it is just one comment. But there will probably be more. Give it a day or two.

Edit 2: Here is a video of the Zaha Hadid Ideal house as well. Thanks to dezain.net

Andra bloggar om: arkitektur, design, zaha hadid

I was just reading some words from Seth Godin concerning what he would like from a truly innovative cellphone. He says that what iPhone doesn’t do is actually re-invent the very thing that makes cellphones magical: how you connect with other people. And that is somewhat true of course. It is time for some general cellphone 2.0 mark-up for sure.

What’s interesting is that this kind of mark-up hopefully will be possible with the iPhone in the future. Because it is “simply” a shell with a large display loaded with a smart software and a smart interface. It is not “trapped” with pre-determined functions as all other cellphones more or less is. And according to me this is actually one of the best advantages of the new iPhone. This feature could make it a truly sustainable product. Because then you don’t have to throw it away and buy a new cellphone every now and then (as people do all over the world all the time). You just upload a new software - and swiiiiish - completely new functions and hopefully new ways to communicate and connect with the surrounding world arises. I really hope that Apple will make this possible in a truly smart way and that other cellphone producers will continue to develop this feature even further in the future.
If an iPhone should “survive” a couple of updates, it needs to be really durable. Let’s hope Apple will make it that way! Let’s also hope that this is great step towards a greener Apple and a better rumour concerning their producer responsibility. More or less the only thing that irritates me concerning the Apple brand. Otherwise they are absolutely one of my lovemarks!

(Another product with the same possibility to make a difference is the brand new Prada cellphone from LG. More about this one within the next few days.)

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Andra bloggar om: iphone, apple, hållbar utveckling

The former icon editor Marcus Fairs has been running a new online design magazine called Dezeen for a couple a month. I just came across it and think it is well worth a visit. In a new post he is reporting about the Naoto Fukasawa Ideal house exhibition at this years IMM Cologne. As you can see on the image above (and on further images at Dezeen) Naoto Fukasawa continues his design work with the “new rationalism” spirit in a successful way. At Dezeen you will also find an interesting interview with Naoto Fukasawa provided from IMM Cologne.

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Tech Tags: IMM ideal+house 2007 dezeen naoto+fukasawa cologne new+rationalism

Andra bloggar om: design, naoto fukasawa, utställning

JWT, the largest advertising agency in the U.S. and the fourth largest in the world, announces the top 10 trends for 2007. The trends are taken from Next Now, the latest book from Trendspotters Marian Salzman and Ira Matathia.

As technology makes jobs more portable and demands that we be always on, we’ll struggle to compartmentalize our lives and learn how to master constant connectivity. Work will saturate our homes, blurring the line between on and off time, and the notion of “work hours” and the way in which we work will change dramatically. Coffee bars, for example, have become the de facto office for many mobile workers and a venue for meetings. Celebrity- centric blogger Perez Hilton famously writes at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Los Angeles, where the likes of Diane Warren, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie stop by his “office” for a quick hello and photo op while grabbing their non-fat lattes. The counter-trend: As our working lives speed up, people are making a conscious effort to slow down. Turning off a cell phone during lunch will become a resounding statement that this is “me time.”

Another slightly more social (you know, the buzzword of 2006…) way to tell the world your status at the moment is to use Jaiku. More info here. The founder of Jaiku, Jyri Engestrom puts it this way (concerning your mobile phone): “You see the names of your closest friends, but you don’t know where they are or what they are doing. For all you know, they could be dead”. Let’s hope they just would like to have some “me time”…

Thanks to Agenda Inc.

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Andra bloggar om: trend, trender, 2007, jaiku, framtiden

Don’t forget the Likemind coffee mornings that will take place in 9 cities tomorrow Friday 19th of January in Europe and the US, including meetings in Malmö (hosted by me and Björn Jeffery) and Oslo (hosted by Nick MacLean).

Piers Fawkes from PSFK has written a few things about Likemind you might want to know:

* You just turn up.

* You don’t have to turn up at 8. You can come sometime between 8 and 10 (or 9 and 11 if your city dictates). And you can go whenever.

* You can do anything for a job. By being so early, it normally means that you do something for a living, but even that’s not altogether necessary either.

* You buy your own coffee and tea, bagels and toast. Although, the longer this runs, we’re not adverse to some nice company offering to cover the cost of coffee across all Likeminds.

* There maybe a Likemind night event but it will be less chatty, more talky. In order to do this we need venues that can hold people. If anyone wants to volunteer something…

* Two people host Likemind, always. This means if no one else turns up, the hosts have someone to talk to. You can offer to run a Likemind in your city by leaving your details here.

* You have to wear a name badge. Yeah, everyone cringes at first but once you put it on - just see the effect. Wow.

Yeah, really: ‘wow’

So, me and Björn hope to see you tomorrow Friday 19th at Solde kaffebar, Regementsgatan 2 in Malmö at 9am.

Andra bloggar om: likemind, malmö