I recently caught up with Mike Simonian and asked him a few questions.
Here's the interview.
Can you briefly describe your company’s background?
In 2005, we started our design studio Mike and Maaike to experiment on subjects that we find challenging, surprising and useful. By using experimentation as a collaborative work process we strive to develop strong conceptual foundations and therefore do not attempt to arrive at preconceived and static goals. We mix our diverse high-tech and low-tech design backgrounds to create progressive ideas and unexpected solutions for products, furniture, wearables, environments, and vehicles.
How did the car project come about?
We always wanted to design a car - it just never felt right. The current state of the auto industry made us feel that something had to be done. While there is a lot of discussion about new propulsion technologies for cars, we felt the conversation about the future of cars should be much broader, not just what's under the hood.
Have you seen “Who Killed the Electric Car” and was that an inspiration?
We did see it and it definitely added fuel to the fire. The movie asked a lot of simple but important questions. The main thing we took away from the film is that the auto industry actually dictates people's expectations when it should be the other way around.
What are the possible next steps for atnmbl?
Our goal for the project is to provoke new conversations about cars that will eventually lead to a new way of thinking about/ designing cars to solve real problems; to encourage a shift from styling cars to redefining them. The project has already had this effect, from some of the debates we have read about it. As far as creating a working ATNMBL, one scenario would be to secure funding to create a working prototype. This would be great but is unlikely because it would be a very long-term investment. More likely, we will take some of the ideas that went into the project and work within the emerging new car industry to design near-term vehicles with this new approach.
How much freedom does a designer have to break conventionally rules when it comes to commercial projects?
Its a designer's job to break conventions to arrive at new solutions that are meaningful. The best commercial projects encourage this.
How much value do you place on user research?
User research is a great way to get a first-hand understanding about the problems/ challenges. We place a lot of value on identifying problems/ opportunities through research. Where research becomes less useful is when you test designs to predict their success or ask people what they want. As Henry Ford said "If I had asked people what they want, they would have said faster horses"
What categories, beyond cars, would you like explore?
Robots are particularly interesting for us because so far, the implementations of robots have been very narrow-minded. Interior spaces and architecture are also of great interest because they are so immersive in scale. Other forms of transportation are also very interesting.
Posted by Ed Cotton
Here are Neil's responses to some questions I sent across to him recently.
1. Can you briefly describe your background?
I’ve spent the majority of my career helping food companies figure out what to do next, be it brand strategy, marketing direction or product innovation. For the past two years I’ve been the Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder of the Nest Collective. Prior to Nest, I was the VP of Strategy and Innovation at Clif Bar & Co., and before that, a senior designer at IDEO. In what feels like a previous life, I was a practicing artist and cultural critic. My work was, in effect, conceptual product design--high concept, fully functional products and experiences that made a statement about a world/culture that we live in.
2. What inspired you to start the Nest Collective?
We started Nest based on two beliefs:
1. Businesses are in a unique position to solve many of the social and environmental problems that we face today.
2. And, “making the world a little better” can, and should, be big business. In fact, it’s Nest’s dream to one day live in a world where organic, sustainably minded brands are the rule, not the exception.
The focus of the Nest Collective right now is to address the health of children in the United States by creating a suite of organic foods for babies, toddlers, and kids. As a dad myself, I’m aware that what my kids eat during those first few years sets a lifetime of healthy eating habits. Look, one out of three kids in the U.S. are either overweight or obese, so we believe that there is a lot of work to be done! We think our brands, Plum Organics & Revolution Foods, are part of the solution.
3. What other companies and people in this space do you admire and why?
I’m truly inspired by every entrepreneur that is trying to grow a cause-related business or a social venture. I admire those who have a vision to bring something new to the world that can have an impact on how we live, and who have the tenacity to actually start a company in this economy is. I have a lot of respect for Jeffery Hollander, founder of Seventh Generation who is a pioneer in the green cleaning space. You gotta love the folks at B Corporation for creating a new corporate standard for social and environmental company performance
4. What impact is the recession having on the organic/natural marketspace?
When it comes to organic foods for kids, the market is still very strong. We are experiencing substantial growth for both of our brands. The parents who see the value in organic foods are more likely to remain committed to buying healthier food for their kids and looking elsewhere to cut back.
Posted by Ed Cotton
1. Briefly describe your background and what you do now?
I’m a marketing consultant working mostly in the bicycle industry, but I’ve also had some strategy projects for social networking sites. That’s pretty much my whole work history; I started doing PR gigs at a few bike races in 2003 while I was still working at a bike shop just after college and things progressed from there.
Some stuff I’ve worked on… I was the marketing manager for the Kodak Gallery/Sierra Nevada professional team in 2005 and 2006. This year I launched a blogging and social media campaign for SRAM Corporation around their sponsored teams and athletes. I also help with the business and sponsorship side of MASH, which is basically the first action sports-style urban cycling film.
2. What’s the story behind the current urban biking movement and what forms is it taking?
Utilitarian urban bicycling - as opposed to the recreational bicycling that most people in the US are used to - has always been a part of life in lots of places around the world, from China to Holland. In this country, the two most visible stories in urban bicycling right now are bike commuting and fixed-gear/track bike culture.
The use of bicycles for commuting and alternative transportation is benefiting from some extremely powerful societal and cultural trends. Environmental values have become mainstream. People are concerned about health and fitness. When gas prices were high and now that the economy is bad, the fact the bikes are an inexpensive form of transportation has become more relevant. Finally, urban living with a European sensibility is very much in style.
On the other hand, the fixed-gear culture started with bike messengers but it has inspired a much larger trend of people riding any sleek, fast, skinny-tire bike in the city. Not many are riding true track bikes without brakes, but lots of people ride a fixed-gear bike with brakes, a single-speed, or just a road bike. This culture combines the benefits of alternative transportation with action sports, style, and youth culture. When MASH came out, they had premiers all over the world, were featured in all these fashion magazines, and blew up in Japan. Nothing like that had ever happened with bicycles before.
(definitions of fixed-gear and track bikes at http://sheldonbrown.com/fixed.html)
3. How do you see this evolving in 2009?
No matter what happens with the economy, more people will have more reasons to ride their bikes to work and around town in 2009 than they did in 2008. But that doesn’t mean that the bike industry is recession-proof since most bicycling is still about recreation. Still, strong bike shops are doing better than most retailers right now.
One evolution that you’ll see in 2009 is bike-sharing programs rolled out in more major cities. They’re like Zipcar for bikes, except that some of them let you have a certain amount of time for free before they charge you. Paris’ “Velib” program is the gold standard, and DC started the first for a major US city this year. Honolulu, Minneapolis, and a few others are on tap for next year.
You’ll also see more celebrities on bikes and the general “fashionization” of bicycles. I recently interviewed the CMO of Puma for my blog about how they’ve made bikes a part of their strategy, and you’ll see more non-bicycle brands doing the same thing in 2009.
4. Who are the companies and organizations that are supporting this movement, it seems to have its own ecosystem?
For something so big, there’s very little hierarchy. It’s really just a chain of communities sharing ideas and learning best practices from each other. Cicolvia program for car-free days in city centers, started in Bogota and spread to other cities in Colombia, then around the world.
Generally, you see the most progress in terms of bike lanes, bike racks on transit vehicles, car-free days, and generally safer streets for bicyclists in cities with strong bicycle advocacy organizations and pro-bike mayors. London’s Ken Livingstone is a great example. In San Francisco, the SF Bicycle Coalition just passed 10,000 members and they’re a significant political force in the city.
The bike industry itself was fairly slow to react to the growth of urban cycling. Until two or three years ago, there were road bikes, mountain bikes, and lounge chairs on wheels. Now there’s an “urban” category of bikes that are designed for fast, efficient city riding. Bike companies are giving more money to advocacy organizations, although it’s likely that the industry as a whole still spends more on sponsoring professional racing than on promoting urban bicycling.
5.Is it possible with a renewed focus on alternative forms of transportation that biking will see a resurgence, if not, what is required to make this happen?
This is already happening, but mostly in denser cities and metro areas with political climates that are more progressive on environmental issues. In many places, the bicycle is not the most practical means of transportation, but we can’t just tear up the sprawl and start over. That’s why people in the bicycle advocacy community are starting to talk about bicycling not just on its own, but also as part of a system of alternative transportation. Instead of “ride your bike to work”, the messaging is expanding to include “ride your bike to transit” and “ride your bike to carpool”. Bicycling and other forms of group transportation go hand in hand.
Practicality is only part of the story; fixed-gear culture will play a role by changing the image of the urban bicyclist. It used to be that dorky guy in your office building who’d get on the elevator still wearing his helmet and reflective strap on his pants. Now it’s actually cool to be a bicyclist, which is an amazing thing.
As a final note… thanks to all the little line items that were included to pass the second version of the Bailout, you’ll be eligible in 2009 for up to $20/month of tax-free reimbursement of bike commuting expenses. Subtract $240 per year, and riding to work is almost free!
1. Briefly describe your position?
I'm the VP of marketing for Mozilla Corp.
We work as part of a global open source project to make Firefox.
Mostly, I try to stay out of the way of an inspired team of marketers working in partnership with a worldwide community to spread the word about Firefox.
2. What, in your opinion, has changed for brands in the 2.0 world?
The poles that immediately jumped to mind for me are "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" and "Line Rider".
Classic branding reached a kind of apex in 1971 with the Coca-Cola "Hilltop" ad -
"Hilltop" rolls up multiple strands of an era that is receding for brands: concentration of audience and attention, advertising as entertainment, and implicit upleveling of professionalism over word of mouth.
I can't think of a better counter and illustration of the structural changes 2.0 has introduced than "Line Rider". A Flash-based physics experiment spreads through the global network to spawn a subnet of participant generated content, a commercial enterprise, and a 2.0 brand sui generis.
- 25K Line Rider videos
The core of 2.0 is continuous, realtime and actionable feedback loops.
As the pre-2.0 lag between idea and response shrinks, we'll see the rise of unpredictable, resonant brands that validate themselves not through multi-million dollar traditional campaigns, but through the trackable, grassroots support of individual humans, enstatiated on the web.
3. What have been Mozilla’s most interesting marketing efforts and why do you think they worked?
There is a line from the launch of Firefox to today that rests on co-opting traditional marketing models and opening them up to participation by our community.
The three campaigns that come to mind:
New York Times Ad. 10,000 Mozilla community members donate over $250,000 in a week to fund New York Times ad to launch Firefox 1.0
Firefox Flicks. A contest to deliver community generated 30-second ads for Firefox (inspired in part by MoveOn's Bush in 30 Seconds contest and Butler Shine's Converse UGC campaign). Over 250 submissions; tens of millions of views on video nets.
Download Day. Rallied the Mozilla community to drive awareness for the launch of Firefox 3 with a campaign to set a new Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a single day. Exceeded our goal of 5M downloads with a final tally of 8M. Campaign lived on the web, was global, and provided a satisfying mechanism for individual participation in a collective effort.
4. How can old school brands become more 2.0?
Listen, share, adapt, be open and give back.
At the edges, reimagine your business down to its DNA (for much, much
more on this topic, read Umair Haque at http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/
5. How do expect the economy to impact people’s relationship to brands?
My hope is that the current economic environment, as fleeting as it may be, reinforces the need for sustainable living.
How this filter influences brand relationships isn't clear to me yet.
I'm optimistic about a rebalancing in the relationship and interaction between human and brand(s) in the years still to come.
Posted by Ed Cotton
It took some time, but it's worth it.
1. What's the inspiration behind Monk's Kettle?
The inspiration was really the brainchild of Christian Albertson, my business partner. He was first introduced to the world of beer while working at a brewpub in Boulder, CO, called The Mountain Sun. Then, while managing the Parish Café in Boston, MA, he discovered the city’s beer-focused places and learned about the industry as a whole. When he moved out to San Francisco about 5 years ago, and noticed virtually no beer focused bars and restaurants (save Toronado of course) he saw a market waiting to be filled. When we started talking about the concept, I was on board right away. Being from Seattle, WA, a city with a huge beer culture, I knew exactly what he was talking about. We soon began our work on the business plan and opened our doors a mere two or three years later.
2. Why do you think that beer has become elevated into more of a
gourmet product?
Well, for hundreds of years beer has actually been just as complex, flavorful, unique and sophisticated as wine: in essence, gourmet. It’s just that for the majority of the population, especially here in the U.S., there was no knowledge of that fact. The only beer really available here was mass-produced by the brewing giants of Anheuser Busch, Coors and Miller. Only over the last 20 years or so did the art of craft brewing make it into this country. Slowly, over that time, it gained popularity and recognition with the help of some great educators on the subject. A few breweries elevated their products, showing consumers the depth of the beer world (Sam Adams and Anchor are two domestics that come to mind), as well as expanded distribution which brought many previously unavailable brews to our shores. There have also been a few beer writers who have done much in the way of education: Garrett Oliver, the head brewer of Brooklyn Brewery has written on beer and food pairings, but by far the most significant writer is the late Michael Jackson whose writings are essential for learning about the world of beer. All of these forces together have brought beer recently onto a scene that was once dominated by wine alone.
3. What do you feel about a Belgian brewer buying Bud?
I think it’s a shame. Not so much because a ‘foreigner’ now owns the beer probably most associated with America, but because the brewing of beer is becoming so dominated by so few large corporations. I think that any time, in any instance, you take a process that requires creativity and a more hands-on approach, and make it more stream-lined and capable of being mass-produced, you lose something. Not to say that Bud is the most hands-on, creative and unique beer, but the principle is still the same. You’re seeing that happening all over Europe with many of their best brew-houses, and its happening here in the U.S. too. The more it happens, I think, the more the artisan beers will lose their character.
4. What do you think is one of the most overlooked beer producing nations-who has surprised you?
There have been a few surprises abroad; though in the way of individual breweries rather than countries as a whole. Most notable are Moa Brewing Co. from New Zealand, Hitachino from Japan, Cucapa Brewing Co. from Mexicali, Mexico, and Baladin from Italy. More surprising, however, has been the style of sour as the great frontier in beermaking today. They have been around for a very long time, developed in the Lambeek region of Belgium, but have begun to really emerge as of late. We at the Kettle have quite taken to this style, the reason we have been increasing our selections. We always have a sour on tap, and a growing selection by the bottle.
5. How do you think San Francisco compares to NYC, when it comes to setting trends in food and drink?
There have been a few areas where San Francisco has set the trend in food and drinks (most notably the Slow Food Movement led by Chez Panisse, as well as speakeasy-like bars like Bourbon and Branch). In general, however, it seems that New York often leads the way in this industry. We at the Monk’s Kettle has seen this specifically with the gastropub trend that is fairly established in NYC, while only getting started here in the San Francisco. When we arrived in San Francisco years ago, we were surprised to find that a place like the Monk’s Kettle did not yet exist. San Francisco is interesting in that there are an awful lot of restaurants and bars, but it seems that the percentage of places that are truly unique and/or providing an excellent product is too low to be considered a leader in the industry nationwide. But we could be wrong about that—we spend too much time at our own place to get out much elsewhere.
Posted by Ed Cotton
1. Briefly describe Glue and your role at the agency?
I work at UK digital ad agency glue London (current clients include the likes of Adidas, Toyota, Bacardi, Nokia, 3, Playstation, McCain, COI and Virgin Trains)
My role is Head of Emerging Technology which is a job title shrouded in ambiguity I know, but actually means I focus on identifying how technology can enhance glue’s creative idea, and how technology can be harnessed to take the creative idea out to new audiences. A lot of time is spent digging out links to the best campaigns and technology partners, creating learning's and then trying to educate and inspire the wider agency on how to do cool stuff.
2. How does technology integrate itself into the creative solution?
We strive to integrate technology as seamlessly as possible. We always approach things from the consumers perspective who on the whole couldn't care less about technology. What people want is a great experience that's tailored to the channel they're on. People should stay oblivious to what's going on under the bonnet. The best technology is invisible.
Once we have a creative idea and understand who the audience is, we're then in the position to identify which channels could be relevant - out of which the technologies generally fall. It's massively important to fully understand the opportunities and limitations of each of the channels, and to try and push those boundaries with each project.
3. What new demands are clients placing on interactive communications?
We’ve witnessed a shift from brands buying time with an audience, to a need for brands to create time with an audience - and by that I mean creating experiences or utilities that add value and that people choose to spend time with.
It’s human nature that once we’ve had a great experience we tell our friends about it (and by experience I mean any experience). Our objective is therefore to enable our brands to enter peoples everyday conversations in a positive fashion, and we do this by building rich and engaging experiences or utilities that people want to spend time with.
4. Looking ahead, what technology trends do you think are going to be big in the interactive space?
Everything is so new that the industry as a whole is on a collective learning exercise to understand what channel opportunities are out there, how people are using these channels, how brands can add value to people on these channels, and also how to build for them. (Made easier by the fact that all of these are constantly evolving!)
For me the special campaigns will be those that understand how people use particular channels, and identify when to employ them in combination to produce something special. The Nike piece is a perfect example.
The other big thing for me is dynamic video. The digital industry has historically been restricted on how work is executed by the limitations of Flash. Motion graphics and 3d applications offer a much wider variety of techniques and better production values, so I think we’ll see a lot more agencies moving into this space.
5. What work out there do you wish Glue had been involved with?
There is so much good work out there. The work R/GA do for Nike is amazing. I love Absolut Machines as an example of how to create a real world experience that is controlled virtually. The Japanese have always been good at technology and their creative skills are now catching up fast. The recent Uniqlock piece is a great example of this and is a strong creative idea is deployed over a variety of channels.
6. Where do you find your inspiration?
I have a wide group of friends from all walks of life. I expose myself and absorb as much as I can across all disciplines. I make time to look on the interweb but also make sure I do real world things too.
There’s an interesting insight to be had everywhere. We’re lucky in London because there’s stuff going on around us all the time, the trick is finding the time to go to it.
Posted by Ed Cotton