Municipality of Copenhagen wants to raise the traffic safety between so-called ”soft” and ”hard” road users to get less injuries in the busy metropolis. And as Stagis has worked a lot with different institutions and organizations in regard to traffic and safety as well as the bus industry of Greater Copenhagen we seemed to be the obvious choice to partner with. This work has led to a collaboration with Department of Traffic within the municipality of Copenhagen. The Department of Traffic wishes to create a better dialogue between the different road users, in order to obtain more safety and less conflicts on the busy streets of Copenhagen. During the summer, the Stagis team has developed, written and designed a new magazine targeted at the ’professional’ road users, namely the busdrivers of the city.

Part of the concept is, that there is a busdriver involved in every story, giving different contemplations about safety. Most of the stories are fairly short and they involve different road users who give their personal view on the issue of safety. The first issue of 'God Tur' (could also be translated to 'Safe Travels') features a story involving a dialogue between a busdriver, a motorist, a cyclist and a pedestrian, advicing each other on safety and pointing out the most dangerous places in the city. The magazine also contains good advice on how to avoid stress during work hours and communicates some of the new initiatives happening in the streets of Copenhagen.

The magazine is handed out in the workplaces of the busdrivers (about 20 places around Copenhagen) these days, reaching about 3,000 people who spend most of their workday in the traffic. In the next couple of months we will work on the next issue which will be out on the streets about November 1st. The content will be created in collaboration with the busdrivers and the other road users in order to speak with their voice and make the magazine easy to identify with.

I was attending a conference on the use of mobile technology in business and communication today, as I was presenting a Stagis project called Busdrivers with character ("Chauffører med karaktér" in Danish), presenting the way we've been working with customers as a means to change organizational culture through appreciative communication. The passengers in the buses gave positive feedback to the busdrivers by text messages and pictures. They helped us create positive hype and media coverage, resulting in a better image and an increased spirit among the employees. You can download my presentation here (however you will not be able of seeing the videos). Even though there is no campaign for the activity now, there are still text messages and images coming in from (mostly) happy passengers in the buses and I know the busdrivers are really pleased to read the messages on the web site. You can see them on www.buschauffor.dk (Danish website).

Before I did my presentation, two british consultants from Simply-goodadvice delivered a talk on internal communication and the impact of mobile media. They mentioned a study which shows a correlation between the company's ability to communicate and the company's financial performance. If you invested 100 dollars in 2004 your money would have decreased to 84 dollars worth by now, had it been a company with bad internal communication. If the company belongs to the group of companies that are good at creating a healthy communication environment in the organization those 100 dollars would now be worth 130 dollars on average. Better internal communication simply leads to a better financial status of the entire business. Recently Novartis and The Exchange Bank of Korea (I think) gave smart phones to all of their employees to push the internal communication further throughout these international organizations.

Even though Stagis is a small company, we're increasingly communicating on email, Skype, text messages, media messages, Facebook etc. In large organizations all those platforms are necessary if you want to keep the communication going across geographic boundaries. One piece of advice from the two british consultants was "don't over regulate," which is interesting in light of recent debates over employees use of Facebook (ie Danish national newspaper Berlingske made Facebook politics, check Journalisten or Politiken articles). Some companies are trying to regulate internal communication as well as the private use of social platforms such as Facebook or blogs. Most employees are really quite responsible - just as they are in their everyday work in the company. Even more importantly, does the use of social and mobile media (and the two combined) help things flow smoother or do they take away time from 'real' work? One Australian study mentioned on Wired says Twittering makes better employees.

A handful of other interesting points on mobile media at work from simplygoodadvice:

• Mobile technology creating major tipping point in empoyee communications
• Employees expect you to have it (if you're a big/international company)
• Top performing companies are setting the pace
• Better internal communications create value that reflects in overall performance
• Internal communication strategies need to keep up with the mobile technology

Yesterday afternoon and evening, Stagis hosted the 21st DDA Bar, an event for the members of Danish Design Association. Peter Kreiner, CEO of Noma gave a brief talk on the success of Noma. He also added an important comment on the window of opportunity that not only Noma and Danish restaurants have due to Nomas status as the Worlds leading restaurant. Other Danish companies, especially the creative ones, could use the possibility to travel out in the World and export more of our social and creative skills. At the end of the two talks we decided to create a new platform in Danish Design Association focusing on internationalization in the Danish design industry.

Nikolaj gave a talk on authentic organizational identity, demonstrating our concept of authenticity and explaining how we come about understanding the authentic strengths of the company in order to help them grow into authentic market positions. He used Noma, Bøgedal, Absolut and Ducati as casestudies – all part of the book that Nikolaj is working on (he says there are only the last 80 pages left to go).

After the talks our guests looked around the Stagis Museum which has been updated and we served local, nordic snacks from Manfreds (former Noma chef) and DinBaghave (“YourBackyard”), all organically grown, primarily delivered from Kiselgården, a small farm who also delivers to Noma.

Thank you to everyone who joined us - both new and known faces! We had a lovely evening.

If you want a tour in the Stagis Museum, let us know – just call or drop a line to email@stagis.dk. You can read more on the Danish Design Association website and see more pictures on our Facebook Page.

Vi søger en senior kommunikationskonsulent til at skabe og gennemføre projekter som udvikler virksomheders autentiske identitet og markedsposition. Konsulenten får til opgave at rådgive om identitet, PR, pressehåndtering, opbygning af image og omdømme og gennemføre projekter med udgangspunkt i sin kommunikationsfaglighed. Jobbet stiller både krav til, at konsulenten kan levere et solidt praktisk kommunikationshåndværk og har gode relationelle evner og projektleder-kundskaber, da vi arbejder tværfagligt med organisationskultur, corporate design og kommunikation.

Jobbet som senior konsulent
Vi forventer at du tager aktivt ansvar for virksomhedens udvikling og vækst. Du får ansvar for både at drive og udføre projekter for eksisterende klienter og proaktivt skabe ny forretning med udgangspunkt i dit faglige område. Du får ansvar for en andel af vores salgsarbejde. Det bliver også dit ansvar løbende at håndtere den eksterne kommunikation om Stagis, om vores projekter og om de begivenheder vi laver. Projekterne gennemføres i samarbejde med både interne og eksterne kolleger og samarbejdspartnere. Vi arbejder primært med danske kunder, men forventer at skulle arbejde mere internationalt fra 2012.

Kender du nogen der kunne være interesseret? Så del det med dem. Læs mere om jobbet på www.stagis.dk eller send en email til nikolaj@stagis.dk.

(Danish job-post, we are searching for a senior communications consultant who could potentially become a partner in the firm. Must write and speak fluent Danish)

To be honest I'm not a huge sports person, nevertheless the European Championship in Athletics dragged my attention yesterday. It was the medals round the necks of the champions I found exciting. The medals are in my opinion quite remarkable due to the v-shaped design, and as the medals are hanging from a white ribbon, the medal itself is a perfect reflection of the ribbon.
I'm note sure if the medal lead my thoughts to the sport, but its very simple and beautiful. The designer is the Spanish Martin Ruiz de Azua's who is a man of medals. Among others he designed medals for the 2003 World Swimming Championships, a transparent bubble filled circular design, which indeed leads my thoughts to swimming.

I recently became aware Timothy McSweeney's - an American Publishing house. I was intrigued by getting to know them more as I read this hilarious text - I'm Comic Sans - published on McSweeney’s humourous litterature site McSweeney's Internet Tendency.
A part from the Internet tendency, the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern is another initiative that stands out. The journal started out featuring only works rejected by other magazines. And from there they started to publish material that was written with particularly McSweeney's in mind. An interesting way to build an editorial brand, maybe aimed at attracting the most distinctive contributors?
McSweeney's have recieved a lot of awards both on design and content for their selection of books and publications, and I sense that when the Founder of McSweeney's comments on the name of the organization, he frames the sphere of the publishing house in a fine way: "[My family] would always get letters from someone named Timothy McSweeney ... He claimed to be my mother's long-lost brother ...[Letters] would always include flight plans, like he was planning on coming to visit. I don't know if he's real or not. My relatives deny it, but who knows?" I dont think I have visited or searched the McSweeneys for the last time.

Today we've launched a new video about the process and the results of the new authentic identity of the Corporate Governance Agency of the Danish Cultural Ministry (Kulturministeriets Koncerncenter). The mapping of the authentic organizational identity and the creation of the visual identity was developed during the past year and this spring the new corporate website was implemented. During the process we found that the primary authentic strength that the management wanted to promote was the role of the Agency as 'translator'. Every time the staff of the Corporate Governance Agency meets politicians, government officers or employees from the many Danish cultural institutions, they try to understand the everyday world of the institution and translate that into politics and vice-versa.

You can see the film on our website www.stagis.com where you can also download an article with one of the Agency employees who's bringing her personality into the everyday job as she lives out the role of the 'translator' between the Cultural Ministry and the cultural institutions who are the clients of the Agency.

We wrote a few blog-posts during the process. Back in October I wrote a post on finding and living the authentic identity which involved a two-day staff workshop and in November Anne was posting the authentic strengths and visuals and corporate colours from the new visual identity.

On Friday July 16th everyone at Stagis will be on summer break for two weeks until August 2nd. In case you need something solved, have questions or want to book a meeting, please let us know before Friday of next week as telephones will be off and email only answered in case one of us are curious and can't help ourselves from checking and replying. This year I'll be spending most of my summer working on the book The Authentic Company in order to finish and publish it this fall.

We are back in business on Monday, August 2nd at 9 AM.

During the past few weeks I have worked on an identity project for a small management consultacy firm. Heliotrop is offering team and organizational development from the perspective of the mid-level manager. Ulla, who is behind the company has a background in the recruitment industry and as an ingineer, and this background combined with a passion for philosophy and human relations creates the forcefield from where she turns teams towards a positive and forward-looking progression.

In the design, we wanted to emphasise both the idea of the name - Heliotrop - which means turning towards the sun, and the authentic strengths we found within Heliotrop:

- Heliotrop works with the relations between individuals and organizations
- Heliotrop believes that a person's conception of a positive future works as a powerful driver for change
- Heliotrop stimulates processes for change by questioning and challenging the the organizations perception of itself

By making a simple and clear combination of a circle - the sun - and the name - Heliotrop - we developed a system that allows the logo to change in 7 different angels. This refers to Heliotrop's authentic strengths of 'turning' someone towards the sun, focus on change through process and the relation between the individual and the organization. All summed up in a dynamic logo and byline: Leadership with drive.