In a previous blog post One man, 366 logos, I took a closer look at the Swedish designer Fredrik Lundwalls retouch of several well-known brand logos. Lundwall challenged himself to redesign an existing logo each and every day throughout 2012, and the result of his work was numerous potential face-lifts to a variety of both old and new, international and regional brand logos.

In the blog post I tried to raise a discussion on the extent to which companies can change their logos over night. In my opinion logos can be improved over time, but there are some considerations that must be made in advance. A great example of this is Roskilde Festival, who recently decided to redesign their logo.

As a more or less neutral outsider with only one appearance on the grass fields of Roskilde, my personal opinion about the ongoing adjustments to the logo is predominantly positive. I think that the changes have adjusted the logo to an industry endlessly influenced by shifting trends, and I have my doubts about the 1973 editions ability to embrace the concept of the festival today.

At the same time, the continuous reshaping of the hallmark of Roskilde has been a great way to create attention/buzz about the festival - and there has been lots of activity on their social media platforms due to the latest face-lift. Within days from the launch, the first passionate supporter uploaded a picture of the new canopy tattooed on his leg on the Roskilde Festival Facebook-page, which has been a breeding ground for numerous discussions and dialogs about the new logo.

The canopy and the logo

With the new logo Roskilde Festival has kept true to their “original” 1978 logo, in which the orange canopy was unveiled. Apart from operating as the visual trademark of the festival, the canopy also plays an important part in the history of Roskilde Festival. Originally, the canopy was produced for the Rolling Stones’ European Tour in 1976. In 1977 Roskilde Festival spotted the canopy on a photograph from the NME coverage of the Hyde Park Queen concert in London. It was love at first sight and in 1978 the orange canopy was unloaded to the fields of Roskilde. After Roskilde Festival 2000 the original canopy retired due to abrasion. The following year a new and slightly larger model was introduced, and the orange canopy has been synonymous with the Roskilde Festival ever since.    

Since 1971, the festival, which is one of the largest of its kind in the Northern Europa, has kept on fine-tuning their logo, and the canopy, which is the hallmark of the festival, has yet again been reshaped.

 The timeline below shows the progress of the Roskilde Festival logo.

Through the past years Roskilde Festival has received quite some critique on their musical profile, which has been rather fuzzy, according to both music reviewers and a large part of the festival crowd. Therefore, the logo face-lift might herald a new era in the history of Roskilde Festival. Based on the line-up for this year’s festival so far, this is exactly what the festival aims to do.

In terms of the new logo I think it suits Roskilde Festival very well, and as long as they stay true to the canopy and the orange colour, they can keep on fine-tuning the logo.

What do you think about the face-lift of the logo? Is Roskilde Festival moving into a new era? Feel free to share your thoughts.  

The municipality of Thisted in Denmark has a lot to offer, and the citizens are realizing the potential of hosting a World Cup for Windsurfers.

”While a number of municipalities in Denmark engages with expensive - and often ineffective - advertising, Thisted municipality and the other partners in the project are so lucky to have a resource in a bunch of dedicated surfing enthusiasts” - Nikolaj Stagis explains to the local newspaper Nordjyske.dk.

An intiative called Cold Hawaii is the organization behind the yearly World Cup for Windsurfers and as the name indicates, the wind is ideal and the temperature is…shall we say ”refreshing”?

The success was founded with "Cold Hawaii Masterplan" in 2006 and 2007, and has proven to be an invaluable investment for the parties involved in the project over the past year. The excellent results achieved in 2010 - 2012, suggest not only that the area's strengths has been defined and translated into relevant, distinct activities, culminating in Cold Hawaii PWA World Cup. They also suggest that here is a cluster of dedicated enthusiasts and partners who have managed to take the long haul. Both to serve their own dreams, but also to serve the area's image and growth. Too many branding and image campaigns are too vaguely based on the municipalities and organizations who aim to succeed. Often, the campaigns and projects get redefined, altered or simply forgotten, and the organizations are left with a wondering of why money was wasted and the effect did not materialize. 

In Thy it has worked out differently. The project to promote and market Thisted Municipality as "Cold Hawaii" exudes that there is a partnership between the municipality, community organizations and local enthusiasts who are passionate about surf sports, to nature and to attract a world championship in windsurfing. These are the enthusiasts who make the project heartfelt and authentic - and which enables the humble fishing village of Klitmøller to make an impact on a much larger scale than we are used to seeing. The trick, of course, is to realize the value in the development that has already taken place, and ensure that it continues and becomes even greater. The more the municipality grow their authentic identity, the greater synergies, credibility and garnering between all the parties involved.

Click on the links above and read more about the initiative that puts Thisted and Thy on the world map while creating a strong incentive for the whole municipality to take part and identify with the activities that surrounds the World Cup. Read Nikolaj Stagis' blog on the success of Thy here (in Danish!).

Need more information on how to discover and realize authenticity in your organization? Go to www.nikolajstagis.dk or read more about other cases here.

With the office back in place, we would like to thank all the lovely people who dropped by to celebrate Stagis last night. Thank you for all the nice flowers and presents and a special thank you to the all the people who contributed with interesting perspectives on the recent 15 years of Stagis. 

Especially the kind words from some of our fantastic customers and partners made the evening memorable, and a short trip down memory lane with stories and anecdotes from the past 15 years with Stagis pointed out the strong ties and relations that makes Stagis go deep into the heart of companies and organizations. Lars Hargaard from OKI Printing Solutions told the story about how a grey color printer named 3400 became "OKI Identity" and how it was marketed as a piece of furniture that would fit an office or space in every possible color. Lars was quite surprised when he got the first prototype - his grey printer had turned into a ferrari-red designer-item. "There was a lot of talk about the market position and so on, and Stagis was quite secretive. But finally they unveiled this red printer and we really liked it!". Watch the case and a video. Birgitte Qvist-Sørensen told about her time at Helsingør Kommune where Stagis was involved in various design projects and Nikolaj Stagis showed a few glimpses from fifteen years passed. "It's hard to believe that fifteen years passed", he explained and talked about the development of Stagis in the year to come, when Stagis will turn 16. "The development of Stagis is dependent on the development of myself and the people that are in the company," he said. The evening also included a hula hoop show my Ms Mia which was quite fascinating. We enjoyed celebrating our 15th anniversary with all of you.

The Stagis team and I wishes you all a lovely weekend.

How can text messages create better public transportation? Well, they can’t. Not on their own anyway. But if the text message campaign is a part of a larger project on delivering a high level of service and better travel experiences for the passengers it starts to make sense.

The project “Bus driver of the year” is part of the huge project “Bus drivers with character” which is initiated and executed by Stagis. The goal is to create pride, appreciation and job satisfaction among bus drivers in order to deliver world class service. The campaign and the text messages focus on “Good moments”, asking the passengers to write about their best moment from the bus. One of the text messages from yesterday reads something like this:

“6A. I was on my way home from school and got a new hair cut, but no one at school had noticed. And then when I was heading home the bus comes and I show my bus ticket. And the bus driver smiles and says, “Did you get your hair cut, it’s nice!” and I smile and say “yes!” and get on the bus. That was my best moment”

For the last three weeks signs and posters in the buses in Copenhagen and all over Zealand in Denmark have called passengers to send text messages with praise to their driver. During the first three years of the project it was focused on Greater Copenhagen. This spring the project has expanded to cover about a third of Denmark. A lot of passengers have taken the possibility to comment on their daily bus travel. Besides receiving praise this effort shows the drivers how important their attitude and behaviour is to the passengers' experience of the ride. This really makes a difference to the drivers – to discover just how significant their daily work is.

Within the next few weeks 6 to 10 drivers will be nominated for the title as “Bus driver of the year”. The passengers will be asked to vote for their favourite candidate on the bus driver website buschauffor.dk and the winner will be celebrated at an event on September 2nd. We’ll keep you posted!

The Danish Communication Association (Dansk Kommunikationsforening) has nominated five projects for the Danish Communication Award 2011. One of them is ’Bus drivers with character’, a project that was initiated and executed by Stagis. The project integrates efforts in the fields of organizational culture, corporate branding and corporate communication in order to create more ”character”, pride, appreciation and job satisfaction for the bus drivers and managers in Greater Copenhagen. The ultimate aim is to deliver a higher level of service and create a better experience for the bus passengers and get more copenhageners to use public transportation.

Three years ago we set out on this wonderful journey with a test project that proved it was possible to change attitudes and pride within the bus companies that participate. During the past year the project has been supported by the Danish Transport Authority which has made it possible to bring the project to a higher level. Almost 7.000 bus passengers have sent their stories about ”Good Moments” to the bus driver website www.buschaffor.dk, the bus drivers have been in the media with positive stories every month, a group of bus drivers are making ”bus driver TV”, the training program ”Movia Akademi” is on it’s way to be integrated into the regular bus industry training institutions and on September 2nd the bus driver of the year was announced at a great event in central Copenhagen. There has been lots and lots of other activities to help everyone make the bus experience better.

On November 9th the Danish Communication Association is hosting Communication Day 2011 (Kom-dag’11) and we are happy to be one of the five nominated projects. The criteria for professional communication is defined as:

-       Target managed (clear goals)
-       Involves management
-       Target audience oriented
-       Multi-pronged and integrated (several integrated activities)
-       Return-oriented (return more than invested)

We try to make all our projects live up to these criteria (and more!) and Bus drivers with character is no exception. It has an extreme degree of integration and especially in the first two years lots of people from all sides of the project asked me if I thought it was possible. We were trying to get seven private bus companies, one public company and the union to work together in order to change culture and attitudes within a group of 4.500 employees and 200 managers across 20-odd work places. And to begin with there was no funding. Everyone involved had to find a way to fund the activities. Why didn’t I give up when things are so complex and difficult? I always thought it was possible – I just didn’t know exactly what the obstacles where. And today it’s paying off. When I meet bus drivers Lars or Rene or Linda, just three of several hundred bus drivers I’ve met, they tell me it’s made a huge difference in their lives, beyond and above their work hours.

I’m really excited about the award. There is an award given by the professional jury and another award given by the audience on the day. I will be there on the day together with my colleague Louise Kramer who is the project manager of the activities we are running and Maja Nellemann, executive of the project and representative of the public transportation authority Movia. Keep your fingers crossed!

More than 200 people – bus drivers, their passengers and passers-by - were there when the “Bus Driver of the Year” was awarded Friday 2nd September in central Copenhagen.

Six bus drivers were nominated for the title of Greater Copenhagen bus passengers, who had sent text messages with good moments in the busses. The winner – Linda – was the bus driver who most passengers had voted for.

For the Stagis team this party was the culmination of months of hard work getting campaigns, press work and the actual event going. This year, it started in May with a campaign in the busses that urged bus passengers to send their best moments from a bus trip to the webpage www.buschauffor.dk where users could vote on the best moments and from thousands of text messages, and later on the passengers voted on the nominees to win the award “Bus Driver of the Year”.

Danish entertainer Huxi Bach hosted the event and singer-songwriter Alberte went on stage. Three awards were given to outstanding colleagues in the bus industry, and one lucky passenger won his own bus with a driver for a weekend for having sent the best text message. Movia CEO Dorthe Nøhr was on stage, and Movia market manager Anders Due and Jan Aage Hansen of 3F’s transportation group presented the prizes.

Bus driver Avi Achi, who won the prize "Joker of the Year," thanked his passengers - and Denmark - for giving him the prize in a speech that seemed to touch everyone present. And "Child Friend of the Year", Jan Willum Jensen, sang a children's carrol on stage. For me, these moments were the real treat of the day: Meeting Avi, Jan and especially Linda – the Bus Driver of the Year – and seeing the pride and joy in their eyes. As the first winner of the prize Linda will fly to Singapore with her colleague (who is also her husband) to experience public transportation there. One of the things that thrills Linda, she told me, is that it will be her first time on an aeroplane. Ever. You can meet Linda on ChaufførTV (Bus Driver TV) where she's been active making videos about her life since the spring.

The party gathered bus drivers and passengers to give each other a pat on the shoulder. For the same reason, "Pat Day" (Skulderklappets Dag) was founded - with the bus drivers as ambassadors.

The Pat Day and the party were created to focus on recognition and the bus drivers, who are making an effort to turn bus trips into a good experience for their passengers. The plan is that the awards be given each year, so the focus on good moments and recognition is maintained. It was a proud day for the bus drivers and a proud day for everyone working on the project at Stagis!



Avi Achi is reading a highly unexpected and unusual speech that he prepeared - he thanks his colleagues and Denmark for the life that he now has. The speech touched many in the audience.

A few weeks ago I spent two days with an inspiring group of people discussing thoughts on branding, identitity, the use of social media in the Middle East, city planning and branding challenges in China. I was invited by Nicholas Ind to meet the group in Paris and give a brief talk on organizational authenticity. I really enjoyed the diverse group consisting of branding experts from the US, Europe (UK, Sweden, Holland, France and Spain), Russia and UAE. Everyone joined in a series of small lectures and discussions with a plethora of views and opinions. How do you meet the challenges of working with the Chinese? What role did Facebook and social media play in the revolution for democracy in the Middle East? How will new typologies for fast and efficient architecture that meet the new demand for housing in Dubai and Africa develop?



I was later invited to join The Medinge Group as a permanent member, which I was pleased to accept. I'm already looking forward to our next convention in August.

The Medinge Group has such distinguished members as consultant and writer Nicholas Ind, who wrote numerous books on branding, the latest of which is called Meaning at Work (check out earlier post), consultant and cofounder Ian Ryder of BCS, CEO Stanley Moss who has been a succesful designer and brand consultant for decades and now travels the World, dean Pierre d'Huy of La Sorbonne/CELSA and Management Institute Paris, consultant Simon Paterson, Ava Maria Hakim, executive at IBM and CEO Erika Uffindell of UffindellWest. The group was founded in Sweden by Thomas Gad, brand consultant and author of 4D Branding which has been published in 12 languages. During the past decade the members have met biannually in Paris, France, and Medinge in Sweden to share and develop thoughts on branding.

The philosophy of The Medinge Group is: "We believe that change can happen at a business and societal level simply by pursuing the principles of compassionate branding. Each of our members has particular expertise which enables them to make a unique contribution to the Group and to clients throughout the world." Every year the group awards brands for their humanistic, compassionate, sustainable and socially responsible behaviour. This year the Brands with a Conscience award was given to Aquamarine Power (UK), BBC World News - Newsweek for World Challenge (UK), Caja Navarra (ES) and Masdar City (UAE).

Besides being a think-tank, The Medinge Group is complemented by for-profit activities called the Medinge Consulting Group, which puts together brand development teams to help international clients.

Update: A few more images on our moblog.

A few weeks ago we launched the conference ‘Be the change’ for the executive Master of Management Development program from Copenhagen Business School. The conference was designed to create attention and be a platform for interaction between the executive program and potential participants.

The financial crisis has been tough on most executive education and training programs as the management training costs have been cut to a minimum across companies and sectors. Our job was to help the recruitment of participants for the program and the primary objective was to establish opportunities to discuss management education with potential participants as well as senior HR and education executives. We’ve been working with the press to get more attention in the business press, we’ve produced a range of video podcasts with some of the top-professors from CBS and finally we created the conference ‘Be the change’ at the Danish National Museum. Some 140 executives joined the event to meet John Christiansen, Jens Moberg, Patricia Shaw, Jan Molin and Michael Christiansen.

During the past four months MMD has received applications from more than 20 participants, reaching a full class of nearly 30 participants which is the goal for every new class. The interaction before and during the ‘Be the change’ conference has been the catalyst for new relations and bringing old ones up-to-date. In january MMD will start publishing four video-podcasts with the talks from the conference, hence giving a new opportunity to experience and share the ideas behind the program. And we will share the case with you on our website – more about that in the next edition of Stagis Highlights (push 'Newsletter' on top of this page to sign up) and here on the blog.

How do you market an executive master program that excelles by letting the participants shape the program themselves? At Master of Management Development, an executive program for experienced managers at Copenhagen Business School, the managers attending the program decide for themselves what to read, what they want to explore, what the content of their exams are and how they will implement their learning in the day-to-day work in their organizations. Every participant in the program is evaluated on six different parameters, among them are personal leadership, reflexivity and relational abilities. If you are to lead management development processes, you have to be able of developing yourself and to evaluate that process. To make things more difficult the market for executive master programs has become somewhat strained by the financial crisis. Most companies think about the budgets twice before they send their managers off to school.

The authentic strengths of MMD
In 2006 and 2008 Stagis helped the program get more attention in the media and fill up the program with curious leaders who want to develop themselves as well as their organizations. Since our longlasting collaboration with Copenhagen Business School began, some 40-odd articles in the Danish media has passed. We also created a series of podcasts with the participants and professors called 'MMD Refleksion' in order to convey the people and the ideas in the program. This year we are helping the program get the much-deserved attention again. This time we are using the authentic strengths of the management development program by creating an experience that will help some 200 leaders, consultants and change agents see for themselves what the program is about. We are setting up the 'Be the change' conference. Three professors and two executives are the main attractors at a half-day conference on November 9th that will demonstrate the idea about changing your world (being Society, the company or your department) by changing yourself as a leader. The much-needed side-effect is framing the theme and creating an event that will generate several types of communication in the press, newsletters, word-of-mouth etc. The conference is set up with Danish newsmedia Berlingske Tidende on their businessliv.dk platform where you can buy tickets.

Be the change
Working together with my colleagues Christel and Niels, I named the conference 'Be the change' with inspiration from Ghandi's "You must be the change you want to see in the World". In organizations, too, you can't change anything if you're not ready to change your own way of thinking or putting yourself to use in the transformation. During an intense three week period Christel booked professors John Christiansen (head of the MMD program), Jan Molin (founder of the program and CBS dean), Patricia Shaw and executives Jens Moberg (former Microsoft and Better Place) and Michael Christiansen (former Royal Danish Theatre and now head of DR). They all have theoretical or hands-on experience on how to transform yourself in order to change things. Personally, I'm looking forward to hearing Michael Christiansen talk about his experiences at the Danish Royal Theatre where he went from being what he calls 'Napoleon' to 'Cousin Sensitive'.

Stagis is making it happen
We set up the conference at the Danish National Museum where 200 participants will experience a great mix of practical experience and advice and get a sense of the theoretical ideas flowing through the master program. Hopefully they will also partake in networking, getting inspiration from one another and talk about the experience to colleagues, employees and friends. The Stagis team is setting up invites and newsletters, dealing with the location, preparing talks and slideshows, posters, handouts, handling press, running the facebook and google platforms and documenting the event.

Want to be part of the change on November 9th?
If you want to know more or participate, take a look at the Be the change page on the MMD website where you can also sign up. The conference is in Danish except for Patricia Shaws part.

Last month, Rene Redzepi, the celebrated No. 1 chef of restaurant NOMA, was introducing his new book at the Sydney Opera House. I just received the book by mail this morning. It's beautiful and well worth reading. Inspiring story (and diary) and inspiring photos. Out on Politikens Forlag in Denmark and Phaidon elsewhere.