In december we produced a small notebook that we've sent to our customers. I wrote an article for it in order to give everyone we're dealing with a chance to read a bit more about the ideas behind our concept of understanding the authenticity of organizational identities. If all goes well, the book should be published at some point during the fall 2008. You can download the article as a PDF here: Organizational Authenticity Article

If you don't have the time or feel the need, you might want to take this quote with you from Shakespears "Hamlet", which was the starting quote of my master-thesis in 2006:

There is a discussion about "brand multiplicity" going on over at www.cultureby.com. The discussion started with a comment from Martin Bishop. Here's a quote:

"Viewers are struggling to make sense of how Dove can promise to educate girls on a wider definition of beauty while other Unilever ads exhort boys to make 'nice girls naughty.' ... Unilever is in the business of selling products, not values, and that means we, the consumers, are being manipulated, no matter how socially responsible an ad seems."

Andrew Smart hinted me and I find it quite interesting. Will a company that is selling products, not values, do better and better or worse in these authenticity/environmentalist/CSR/global warming-times?

I thought I'd share a thought as I'm working on something that has it's similarities. I'm sure to receive a beating for it. Here's the last comment (mine) in the string as of now:

The need for authenticity means a need for integrity
There is a point in discussing how two sets of values embraced in commercials by two so-called product brands represent some sort of integrity with the corporate brand - or wether they don't. Evidently, and to an increasing degree, consumers see through product brands and take into account which company the product (and "it's" communication) comes from. In a study on resource partitioning in the beer market, Carroll found that consumers preferred beer that came from a family-owned, local business using handcraft and their own recipes which explains why the number of microbreweries have risen ten-fold over the past twenty years. More importantly, it shows that consumers are interested in the organizational identity behind the product - not just the product and it's features (or it's advertising). Along the same lines there are lots of studies that connect the reputation of a company to the buying preferences of the customers. And guess what the primary dimension of a company's reputation people rely on the most? The authenticity of the organization, followed by transparency, integrity, trustworthiness and a few others.

Now it may be that Unilever decides for themselves what to do with their product brands and how they want to communicate to two relatively different consumer segments. However this blog, Youtube and loads of other sources have made it possible for people to understand and investigate the companies they support much better. And to make things "worse" the New Realists, Cultural Creatives, Creative Class-members, New Consumers and Inner-directeds (choose any of them, they have sort of similar preferences) all want authentic experiences delivered by authentic companies because they want to surround themselves with things/people/organizations they can believe in. Is Unilever one of them? Well, not as far as I can tell from all the comments before mine - if Unilever was driven by greater meaning than making money and had a clearer heritage we probably wouldn't be discussing this. And the Axe/Dove commercials would both carry a value-system that might not be similar but certainly with more shared beliefs.

By the way, I like the commercials/campaigns we're discussing. I just see how the modernist separation of the corporate brand and product brands is working to a lesser degree than it did 10-20 years ago. And that doesn't mean that all messages from a large corporation doing business across 2-digit numbers of markets have to communicate the same everywhere. It just means that it has to come from a shared set of beliefs and hence show some degree of connection to the company that makes the stuff and delivers the message.

My brother was kind enough to send me this photo that he took in the subway today, commenting that it was probably as useful as when our grandmother would try to express her understanding of what you're doing (with an age difference of 50 years she had no clue). But it is useful. Because it's a great example of how companies are starting to understand that they need to bring forward their authenticity. However most of them - as well as their consultants and ad-agencies - have no idea of what their own authenticity consist of and how to make it clearer in their strategy and organizational life. Absolut is doing a lot better when it comes to this - which is the reason they're part of my book. More on that later!

PS: My brother is a New York-based photographer who shoots fashion and advertising and actually, without having spoken a word with him about it, he is a master at bringing out authentic images. See what you think: www.sebastianvikkelsoe.com - comments are welcomed and danish shooting opportunities even more so!

Two weeks ago, just getting back from an attempt of writing the first 75 pages of my book, I spent a day at Roskilde University (RUC) conducting exams with 12 students that I've had the pleasure of mentoring through their group projects during the fall. Unfortunately group exams have been banned so even though there was only three projects we had to go through 12 individual exams. I would have loved to get further into the discussion of each project instead of starting over again and again - and I think the students feel the same way. 20 minutes of individual discussion just doesn't give the same as an hour (or more) of participative group debate.

One of the projects was about authenticity in urban creative businesses, namely designers, artists, record-shops. The case was a small designer-shop in Vesterbro called CAN (check it out: www.yeswecancan.com) where locals and connoiseurs of art and hip-hop records meet up for a social experience as well as bying art, records and one of a kind clothing. One of the points of the study by Rikke, Sander, Beate and Dennis was that a creative business can't market themselves (or will not market themselves) if they don't know what the codes of their authenticity is. As long as they don't, they will feel that they sell out everytime they do actions to promote themselves and hence they will evade anything that resembles marketing. The way forward? "To know thyself", as one philosopher said.

Artwork, courtesy of Stine and Martin at CAN, I'm happy to connect anyone to the students.

I met up with Joe Pine of Pine & Gilmore, the authors of Experience Economy and lately Authenticity which is about the rendering of authenticity in economic offerings like products, services and experiences. And as Joe was in Roskilde to talk at Backstage 2008 I joined him there and spent most of the day discussing our common interest and our different views on authenticity in business. Thomas Madsen-Mygdal was doing a talk in the morning which I missed out on but I know it was great! If you missed it this year put it in your schedule for 2009. It is set up in Roskilde as part of the new experience center that is being developed there and the wonderful people behind the famous (and certainly authentic in any respect!) Roskilde Festival are the ones doing it.

Joe and I had a great talk and taped some of it for a later v-log (blog-post on video) so you'll be able to take part in our discussion. Will get it online and let you know soon!

We recently helped photographer Sebastian Winterø with a redesign and organisation of his website. Chek it out, and enjoy Sebastians work.

The world is full of beautiful memories; just after handing over my dissertation around this New Year, one memory of mine was spent revisiting the creative city of Berlin, where I recently returned from. Strolling Berlin I also revisited The Bauhaus Archive, where I was reminded in sight of how the former Bauhaus Academy of Art prepared the grounds for a great deal of future design and works of architecture.

This optical colour-mixer designed by Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack in 1923 is very typical of the didactic intentions of the Bauhaus, and also unites three dimensions I favour; Design, learning and play!

Hirschfeld-Mack's main activities at The Bauhaus Academy of Art laid in the problems of colours and colour projections. With this didactic toy he demonstrated how the rotation of the top produces the optical mixing of the colours, that are printed upon the laid-on plates; on the back telling about chromatology. Here, some aspects of the colour theories from Goethe to Schopenhauer up to Hölzel are being demonstrated in a fun but simple way - Less is More...

Have a colourful, fun and inspiring 2008!

One of the funny Christmas greetings received this year at STAGIS to make a use of was definitely this memory stick: A real LEGO brick in the shape of an USB key to travel with bytes; thank's Thomas, I think it's fun!

This year Stagis decided to do a christmas present for our clients, collaborators and friends. As previous years we wanted to do a nice notebook. As we worked on the concept our focus was to emphasize the principles of authenticity though the design and the contents. Therefore we made a book with tree different sections. One for each dimension authenticity can be measured according to the method Nikolaj Stagis developed. The principles of the method is used in our daily work to help companies see, live and express the authentic strengths of the organization.

The Three dimensions of the book "Be Autentic"
Image Authenticity: Part One is an introducing article on authenticity: "Authentic Companies are the Winners of tomorrow".

Reflexive Authenticity: Part two is the notebook. Blank pages where you can write your thoughts for actions.

History and heritage authenticity: Part three is the visual history of Stagis 2007. Moblog images from the year that past, photographed by the Stagis team documenting projects, people, collaborations, social life and more.