Yesterday I read an interesting article at ’markedsforing.dk’. It was about a group of young woman, who have decided to start an abnormal women magazine. The magazine is called ’Consume’ and is about women’s real needs. Or, the needs that have been suppressed by all the other women magazines, like Sirene, Bazar, Costume, Eurowoman and Q magazine.

The founder of ‘Consume’, a young RUC student at my own age, was basically just tired of the fact, that women magazines every month have the same beauty and fashion related headlines. For instance, in June 2008, Eurowoman had the headline saying: ’60 hot tips to everything you have to see, listen to and wear this summer’?
On the cover of the same magazine for men, Euroman, the headline was a bit different: ‘Lars Lykke Rasmussen - Demarks next prime minister?’

It gave my something to think about, although I don’t buy magazines very often. It only happens when I’m really bored! So why do I buy them, when all I feel afterwards is a huge loss of my money to something totally unnecessary?

Why is women thought of, as the gender with an enormous desire to buy things that are related to their looks only? And why are men thought of as the gender, who is interested in both politics along with fashion and their looks? Can’t women do both? Or am I just naive, thinking that this is a great opportunity to show both men and women, that we actually care and wish for the same things, when we buy a magazine…

Is ‘Consume’ just another women magazine that’ll live a few months before the hype takes of, and the consumerist women long for fashion and beauty tips again? Or is this the start of a new beginning for women magazines with articles that has a deeper meaning and articles that reaches far away from women as the consumerist, beauty and fashion related gender?

I think, that my need for women magazines is rooted in a need for a break in my everyday life. As I wrote before, I typically buy the magazines when I’m bored or need a break, and the outcome of my reading is nothing. I have always read the article once before, or at least a really similar one. So I’m wondering what my need for an ordinary fashion and beauty magazine is. At the same time I feel that I get all of my intellectual stimulating from reading newspapers on the Internet, or if I want it to be even more specific to my educational subjects communication or psychology, I read books about that specific subject.

Maybe I really don’t need ‘Consume’ because I find my interesting articles elsewhere, and maybe when I by a women magazine, it’s because I know it’s just a waste of time – a waste of time, that I’m aware of. A women magazine is just a break for me, when I’m not reading anything interesting. And maybe it’s the same for all the other women, who month after month by Sirene, Woman or Eurowoman. And who says that a women magazine should fulfil all your needs in terms of politics, beauty, fashion and interior decorating. I know, that when I by a women magazine, it’s just a waste of time, but a nice relaxing waste of time.

Today I met Anthropologist Grant McCracken. First of all he was on stage doing a great talk on the importance of anthropology, which is in his words "too important to leave to Anthropologists". Something which I can most certainly agree to. There is a discussion going on about Capital-letter Anthropologists (the real deal who went to school and all) and the rest of us who have just studied some or maybe even the ones who has a special gift of empathy and understand cultures. Designers can choose to take on the role of being the ones who enter companies or organizations to give the perspective of an anthropologist on how the culture inside the company (or outside, the culture of the customers) is to be understood and secondarily turned into useful knowledge, strategies and corporate expressions.

Grant gave several examples of how bad things can turn when companies forget to consider the cultures they are acting with. Like Levi's who missed the cultural trend of hip-hop and missed an opportunity of 1 billion dollars. As one Levi's representative said, "who knew baggy pants was were a paradigm shift?". Or Quacker, who bought the Snapple brand at 1,7 billion dollars and sold it 3 years later for 400 million. They missed that the culture underpinning the use of Snapple was in decline and the penalty of not knowing the culture they were engaging with was 1,3 billion. No small deal - even to a large corporation.

I was enlightened by Grants talk. What I've been trying to put into systematic use over the past three or four years at Stagis is the use of cultural knowledge as the basis of creating strategic design and communication initiatives for our clients. Because culture is basically what identity and good corporate branding is built on. As McCracken put it, a Harley Davidson motorcycle is just a means of transportation. Any other description of the product consists of culture. After his talk I went to meet him and what do you know - before I could get on the plane home Grant had become a Facebook friend. I guess the modern capital-letter Anthropologist is digging into the cultures of the web too :-)

Today the GAIN conference opened. Tom Kelley, head of IDEO, California, was at his best, with a rare ability to combine sharp insights, empathic questioning, stories from a long career at IDEO with wit and humility. One of the presenters this morning, Michael Conforti was talking about jungian archetypes and how we perceive different people, organizations or roles (say, in a movie) in terms of the field they are taking on. For instance, the hero in Disney’s Hercules doesn’t honour the idea of what a hero is. The hero in this movie is selfish and acts to create personal gain which doesn’t correspond with the idea of a hero. Michael calls the established understanding of a particular role or archetype ’Field’. Fields have specific properties to them, established over time. And if you don’t follow and meet the properties of the Field you are trying to be or communicate, your project is not likely to become a success. In terms of my book on authenticity it was a really interesting reminder of the way we understand anything in terms of what we already know. This goes just as much for business and the identity and brands of companies as for characters in movies. It was really interesting to hear that idea applied to a different field than what I usually work with. The understanding of an authentic car manufacturer, telephone service provider, bakery or accounting firm draws on a particular Field as well. We refer the experience of a corporate identity to our existing understanding of a business or industry. And we see any business as authentic in the light of this pre-existing notion and the degree of seperation from the existing field, defined by heritage authenticity and reflective authenticity.

The afternoon was a blast! The 27-year old Jonah Lehrer did the most jaw-dropping presentation in regard to his new book ’Proust was a Neuroscientist’, eight casestudies of scientists who was not considered scientists but artists. Examples would be Cézanne, Stravinsky and the 'founder' of fine french cuisine, Auguste Escoffier. As what goes for Proust, he found what has taken Neuroscience decades to figure out, which is memory is a process and not a depository. Most of the things we remember are not actual memories but things we subconsciously make up as we go along. The memories awakened by our sense, smell and taste are the most valid as they have been through the cognition the fewest times. I will not go into further detail, just recommend the book and if you ever get the possibility, go hear the guy talk. It's pretty amazing and very inspiring!

Yesterday Anne and I arrived at the biennial design- and business conference GAIN in New York, arranged by AIGA. We are here together with a handful of managers from the Danish design industry (Danish Design Association), namely Søren from e-Types, Mikkel and Line from 1508 and Mark from The Mark. This morning we paid a visit to digital agency AKQA, recently acclaimed one of the top-50 most innovative copanies in the World by Wired Magazine (for those interested in authenticity, note their description of their Shmirnoff case). We spend a couple of hours with Damian Claasses and Lars Bastholm (well, that was brief, but still fun to see you, Lars) who used to work at Danish Framfab back in the early web days.
We discussed how the AKQA team has managed to forward some of the largest brands into business-oriented, creative projects. Like a secret game-like campaign for McDonald’s. Or the Coca-Cola Happiness Factory which they brought to digital life as brand fans can now sign up for a virtual job at the factory, claiming to make their work-life more fun.

The conference presents an impressive lineup of very interesting and highly succesful people within and outside the design industry. Tom Kelley, CEO of IDEO, will be presenting and leading the conference. Grant McCracken, anthropologist with rockstar-like status in academia and business. Michael Conforti, psychologist and jungian analyst specializing in subjects like Jung's archetypes, storytelling (he has consulted a number of movies in the making in order to get the story right) and jungian archetypes. And my favourite writer, journalist and author of Tipping Point and Blink, Malcolm Gladwell will be closing down the conference saturday night. All very exciting!

I am hoping to get inspiration on the way we create value and business for our clients and find input on how we can solve some of the complex challenges that we are facing when we help clients develop their organizational and corporate identities. And ofcourse I’m also looking forward to spending time with our Danish colleagues, meeting my brother and my friends and enjoying the sun in the Big Apple. Sunday night we fly back to Copenhagen.

Not to long ago I saw the coolest commercial I have ever seen. I think the pictures are perfect, the timing is perfect, the music is perfect, but… Yes of course there has to be a but.

Despised how cool I thought this commercial was, and how often I told my friends about it, I could never remember who and what the commercial was advertising for, and that’s a shame. And I still can’t remember the name of the company if you ask me now, but after I have seen it again and again, I now know what the product is.

Is this commercial then a complete waste of money? I don’t think so, if it is part of a plan to show that this is a company, which is willing to take a chance, and doesn’t want to do it like every body else. And the point isn’t to sell a lot more of the product. If this is characteristic for them, then the commercial is very good. If it is not, then it has nothing to do with the company’s authenticity, and is just a cool commercial, which overshadows what it is advertising for.

What do you think? Is it possible for a commercial to be to good, or is it just me who isn’t affected so easily by this commercial? And is it possible to tell anything about a company through a commercial like this, which is so fare from the product?

If you remember what the commercial was advertising for then say so.

During the past three weeks I’ve been on a roadtrip with Lego. A mental and historical of the kind with Lego company and a literal one with CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp.

During the past year I’ve been studying a number of different companies in order to further define my conception of organizational authenticity and to find examples and practical implications of how you as a leader can help your company become more authentic. This time around, I was trying to find out how Legos identity has been rediscovered through the past four years and the outcome of the toy company has been turned from massive losses to impressive revenues.

Three weeks ago Jørgen invited me to join him as he was going to a Lego Fan event in Skærbæk in Southern Denmark. I rode my motorcycle to Jørgens place and joined him and three of his kids on what would most certainly have appeared as a family trip including the odd uncle.

I have heard about Adult Fans of Lego before, mostly from my friend Majken Schultz and her former PhD-student Yun Mi Antorini who wrote her thesis on brand communities with the adult Lego fans as the case in study. But I had never experienced the ’real’ Lego fans myself. Arriving in Skærbæk I was lucky to talk to a bunch of hardcore Lego fans who spans from babies to 80-year olds and on that particular day represented 12 nations who had all come to Denmark to participate in the Lego Fest.

What’s interesting to me is the fact that the Lego fans have been active in getting Lego back on track. As one Danish fan told me, ’Lego had forgotten what Lego was all about. You could buy a helicopter and the tail was in one piece. So you could do nothing other than build a helicopter with it. The very idea of Lego was disappearing and we tried to tell Lego.’ Luckily, they did listen and things changed. A number of employees were discussing the authentic strengths of Lego and the Lego experience with then newly-appointed CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp and they found out that the creative play within the building system of Lego was the most valuable authentic strength of the company. The focus on the construction process as the most precious part of the Lego brand was reestablished as was a number of initiatives, like fan communities, the possibility to order customized boxes of Lego and the revitalization of the initial founders’ credo ’Nothing’s too good for children’ (I don’t think I’m using the right translation here, but along those lines...). A value that was born by the founder and has more relevance now than ever. Simple as it may sound when I mention it in brief, the change has been enormous. Not least the economic impact. For three consecutive years the Lego Company has been presenting it’s best results since it was founded.

Yesterday I was interviewing Jørgen again. This time I flew to the Billund headquarters where we mapped the authenticity of Lego before heading off on another roadtrip including another late afternoon with the kids. I’ll leave the details. Let’s just say I suspect Jørgen of an attempt to turn my book into a sequel on parenthood. The title would be ’Authentic Parenting – How to Multitask Kids, Bricks and Business Authors’. During the next weeks I will be going through the talks as I leave part one of my book and start working on the next.

Vi har i løbet af de sidste par dage modtaget rigtigt mange ansøgninger til stillingen som projektleder i Stagis. Alligevel har jeg valgt at forlænge ansøgningsfristen med en uge (fra i dag til fredag den 10. oktober), da jeg er blevet opmærksom på, at to af de medier, vi har slået stillingen op i, er kommet lidt sent 'on air' og der derfor har været ret kort tid til at se opslaget og søge.
Det ændrer nu ikke på, at jeg er gået i gang med at læse de ansøgninger vi allerede har modtaget og at jeg begynder at invitere nogle af alle disse dygtige og spændende mennesker på besøg i vores flytterod i løbet af næste uge. Men for de der netop har fået øje på stillingen, er der nu alligevel en chance til at skrive til os.
Du kan læse jobopslaget på vores website på www.stagis.dk.

(Project Manager position in Stagis requiring Danish skills - the deadline has been postponed to October 10th)