The Soccket - A Fun Social Innovation

by Kevin Roberts

Tackling climate change is too important to leave to politicians! It's a job for the inventors, the innovators, the radical optimists. Because of them, the clean energy revolution is already underway, in big ways and small. I stumbled across this amazing idea, and I wanted to share it with you.

Meet the Soccket, a "fun, portable energy-harvesting energy source in the form of a soccer ball". That's right - it is a football that captures the energy of each kick, throw or header to be reused later as a tiny power generator. For each 15 minutes of play, it generates enough energy to power an LED light for three hours.

The Soccket has been trialed successfully in Durban, South Africa - home to this year's Soccer World Cup, as well as to millions of young people who love nothing more than to kick a ball around, often in communities with not enough safe, reliable sources of energy. The inventors see it as a community builder and public health tool as well as being, well, a soccer ball. They plan to develop a high-end version for sale in the US and Europe. An inspired and inspiring idea!


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Image source: ecofriend

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

An Airline Innovation - "Cuddle Class"

by Kevin Roberts

Innovation comes from the edge. For most European travellers the edge of the world is New Zealand. That means a 24 hour flight, and there are plenty who don't want to part with a huge amount of cash for business class - where you can get a real sleep. So congratulations to Air New Zealand for putting on their thinking hats and solving some of the negatives of long haul travel. Skycouches on their new Boeing planes mean that three seats form one bed, with an extra panel raised from the footrest area to give space for two to sleep in what they're calling "cuddle class".

Economy/coach class can be a tough ride, so the opportunity to lie flat with your partner and sleep off the miles will be too good to pass up. There's little mystery on a flight like this, and sensuality takes a back seat unless you're prepared to pay more, so adding a little bit of intimacy to the mix seems like a great solution to me. You arrive at your destination, not prodded by strangers' elbows and plenty of sleep interruptions, but after a sleep, a meal, and lesser chance of DVT. It costs a little more, so let's see how it goes. While Air New Zealand are ahead of the game in solving a long distance issue - there must be plenty of ways other airlines can innovate for shorter flights.

I won't bother challenging the major US airlines, who need a whole culture change before they can come close to getting this far (JetBlue and Virgin America being honourable exceptions), but I'm sure other carriers can continue to innovate, push the boundaries for economy as well as business and first class. Everyone is on the same plane together! Perhaps they can look at the other innovation from my national carrier - Spaceseats. Two abreast and designed to shape in to allow couples to dine together. You choose - the back of a seat, or at best a small TV screen, or the smile of your loved one facing you. And for those who are not couples, who knows? You might even make a new friend.

Image source: Vielflieger-blog

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

You Were Born to Save the Planet

Adam Werbach, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, recently spoke at the 5th Annual Teens Turning Green Summit in California to an audience of keen, sustainability-minded young people. His message - on the opportunities this generation has to create positive change and the power of DOTs - clearly resonated, and is now spreading like wildfire on the web. It's a welcome shot of inspiration for anyone, whether you're teen or senior, whether you consider yourself Green or Blue. Below is a shortened version of Adam's speech, you can read the full version here. - Kevin Roberts


by Adam Werbach

The Earth needs you right now. Our ecological systems are in decline, one-third of fish species stand at the verge of collapse, the glaciers of the Himalayas, which provide drinking water to over a billion people, are rapidly melting, the chemicals we're putting in us, on us and around us are forming complex endocrine disrupting compounds that are in every one of our bodies. Tonight hundreds of thousands of Haitians are sleeping below flimsy plastic shelters wondering where they'll find their next meal, wondering when their kids will start going to school again.

All of this bad news should make me crawl up into a ball. But instead I'm oddly optimistic, like a kid looking for coins in a payphone. The world may be screwed up, but it's changing faster than ever. Your challenge is to make the type of change we want at the speed we need. And you have it in your neural programming to make it so. Recent brain studies show that your brain moves faster when you're younger, so you're bringing more processing power to the challenge. All of that texting and facebooking is going to pay off in spades. The world is changing and your generation was born to save the planet.

Any movement starts with yourself. I ask you to pick a DOT - DOT stands for Do One Thing. One thing that's good for you, good for the planet, that you do regularly. Maybe it's yoga or riding your bike or saving energy. But it's one thing you do to put your body where your mouth is. We need a billion DOTs. One billion people all making their own commitments. Take a moment now and choose your own DOT. Share it with a friend. Keep it going. Pick another. And it all adds up. If every high schooler turned the thermostat in their house down by one degree Celsius, it would be like reducing 100,000 tanker trucks of gasoline, or taking over a million cars off the road.

Right now there are about 6.7 billion people on the planet. And there's an emerging bulge of teenagers at the bottom of the demographic pyramid that exists because fertility rates are dropping globally. By 2011 there will be 7 billion people and 1 billion teenagers on the planet. Can you imagine 1 billion teenagers? Can you imagine them talking all at once? Now imagine them all walking in the same direction in a line that's as long as 1,000,000 Empire State Buildings. Can you see it? The line would stretch around the earth fifteen times. Can you see it? Now imagine one billion DOTs. All coming together. I'll bet on that.


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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Making Kids Eager to Learn More

Jenny Cornell, the Development Director of my old school, Lancaster Royal Grammar School, wrote this piece on the school's exciting new InspirUS programme... and I wanted to share it. - KR


You may well remember when you started secondary (high) school - fresh from the security and familiarity of your primary school - nervous, naive, anxious but determined to make it.

Did you have any idea what opportunities awaited you or how your life would turn out?

Perhaps you can now look back and appreciate what a great start you had - how it prepared you for what was coming next (though you might not have recognised it at the time).

Andrew Jarman, the Head of Lancaster Royal Grammar School, has introduced a really worthwhile initiative to help reach out to more kids like us. There are lots of bright youngsters around Lancaster today who come from ordinary family backgrounds where life may be tough. Sound familiar? These children would really benefit from the unique opportunities at LRGS which could lay a foundation for a life they never dreamed of!

The InspirUS project is a new and innovative programme to help unlock the talent in these youngsters. Over fifty primary schools in the Lancaster area will be included where bright boys and girls from any background will be invited to attend challenging masterclasses at LRGS.

The aim is to inspire these youngsters, to stretch and stimulate them to give them the skills and confidence they need to make positive changes in their lives. We hope that, through the programme, more children will be made aware of the opportunities available to them and that they become better informed about their prospects.

Thanks to the generosity of some old boys of the school, enough funding has been raised to launch the initiative. Specialist teacher, Kathryn Page, has been recruited to begin the work, visiting primary schools to work with the primary heads and teachers, talking through the benefits of the programme and helping to identify the children best suited for inclusion. The first tranche of youngsters was welcomed to the InspirUS classroom in January.

The children spend the afternoon exploring topics beyond their normal studies. Last week it was "Water Water Everywhere". After finding out about David Hockney, the youngsters produced their own artwork on watery themes, in the artist's style, listening to Louis Armstrong singing 'What a Wonderful World', and then did some quick-fire sums, with percentages and fractions, all based on how much water we use in the home and learned the meaning of a wonderful new word - ubiquitous.

This week the theme was "Is there anybody out there?!". To the soundtrack of David Bowie's Space Oddity, the children had fun imagining how they would communicate with alien species - by code. They cracked number codes, learned about Braille, discovered the strange language of Pig Latin and found out how to use binary code to reveal hidden messages. A cheer went up when it was revealed to them that the next session will be "May the Force be With You", complete with a visit from Darth Vadar...

The lessons are lively, pacey and great fun and with four sessions completed, the children are all eager for more... and more schools and parents are asking for their children to be included. Let's hope their experiences will, at least, ease their transition from primary school to secondary school and, even better, unlock their potential to make life changing choices.

- Jenny Cornell (text and images)


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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Thinking Fearlessly

by Kevin Roberts

Sometimes in life - boardroom, living room or classroom - we get so scared of failure that we make it impossible for ourselves to succeed. In an economy in reset mode, the unreasonable power of creativity is what will set smart people and companies apart. But the thing about creativity is that it breeds failure as well as success.

That's the paradox. In a jittery economy, people suppress creativity to minimize the risk of failure, and companies often encourage that kind of insular thinking. But it's exactly the wrong approach - if allowed to set in, fear of failure will set an organization on auto-pilot, nose down.

Jonah Lehrer wrote on his blog in December about how psychologists are learning more about how the creative brain functions. He used the example of a simple but powerful experiment among college students. Two groups were told to list as many modes of transport as they could. The only difference was that one group was told the idea for the research came from exchange students in Greece, and the second group was told it came from classmates from down the hall.

Fascinating results. The 'down the hall' group came in with a predictable set of responses like car, bus and train. The 'Greece' group let their imagination run wild, generating far more answers, naming horses, ancient warships, spaceships and, yes, Segways.

The only difference was that one group was given the smallest permission to think fearlessly, and they jumped at it. Lehrer uses this research to argue in favor of the mind-opening possibilities of travel, and he's right. More importantly, it reveals the way the creative mind flourishes in the right conditions, and closes down in the wrong ones.

Fast Company magazine backed this up when they reported the findings of Harvard Business School research into the work habits of 238 creative professionals. The findings revealed that "creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety." The researchers argue that a fearful or negative workplace environment is an anathema to creativity and that "when people are doing work that they love and they're allowed to deeply engage in it - and when the work itself is valued and recognized - then creativity will flourish."

The lesson is obvious. We need to overwhelm tough times with our boundless and brazen creativity - not the other way around.


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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Fantastically, Brilliantly, Insanely Amazing

by Kevin Roberts

One thing about the January 27th launch of the Apple iPad clashing with President Obama's first State of the Union address was that they both focused on Jobs.

And check out the awesome enthusiasm Steve Jobs and his team have for their new baby in this video!





A lot of hype and hyped-up criticism have accompanied the launch of the iPad. Nothing new there. Apple attracted lots of criticism with the launch of the iPod in 2001 (total sales: 220 million) and the iPhone in 2007 (total sales: 34 million). They centered on a perceived lack of functionality. So it's not surprising to hear gripes that iPad doesn't support HDMI or Flash graphics, or have a built-in camera.

The critics have missed the point. The iPad is not a netbook or scaled-down laptop. In fact, it is only a distant relative to the traditional PC or Mac. Instead, its lineage is the DVD player, the VCR, the television set, the radio, the newspaper, the telephone, the telegraph. It is not a workhorse loaded up with functions and hardware. It is a platform for story-telling, interactive, personal and immediate.

The story of human technology is the relentless advance in the direction of greater utility, connectivity, immediacy, affordability and flexibility. The iPad represents a quantum leap in that direction.

We want to communicate with each other, cheaply and easily. We want information where and when we need it. We want to be entertained and to entertain ourselves. We want to get closer to the people and the things we love. The iPad promises to do that. Technology that fails to serve that purpose is just a gadget, suitable for little more than collecting dust.

There's an interesting blog post in the NY Times predicting that the iPad will become an irresistible toy for children because kids will love the tactile nature of the device (they love to jab at things!), 'painting' software allows for mess-free splatter, it's an ideal distraction for car trips, and the screen offers endless story opportunities. I couldn't agree more, but the author could go even further: They are pretty compelling reasons for adults to get their hands on an iPad, too.

Related Articles:

• Radical Innovation of Meaning


• Apple's Hidden Disruptive Innovation


• Insights to Drive Apple iPad Success


• Will Apple Introduce the Innovation Expected From Google?

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Secretly Famous

Clockwise: Jumble Room, The Randy Pike, Augill Castle, Little Town Farm as seen on 'Secretly Famous'

by Kevin Roberts

A key element of a Lovemark is secret ingredients (in the Mystery bucket). Think the recipe for Coca-Cola. The Harley Davidson sound. How you get the Caramello into the center. Some secrets however are for sharing, not locking up. In sojourns to the Lake District of England where I have a home in Grasmere (the most beautiful village in the whole wide world) I was introduced to Nathan Westgate and his team of 'secret agents' who search out the most unique places to stay, eat and visit.

Nathan has created a website Secretly Famous that shares recommendations of quirky and unusual places that have the real charm and character of the Lake District, one of the world's must-do tourism trails (read your Wordsworth). You'll find farms, barns, bars, beds and bakeries. His 'secretly found' places are all independently owned, are run by people who have amazing passion for what they do, and champion the best local produce.

My favorite place in Grasmere to recover my senses is The Jumble Room run by Andy and Chrissy Hill - "a small bohemian-style restaurant". You'll find this is now "Secretly Famous" along with The Randy Pike in Ambleside, Augill Castle near Kirky Stephen, and Little Town Farm near Preston, among many others.

Nathan, who is a brand consultant in Preston, has started with the Lake District and Lancashire, will venture to Cheshire and Yorkshire in 2010, and then the world.


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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Follow Your Nose

by Kevin Roberts

A few years back I sat next to Jean Paul Gaultier on a flight from Paris to Athens. Coincidentally we were en route to the same hotel... he invited me to a party he was holding that night and I found my favourite male fragrance... Le Male. Last year Jean Paul created a USB flash drive that perfumes the air with the unmistakable Le Male fragrance as it works. It's great to see the over-looked sense of smell injecting some excitement into a product which is often bland and sold on functionality alone. And while this was only available as a gift-with-purchase of the fragrance, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before other makers of technology products move past the tablestakes faster/bigger/cheaper functional benefits and 'wake up and smell the coffee' when it comes to the power of scent.

It's not news that smell is strongly linked to memory, but a recent piece of research has confirmed that it's particularly useful for enhancing recall of all sorts of brand associations. And of course it's a key Lovemarks ingredient. The olfactory sense has been making small inroads in the technology arena, with scent-strips being added to Sony cellphones in Japan and Asus' fragrant laptops (also see my previous post on Smell of Books adding just that to emotionalize e-books), but so far nothing wildly original has made it to the mainstream marketplace. Why don't Internet hotspots emit a fragrance to show where the signal is strongest - a whiff of wi-fi?

The arts, on the other hand, have thrown themselves into exploring the untapped opportunities of the nose. A 'scent opera' premiered at the Guggenheim last year, where music was accompanied by sequences of perfume 'chords' rather than singing. And I love designer Hyun Choi's 'Flavor of Time' clock concept which assigns a scent to each hour for a unique new way to tell the time - providing a new contender in the old analogue-vs-digital debate!


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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Playing at Strategy

Top Left: January 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review, Top right: Michael G. Jacobides

by Kevin Roberts

"The play's the thing" may be from Hamlet but the subject is from Michael Jacobides, an associate professor of strategic and international management at the London Business School who appears in the new issue of Harvard Business Review with an article Strategy Tools for a Shifting Landscape.

His starting point is the breathtaking speed at which customers and competitors transform - and the turbulence this creates. Traditional strategy frameworks aren't working, he says - they simplify rather than taking account of complexity and changing boundaries; they produce "still pictures of the future." Jacobides puts forward the playscript - a narrative in which "words are more powerful and flexible than value curves." Playscripts "consider how a company could succeed by reinventing its role as reality changes." His method involves characters and their roles, storylines and connections, links and rules, plots and subplots. More fun than the usual approach to strategy planning!

Jacobides' HBR article applies the playscript method to the challenges of the pharmaceutical industry; looks at how Ikea future proofed itself, how IBM reinvented itself, how Marvel Entertainment turned itself around - and this is the part I especially like - how Saatchi & Saatchi changed the very basis of its competition via Lovemarks.

The article cites the company's revival after its near collapse in the mid 1990s. Noting that "companies can change strategies by changing their roles," Jacobides writes that "Saatchi & Saatchi didn't just change its value proposition. It transformed itself into a strategic link between clients and their customers." By "writing a new playscript" Lovemarks shifted Saatchi & Saatchi from being suppliers to strategic partners; created an industry wide concept; cemented connections to clients; and increased the number of pitchless wins.

For me, it really was a case of "to be or not to be."


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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Can Optimism Change the Subway?

by Kevin Roberts

A public art project that links New York's subway system with the idea of "optimism" is bound to attract some cynicism, if not outright ridicule. That's because public transit everywhere in the world is one of the more popular targets for complaint, vitriol and even fist-shaking rage.

However, radical optimists seek out optimism in the hardest places - and where better than the subways of New York?

A campaign instigated by Manhattan designer Reed Seifer to distribute 14 million Metrocards emblazoned with the word "Optimism" to New York commuters kicked off in November last year under the MTA's Arts in Transit program. He's been an optimism promoter since the early 80s after an experience as a young boy with his father and a homeless man. He wrote a thesis on optimism and then started selling buttons. Now he's reached exponential scale. The naysayers were quickly vocal - "I am optimistic that the MTA is mismanaged and the fares will continue to go up while service goes down", and the sarcastic sucker-punch: "I feel better already."

It'll be interesting to see what effect the campaign has. Is simply putting a positive word out there into the atmosphere enough to cause social change? I'm a great believer in the power of language to change the entire conversation. This is how Lovemarks came about - I wanted to change the whole paradigm of brand management which had run out of juice. Love is the most provocative act of all, and people can get remarkably jumpy at the prospect of getting close to Love. One of the ways we started to propagate the idea of Lovemarks in Saatchi & Saatchi was to simply use the word a lot - in emails and conversations. Do it naturally, don't overdo it - but just do it!

Whether Optimism is as compelling as Love is yet to be seen. I've called myself a Radical Optimist - not an everyday garden variety, but a committed evangelist. Reed Seifer is therefore a Radical Optimist, taking the notion beyond the "glass is half full" cliche.

Radical Optimism is not about seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses; it's about taking notice of the roses that are out there - and getting out there to plant some more. Negativity and pessimism is easy. As the MTA campaign reminds us, traveling through life with some optimism in our back pocket is a great idea for us and for those around us.

Oh and here's the thing - the New York transit system is a world-beater, and it deserves better than the relentless negativity that seems to be directed its way. Did you know that New York is one of the most sustainable cities on the planet - per capita greenhouse emissions are around a third of the rest of the USA - and that's largely thanks to the subway system, and the five million people who use it every day.

Image source: http://www.mta.info/mta/aft/about/optimism.html

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Cut Your Jargon Emissions

by Kevin Roberts

It's getting to that time of the year when people are makng New Year's Resolutions. For anyone working in business, here's an idea: let's try and make 2010 the year of plain English. A good way to start would be to read George Orwell's 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language. Orwell understood how language could be used a weapon against the powerless, and how jargon and cliches are used to hide meaning, not clarify it. He offers six timeless rules for effective communication:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
   
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
   
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
   
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
   
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
   
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I am not 100% on number 6, and here's another one for people in business:

7. Try and express your thoughts in one breath.

MBA-speak started by infecting the workplace but has tragically made its way into sport (losing teams now "lack accountability") and even the home (KPI's in the kitchen!).

• Why do we have to touch base to get our ducks in a row when we could just meet?
  
• Why must we synergize our learnings going forward, when comparing notes would do fine?
  
• Why wouldn't a busy person save time by saying "I'm busy" instead of due to cascading workflow, I am lacking in requisite bandwidth?
  
• Why reach out when you can just make a call?
  
• Why can't we leave a meeting with things to do, rather than take-home actionables?

Communication is about accountability. If we express ourselves clearly, we have no choice but to stand by what we say. By resorting to cliches and jargon, people are blurring meaning to avoid scrutiny. It's also laziness.

People are hungry for clarity and authenticity. In every part of life, let's commit to using language to amplify meaning, not bury it.

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

The Selfless Gene

Contrasting expectations of species-level evolution, the classic phyletic gradualism model (left), and the punctuated equilibrium model (right).


by Kevin Roberts

Biology fascinates me. I love the work of Stephen Jay Gould who theorized how change in evolution happens at the edges, the margin, the fringe. He calls this 'punctuated equilibrium', and it explains how evolution doesn't take place on a predictable, linear path but with unpredictable and dramatic bursts coming from the outer reaches of the species. The same can be said of the world of ideas and innovation.

Another biologist, Richard Dawkins, a brilliant communicator, created a lot of confusion when he called his 1976 book on evolution, 'The Selfish Gene'. The book details the brutal efficiency of evolution, but the phrase itself has entered common usage to mean that human beings are genetically programmed for selfishness. It means nothing of the sort - and isn't it great when research comes along that proves the exact opposite.

The NY Times reported last month that research into young babies demonstrates that we are born with an in-built instinct to help others. Before parents have even begun to teach the rules of social behavior, researchers saw kids as young as 12 or 18 months in small, selfless acts of kindness. This innate generosity and willingness to share and cooperate is unique to humans; even our closest ancestors have no interest in helping out a fellow chimpanzee unless there is something in it for them.

Researchers are quick to point out that there is ample evidence that selfishness plays a part in our make-up too. As one of the researchers puts it, "That's why we have moral dilemmas, because we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time."

These findings confirm what radical optimists already believe, and it's nice to have some science to put in the back pocket.


Image source: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2007/08/index.html

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Electronic Readers Hit the Big Time

Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook

by Kevin Roberts

Fear of new technology is not new. In 1982, the king of all Hollywood lobbyists, Jack Valenti, told the US Congress:


"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."


Hysteria aside, the movie industry was utterly convinced that the advent of video cassettes would destroy the film industry. 30 years on, video and DVD have had the opposite effect - far from undermining the industry, they are integral to its ongoing profitability. How could Hollywood keep producing so many films, at such great cost and such variable quality without the "straight to DVD" option? Even the notorious box-office bomb, Waterworld, almost broke even in the end, thanks to DVD sales.

There has been similar angst about the fate of books and the publishing industry since the arrival of the Internet and new technology like e-readers. In 2007, the US National Endowment for the Arts reported a "remarkable decline" of American reading habits, its chairman saying that it would damage the civic, political and economic fabric of the country. The New Yorker chimed in, quoting sociologists who claimed that "reading for pleasure will one day be the province of a special 'reading class', much as it was before the arrival of mass literacy." The Boston strangler strikes again!

E-readers are all the rage this holiday season. Industry experts forecast that Amazon will sell 900,000 Kindles in the last two months of 2009. The Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook, which sold-out before it even hit the shelves, are also on a tear. There was a lot of skepticism about e-readers in the first couple of years, and a lot of doomsayers who thought they spelled the end of the written word.

The truth is that technology has ended the monopoly of bound, mass-produced manuscripts we call books, and expanded choice for readers. We can read on the computer screen, on dedicated e-readers like Kindle and Nook or on our cell-phones.

We love books for the stories and the emotional power, the insights and inspirations. Who ever puts down a great book and says, "Wow, I loved the paper-stock, and the font was awesome!"

People who love reading will read more than ever before - I know I do.

Circumstances, mood and moment will determine how and what we read - the Kindle is great for plane trips or train-rides; the cell-phone works well for a quick catch-up with emails or news, and nothing (for me, at least) will beat the pleasures of a book on a beach, or a bookshop on a rainy afternoon.


Editor's note: Will Apple go after the e-reading market with the rumored Apple tablet?

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Will Avatar Spark More Originality?

by Kevin Roberts

Avatar, opening in the US tomorrow, has Hollywood holding its breath. The $350 million spectacle by writer/director James Cameron seems destined to one of only two possible fates: spectacular blockbuster or massive bomb. The middle road never seems open to Cameron, who famously drives Tinsel-town bean-counters bonkers with his uncompromising vision and gargantuan budgets. Sigourney Weaver calls him an "idealistic perfectionist", which is a pretty good aspiration for all of us.

I haven't seen the film yet, but I wish it well for three reasons.

One, Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop in New Zealand has been responsible for the special effects, which are said to take 3-D animation to a different plane. Another hit for Weta would be great for this awesome Wellington Lovemark - and for the city itself.

Second, I love James Cameron's gutsy approach. In an industry teeming with yes-men, corporate cronies and wannabes, Cameron stands apart as a maverick who rises and falls on the size of his talent, not his Rolodex. He put his philosophy this way:


"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success."


Most importantly, I hope that Avatar succeeds because it represents something that has all but disappeared from mainstream film - a truly original idea. It is not recycled from a TV show or old movie, nor is it based on a book, play, musical or comic book. James Cameron is the sole writing credit, and the story is woven entirely from his imagination.

The rise of innovation in Hollywood (and Wellywood and Bollywood) has been startling, but it has not been matched by the rise of great originality - in fact, the opposite has happened. The graphs below show how the number of films made from an original idea - as opposed to sequels, book or musical adaptations, comic books or earlier films - has declined dramatically in the past decade. Instead, we are saturated by sequels. 15 of the top 20 box office hits of the 2000s were sequels (and some of them were brilliant, but the point is valid).

The last decade will be remembered for awesome innovation we used to help tell stories on screen. Let's hope that the '10s is known more for the creativity and originality we bring to storytelling itself.





Image source: http://www.topnews.in/avatar-will-make-titanic-look-picnic-says-james-cameron-2244474

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks

by Kevin Roberts

Newspapers are up against it in the Participation Economy, the Internet-powered revolution of joining in, taking part, sharing and joy. For the modern consumer, the idea of reading newspapers full of day-old news hand-picked by faceless editors seems, well, very early 90's.

These days we get to be our own editor-in-chief, selecting the bits of news, opinion and analysis that best suit our tastes, politics or predilections. The news business still hasn't worked out a way to make this work financially, but I suspect that will change soon. Free is not sustainable. Walter Isaacson, former editor of Time, proposed one possible approach to the issue of payment here.

There may be some spark in the old format yet. On the first day of the climate talks in Copenhagen, 56 newspapers in 20 languages pulled off a dramatic and high-impact stunt. They simultaneously published a front-page editorial calling for action on climate change. Papers included The Guardian (which got the ball rolling), the Toronto Star, the Jakarta Globe, Le Monde, The Brunei Times, la Repubblica and The Cambodia Daily.

This degree of collaboration across geographical and political boundaries carries a high degree of difficulty. Whatever you think about the editorial itself, the scale and audacity of the maneuver is impressive. The old-school newspaper editorial is long past its heyday, but - on this occasion at least - some creative thinking and collaboration breathed some life back into the art-form.


Image Source: http://babycreativeblog.com/copenhagen/

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Work Can Be Fun

by Kevin Roberts

I don't get a lot of free time, and that's the way I like it. For me it's never been about work-life balance, but always about work-life integration. Finding compelling and compatible work to who I am and who I want to continue being, and devoting everything I have to performing at peak, getting into flow.

In these new straightened economic times, we're all having to work harder, knuckling down to the task at hand, and making sure we're building a future that is sustaining and rewarding. It's not easy. But it's easier if you love what you're doing, and you're doing it all the time. Naysayers will say nay, but its actually easier than ever to devote yourself to what sustains you. All you need is a computer, and the desire to make a difference.

Probably nowhere in the world is this more clear than in my home of New York City, where once again, creativity is biting back and inspiring people to throw everything they have at their situation. I don't know if the people who run the http://www.overthinkingit.com/ blog do anything else with their day, but something tells me everything they do has to be fun. At least they have enough time to bring us the graph above.

Which is fun, and will get you arguing about rock music, Rolling Stone, or crude oil. Their blog is classic pop-culture with a semi-serious spin. It's fun for the readers, but what fun is it for the bloggers themselves? These people have created their world and devoted their time for their own enjoyment. It just so happens we love it too.

Our only way to make the long road ahead through our economic crisis run faster is to enjoy ourselves, to be creative in everything we do, and integrate work and life. Start today with something simple. Eliminate the reasons not to, apply yourself wholeheartedly, make sure you're smiling, and enjoy the (bumpy) ride.

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Create It and They Will Come

by Kevin Roberts

I've been amazed by the global enthusiasm for the iPhone apps that continue to proliferate around the world. Creating an app is as simple as thinking of something useful. It's the modern day inventor's route to riches, and the modern day consumer's lifestyle compressed onto a small device. The creativity just keeps on coming, and it has the consumer at the heart of every decision.

The Urban Spoon app lets you define the parameters of what you want to eat. Anything you'd like to leave to chance, just solve with a shake of the phone. Is That Gluten Free? will tell you what you're eating while you are at the restaurant. The World Factbook '09 can solve discussions over dinner. Then GymGoal can help you work it off. And on it goes.

These apps are the ultimate conversation starter. "Have you got this app?" The power of the idea is transmitted every minute through conversation. Phones have got the world talking, but few guessed it would be in this unique manner.

Where was all this creativity before the iPhone opened a space for it? Are we using the other screens in our Sisomo family with the same creative, open approach? Cinemas, TV's, billboards and bus stops are all waiting for the app magic. The future is wide open, and screens are everywhere. Let's bring the world's creativity to every screen, not just the little ones.


Image Source: http://www.walyou.com/blog/2008/11/28/free-iphone-apps-this-black-friday/

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Brand America Is Ba(ra)ck

Susquehanna River, Asylum Township, Bradford County, PA

by Kevin Roberts

I've written in April and June this year on Brand America, which had became deeply unpopular through the decade. I had put my case for new actions and new messaging to The Pentagon through to Paper magazine. I tell people that what made the USA great is still there in abundance - a tremendous human energy, ideals of a better future, and the capacity to be the force for good in the world.

While the reality that President Barack Obama is only human has only recently dawned, and his popularity is now ranked at about 53% approval, his inspirational message already has delivered benefits to the USA as far as the ROW (Rest Of World) is concerned. In the week that Fortune magazine named Steve Jobs as CEO of the Decade, FutureBrand, which ranks country brands, has announced that the United States is back on top as the country that most people want to visit and do business with.* NY, DC and LA are each powerhouse cities (add San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Cincinnati and many more). The countryside is unbelievably diverse and historic.

This is hope and dreams made real for the Administration. The President has the near-impossible job - everything to deal with - wars, economic crisis, health care, environment, the future of America. He's accountable for it all. So hats off for this achievement - restoring international preference. Millions of people came through Ellis Island to make a better world. America is a vast and beautiful country with idealistic values, beliefs and principles. Barack Obama has the ability to be a focal point for the aspirational dreams of Americans, and to people everywhere - to be the best they can be. The world is noticing. Here's what Paul, who nominated America as his Lovemark, said back in 2004:


"America is the greatest of all my Lovemarks. It stands for freedom, liberty and choice. Whether you agree or disagree with the brand, it gives you the freedom to speak out, to take control, and make it better. If you invest everything you have in America, it is the only brand that will truly reward you."


These are big ideals to live for. A footnote, of the top five countries, I've lived in Canada and Australia, (2nd and 3rd) and presently have homes in the USA, New Zealand, and France (1st, 4th and 5th). The opportunity is clearly there for Great Britain (8th - also home!).

*From Futurebrand: From best overall country brands and top brands within regions, to detailed rankings of the top ten brands across a breadth of categories including Authenticity, History, Art & Culture, Resort & Lodging Options, Ease of Travel, Safety, Rest & Relaxation, Natural Beauty, Beach, Nightlife, Shopping, Fine Dining, Outdoor Activities & Sports, Friendly Locals, Families, Value for Money, Rising Star, Standard of Living, Ideal for Business, Easiest to Do Business In, New Country for Business, Conferences, Extend a Business Trip, Political Freedom, Most Like to Live In, Quality Products, Desire to Visit/Visit Again, Advanced Technology and Environmentalism.

The year's CBI tracks the perceptions of approximately 3,000 international business and leisure travelers from nine countries—the US, the UK, China, Australia, Japan, Brazil, the UAE, Germany and Russia. The insights from an expert panel of 47 tourism, development, policy and academic professionals are also featured. This sample has a margin of error of ±1.8% at the 95% confidence level.


Image Credit: nicholas_t - http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholas_t/

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Obviously You Feel the Love

by Kevin Roberts

Don't you love it when scientists come out with studies proving the completely obvious? The advertising industry is not immune from such studies, as the American Association of Advertising Agencies has recently released a paper entitled: "Why You Need to Incorporate Emotional Messaging Into Your Marketing Communications." It states "Recent studies have proven that emotional advertising is more effective than a rational strategy."

The AAAA paper points to a study of the 880 winners of Advertising Effectiveness Awards from the UK's Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) which has offered further proof (as if there was any doubt) that if you put your message in emotional terms, it will carry more weight. Some highlights from the analysis:

• Emotionally based campaigns outperformed rationally based campaigns on every single business measure in the cases studied—sales, market share, profit, penetration, loyalty and price sensitivity.


• Emotional appeals are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains as rational ones.


• The more emotion dominates over rational messaging, the bigger the impact on the business; the most effective ads are those with little or no rational content.


• Emotional advertising is particularly good at reducing price sensitivity, and hence leads to large profit gains.

I've given hundreds of speeches and written a couple of books - Lovemarks: the future beyond brands, and The Lovemarks Effect on the very subject of emotional primacy. I religiously reference neuroscientist Donald Calne - people are 80% emotional and 20% rational; reason leads to conclusions, emotion leads to action.

Whilst the 4As are "surprising with the obvious", their survey is actually very timely. The job of keeping clients on an emotional track is a never-ending one. My #1 job when I started as CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi was to "emotionalize clients." There is frequently a tendency on the part of brand managers to cram too much information about product benefits into advertising; to be overly prescriptive; to run with facts not stories. There are only two questions that matter in advertising: "Do I want to see it again?" And "Do I want to share this?" An ad crammed with data ain't gonna be revisited or shared.

Btw, other startling "surprising with the obvious" findings from scientific studies include:

1. Gun-Toting Drivers are More Prone to Road Rage
2. Too Many Meetings Make You Grumpy
3. Swallowing More Than One Magnet is Dangerous
4. Memory and Concentration Fade With Age
5. Time Flies When You're Busy


Image source: http://www.elt.lt/2008/02/14/all-you-need-is-lovemarks-lovemarks/

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

School is Out

by Kevin Roberts

It sometimes feels like I've run the full gamut of school-related experiences - from being kicked out of school at 17, to being invited back as a Governor. I frequently speak to students at universities around the world, but having an eternally curious granddaughter like Stella in my life has piqued my interest in the way primary schools approach the first few years of learning.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem we're doing our children justice in this regard. Despite being one of the richest countries on earth, America's education system is notoriously rife with difficulties. A recent in-depth report from Cambridge University on UK primary schools suggests a grim focus on state-determined curriculum and assessment is dampening childrens' appetites for learning. The researchers recommend a new approach where formal learning begins age 6 (rather than 5), and that younger children be left to learn through play. I've spoken here before about the importance (and fun!) of free-ranging play outdoors, and I think this principle remains the same in the classroom. Of course core frameworks are important - as long as they allow great teachers to inspire their young pupils to experiment, keep asking "why?", and start coming up with their own answers. Sure, sometimes they'll get it wrong. Sometimes they'll get their hands dirty. But if their curiosity is sparked, they'll develop a love and appreciation for learning as adventure that will last a lifetime.

I like the approach taken by President Obama in a recent speech to young American school children. Always big on hope and inspiration, the President pointed to where the best kind of education leads - discovery, innovation and creation. Not just retaining facts and ticking off boxes, but being able to take what you've learnt and use it to make something exciting and new that benefits everyone. His concluding questions put the future firmly in the hands of his young listeners:

"So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What
problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make?"

Fittingly, a bunch of open-ended questions best answered with imagination, not just textbooks.


Image source: http://defencedebates.wordpress.com/category/my-feedback-to-you/

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.