audiences build

The first painting I ever bought was of a vase of calla lilies… the albo maculate variety. Sound cliché? Precisely the reason I felt so compelled. It was by an obscure Vietnamese artist, acquired from an artist collective in Hanoi, where the backdrop is drenched with local art. While I usually abhor the stereotypical, particularly a subject which could very well be on my mother’s walls, this piece somehow transcends it all… even the funeral associations. I look at it and rationally decide I don’t like it, but it evokes an emotion in me… which I’ve never been able to ignore.

I come across it time and time again. It’s what people talk about it. What compels us emotionally defies all logic… or rationality.

I was recently discussing the challenges within the music industry with a musician friend of mine. He says there’s no guarantee of success if a label gives a record deal anymore. The formulaic approach in distribution, creative expression or marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be.

Not so long ago, Wired Magazine published an article outlining a range of models for music distribution for the immediate era. It crosses the spectrum of giving control to the distributor on one end, to the musician on the other. While the article really does illustrate there’s no one model for everyone, there is room for everyone. What is missing for me is the acknowledgment that none of these models provide any guarantees. It still rests on an ability to resonate with the audience.

If creative expression resonates, it builds an audience virally on its own.

janine ramlochan

a ‘bloody’ success?

I recently read about how Tourism Australia abandoned the “So Where the Bloody Hell Are You?” campaign. Some considered the tone ‘too coarse and foul-mouthed’, apparently Canada and the UK banned it, meanwhile in Japan and China the language was deemed unfathomable, with the slogan lost in translation.

Yet, according to Nick Bryant the campaign appears to have worked.

For all the criticisms of the “Where the Bloody Hell Are You?” campaign, the latest figures show that Australia has posted the strongest tourist spending in almost a decade. Holidaymakers injected $A85 billion into this $A1 trillion economy. And this at a time when the strength of the Australian dollar has made it more expensive to come here and the environmental lobby is encouraging people to holiday closer to home.

Nonetheless, [Tourism Australia] wants a new campaign touting Australia as a “mature, inviting country”.

I wonder if what led to its abandonment is the very reason that it worked. Many of us have seen and discussed it, even here in Canada where it was supposedly banned. The controversy raised eyebrows enough to look it up, talk about whether it was or wasn’t controversial and exactly what it was about it which made people think it was. Relative to the many campaigns which go unnoticed, it actually comes as a surprise that it was banned here.

Arguably, this campaign was able to reinforce perceptions of the country and get on peoples’ radar. As far as global viral campaigns go, it seems quite the success.

I’m not sure they would’ve been able to design a better viral campaign if they tried. And the new campaigns they’re kicking around are nowhere near as compelling.

janine ramlochan

thinking and design

I was listening to Debbie Millman’s Design Matters podcast with Jessica Helfand and William Drentell. This quote from William Drentell talking at an AIGA conference really resonated with me:

Designers talk about creating a body of work, but they seldom talk about
acquiring a body of knowledge. They take pride in being makers, but seldom
identify themselves as thinkers. They claim to be emissaries of
communication - to give form to ideas. And while we would like to believe
this is true, it seems to us that all too often, we, as designers, are
called upon merely to make things look good - rather than contributing to
the evolution and articulation of ideas themselves.

Thinking things through is what has given most of the successful projects each of us has done their own unique fingerprint; their unique voice or feel. And hopefully, we are able to move beyond merely making things look good because that’s what we do so well.

brenda van ginkel