Yearly Archives: 2011

We’ve just been updating our software and I have re-discovered the joys of the iTunes screensaver. Like many designers, my first love was the 12 inch vinyl album cover, and while records have given way to CD’s which have in turn made way for downloads, the sight of a well designed cover still fills me with joy, excitement and nostalgia.

No prizes for identifying all of the covers shown here, but I'll bet you can't. For more on this subject, go to http://sleevage.com/

And one question. Isn't it about time for animated cover art?

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Steve Jobs was a genius whose work fundamentally changed our relationship with technology. But the news this week that some anti-capitalist, anti-corporate demonstrators in the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement have been seen mourning Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs without a trace of irony underlines the astonishing achievements of both Jobs and the Apple brand.

Let’s not forget, this is a company that was discovered earlier this year to be covertly tracking the movements of every iPhone user on the planet; whose iPods fail so often that I am now on version 4, the first three having stopped working; who have shamelessly appropriated the images of important historical figures including Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jnr, Einstein and Mohammed Ali to sell products; and where working conditions in its Chinese factories are supposedly so poor that suicides apparently occur regularly.

So how did this big, and not always nice company manage to inspire such strong feelings of affection? Feelings noticeably absent in most attitudes to Microsoft, despite Bill Gates being the greatest philanthropist in history.

As Gideon Spanier wrote in the London Evening Standard last week, Apple was unique in its approach. It had its own advertising agency, its own design team and did its own PR, all overseen and signed off by Jobs. This meant that the philosophy, vision and attention to detail that drove the creation of new products also drove the aesthetics and the design of adverts, TV spots, packaging, website and stores. Or as Jim Prior of WPP says in the same article, “there was a complete marriage and unity between the product and the message.”

But what Apple has achieved through truly integrating its strategy, vision, messages and communications is a unique relationship with its audiences that can inspire fanatical devotion. One that is so strong hundreds of millions of consumers are willing to overlook the facts, premium prices, and indeed rational thought and judgement, in order to think of Apple, a company that rivals Exxon to be the world’s biggest, as their super-cool best friend.

Last night, we attended the Financial News Awards for Excellence in Trading & Technology, 2011 – a celebration of all that is good in the trading and technology sectors. The evening provided a welcome respite from all of the gloomy market news, reminding us that we should celebrate those who have worked tirelessly to overcome our current challenges through innovation and responsive IT infrastructures.

The awards mark the achievements of those firms and individuals working across the spectrum of trading and technology in the European financial markets, from stock exchanges and MTFs, to software vendors and in-house IT teams. Financial News’ editorial team selected the shortlist for the awards and a panel of senior industry practitioners chose the winners. It was great to see so many of Greentarget’s clients picking-up awards.  Winners included:

– Best Clearing House:  EuroCCP

– Most Influential Woman in Trading and Technology: Diana Chan, EuroCCP

– Most Innovative Trading Firm: Citadel Execution Services

– Best Foreign Exchange Trading Platform: FXall

– Financial News Top 40 under 40: 

   - Clare Fraser, Omgeo

   - Alan McGroarty, Citadel Execution Services 

   - James Godwin, PLUS Markets Group

Our congratulations go to them and all of last night’s winners

I found this on an old tractor in Sussex at the weekend. No detail, (I don't suppose you need to know too much about your speed while you ploughing a field) just a symbol of a tortoise at the bottom and a hare at the top. Surely this approach would be a great 'on-brand' addition to the dashboard of any Fiat 500 or Beetle?

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So Sibos is over for another year.  There were many recurring themes discussed such as consolidation, public policy and access to market infrastructures.  T2S was a topic of hot debate, particularly when the ECB announced further delays to its implementation.  Diana Chan, CEO, EuroCCP gave a new slant on T2S which is that we should not be focused on cost savings as a result of the regulation, but that the interesting theme is what new services CSDs will create as a result of the regulation.  Marianne Brown, President & CEO, Omgeo drove home the message that the relevance of trade affirmation is at an all time high.  Confirming the economic details of a trade is in fact paramount to mitigating counterparty, operational and credit risk.

And on to matters of a slightly more frivolous nature, the most popular giveaways on the Sibos exhibition floor were the soft toy horses being given away by Wells Fargo and the Russian dolls from the National Settlement Depository.  Note to self for next year, don’t leave gift surfing to the penultimate day, you will likely leave empty handed.  

A big thank you to all of my peers, clients and friends with whom I spent  time with at Sibos, having interesting and stimulating debates about market structure issues during daylight and night time hours. 

Next week I’ll delve down into some of the themes I found most interesting at Sibos 2011.

M.R.

September 2011 and once again it’s time to head out to Sibos, this year to Toronto, to spend a week discussing the finer points of post trade infrastructure and most recently, its role in restoring the faith of investors and policymakers in financial markets. To those of you not in the know, you may think that this is a dull subject, but you’d be amazed to find out that a week spent absorbed in the post trade space serves up more intrigue and unknowns than you’d get in a David Lynch movie.

Moreover, for any PR claiming to be an expert in communication in financial markets infrastructure, Sibos is a key date in the calendar, particularly in the wake of the GFC – Global Financial Crisis – a slightly irritating but useful acronym. Not only does the event provide you with the opportunity to network with clients and peers, the panels and keynote speeches help you to form opinions on global macro financial themes, as well as build-up your knowledge of technical matters relating to the various legislative initiatives in the US and Europe – Dodd Frank, EMIR and MiFID II. There are also one or two free parties as well.

As a specialist PR in financial markets, as well as the infrastructure which underpins it, I think the GFC has made it even more important to attend industry events like Sibos and TradeTech. Whereas technical knowledge used to be the preserve of financial PRs and investor relations specialists, the need to have command of esoteric and technical matters has become a pre-requisite if you want to be a serious player in corporate and business to business PR in financial markets.

I would go as far to say that without technical knowledge of the regulatory and economic environment, it is impossible to operate as a PR in financial markets. Since the beginning of the GFC, the biggest part of our job has become digesting and assimilating regulatory, economic, and financial news and advising clients on how to – or how not to – act on it in the public domain. The latest unofficial MiFID 2 document which is currently doing the rounds is a perfect example of this. Over the past couple of weeks we have helped clients articulate their positioning around it and promulgated their views to the influential journalists covering the topic, which is not something we could have done without the requisite technical knowledge. Industry events like Sibos have a key part to play in building that knowledge base. If you don’t know your OTF from your MTF, you may as well not bother.

LONDON, 8 APRIL 2011 – BDO, Fairley & Associates and Greentarget have today announced that that their excellence in rebranding has been recognised at the Communicate Magazine Transform Awards 2011 in the following categories:

• GOLD award for Best Brand Evolution
• GOLD award for Best Implementation of a Rebrand
• SILVER award for Best Internal Communication of a Rebrand
• SILVER award for Best Corporate Rebrand to Reflect Changed Mission/Values/Positioning

BDO, Fairley & Associates and Greentarget were recognised for their collaborative work in the repositioning and rebrand of BDO, the world’s fifth largest accountancy network. The project was commissioned to signal the move of every member firm in BDO’s international network to a single global trading name. This demanded a full refresh of its visual identity by Greentarget and a comprehensive brand, engagement and implementation strategy throughout the BDO network, led by BDO and Fairley & Associates.

Julia Henniker-Heaton, Director, Brand and Marketing at BDO said: “Working with Fairley & Associates and Greentarget enabled us to create a project team that acted as our internal support. This collaborative and integrated approach helped us to secure engagement from internal stakeholders throughout the process, as well as ensuring the rapid implementation of our striking new look and feel. The repositioning of BDO under a single trading name now reflects our capabilities to deliver a consistent and exceptional level of service and expertise to our clients across the world.”

Simon Case, Creative Director, Greentarget said: “We are delighted that the excellence of our work and the unique process we adopt in involving clients in the development of their brands has been recognised in this year’s Transform Awards.”

Rachel Fairley, Managing Director, Fairley & Associates said: “We employ a strategic, pragmatic approach and virtual team philosophy to all of the projects we carry out. It is brilliant news that our work with BDO has been recognised by a panel of experts.”

Andrew Thomas, publisher, Communicate Magazine, said: “We have seen a 60% increase in the number of entries this year which highlights the growing importance of the Transform Awards and represents fabulous growth. These awards are important because not only to they recognise the importance of creativity, they also benchmark execution and outcome as well as the strategic input of Europe's branding consultancies and in-house expertise. It is my belief that Europe leads the way in these fields.”

Now in its second year, the Transform Awards are Europe’s only dedicated recognition of excellence in rebranding and brand transformation. The Awards, organised by branding and communications magazine Communicate, are judged by a panel of expert practitioners and academics. The award ceremony was held at the Grange Hotel St Paul’s in London and was hosted by former director of communications and strategy at Number 10 Alastair Campbell.

A great deal has been written recently about MBAs, much of it negative.

To some, MBA graduates are seen as the arrogant, process driven terminators of the modern business age, sent like swarms of locusts by the big consulting firms to tell you how to run your business.

To others, they are the elite; the best people trained in the best schools to lead the world for future generations.

But whichever view you take, neither one explains why MBA schools are generally so poor at branding, advertising or creating a unique and differentiating image.

Turn to the The Economist's back pages and you’ll see what I mean. If adverts for MBA courses showcase what the best of the best can come up with when they're asked to be creative, we're all in trouble!

How do all those earnest, clean shaven MBA students find the time to study when most of their days are spent rock climbing. Who knows, maybe ‘rising to the challenge’ and ‘reaching for the top’ are important learning modules in the majority of courses?

Climbing, leaping and overcoming imaginary obstacles may be the hoariest of business clichés, but it hasn’t stopped most of the MBA schools from employing them with relish – strange given that the management school sector is so highly competitive.

And isn't it a little worrying that the business leaders of tomorrow (and their schools) have neglected to learn those central tenets of communication – intelligence, relevance, differentiation, and building positive reputation – in favour of tedious, me too, lowest common denominator consensus?

In her blog for Eye magazine, writer Jessica Jenkins made a number of interesting observations about the current vogue for big organisations using ‘friendly, rounded typefaces’ and it got me thinking.

Given the amount we read it’s always surprising that most people don’t notice the difference between one typeface and another. If we discern any different visual experience from reading The New York Times or The Financial Times most of us do so only subconsciously – as long as we can read easily, we don’t really care. Yet typefaces have an enormous part to play in the way an organisation projects itself. They help people read easily in different situations and in different media; typefaces guide readers through information in the correct order and help them navigate their way through documents.

Just as science fiction films have historically reflected our attitude towards technology, so typefaces, it can be reasonably argued, reflect the way companies want to project themselves. Organisations of all types have wanted to be our friends in recent years, so their choice of typefaces naturally drifted towards the softer and friendlier. They wanted to ditch the hard, ‘corporate’ typefaces of the 70s corporate monoliths (almost always variations of Times and Helvetica) and started to soften their edges in an appeal to our hearts. In many ways this could be seen as a natural, if literal, interpretation of what branding agencies were telling them – that products were commodities and brands had to appeal to emotions in order to create loyalty and growth. So what better way to appeal to somebody’s emotions than to become round and cuddly?

This was understandable during a boom, but now looks hopelessly outdated and clumsy. Recent history has severed the public’s trust in government, politics and big financial institutions and in order to win our trust back they will need to start projecting a high degree of stability, stature and seriousness of purpose. Additionally, demand from the public for ethical and appropriate behavior will be higher than ever. Most of us won’t want organisations to be our friends anymore – we’ll just want them to actually know what they’re doing!

Many companies are still trying to work out how they should position themselves in the new, even more cynical post-banking-collapse world, and visual identities will be playing catch-up. But in order to reassure us that they are competent and ethical, most organisations will have to review and re-deploy all of the communications tools at their disposal, typefaces among them. Serious typefaces with hard edges, or serif faces with ‘heritage and gravitas’ will be back in vogue, while their friendly and curvy cousins will have to make do with the back seat for a while.

So if anyone advises you to adopt a nice rounded corporate typeface, beware. Go serious – it might just help you send out the right message for the next few years.