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I am stoked to have been asked to participate in Steinlager Pure’s Pure Futures campaign as a mentor.

What is the Pure Futures campaign? Well, Steinlager Pure is recognising Kiwis who have uncompromising visions for New Zealand’s future by helping them realise those visions. They have $100,000 to give away, along with help and support from mentors like Dan & Steve at iconic Kiwi clothing label Huffer, awesomely talented industrial designer Jamie McLellan, the great team down at Auckland’s internationally acclaimed business incubator The Icehouse, single handed trans-Tasman rower Shaun Quincey, the team behind mega-successful Kiwi fashion brand Stolen Girlfriends Club, and me.

All you have to do to get involved is register and share a brief summary of your vision and what you think you need to make it happen. The community is then invited to vote and comment on your vision, and the most promising visions will then be given the resource they need to get them underway.

I am really looking forward to working with some big ideas, and hopefully helping people realise their visions by helping them develop brand and/or communications strategies to spread and promote their idea.

To get a flavour for the kinds of visions that they are looking for check out this interview with Emily Harris, who has a vision for a greener community through rooftop gardens:

Head over and share your vision at purefutures.co.nz

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I have spent the last couple of days at the fantastic Semi-Permanent09 design conference here in Auckland. It was totally amazing. It was an incredible way to cap off what has been an exhausting couple of weeks for me, so much so that I couldn’t even muster the energy for the after party last night. What a lame-o.

There was so much awesomeness that I am still trying to digest it all and put it in the appropriate compartments of my brain, but some of the stand out highlights for me were:

• Kiwi lad Cleve Cameron who kicked off the whole 2 day inspiravaganza (that’s an inspiration extravaganza). Cleve took us though his past work sliting the glug with expert use of spungo deliveries and transmissions in Wellington central (my explanation of what this actually is wont do it justice, but it was a great story of a remarkable idea that completely engaged people). He then took us through some wonderful creative work he has done at agencies around NZ and Australia, including the fantastic ‘don’t feed the ducks‘ campaign for Australian brand Wonder Performance bread. His latest project is another triumph of imagination and story telling; a band from the future called the Beop. Rather than explain it check out their latest transmission (from the future of course) at Beop beam central. Cleve obviously has both an incredible imagination, and a remarkable gift for storytelling, and he was a great choice to get things going.
• Sanky from AllofUs told us about a couple of their really interesting projects, like building a giant Einstein head that allowed people to experience what might be going on in his brain by literally getting inside it. AllofUs has a great multi-disciplinary team, and they are doing some amazing work on projects that people would kill for. I love this diverse team based approach to problem solving, and the companies that are doing it are doing some of the coolest work around.
• James Jean is an incredible artist/designer/illustrator. There isn’t really much more to say. His body of work was jaw-droppingly beautiful, and made me glad I had dragged myself out of bed to make the morning sessions on the second day.
• Kate Moross is super cool. Her work is totally rad, and she obviously has an intuitive understanding of how to build a brand. Roll in a penchant for the remarkable (my observation, not her words) and it is no wonder that she has become so incredibly successful. Two things she said stood out particularly for me (excuse the clumsy paraphrasing): that it isn’t hard to learn how to do things, so just figure it out if you need to, and that nice isn’t a word you should use, but a thing you should be.
• Harry Pearce of Pentagram had the unenviable task of delivering the closing presentation. Normally this is hard enough, but when the conference is already running more than an hour late, and the audience are dying to get to the after party it is even worse. However Harry rose to the task, delivering what I thought was one of the most interesting insights into the creative process of any of the speakers. His was a touching, personal story, and his passion for both design and people came through loud and clear. Of course it helped that the work he showed as part of the story was equally incredible.

There was also amazing stuff from Philip Hunt from Studio AKA (am definitely going to catch their two short films – Varmints and Lost & Found), Tim Beard from Biblioteque, David Carson, Arvind Palep and Aaron Duffy from 1stAveMachine, and Alexia Sinclair. In fact, there really wasn’t any filler.

I am not a designer, at least not in the creating beautiful pictures/garments/paintings/buildings kind of way. I do like to think that through my work in building brands I can be as brave, creative, and just plain awesome as the speakers that we had the pleasure of seeing at SP.

Huge props to all the organisers, and to all the speakers. Thank you!

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Is your brand trying to attract customers, or build a fan base?

• Customers are fickle. Fans are loyal (so long as you reward their loyalty).
• Customers don’t forgive you. Fans do (so long as you make it up to them of course).
• Customers have to be acquired, one by one. Fans recruit more fans.
• Customers are suspicious, and take everything with a grain of salt. Fans trust you, and will hear you out.
• Customers will rush to join the angry mob. Fans will defend you, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Of course all of this only happens if you take care of your fans. And when they can do all this for you, why wouldn’t you?

Awesome photo courtesy of notsogoodphotogaphy on flickr

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