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People tend to imagine Switzerland as a special country, made of strong contrasts and, perhaps, many clichés. Foreigners tend to imagine the Swiss people living in idillic landscapes such as those described by Johanna Spyri’s Heidi or surrounded by austere and severe banks, with their coffers hiding the most precious treasures of the world.
To describe Switzerland from a designer’s point of view a good way is to abstract it from the stereotypes and put it in its real context.

Switzerland is a small country right in the middle, but outside, of the European Union, surrounded by Germany, France, Italy and Austria.
Believe it or not, Swiss don’t speak Swiss – it doesn’t exist such a language! We have three official languages: German, French and Italian. It’s a federation of states, where each of the 26 Cantons is an autonomous republic with equal forces in the Helvetic parliament. This type of union, over the centuries, has strengthened the concept of unity in diversity, the strong direct democracy and neutrality that the world envies us. The constitution is thus a premise for stability and multilingualism.

Therefore, Swiss residents from their earliest age have to learn 3 languages and 3 different approaches to express themselves and feel integrated in Zurich, Geneva or Lugano. Being at the center of Western Europe, its cultural influences are a mix of Germanic, French and Mediterranean cultures.

To communicate and be creative in Switzerland means embracing and blend harmoniously with three different styles and mentalities, bearing in mind that there is a growing global market, that sees the “Swiss made” label as a symbol of precision and quality.

Original appearance on CreNative.

On the other hand, Switzerland has no raw materials and this, over the centuries, has led people to develop an economy based on research and mechanics. In practice, large Swiss companies operate primarily in the areas of precision engineering (watches and mechanical components) and pharmaceutical. There are not many large facilities (there’s no space) and there is no critical mass (7 million residents) to develop a local and broad B2C entrepreneurship.

Over the last century the Helvetic design has grown mainly around industrial design, strongly influenced by minimalist and functional architecture (small areas, small factories, thus functionality and efficiency as the main keywords).

In addition, the need that any graphic material would be then translated and produced in three languages forcibly limited the length of texts and brought to develop an immediate and essential visual communication, to get all Germans, French and Italians in one shot and thus spare some money.

The presence of numerous financial institutions had also a strong influence on the style: elegant but understated. For many years the creative industry has developed an inconspicuous communication, partly because in some way called to be consistent with the typical Swiss banks’ discretion.

The Swiss style, a design that’s distinguishable for its clean lines and shapes, for its use of white space, for the sans-serif typography (Frutiger and Helvetica sound familiar?) and strong contrasts have clearly taken from, and simultaneously influenced, the Modernist and mainly the Bauhaus movement of the first part of the last century, which by then spread and got called International style. Actually, while the Bauhaus became a strong artistic movement mainly in Germany, the Netherlands and Russia, it did not get much consideration in its originating country (except in rare instances in industrial or urban areas in the German-speaking Switzerland). Despite this, the concept of clean and essential lines and typography “caged” within grids, has become the underlying foundation of design’s best practices.

However Switzerland has not the same assets in every region. Ticino, at its Southern edge and a merely Italian speaking land, has embraced the basics of the Swiss style while merging with the soft-edged and warm lines of the Mediterranean and Baroque style. The influence comes from the short distance (20 miles) from Lombardy and Milan, the leading region for furniture design and fashion in the world.

Challenges for Swiss designers are therefore manifold. First, keep the “Swissness”, a recognized and valuable brand that still stands for quality, precision and on-time delivery. Secondly, being able to still produce an impacting visual communication, since language differences – mainly for its costs – are replaced by English and thus moving toward a more globalized and conformed style, but less original and creative than used to be.

Finally, there’s the need to leave behind decades of austere visual communication strongly influenced by B2B and Banks, opening up to new ideas and styles.

Hopefully designers in Ticino (where I live) have understood and they actually boast a strong foundation and a broader creativity, mainly inspired by the Italian style. Who knows, maybe in a few years the Southern part of Switzerland will become a cluster of the merger of both Swiss and Italian styles and design?

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Introducing Nearbors from Nearbors on Vimeo.

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We just activated Nearbors and we’re almost ready to open it for early subscribers.
Sign up today and me and my team will let you know as soon as the beta is available.

Nearbors???

Ek, Yes!
Nearbors is a web based platform which aims to connect people unable to move and people already in movement in urban and in rural areas, as an alternative and cheaper approach to traditional delivery systems based on couriers.
Nearbors is a delivery platform that gives the ability to occasional, but trusted, individuals to purchase goods on behalf of customers at any retail store or merchant within a certain distance and deliver these goods efficiently and in return of an incentive. By exploiting the real-time location information of people and goods and the ability for members of the Nearbors community to deliver items for others while moving, it’s possible to lower the number of unnecessary trips, reduce travel demand in urban and sub-urban areas and help people who aren’t able (or willing) to leave their homes receive their purchased items.

The Nearbors platform matches customers who expect their purchased goods to be shipped faster (in terms of hours rather than days) and cheaper. All the items are purchased through the platform by leveraging real time data on availability of goods (and later on their quality too) and their current prices.

Mission statement
Helping individuals unable to move to have their locally purchased goods at their homes more efficiently and at the best value worldwide.

Company vision
Nearbors is a worldwide community driven platform that gives the ability to people already in movement to purchase and deliver locally available goods faster, efficiently and sustainably on behalf of customers that aren’t able to move or physically buy in-store.

We would love you to give us feedback with our soon to be released beta… If interested just sign up (and no, we won’t spam you!).
Nearbors

You can follow Nearbors both on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nearbors or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nearbors

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We’re committed towards our clients to help them build a long-lasting relationship with their markets by promoting and engaging their customers/users in a unique and memorable way.
Statistics show that the latest works made by us so far have had a huge increase in terms of visitors and appreciations: a customer oriented approach is always the right choice for paving the paths towards success.

We think that the Mobile First – Responsive Web Design approach is the best option for building web sites; and we, at Plastical, decided to offer it as a standard, regardless of the size of the project and for every site we will be involved into.

Follows a list with our latest and most interesting projects built with the MF – RWD technique (July 2012):

AITI50 – www.aiti50.ch
Flex4 – www.flex4.ch
HR-Pro – www.hr-pro.ch
Michele Moor – www.michelemoor.com
PPD – www.ppd.ch

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I’m more than convinced that the business model of ad agencies is at a major turning point.

With the advent of crowd sourced platforms offering logos, templates, pre-made layouts and, in general, any kind of inspiring creative ideas (think of sites such as Zooppa, which offers users’ contributed videos for TV commercials) for ad agencies is becoming harder to justify their “raison d’être” in front of their clients.

In three years the role of ad agencies has been undermined by a new form of creative flow coming directly from customers. No doubts that very soon this phenomenon is about to explode and spread in every direction.

Major brands are already publishing pitches and creative contests.
These open competitions have the absolute great advantage to generate cheaper and probably far more inspiring ideas than any ad agency will ever be capable of (creativity from a group of few vs creativity coming from hundreds or thousands of brand-lovers).

Among hundreds, or maybe thousands, of submissions there’s certainly a small percentage of great ideas worth exploring or considering. For few thousands Dollars anyone can publish a video contest and receive nearly ready-to-be-aired commercials from amateurs or prosumers: few lines for defining the pitch, some cash and that’s it. Less costs and no more tedious meetings with those creative gurus, their bla-blas and egos.

People-powered contests are the most violent and disruptive phenomenon ever occurred and, in my opinion, is what will put an end to the role of ad agencies in the creative process.

No ad agency owner is willing to admit it, but we are all doomed.

We have to compete against thousands and thousands of talented freelancers who are entering these contests: the power of the mass against a few, although brilliant and excellent art directors or creatives hired and working for us, is a lost battle.

As an owner of an ad agency I must admit that there’s nothing I can do about it: I honestly can’t debate against quality or technical execution.
Professional tools have always been available and accessible to almost everyone willing to learn, experiment and publish their results online. Prosumer cameras offer super-quality pictures and videos that have (almost) nothing less compared to high-end gears. Tutorials and tips to get professional results are everywhere and accessible to anyone. It simply means that today hundreds and thousands of individuals have exactly the same opportunities to offer brilliant and qualitative results. Except from hollywood style productions, it’s hard to really find substantial differences from a professional video, picture or web site compared to one made by an inspired amateur. Simply check Vimeo and decide for yourself if I am right or wrong.

Individuals publish finished products, designs, logos, tv commercials. Crowd sourced platforms are killing the whole process in favor of the final result (again: Zappos took the winning proposal and aired it as it was published and presented on Zooppa; no savvy ad agency usually dares to enter a pitch with a final version of a commercial, especially if there are no warranties to be hired as a contractor).
To be able to win a pitch on any of these crowd sourcing platforms an ad agency is required to produce a top quality and inspiring final version, which undoubtedly is a serious problem in terms of resources and costs. Add to the equation that there’s absolutely no warranty that the published proposal will have chances to win the competition. It’s clear: we’re in great turmoil.

Let’s face it: with freelancers we had to compete against prices, poor execution and lack of a stable structure that could potentially be a good reason to avoid them. 1 out of 10 an agency won the pitch and got the job. But with the advent of crowd sourced platforms it’s not about prices, poor execution or lack of structure; it’s about the single idea, the single inspiring idea that comes out. And believe me: the chances for an ad agency to win a pitch becomes 1 out of 100, or more realistically 1 out of 1000. The battle is against final versions of commercials, pictures or web templates.
Dear colleagues, tell me: do you really have the resources, the time and the structure to – maybe – win a pitch of $10’000 while competing against tens of thousands of talented individuals?
I don’t!

Probably, it’s the end of an era and I, realistically, I only (and hardly) see a few and radical solutions:

1. shift towards a business model that embraces consulting as the main core competence (i.e., become a sort of recruiting office, where the only reasonable offer is to help entrepreneurs and companies do a smart selection of the proposals);
2. fire all your creative team and concentrate on highly specialistic offers (i.e., app or web development versus web design, events organization versus brochure design, an so on…); in a few words, define a new business model and evolve;
3. wait until this trend is over, hoping that mass idea generation will soon turn into an exhausting way of looking for inspiration and companies will rather ask a professional (of course for far more less than before) to present his vision.

Of the three possibilities none is mutually exclusive. But there’s a certainty: ad agencies are facing hard times and I’m convinced that soon there will be no more ad agencies the way we know them today.

Let me know what you think… Am I right or wrong? Do you have a more optimistic vision of the future of ad agencies? Feel free to share your comments and critiques!

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A quick one on entrepreneurship and creativity.

Today, as the Economy spirals downward and competition becomes stronger, businesses are struggling to find new ways to emerge and succeed.
Experts and consultants are all claiming that, in addition to the usual development and sale of innovative and top-of-mind products, there’s the need for CEOs and management to orient their decisions focusing more on creativity. Paraphrasing, it means that the old strategic model is surpassed and it’s time to embrace ideas generation as the preferred way to make (and take) decisions. Focusing on alternatives means finding new and unexplored ways to deal with complexities, while developing a new mindset is the key factor to enter a new era of business management.

The shift towards a creative entrepreneurship it’s easier to be said than done. It means changing corporate culture, organization and processes. I think that it’s more demanding in terms of efforts and resources than any previous “how-to-succeed-with-your-business” approach emerged in the past. There are some random points I’d like to mention.

First: established businesses have explicit and implicit rules that have shaped their organization during years. CEOs and top-management of these type of companies have grown into a legacy structure that has developed through years and succeeded, thus changing habits its harder than in smaller or newer companies.

Second: successful organizations have at their core world class research and development departments or areas. People working in R&D has already a creative-innovative approach on service/product development and those people are hired and paid to do so. Usually managers and boards expect them to be the creative resource and engine, not the opposite. Is there a reason to open up for an inside competition between management and researchers? Apparently not, but a smart competition, where roles are clear and each part focuses only on certain aspects (product development for R&D, business models for Management) may lead to new and positive (although sometimes negative too) results that disrupt established markets.

Third: external consultants have a more objective and fresh approach towards ways of thinking organizations and structures. New professional roles, such as business innovators and strategic thinkers, are required to help managers and boards to develop and shape organizations, turning business leaders in challengers – or at least let them understand that certainty and safe-harbors belong to past.

Certainly, these are just a few points and considerations on what’s going on and certainly more has to be said and explained.

But, more today than in the past, when talking about entrepreneurship, it’s hard to forget words like innovation and creativity.
Creative consulting firms are ready to help organizations and entrepreneurs to face new and demanding challenges.

Welcome innovation, welcome creativity. Welcome creative entrepreneurship.

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These are the slides of my keynote speech at USI EMBA on April the 12th, 2012.

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