Perspective.

“I wonder how it will affect your general outlook when you return to Australia??
You are seeing, and living in, such a different world. Will Australia seem too trivial, smug and self-satisfied? Will all your friends, and your family, seem too materialistic and self-seeking?”

This came through on an email from my beloved Granny. She is an amazing woman, who has done a great deal for the community in her years as, among other things, Administrator’s wife, and MD of the YWCA in the Northern Territory. And as usual, she kind of hit on exactly the thing that I have been thinking about a lot as I spend some time in various developing countries across South America.

Its all about perspective, I decided, about half way up the first mountain pass on the Inca trail in Peru. The heights are breath-taking. Literally. Although relatively fit, and well acclimatised after months in Bogota, as we ascended to the first, and highest pass (about 4,200m), we found ourselves having to stop roughly every 90 seconds. We were carrying our own packs. Mine weighed about five or six kg. Not a huge amount in the scheme of things. As we ascended, the interval between breaks got shorter and shorter. To the point that we had to stop every half a minute or so to catch our breath.

Meanwhile, the Porters, skipped past us, up the mountain, mostly wearing thongs made from recycled tyres, mouths green from chewing on coca leaves. The Porters, who are aged from their thirties up to their mid-sixties (!!!) are employed to carry everything but our clothes – tents, food, shelter, oxygen tanks, first aid, cooking gear, chairs (god knows why you need a chair, when you get to camp all you want to do is lie down) and tables. A law was enacted a few years ago protecting the rights of these hardy fellows who now have their packs weighed at various check points along the path. The limit for each porter is 20kg – four times what I was carrying. Before the laws came in, most porters carried around 60kg. And they don’t have fancy backpacks, with padded straps for support. Most of them just bundle their stuff up on a big piece of hessian and tie it around their shoulders. Add a few ropes around the waist and they’re away. I found them (more than the coca leaves) to be the most useful motivation to get me to the top. Every time I started breathing heavily and could feel a whinge coming on, a porter would walk past. Head down, weighed down, absorbed in the task at hand. Not complaining, occasionally smiling (although they don’t offer much to the trekkers, we mostly seem to just be nuisances getting in the way.)
“How can they do this, every week!” I ask James, dumbfounded, that they can find it within their souls to get up and climb this beautiful, but bloody hard track again and again.
“It’s a good job, they get fed,” he shrugs, and so it is, if you are an uneducated Peruvian living in the foggy highlands.

We woke up on the last morning at 3.30am to climb down into Macchu Picchu. Despite the early start, the trekkers are excited. This is it. The moment we have been waiting for. Not only do we finally get to see the mystical city, but there is the promise of a shower and a hot springs session at the end. So far on the trek we have had perfect weather, it has not rained. It has not been foggy. We have had vistas of beautiful sun capped mountains and chased llamas and wild horses across sunny alpine fields.

We reach the sun gate, just as the sun should be coming up. The sun gate is the mythical place trekkers dream about getting to. It’s the spot where you can take the photos of Macchu Picchu that you see in all the postcards. The stony city sprawling out below you, while mountain peaks soar up around you. Only something’s wrong. There is no Macchu Picchu. There is just fog. Thick, dense, fog. Limiting visibility to about 2 metres.

Where is it?

I laugh, and shout ‘isn’t it beautiful?’ A few trekkers titter at my joke. It’s a shame, but hey, the rest of the trek was beautiful right? We’re going to climb into it and see it up-close. You buy a postcard if you want a snap of this view.

And then someone starts to cry. She is clearly Gen Y. English, a Lily Allen posh cockney accent (such an oxymoron). “We’ve come so far, and now we can’t even see it” she moans weepily. Around her, the porters stoically, uncomplainingly walk on, heaving their leaden packs. Thank god she was not in our group, or I would have given her a dressing down. I think, maybe smugly, how her travel has failed her. Why do we trek in the footsteps of ancients, pay good money to put ourselves through an arduous experience? Why do we explore other countries, and hunt desperately for authentic foreign experiences off ‘the gringo trail’? It’s about shifting our perspective. Making mental leaps and changing our viewpoint to see how other people live, to find out what we can learn from them. To experience a different way of living that forces us to think about our prospects and hopes and dreams differently. To shake us out of our comfortable developed lives. And to be weeping at the end of a fantastic trek because you can’t take your own postcard shot, is, I believe, a serious personal failure.

I am now in a little town called Taganga on the Caribbean Coast. Some hate it, some love it. I am in the latter group. It’s a fishing village that has sort of been overrun by backpackers, but at least they bring with it creature comforts like real coffee and vegetables. And the local flavour definitely still exists in spades. It storms every afternoon (rainy season) and the streets turn into rivers and wash away. All the cats hide under piles of rubble and the dogs howl at the thunder. The lightning quite often sets the mountain on fire.

I have been spending the afternoons volunteering with a local organisation called Fundacion Mariposas Amarillas. They run after-school activities with kids in some of the poorest barrios in Santa Marta. The kids are crazy. With very little discipline, they run around, steal pencils, draw on the walls, throw things and scream at each other. But they’re grateful (I think) for the time that these adults are putting into them.

I spent an hour last Thursday teaching a 13 year old simple arithmetic (jury’s out on if I did her a disservice or not with my poor Spanish!) She was so grateful to be learning – something that her parents can’t afford to get her. It feels nice to be offering something back to these people, no matter how minor my contribution. Later, back in our apartment, James and I spent the evening going through a bridal registry website, choosing various things for our future marital home.
“Oh god, I definitely NEED a butter dish. We’ve needed one of those for a long time!” I exclaim, delighted to click on the icon for a ceramic butter dish at the special Peters of Kensington price of $16. And then I pause, horrified at myself. I look around. We are basically living in a glorified caravan. It’s a cement floored single room We have gas, and occasional electricity. I have two saucepans, a wooden spoon, a few chipped plates, three teacups, and a fridge. I am more content than I have been in a very long time, and I certainly have a great deal more than the little girl I worked with in the afternoon, and yet I still find myself actually getting enthusiastic about a butter dish. So maybe I need to spend a bit more time working on my own perspective shift.

This worries me, as I am one of those people who spend a lot of time thinking about how I can live a better, more sustainable life. I know the world’s resources are finite. I watched a TED talk by a Jason Clay, Vice president of the WWF the other day. He gave the frightening statistic that a cat in Europe has a bigger ecological footprint than a person in Sub-Saharan Africa. I know we all need to consume less, and having lived with less, I know it doesn’t impact on my happiness or contentment at all. But if I can still get stirred by a butter dish, imagine what some of my more superficial friends are like?

I think perspective can help to an extent with this. And I am sad to disappoint my wise old Granny, but I can’t do it alone. As a spoilt, western DINK with high disposable income, I am too conditioned to be able to easily escape my need for ostentatious consumption, (yes, a butter dish is a needless luxury). Our own individual perspective shifts can only take us so far. The corporate world needs to embrace, and thus push, a culture of less consumption. Find ways to make their activities sustainable, because we lowly individuals can-not be trusted.

Jason Clay, and the WWF have the right idea. Rather than engage with individuals to save biodiversity, they are going directly to the big corporations. Asking them to work together. Making companies agree on green initiatives so that sustainability is above competition. Because as any behavioural economist will tell you, and I have proved by my passion for butter dishes, humans can not be trusted to make the best decisions.

The holy quadrant – a planner’s dictionary.

Seeing things differently in Colombia

So, it’s been a while, sorry about that. But I have a good excuse, honestly I do. In the immortal words of Tolkein, not all those who wander are lost, and following the direction of many a planning director who have advised over the years that ‘the desk is a dangerous place from which to see the world’, my partner and I decided to pack up, and set sail for a global adventure.

He needed to fast-track the end of his masters, and I wanted a bit of time to think about things, meet new people, learn new languages and discover new cultures. I have also committed to writing the novel that has been floating around in my head for a while. This is not just a creative exercise, but a self-disciplinary one. Motivating oneself to write 100,000 words is not easy, especially when there is so much outside to discover. I have been using a lot of tips from the Behance network to help me stay motivated. Creativity is 1% motivation and 99% perspiration is definitely right. I sweat and angst over words, knowing that most novels takes OVER 2 YEARS to write, and on average earns the author a grand total of $11,000. So, no I’m not ready to give up my day job just yet. And happily, I find I am actually missing work. Happy, I say, because this is a pretty good indication that I have chosen the right career. After falling into planning five years ago, I have not had much opportunity to think about it objectively, being stuck in the quagmire of deadlines, client demands, and general agency politics. Now, with a bit of space, I can definitely say that I feel so blessed to have found myself in this line of work. I think the gods were definitely smiling on me, when they pushed me out of law, and into ad-land. Sure, it has it’s ups and downs. I hope I can find it in my soul to keep having the same conversations with clients over and over again, but what other job are you given the freedom to create tangible assets out of intangible products (and no, I am NOT talking about CDOs and other constructs of investment bankers here). But using words and ideas and strategies to bring success and drive change. I love it. I really do.

We are living in Colombia, Bogota at present, so over the next few weeks I’ll offer some insights from the field. Branding in a developing country, Marketing a former guerilla zone, and have a look at the incredible enterprise economy that exists here.

It’s also been nice to have the opportunity (and time) to go back to basics. Get my head around my planning philosophy, on my own terms.

So, starting with the essentials, here are my definitions of the holy quadrant of brand strategists everywhere. In my opinion, the ‘holy quadrant’ comprises of:

• Strategy
• Idea
• Insight
• Brand

These are the concepts that are the bread and butter of planners. Every day we make them, describe them, play with them, sell them, but how often do we actually stop to think about what they are.

My definitions may change over time, but I want to have a good idea of what they mean to me, and be able to explicate that clearly and succinctly in boardrooms. I have sat through far too many meetings with both marketers and advertising folk who confound with corporate wank. Watching my partner do his MBT (Masters of Business and Technology, or as I have coined it ‘an MBA for nerds’) I watched his level of corproate jargon rise exponentially, plateau and then slowly fall away as he has come to really understand the concepts that they teach.

My hypothesis, thus is:

USE OF CORPORATE JARGON = LACK OF UNDERSTANDING.

So, in the spirit of understanding, (and what else is a sabbatical about if not developing understanding and self awareness) here are my definitions of these major concepts.

STRATEGY: A plan that sets out how you are going to reach a goal.

I have read before that strategy making is like pottery (Mintzberg’s analogy).

Mintzberg was an academic who postulated that strategic thinking, like the crafting of a pot, occurs as the business goes about it’s business. A potter starts out with something in mind, but the end result may be completely different to what he initially planned. Strategy, like a pot, needs to be crafted, rather than formed. This is important when you think about the strategic planning cycles of many corporations. Flexibility is key and the necessity to balance emergent planning (planning on the fly) with deliberate planning. In other words, ensuring that you can change the plan as you need to, and respond with some immediacy to external pressures.

IDEA 

I went back and forward on this one a lot. One dictionary definition offers this

“A thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action”

Helpful, but perhaps a bit broad in the context of the advertising industry. A definition of idea should provide the framework to judge good (and real) ideas versus executions.

Mark Pollard always has interesting things to say about ideas, and what they are, and how to sell them. (this post of his was actually the inspiration for this exercise).

After synthesising some of his thoughts, and tweaking them, I have come to the following definition.

IDEA: An idea is a novel concept that provides a useful course of action.

So there are three things here:

1. Novel – (original, different from anything seen before)
2. Useful – (serves some purpose)
3. Course of action (lights the way forward, allows you  to reach your goals)

Also interesting to think of this in the context of my Strategy definition. The idea is the tangible execution (or course of action) of a strategic plan.

INSIGHT: A penetrating understanding that creates a business opportunity.

I think the latter part of this sentence is the most important. There are multiple, multiple insights in the world. Men don’t ask for directions. A single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Happy families are all alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Kids love slime.

But unless these insights offer an advantage, or expose an opportunity, then they are useless to planners. We should be demanding more of our researchers and having more confidence to exploit the insights they uncover.

Importantly too, I don’t believe insights need to be new, or unexpected. There are no new insights, just under-utilised insights.

BRAND: A brand is the expectation you set for the people who will interact with your company.

As our good friend Al Ries tells us brands live in people’s minds. They are a cluster of strategic ideas, a promise, and often the personification of your business. By establishing a brand, you are establishing an expectation – for your customers, your staff, your partners – that you will behave a certain way.

 

I think it’s not so important what a brand is, it’s more about what a brand does.

Internally, a brand –

Establishes a shared vision and are often the catalyst for better leadership

Provides a framework for decision making

Strengthend corporate culture

Externally, a brand –

Enhances sales through creating perceptions and improving loyalty

Facilitates consumer and partner decision making by being a guarantee

Provides a platform of thought leadership

Gives consumers a means of self expression

 

And that is just the tip of the iceberg!

So they are my holy quadrant. I will be interested to see how these change and evolve over time. It’s been a highly valuable exercise, and one I would recommend.

What are your definitions?

Thinking Small

This is a great series of blog posts on Why Thinking Small is better than thinking Big – perhaps useful given our risk-averse small budget clients.

Two good quotes

“Creating brands built around a coherent stream of small ideas makes them stickier (the velcro analogy Russell Davies has used that I still think is an incredibly helpful metaphor) and more powerful – being the brand of new news and seen as having momentum and energy is the best leading indicator of future preference and usage.  It also means you are more likely to thrive in a world where 95% of things die.”

“Small ideas do rather than say: It’s about making communication products, not communicating a product”

Also mentions a LONG idea being a better objective than a big idea.

Finally, mentions a great reference to Rory Sutherland’s discourse on Behavioural Economics and how small changes can make big differences.

“Rory Sutherland talked about the issue of people not finishing their drug prescriptions – a waste of tablets and in some cases (eg antibiotics) patients who aren’t fully treated (with the ensuing further days off work, medical costs, erc.)  So why not change the instructions to read, for example, “first take the yellow tablets for 10 days and then take the red tablets for the next 10 days”).  Same medication, much greater likelihood for the treatment course to be finished (this is, I believe, called “chunking”).”

http://garethkay.typepad.com/brand_new/2011/05/what-small-ideas-look-like.html

The 10 Thousand Girl Campaign

Last year I joined the steering committee for 10 Thousand Girl. A social movement that is seeking to bring financial education and understanding to young women across Australia. It does this in the belief that successful women will share their success with those less fortunate than themselves, and so has set out to create a ripple effect in Australia and beyond (through its partnership with Opportunities Australia). You can find out more about what they do here.

Anyway, I was asked to say a short speech for their media launch on International Women’s Day. Here is me doing just that:

And, here is what I said.

I came across 10,000 Girl, as most of us have – through a friend. It’s foundation in based in social entrepreneurship strongly appealed to me. It helped me to resolve my dilemma “I want to save the world, I just want to be able to have a beach house while doing it.”

I am a strategic brand planner in an advertising agency. I tell businesses where they want to be, and how to get there. I create tangible profit from intangible assets.

It felt a bit ironic then, to be a planner, without a plan.

My mother had always told me that the most important thing I did in life was marry someone rich – “marry right the first time” she said “and life will give you everything you want.” I used this sage advice as motivation to ensure that I became financially independent. With a lack of parental guidance however, it has taken me the best part of the first 10 years of my adult life to understand how to plan for the future.

It wasn’t that I was struggling financially or anything. I just didn’t know how many opportunities I had at my disposal. 10,000 Girl has given me a crash course in confidently navigating my way towards achieving my financial dreams.

10,000 Girl has taught me the value of a solid, continuously evolving life plan. There is something very powerful about having a vision – and sharing that vision with a supportive network of non-judgmental women.

In the Steering Committee we grow our own dreams whilst collectively shaping 10,000 Girl so it flawlessly meets the needs of young women starting on their own life planning journey.

After 8 months on the 10,000 Girl Steering Committee – I now have the confidence to take a career sabbatical.

In July –  I am moving to Colombia. I am going write the novel I have always known was inside me – it’s going to be a trashy pot-boiler – I’ll save the great Australian novel for when I have a bit more life experience under my belt.

In the meantime, I am continuing to share the importance of life and financial planning with the women I meet – encouraging them to take life by the horns and shake as much out of it as they want to. Keep that Ripple, Rippling on. Because if nothing else, 10,000 Girl has taught me that those pipedreams are right there for the taking.

 

The ladies at 10 Thousand Girl have declared 2011, the year of the Dare Dreamer. What are you dreaming of achieving this year?

Gladwell on Social Activism

A good read, but especially liked for Gladwell’s common language no-nonsense explanation of the benefits of Facebook – something I have been trying to explain to my old man for over a year!

” The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all#ixzz10nqC77f6

Shifting the category

Often brand strategies will write themselves. You come in as a “naive expert” (with thanks to Adam Morgan), an angle will emerge out of the air and grab you by the throat, and away you go. Often scores of research and brainstorming territories will get you right back to this original hunch – which is fine. The work is a way of bringing rigour (and often confidence) to your ideas and strategy

This week, I was briefed on relaunching a brand…. and I drew blanks. Blankety blank blank blanks. It’s for a mid-sized Australian brand, with a range of great (but undifferentiated) products, and after days of dreaming, looking, researching that insightful angle is not jumping out. (It’s not even whispering at me!)

So – back to Brand Positioning 101. Where do you go when you are drawing blanks on an angle.

#1 – SHIFT THE CATEGORY

With hundreds of products in every category, sometimes, you need to take a leap of faith and redefine that category. Often this may mean undercutting the existing norms (and potentially pissing off the competition) but if you do it in the right tone of voice, and with enough conviction then (the important) people will love you for it.

E.G. Diesel sneakers – not made for running, made for kicking asses.

Diesel and it’s Be Stupid positioning has shifted the category of sneakers. Diesel recognised that those functional shoes that were built for comfort and speed, have become the staple of every self respecting teenagers wardrobe, and running isn’t really that cool anymore.  But Kicking Ass is.

Love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9CZKjNd4hM&fmt=18

 

Lessons from our Teachers

I just love my friend Tory. She is an absolute live wire.
She is nearing the end of her Masters of Education, and over a glass or four of red the other night, she was telling me about her approach to teaching History and Social Studies to high school kids.
Rather than feeling limited by the curriculum, Tory has embraced new ways of teaching, setting up different blogs for each of her subjects and encouraging interactivity. Serendipity playing the way it does, I had only just that day, watched the excellent RSA animate video called The Secret Powers of Time. If you watch the video you will see  Professor Philip Zimbardo present the thesis that kids brains are being rewired to learn differently – they have digitally rewired brains and will never fit into a traditional analogue classroom. They need to be in a situation where they are controlling something. A+ for you Miss Tory!

Anyway, these occurrences got me thinking about our education and national curriculum and what lessons teachers can learn from advertisers (and vice versa) around how to engage people, how to get key messages across and how to drive response. After all – school is one of the single biggest melting pots of messaging we are not only subject to, but also expected to remember.

So then I thought back to the best teachers I ever had, and why they worked for me, and Brands can learn from them.

Lesson 1: People need stories.
Mr McGuire. A delight. An Irish story teller of McCourt proportions. He was my politics teacher for a few years and he gave us the bare bones of what we needed to pass. But occasionally, when we couldn’t be bothered learning, we would twist his rubber arm to reminisce about his football years. His eyes would light up, he would come to the middle of the class. We would turn our desks to face him and off he would go. Arms flying, spittle flecking, he would tell us about the glory years in Belfast when they would get out on the muddy pitch and kick around a soggy bladder. So while the stories weren’t really the subject matter, they were cause enough for us to go back to class, day in, day out and really listen to Mr McGuire. They helped us to trust him.
MR MCGUIRE’S LESSON: Sharing stories allow us to build trust

Lesson 2: Have a Personality – at any cost.
Mr Wilson was an ex SAS soldier, and one scary mo-fo. He was only ever allowed out to teach us as a substitute on days when no other substitute could be found. He would stand up the front, completely disregard the curriculum, and tell us Vietnam war stories. We would sit, enthralled, not really learning much about geography,  but learning how to respect our teachers – for their wisdom, their experiences and the mere fact that they were the ones in charge. He never taught me a single fact, but he taught me that the most interesting people are those who tell it how it is, and really stand for what they believe in.
MR WILSON’S FAVOURITE QUOTE “YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME, DO YOU THINK I AM SCARED OF SOMEONE LIKE YOU? YOU SHOULD SEE THE PEOPLE I HAVE HAD TO DEAL WITH! HA HA HA!”
MR WILSON’S LESSON: Be who you are and let your personality out. People will either love you for it, or hate you for it, but at least they will feel something about you.

Lesson 3: Reward is important for overcoming Barriers.
Miss O’Rourke. Most people hated her, I adored her. Why? Because she would REWARD me. The spine-chilling-butter-wouldn’t-melt teacher’s pet that I was in English in year 8, I entered all the English competitions I could and, in fact, won a few for some angst-y poetry. This of course, made the ladder-climbing Miss O’Rourke look good, so she of course rewarded me with wonderful marks, free lessons, homework leniency and a manner of other things.
MISS O’ROURKE’S LESSON: When people have done something for you, do something for them – you can overcome even the most entrenched barriers.

Lesson 4: Generosity is a key straight to the heart
Miss Hackett and Mr Boyett were amazing. They were like new age spiritual gurus in a school of catholic sycophants. Every year, they would take a group of year 10 girls hiking in the Murchison Gorge. They didn’t take everyone – just a few random girls from different groups who they thought would benefit from it. It wasn’t a part of the ‘school’ thing, they didn’t have to do it, they just chose to do it, to offer us a bit of respite from our families, our friends, our lives. Their warmth, open spirits and generosity made them firm favourites amongst all students.
MISS HACKETT AND MR BOYETT’S LESSON: Offer more than you have to.

What lessons did you learn from your teachers?



Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ll admit, I don’t know a lot about Eleanor Roosevelt, despite studying a few units of American Politics back in the undergrad days, but I came across a great and timeless quote from her recently.

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

US diplomat & reformer (1884 – 1962)

What a legend. Carrie Bradshaw could learn something off her.

Money, Mouth, Money

I have always loved working on Internal branding projects. I find it fascinating, and fulfilling, to see how a well structured, honest sense of mission [NOTE: Not a Mission Statement] along with a well-structured internal communications campaign, can reinvigorate and excite employees about their working life. The impact this has on the rest of an employee’s life can only be imagined. So,when HR departments and senior management actually put their money where their mouth is and introduce innovative work policies that reflect their sense of mission then hear me squeal in delight!

Case in Point.

HubSpot – an internet marketing company in Masachussets abolished staff holidays. The CEO Brian Halligan recognised that people are working in the evenings, and on weekends on BlackBerrys and ‘it seemed ridiculous not to acknowledge that in some way’ [Source: WIRED]. Employees can now take time off whenever they want. By demonstrating real trust, Hubspot encourages its employees to act more like self-employed business people rather than employees. Staff performance reviews will demonstrate if the scheme is working or if anyone is abusing the system – and ultimately performance and output should be the only measure of a staff member’s commitment and value to the company. As far as Brian is concerned his biggest issue is whether or not staff are actually taking enough leave, and you can imagine what that does to productivity.

Working in what endlessly espouses to be a creative industry, I am therefore astounded at the lack of innovative work place policies I have witnessed. Sure, there is the quarterly Away-Day where endless booze is thrown around in the name of team-building, and you might get the occasional talk from a famous director to inspire our greedy minds, or the Monday Fruit Bowl. But I am yet to hear of any real, authentic demonstrations of innovative work place policies that reflect the missions and beliefs of some of our great agencies.

Believe in unlocking creativity by understanding human needs? Then allow your staff to work their own hours.

Believe in creativity that delivers results? Then reward staff on the basis of their output, not on their level of experience.

Believe that work is the only true measure of an agency? Then make your business results radically transparent so people can view the outcomes of their work.

But maybe I just haven’t heard about them yet….

If you have heard of any, I would love to hear about them.

Happy Rainy Tuesday

Analogue innovation

I love this design thinking for homeless people. Chalk-marks to help the Homeless community communicate with each other. Yet another example of how simply and effectively needs can be met when design thinking is applied to social issues.

via PSFK