Jeff Staple on 'The Accident'
Jeff Staple, Founder and Creative Director of Staple Design and Reed Space, talks about his "accidental" career path. Jeff went from hand-silkscreening tee-shirts in school to heading a global design, consulting, apparel and retail operation in 11 years—On his own terms. He speaks to us about lessons learned and knowledge gained in the process.
Rob Campbell on How Creativity Can Liberate Business
Rob Campbell (Sunshine/M&C Saatchi) explains why he believes the future of brands is about creating fate - not advertising. Claiming that ad agencies don’t know the difference between an idea and an “ad” idea, Rob describes why true creativity is more cost effective than common philosophies of formal research & development, distribution and brain-washing media spend.
Rob explains why companies who are looking for the ’single insight’ are wasting their time and that companies who understand people and culture - not category - and who have a way to transform it into something that is motivating, will ultimately win.
Charles Ogilvie on Look & Feel
Charles Ogilvie (Panasonic), Creative Designer and Inventor of RED, the award winning in-flight entertainment system for Virgin America, speaks about service innovation, new revenue models, and the use of airborne technology throughout Asia and the world at large.
From the drab grey seats and drop down projectors of just ten years ago, Charles describes the process he and his team went through when challenged by Richard Branson to figure out “What’s next in aviation?”
Interestingly, Charles explains that in addition to personal entertainment systems, mood lighting, and all the wizzy-wig technological concepts being tossed around, Asian airlines in particular may actually excel best on a service level. Where rules regarding uniforms or service mentality have traditionally held back American companies, Charles encourages any business operating in Asia to take advantage of all that is possible.
Asian Youth Trends
Piers Fawkes (PSFK) moderated a panel discussion about youth culture trends in Asia and how they will impact business around the globe. With the help of trends experts from across the continent, including Achara Masoodi (Mindshare), Michael Keferl (CScout), and Sonal Dabral (Bates141), the panel shares insights and advice about gathering trends, and more importantly, how to best use them to stimulate change.
Piers Fawkes on The Creator Class
Piers Fawkes (PSFK) explains how an emerging class of creators is developing that inspire and challenge the way we work today. He describes the intricate relationship between creators, the community, and modern companies - and how we can react and adapt to be part of this new movement.
The Creator Class Panel
At the PSFK Conference Asia 2008, Piers Fawkes (PSFK) sat down with leading experts in Asia’s creative community to explore the emergence of a new generation of multi-skilled creative minds. These young individuals feel they can turn their hand to multiple product and service offerings, often challenging they way established industries operate.
Focusing on how this ‘creator class’ leverage the internet to hone their skills and market themselves to a greater audience, the panel, including Brian Tiong (B-Side), Paul Tan (POOL/AWE50ME), and Jason Anello (Yahoo!), explore how agencies and companies can collaborate with this unique group of talented individuals.
China & Identity
Floydd Wood and Jerry Clode (Flamingo International) look at the specific ways Chinese youth are creatively re-working their identity - an emerging trend vital to those wanting to address this demographic on their own terms.
Focusing on 'retro' and 'youth identity,' the two researchers explain how Chinese youth are re-interpreting their past to construct new identities. Drawing upon historical events and traditional lifestyles for inspiration, today's youth are carefully extracting aspects of the their past to form their own identity. But as Jerry states, "looking back [in China] is not always a comfortable process. Tumultuous events like The Great Leap Forward, the demographic effect of the one-child policy, and the current economic and social transformation have all contributed to influencing a unique group of young people who are delicately balancing an enormous sense of national pride with a growing influx of global culture.
Nick Barham on the Chinese Middle Class
Nick Barham (Wieden Kennedy, Shanghai) explores the anxiety, opportunity and extravagance of the Chinese middle class. Deliberately not speaking about the "Olympics, the Dali Lama, Tibet, the earthquake, their amazing economic growth, or all the reason why the West is scared or worried about China growing," Nick focuses on the aspirations of China's middle class and the broader social changes that are happening at that level.
Noting that the number of new credit cards issued in China jumped from 3 million in 2003 to 90 million in 2007, Nick describes how the middle class are embracing the growing pains of achieving their middle class dream. He explains how the word "nu," which literally means slave, has been re-appropriated by white-collar middle class individuals to refer to themselves - people, who through credit card payments, mortgages, and car payments, use the term in a positive light to assert control over their life and associate themselves with this growing middle class.
He also discusses how the middle class are 'under pressure.' both on a city level, due to the shear number of inhabitants and the speed at which that's growing, but how the people themselves are also under growing pressure to perform and keep up with all the changes that are occurring.
Make It With Us
Colin Nagy (Attention!) interviewed social media/grassroots expert Andrew Hoppin (NASA) and noted architect Mark Dytham (Klein-Dytham/Pecha Kucha Night) on the subject of collaboration.
To get the ball rolling, Mark Dytham demonstrated the format of a Pecha Kucha presentation - a ’show and tell’ slide show where individuals present a topic of their choice and are restricted to telling their story with only 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds - a primer to his topic for the panel: the evolution of Pecha Kucha Nights.
Andrew Hoppin then took the stage to explain how NASA is trying to re-invent itself by engaging their community through everything from virtual meetings and co-working events to robots and raves.
Following their Pecha Kucha presentations, both speakers sat down with Colin Nagy to explore the nuances of collaborative co-working and how companies and institutions can benefit from engaging their audience, staff, partners and the community to drive innovation.
Daryl Arnold on the Digital Mainstream
Daryl Arnold (Profero, Tokyo) explains what the billions of mainstream people are doing everyday on the net, what the secret is behind selling normal stuff to ordinary people, and offers digital experiences for cornflake eaters from around the globe to prove that mainstream really isn't a dirty word.
- PSFK CONFERENCE ASIA 2008 VIDEOS
