In the post-Mad Men world, success requires more than a big idea and a Madison Avenue campaign. Having come of age in the more innocent 1960s and faced the technological revolution head on, brand consultancy Wolff Olins knows this better than most. Its latest report, 'Game Changers', outlines the five characteristics today's businesses need to adopt in order to make strides. The title refers to those corporations - Apple, PayPal and Nike, to name a few - that invested in the five game-changing behaviours with outstanding results.
Helping their clients become game-changers is Wolff Olins' core business, so the London office recently underwent a vibrant makeover to reflect that. It hired the young ad and art-direction agency Everyday Workshop to create a number of in-house installations that, abstractly, convey the five key attributes to 21st-century success: 'purposeful', 'useful', 'experimental', 'boundaryless' and 'value-creative'.
The Day-Glo graphics - overseen by Everyday founder (and former Wallpaper* Bespoke art director) Andrew Wren - are definitively 21st century. One wall displays a 2D mural of overlapping spheres that literally burst out of the picture and hover over the office. This is meant to convey 'boundaryless-ness', the need for companies to shift from being insular to being 'constellations' (like Amazon, for example) that collaborate with would-be competitors for wider success.
'Experimental' is represented by a mural of multi-faceted pyramids overlooking lengths of neon tubing, laid in paths along the floor. Evolution, this is meant to communicate, depends on trial and error and acceptance of failure.
The new graphics make the five tenets impossible to avoid. Are they experimental? Absolutely? Are they purposeful? Useful? Boundaryless? Value-creative? Let's just say they carry the message that these are people who practice what they preach. And that, these days, is a game-changer.
To illustrate the importance of being 'experimental', Everyday Workshop designed a mural of multi-faceted pyramids and zigzags of neon tubing. Some paths, they say, will get you nowhere and some lead to gold, but you'll never know until you take them. WO uses the example of Google, a company whose strength is its willingness to experiment
Graphic cubes in varying sizes and colourful arrows pointing every which way represent 'diversification'. In order to succeed in today's changing economic climate, companies must branch out from their core values and embrace new directions. Exemplifying this idea of 'value-creatives' is Lego, which branched out into theme parks, and Tesco, which sells everything including the kitchen sink
Office supplies on a table and a busy graphic representing productivity symbolise 'usefulness'. Companies should take cues from Apple, says WO, and turn customers into users, making their experience fun
Companies should be constellations that collaborate with would-be competitors rather than shutting them out, according to WO. Here, this concept of being 'boundaryless' is depicted by orbs that represent corporate stars like Amazon and PayPal, which join forces with other entities for combined might
For game-changing businesses today, an identifiable brand drives growth and makes a difference in the world. This area in the WO office acts as a sort of 'think tank', promoting abstract, out-of-the-box thinking
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