Welcome to our May edition of Innovation Inspiration – Added Value’s monthly e-mail designed to provide you with a short burst of facts and stimulation on marketing and innovation topics.
Today Levi’s launched their Care-to-Air Challenge which will award $10,000 to the person who can design the world’s most innovative, covetable air-drying solution for clothing. Levi’s is the latest in a series of big brands this year using the open-source collaboration platform to reinforce community minded values via an approach that engages pragmatically and progressively.
Discovery en Español is the Spanish language version of the Discovery Channel. It offers Spanish-speaking audiences of all ages nonfiction entertainment including nature, science and technology, history and world exploration. Like its sister networks, Discovery en Español aims to educate, inform and entertain viewers with quality programming designed to help them explore their world and satisfy their natural curiosity.
It’s pretty simple really. Sustainability trends have transpired such that demand is rising as products proliferate. Regardless of whether the category is well understood, it’s in evolution. The dialogue created around each new brand’s entry is fueling the debate and education process which is driving consumer awareness and interest.
Prior to 2010, we were in wait and see mode. With Pepsi’s launch of Refresh Everything in January, a tidal wave of new product initiatives have been hitting mainstream store shelves demonstrating that we are no longer speculating on the importance of sustainability but we are entering a new realm of consumption based on it.
In response to growing client demand, Added Value has appointed three experienced brand development and marketing insight specialists to the senior team in North America.
Yesterday, we were finalizing a recommendation for a set of light to dark green segmentation definitions for one of our clients. The definitions are to be based on a set of attitudes and behaviors that we tested for quantitatively with our client’s core target audience and we are currently in the process of using the results to define and develop the size of our strategic opportunity.
Imperial China was on a par with the sumptuousness, sophistication and excess associated with any of the world’s historical elite – Tsars, Sultans, Kings… But the culture of luxury virtually disappeared during the majority of the 20th century.
Ke Nako! It is time to celebrate Africa’s humanity. The 2010 FIFA World Cup™ is about to begin. And despite a global recession, pretty harsh skeptics and a some political upheaval, hordes of South Africans are gearing up to welcome the world.
Britain breathes a sigh of relief. Calm descends after weeks of frenzied election activity that kept everyone, including the parties themselves, guessing right until the last. So, now that there is a result – Britain’s first coalition government in 36 years – what do the UK public think about a new government, with the Conservative Party’s David Cameron and the Liberal Democrat’s Nick Clegg sharing the helm? Is this really what they were looking for?
I spent last week running an experiment in social innovation in Finland. Our mission? Saving the “lost boys” — the teenage boy dropouts in the Finnish public school system. Is this a big problem, you might ask? Well, if you are Finland with one of the highest literacy rates in the world, the highest reading and math scores in the world, and one of the highest graduation rates in the world, the idea that even a small number fail in their system is unacceptable. And it is small. We’re talking low single digits here. Many US school districts that have greater than 50% dropouts would scoff. But this is Finland, and they are taking this relatively small but growing problem seriously.
The nature of social innovation is that it involves large-scale systems that require change to happen on many levels. Social problems deal with cultural institutions, government bureaucracies, politics, ingrained cultural beliefs, and a host of issues that make these problems seem intractable. The structure of the system itself seems to be designed to perpetuate the problem. It has all the makings of a classic “wicked problem” (as described by Horst Rittel). Even defining the nature of the problem is tough.
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A sane person might ask, “Why bother?” or, “You really want to fight City Hall?” There are many reasons, but one that stands out for me…
