The Flasher

Free Stickers!

I grew up in a part of the world where snowboarding is everything, especially when you are a kid.  The halfpipe for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is minutes from my (parents) house. You can be on the Whistler Blackcomb gondola in just over an hour.  Last weekend the world’s best riders competed in a rail jam on the rooftop parking lot of my local mall with A-Trak spinning a live soundtrack.  This is a part of the world where messy hair and goggle tans are deeply admired.

In a place like this certain brands carry heavy influence. We formed fierce opinions and pledged allegiance to our favourite snowboard brands in grade school.  Burton, Special Blend, Thirty-Two… our loyalty was built on fascination.  We wanted to live and breathe the world these brands built.  After all, they sponsored the riders, released the videos and hosted the events we all obsessed over.  They designed really cool stuff and presented it in really cool ways.  Brands became stars in and of themselves.  We wanted a slice of the magic. 

Brands elevated snowboarding from an activity to an identity.  By touching every aspect of the snowboarding experience they became larger than life.  The world of professional snowboarding was a fantasyland.  So when brands found ways to connect with us in personal ways, we fell head over heels in love.

Funnily enough, I began thinking about all this after reading an interview with Danny Fuller, who is not a snowboarder but a professional surfer from Hawaii.  His main sponsor is Quicksilver, a deal he secured at 10 years old.  When asked how he got involved with Quiksilver, Danny’s reply ignited a million flashbacks.  He said, “I started surfing at a really young age. I got spotted by the Quiksilver team manager in Hawaii. He gave me some stickers, and it all started from there. It’s funny when you’re 10 – you’re just so pumped on stickers.”

I used to beg the people working in snowboard shops to hook me up with free stickers all the time!  When I got older and worked in snowboard shops myself, I always threw free stickers from my favourite brands in the bag when younger kids bought stuff.  You could spend days, even weeks debating where to stick your precious sticker (they invariably ended up on your board, bedroom mirror or mom’s car).  Stickers were the best!

It’s a really simple snapshot of how brand loyalty works, but it hits at the nerve.  Granted, brands in snowboarding and surfing benefit from the nature of the industry.  Their commerce revolves around very marketable people, places, activities and objects.  Plus the ties to art, fashion, music and film make it easy to create a fantasy world.  But there is something fundamental at the root of the example. A small token of the brand presented in a personal context forges a connection to this world in a way that simply purchasing the product or seeing the magazine ad can’t.  It also represents a powerful form of viral marketing.  Kids spread the message because they are genuinely connecting with these brands. Stickers get you stoked.

Designing København

I was looking at an architectural photo essay today and started thinking about the powerful role architecture plays in creating the essence of a city.  But what happens when something radical and different appears?

Copenhagen (København) has found a way to blend architectural styles and not have it become a visually cacophonous eye sore.  Ultra modern bank buildings sit beside 300 year old boat sheds.  For some reason it seems very natural, very Copenhagen.  Hmmmm…

I’ve determined that it’s because high-quality small-scale projects are pursued throughout the entire city, allowing people to experience new architecture in familiar settings.
Copenhagen hasn’t fallen into the global skyscraper race.  So many cities go for architectural ‘wow factor’ in scale, creating isolated zones of engineering eccentricity that lack connection to the rest of the city.  Take George Saunders’ impression of Dubai in The New Mecca: “like four or five architects staged a weird-off with unlimited funds.”

Copenhagen architecture is less about spectacle and more about pushing the essence of the city into new territory.  A locally minded pollination of new design allows Copenhagen residents to connect with progressive architecture often and in personal contexts.  Because of this, pioneering change in a traditional streetscape doesn’t come off as wild or alienating. 

This picture is taken at Tietgenskollegiet, where some friends lived while we were studying at Copenhagen Business School.  It’s a building with unforgettable design, but it also happens to be one of the most functional living spaces I have ever experienced.  It isn’t a monumental showpiece.  It’s a student residence in a quiet suburb.

Copenhagen has been voted the world’s most livable city in a number of recent surveys.  

So what is the essence of Copenhagen?  That embracing innovation and new ideas can be a way of life.

Back to the Revolution

A few weeks ago my brother was in Sydney with an old school medium format film camera.  Fearing the negative effects of airport X-Ray machines on his undeveloped film (pun intended), he decided to have it developed before he went back to Canada. 

But when enquiring about medium format at camera shops and film development labs, he was met mostly with shoulder shrugs and confounded expressions.  Sure technological advances have created more efficient ways of producing images, but when photo labs aren’t even familiar with medium format film a red flag must be hoisted.

Perhaps the largest annual photography festival in North America is the Contact Toronto Photography Festival, running for the entire month of May.  This year’s conceptual theme is ‘Still Revolution’.  As the website explains,

“Much discussion throughout the festival has been focused on new technologies and the transformation of photography… Allured by many different claims, we’re compelled to explore the progression of the medium, to investigate what this image revolution is all about now.”

Some images at this year’s festival will likely broadcast an ironically revolutionary message:  Sure technological advancement opens new avenues for photography, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Is the next revolution going to be teaching how to develop film?

What does this have to do with communication?  There is something magical about an artefact existing in time and space rather than pixels and kilobytes. 

Whether it’s a handwritten note on personal stationary or a single Polaroid photograph in your hand, these vehicles of communication are not electronically syndicated.  This embeds them with a personality and contextual meaning impossible to convey in the digital realm.  Furthermore, their bespoke caché is enhanced purely by existing in the era of digital communication.

These tangible modes of producing images and messages could play an important role in how people want to communicate in the near future.  A physical note or photograph has renewed individual meaning and people are bound to gravitate back to them because of this.  I’m wondering how brands (and people representing brands) will be able to harness this newly reframed power.

…Now if I could only find a way to send my brother a telegram. Stop.

That would be just plain cool. Stop.