WALTER AMERIKA BLOGS

Annie's loan

Annie Leibovitz is a world famous photographer. Worked for Vanity Fair, Vogue and Rolling Stone. Made amazing pictures of the rich, famous and powerful. And needed money to buy the house of her complaining neighbour. Lots of money. So she went to The Art Capital Group and besides some houses she put up all hercopyrights, photographic negatives, contarct rights (existing or to be created in the future) as collateral.At an interest rate of something between 6 and 16 percent. And tomorrow is payback time.

The gentlemen of the Art Capital Group made a deal and they're sticking to it. Annie is an artist and had no idea what she gave away to these cultural sharks, is the reasoning you often read. But Annie must have know that she had an 'artist' lifestyle. Nevertheless, I hope they can work out some sort of settlement. Because it would be a shame if Leibovitz would decide to put her camera aside

Brand Bubble?

Recently two Y&R executives wrote a book called the Brand Bubble (see the video) in which they predict a huge crunch of intangible value by lack of consumer love for brands in general. I tend to doubt that, but I do get this nasty feeling that there actually might be something true in the concept of a brand bubble. Now I'm not an accountant (and I don't want to become one either) but I do know that intellectual property is still a relatively new area of expertise in the financial world. How do you value what is intangible. How do you measure brand equity. In any case, it's something the ad industry and the financial industry still haven't figured out. Remuneration for instance for brandbuilding by agencies is seldom based on the growth of brand equity. An agency is being paid for the hours they work, not for the value they add. For those who are really interested (and trained) in this, there a great discussion going on at IAM (intellectual asset management).

How to pitch to Scrooge in 2009!

Jeremy Hanks (@jeremyhanks on Twitter) analyzed Santa as an entrepreneur in his post called “Santa Claus: World’s Greatest Entrepreneur.”. Serial entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki loved what he did so he crafted a venture-capital pitch for Santa to illustrate the kind of deal that venture capitalists would fund in today’s economic conditions. Nice basic scheme for everybody thinking of turning an idea into business in 2009.

1. Problem. Parents need a method to influence their non-compliant kids throughout the year. This is a universal problem beginning at approximately age three and continuing up to the teenage years.

2. Solution. Outsourced bribery via jolly old man who gives candy and toys to nice kids and lumps of coal to naughty ones.

3. Business Model. Revenue sharing with toy companies and candy companies, licensing image to retailers, and royalties from multiple movies, songs, and publications.

4. Underlying Magic. Ability to deliver toys to all the kids around the world in one night, make reindeer fly with near zero-carbon footprint, enter homes through chimneys, know what every kid wants, and know whether every kid has been naughty or nice. Zero support issues due to omniscience. Completely lead-free materials. Over fifty patents filed.

5. Marketing and Sales. Current SEO methods yield 15,700,000 hits in Google. Partnerships with toy manufacturers, candy companies, and retailers to increase Santa’s brand awareness for mutual benefits. Deep inroads into western literature. Creation of long-lasting brand awareness by working with grandparents. You can track market penetration in real time too.

6. Competition. Jesus or none, depending on your world view.

7. Team. Proven CEO with hundreds of years of experience. In addition, there are Mrs. Claus, non-unionized elves, and flying reindeer including one with a red nose. All work for free with no stock options. North Pole production facilities are also free.

8. Projections. Total addressable market of two billion children. Conservatively, 1% market share means twenty million children.

Creative calling cards of the Amsterdam Area. And more. Much more.

Last Thursday I officially opened the international creative portal creativeamsterdam.com about all that's creative in and around Amsterdam. As chairman of the creative board of Creative Cities Amsterdam Area, I worked my way through numerous links and buttons...the site is great if you need info on the creative calling cards of Amsterdam, the creative services, the creative companies or creative individual talent in and around Amsterdam. The meeting took place during Picnic08, a fabulous event on new media, technology and green challenges. Both Picnic and CCAA are part of 'Open CI': a search engine specific for the creative industries, developed by Amsterdam based new media organisation Mediamatic.

Future vs History

If yo have some time to spare, sit down and watch this debat between two world class thinkers and authors - Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz - discussing their similarities and differences as well as the foundations, methods, biases and limitations of both their disciplines. But only if you're really relaxed and not bothered by deadlines or other heartweakening stuff.

Creative Company Conference coming up

'The Creative Company Conference heralds the primacy and potency of innovation and creativity in business - and celebrates thought leaders in a unique assembly to be held annually in Amsterdam, where ideas, experience and best practise are shared and inspiration is sparked'. That is how the upcoming conference on creativity and entrepreneurship on April 1 in Amsterdam is being promoted. One that I look foreward to attent, because the speakerslist looks promising:

Arkadi Kuhlmann Chairman, President and CEO, ING DIRECT USA
Bill Moggridge Founder, IDEO(USA)
Robert Brozin Founder, Nandos(SA)
Peter Diamandis M.D., Founder and Chairman, X Prize(USA)
Richard Reed Founder, Innocent Drinks(UK)
Ivy Ross Chief Creative Officer and Vice-President, Disney (USA)
Carlos Miele Fashion Entrepreneur, Carlos Miele Ltda Brazil
John Howkins Chairman of ITR Consultants (UK)

Next to that, I think it's about time that the creative industries start growing up in terms of business potential, better selling the big added value they could contribute and getting organized as one industry as a whole instead of all different columns of expertise. Reason also for starting the Creative Industry Sofa initiative. The CIS is able to provide to some of its businesscontacts special discount prizes for the event, so if you're interst please contact us by email.

Hurray for JP

Turning 50 today, good friend and colleague Jan Paul Reij. May you live for at least another 50 in good health and happiness. Found this picture in the archive that seems appropriate for the occasion.

Out of Sphere

The presentation of Joseph Pine on his Multiverse thoughts is removed from YouTube on his request. Apparently there was no OK given by Pine to put it there. I just added one out of many clips to this blog, so you can consider that as a teaser for the upcoming book on this By Pine. No open source or co-intelligence yet in this case.

What is a blog without a Davos post?

So here it is. The theme was the Power of Collaborative Innovation, although most of the time was probably spend on dicussing the subprime money crises in the US. Again I wasn't invited (duh...something to do with my salary or the fact I never wrote a book I guess). And when I would have been invited, I probably would have had to say no, because of the opening of the special Design Academy 60 year exhibition yesterday in the Design House in Eindhoven. Far more important in a way to see what the young generation is up too...as MOMA's curator Paolo Antonelli stated in Davos: “Designers may be the true intellectuals of the future.” They translate revolutions in technology and science into useful things. In that societal role, designers makd progress available to the population. They are the interlocutors of civilization and culture.

Paola, according to Businessweek editor Bruce Nussbaum, showed slides of nanodesign, tissue design (yes artificial food design), sense design (dogs may smell cancer on people—bees can do the same with many diseases).

Paola Antonelli's new show at the MOMA deals with design and science and will prove to be dazzling. It opens in mid-February. Maybe the CEO's of the world should spend an extra day in the museum.

Next to that, the forum conducted an experiment with the online video website YouTube, asking people from around the world to answer “The Davos Question”. What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008? More than 2 million people took part, says the press release, and business, government and civil society leaders from the Annual Meeting posted replies. Among those submitting video responses: President Shimon Peres of Israel; President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal; President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan; former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger; and rock star Bono. The resulting global conversation may be viewed at www.youtube.com/Davos.

Last but not least, Gordon Brown, Bill Gates, Irish musician Bono, Queen Rania of Jordan, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab, Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and Cisco CEO John Chambers issued a joint statement vowing to make 2008 a turning point in the fight against poverty. The world is facing a "development emergency”, they said, pledging to “work together to help the world get back on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals."

My impression was, they already did. Nevertheless, it's crucial the Goals are met in 2015. My solution, as I been saying is, to turn 0.7 (the Official Development Assistance percentage promise made by the rich countries) into a global brand with the help of the international corporate world to raise awareness and activate support. It only takes 0.7 percent of our time, talent and money meet the Goals!

Back in Sphere (somewhere in the Multiverse)

Back in sphere. And from now on in English. Reasons for this short communicative break: Xmas, flu, business.
Reason for going on in the English language: simple fact that a great deal of my conversations already are in English, I like the fact that foreign friends are now also able to read about the stuff that triggers me and I'm wondering if this leads to more visitors. Although that in itself was and will never be the reason for writing.

Talking about sphere. Although I was not present when Joseph Pine (the Experience Economy) presented his Multiverse theory on Mobile Monday (someone made me aware of his presentation when we were talking about the role of banks within Second Life). Pine creates a matrix of different worlds:
- Physical World
- Virtual World
- Mirror World
- Augmented Reality
- Alternate Reality
- Warped Reality
- Augmented Virtuality
- Physical Virtuality

Will take some time to figure out wether the Startrek speak (beam me up, Joseph) makes sense and will be applicable to create economic and social models that we can use in order to make some progress. Nevertheless, nice thinking. See for your self at You Tube.