Alexander Gallé is Partner and Creative Director at GALLÉ - a design and branding studio focused on luxury, entertainment and fashion brands - and one of Europe's leading art directors in the luxury brands online sector. Gallé's portfolio includes websites, online ads and e-commerce solutions for Yves Saint Laurent, Asprey, Fabergé, Garrard, Dior Beauty, Marchesa, Corum Timepieces, Boucheron, Jimmy Choo, MCM, Twentieth Century Fox, Buena Vista International, Miramax, Metropolitan Hotel, Marbella Club, Hotel Casadelmar, Lebua Hotels and Resorts and many leading hotels around the world. Gallé led the re-branding strategy for Corum Timepieces in 2006 and art directed their Unlock and Conquer ad campaigns in 2007. Later in that year, Gallé's studio also launched Artipolis, the social network for art and design professionals. Gallé combines 15 years of design and art direction with in-depth knowledge of the commercial and strategic aspects of the internet and Web 2.0.
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
The birth of technoluxe
This lecture was given as part of McCann Erickson’s “Thought Leaders“ programme, on 28 March 2012 in Lima, Peru. "The Birth of Technoluxe" was then published in Luxury Briefing in June 2012. Feel free to download it here.
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The Birth of Technoluxe
by Alexander Gallé
I’m going to start this lecture by tempting you all with a delicious French apple tart. In French, it’s called a “Tarte Normande”.
Here it is.
Here it is.
Now, what are the ingredients in a Tarte Normande? Here’s the list: flour, butter, sugar, eggs, apples, some almonds, a little Calvados apple brandy…
Anything else? Well, let’s think. We have all these ingredients here on this side of the table, and yet we don’t have a Tarte Normande, there must be something we’re missing…
Here is what we’re missing. A recipe.
The recipe is the knowledge. Funnily enough, it includes the list of ingredients itself. It isn’t a physical object, and yet it is a magic ingredient that turns a couple of dollars’ worth of goods into twenty dollars’ worth of dessert. If you really apply a lot of knowledge, people will travel miles and spend even more of their own wealth just to eat your Tarte Normande. So that, in all senses, you could truly say that the recipe is the magic ingredient that turns 1 and 1 into 3.
All right, now, we can all go on Google or Wikipedia and search for the recipe, and it’ll be delivered to us. What’s more, it’ll be delivered to us free of charge.
Why is that? Why is it that this magic ingredient called knowledge that turns two dollars’ worth of stuff into twenty dollars’ worth of better stuff is free?
That’s because knowledge has yet another magic property to it, which is that it is infinitely multipliable. Let’s go back to our ingredients, and take, say, the apples. Here is my apple, and here is your apple. If I give you my apple and you give me your apple, we will each still have an apple. But with our magic ingredient, if I give you my recipe and you give me your recipe, we will each have two recipes!
So, not only is this an ingredient that magically turns 1 and 1 into 3, but it can do it infinitely many times over, without losing any of its power to the original owner of the ingredient, who can still turn his apples and sugar and flour into a delicious Tarte Normande.
In other words, with knowledge – our magic ingredient - new wealth is created. With knowledge, you no longer have to take wealth from someone else if you want more of it for yourself. You can just make it instead.
The moment of realisation of this simple fact changes everything. And it did indeed change everything when humanity first realised it. Among other things, it led to the birth of luxury, as we’ll see later on. First, let’s look at how this happened.
Today, we can go to Google or Wikipedia, look up any information and find it in a mattter of seconds. This wasn’t always the case. It used to be that information was stored in books, which were written by hand, by monks. They took a long time to make and were very expensive. Turning knowledge into a physical thing, a book, meant that replicating knowledge involved replicating a thing, which constrained its level of multipliability. In this environment, knowledge wasn’t infinitely multipliable, because the vehicle, the thing it used to exist on was expensive to make. Most humans didn’t even know how to read, and didn’t have access to the vehicles of information, because they were expensive things to own and access. In other words, the barrier to entry was just too high.
The big change occurred, of course, when Gutenberg developed the printing press, thereby drastically reducing the cost of storing and multiplying knowledge. Now, the barrier to entry was lowered, and knowledge could flow increasingly free from physical constraints. It became the key catalyst for the great societal change, which took us from the mercantilist age to the industrialist age.
During the mercantilist age, wealth was still defined in a context where 1 + 1= 2. If you wanted more wealth, you had to confiscate it from someone else. The biggest players were those who were more adept at confiscating things under the threat of violence: states. Acquisition of wealth via war and oppression of vast populations through conquest was the name of the game for states and their rulers.
During the industrialist age, wealth was created through the application of knowledge, in a context therefore defined as 1 + 1 = 3. If you wanted more wealth, you could now create it, applying more knowledge to the art of making things. The biggest players were those who were more adept at creating things. Creation of wealth via industrialisation and marketing to vast populations through mass communication was the name of the game for companies and entrepreneurs.
Now then, why did this lead to the birth of luxury?
Well, it’s a numbers game, really. Prior to industrialisation, there were craftsmen applying their knowledge to the creation of goods for kings and aristocrats. The number of bourgeois who could afford their services was very little.
Notice how, in France, a century made a lot of difference in the number of bourgeois and the power they yielded over the societal interaction system. In 1673, the most popular theatre play in town was a comedy called “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” by Molière, poking fun at the ridiculous bourgeois, “pour le divertissement du Roy” as it so happily announces on its opening pages. One century later, it was the bourgeois who had a laugh at the king’s expense in France.
So, two points on this evolution:
1. It was the rise in the number of bourgeois during the industrialist age, that led to a market big enough to enable craftsmen to establish themselves as respectable institutions i.e. luxury brands in their own right, rather than as mere suppliers to a single wealthy person (a market too small to generate the profit required for capital augmentation).
2. It was the increase in the application of knowledge to the art of making things – which industrialisation brought about - which enabled them to do it cost effectively.
Regarding the first point, notice how, in the UK, the act of supplying a single member of the royal family continued to lend credibility to the knowledge-augmented craftsmen. The UK was a nation much more open to trade within the existing system of royalty and aristocracy. Hence, the key message in British luxury brands remains, to this day, about “serving the best”, expressed in the royal warrants which form a key part of their brand identities. In France, by contrast, the bourgeois having replaced and become the new kings and aristocrats, the message is oriented not so much towards serving the best, but being the best.
This is most noticeable in the way British luxury brands have a culture of service and friendly advice at the heart of their brand communications, and a very open and welcoming attitude as you walk into their stores. In France, by contrast, the first message as you walk into their stores is that the brand is better than you and that you should aspire to be worthy of the staff’s attention. Serving vs. Being.
Regarding the second point, it becomes clear that it was industrialisation - in other words knowledge-augmented craftsmanship - that made possible the actual production of luxury goods at a price which the growing middle classes was able and happy to pay.
Now, when 1 + 1 = 3, something interesting starts to happen to the economic output of society. Or, rather, something interesting starts to happen when this extra output (the 1 extra) is re-input into the economic equation: the line showing the increase in output stops being linear, and starts being exponential. This is shown in the following graphic. Exponential growth is what our favourite inventor and design scientist, R. Buckminster Fuller, termed “ephemeralization”: doing more and more with less and less, until you get to do almost everything with almost nothing.
Anything else? Well, let’s think. We have all these ingredients here on this side of the table, and yet we don’t have a Tarte Normande, there must be something we’re missing…
Here is what we’re missing. A recipe.
The recipe is the knowledge. Funnily enough, it includes the list of ingredients itself. It isn’t a physical object, and yet it is a magic ingredient that turns a couple of dollars’ worth of goods into twenty dollars’ worth of dessert. If you really apply a lot of knowledge, people will travel miles and spend even more of their own wealth just to eat your Tarte Normande. So that, in all senses, you could truly say that the recipe is the magic ingredient that turns 1 and 1 into 3.
All right, now, we can all go on Google or Wikipedia and search for the recipe, and it’ll be delivered to us. What’s more, it’ll be delivered to us free of charge.
Why is that? Why is it that this magic ingredient called knowledge that turns two dollars’ worth of stuff into twenty dollars’ worth of better stuff is free?
That’s because knowledge has yet another magic property to it, which is that it is infinitely multipliable. Let’s go back to our ingredients, and take, say, the apples. Here is my apple, and here is your apple. If I give you my apple and you give me your apple, we will each still have an apple. But with our magic ingredient, if I give you my recipe and you give me your recipe, we will each have two recipes!
So, not only is this an ingredient that magically turns 1 and 1 into 3, but it can do it infinitely many times over, without losing any of its power to the original owner of the ingredient, who can still turn his apples and sugar and flour into a delicious Tarte Normande.
In other words, with knowledge – our magic ingredient - new wealth is created. With knowledge, you no longer have to take wealth from someone else if you want more of it for yourself. You can just make it instead.
The moment of realisation of this simple fact changes everything. And it did indeed change everything when humanity first realised it. Among other things, it led to the birth of luxury, as we’ll see later on. First, let’s look at how this happened.
Today, we can go to Google or Wikipedia, look up any information and find it in a mattter of seconds. This wasn’t always the case. It used to be that information was stored in books, which were written by hand, by monks. They took a long time to make and were very expensive. Turning knowledge into a physical thing, a book, meant that replicating knowledge involved replicating a thing, which constrained its level of multipliability. In this environment, knowledge wasn’t infinitely multipliable, because the vehicle, the thing it used to exist on was expensive to make. Most humans didn’t even know how to read, and didn’t have access to the vehicles of information, because they were expensive things to own and access. In other words, the barrier to entry was just too high.
The big change occurred, of course, when Gutenberg developed the printing press, thereby drastically reducing the cost of storing and multiplying knowledge. Now, the barrier to entry was lowered, and knowledge could flow increasingly free from physical constraints. It became the key catalyst for the great societal change, which took us from the mercantilist age to the industrialist age.
During the mercantilist age, wealth was still defined in a context where 1 + 1= 2. If you wanted more wealth, you had to confiscate it from someone else. The biggest players were those who were more adept at confiscating things under the threat of violence: states. Acquisition of wealth via war and oppression of vast populations through conquest was the name of the game for states and their rulers.
During the industrialist age, wealth was created through the application of knowledge, in a context therefore defined as 1 + 1 = 3. If you wanted more wealth, you could now create it, applying more knowledge to the art of making things. The biggest players were those who were more adept at creating things. Creation of wealth via industrialisation and marketing to vast populations through mass communication was the name of the game for companies and entrepreneurs.
Now then, why did this lead to the birth of luxury?
Well, it’s a numbers game, really. Prior to industrialisation, there were craftsmen applying their knowledge to the creation of goods for kings and aristocrats. The number of bourgeois who could afford their services was very little.
Notice how, in France, a century made a lot of difference in the number of bourgeois and the power they yielded over the societal interaction system. In 1673, the most popular theatre play in town was a comedy called “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” by Molière, poking fun at the ridiculous bourgeois, “pour le divertissement du Roy” as it so happily announces on its opening pages. One century later, it was the bourgeois who had a laugh at the king’s expense in France.
So, two points on this evolution:
1. It was the rise in the number of bourgeois during the industrialist age, that led to a market big enough to enable craftsmen to establish themselves as respectable institutions i.e. luxury brands in their own right, rather than as mere suppliers to a single wealthy person (a market too small to generate the profit required for capital augmentation).
2. It was the increase in the application of knowledge to the art of making things – which industrialisation brought about - which enabled them to do it cost effectively.
Regarding the first point, notice how, in the UK, the act of supplying a single member of the royal family continued to lend credibility to the knowledge-augmented craftsmen. The UK was a nation much more open to trade within the existing system of royalty and aristocracy. Hence, the key message in British luxury brands remains, to this day, about “serving the best”, expressed in the royal warrants which form a key part of their brand identities. In France, by contrast, the bourgeois having replaced and become the new kings and aristocrats, the message is oriented not so much towards serving the best, but being the best.
This is most noticeable in the way British luxury brands have a culture of service and friendly advice at the heart of their brand communications, and a very open and welcoming attitude as you walk into their stores. In France, by contrast, the first message as you walk into their stores is that the brand is better than you and that you should aspire to be worthy of the staff’s attention. Serving vs. Being.
Regarding the second point, it becomes clear that it was industrialisation - in other words knowledge-augmented craftsmanship - that made possible the actual production of luxury goods at a price which the growing middle classes was able and happy to pay.
Now, when 1 + 1 = 3, something interesting starts to happen to the economic output of society. Or, rather, something interesting starts to happen when this extra output (the 1 extra) is re-input into the economic equation: the line showing the increase in output stops being linear, and starts being exponential. This is shown in the following graphic. Exponential growth is what our favourite inventor and design scientist, R. Buckminster Fuller, termed “ephemeralization”: doing more and more with less and less, until you get to do almost everything with almost nothing.
The best example of ephemeralization covering the historic period that spanned the impact of Gutenberg’s printing press, is the one often given by Bucky himself: in 1520, it took Magellan two years to sail around the planet in a sailing ship. Three centuries later it took a steamship two months to do the same. One century later a plane took 2 weeks to fly around the planet. Half a century later a space capsule could do the job in under an hour.
Not only can we do more with less, the rate of doing-more-with-less-ness is increasing. In other words, there is an acceleration taking place.
Nowhere is this acceleration more obvious than in the knowledge applied to the art of spreading knowledge itself: information technology. The exponential curve displayed in this sector since the ‘70s – often referred to as Moore’s Law - is simply phenomenal: every two years, double the power at half the cost.
The importance of this phenomenon, although discussed rather often, can not be overstated. We have argued earlier that the introduction of knowledge into the system is the reason why we moved from a mercantilist age to an industrialist age, in which knowledge augmented output: 1 + 1 = 3.
Today, the complete freeflow of this knowledge - through the acceleration occurring in the technological vehicle carrying it - and its output’s subsequent reintroduction into the equation (ephemeralization) will not just mean that 1 + 1 = 3, but 9, and then 27, and then 81, … Welcome to the technologist age.
Just as the industrialist age gave birth to luxury, via the development of knowledge-augmented craftsmanship, so the technologist age gives birth to an entirely new category of luxury, which I will call “technoluxe”.
One great example of technoluxe is the new McLaren supercar, released just under a year ago now… This, for two reasons:
1. The first McLaren, the F1, was priced around £1.2 million in the early ‘90s. The MP4 12C, released last year, is a superior car in every possible way and is priced at a tenth of this figure.
2. The technology used in the McLaren MP4 12C ensures the car is not replicable without it. It not only takes the car into the technological age, but it has, since the car’s release last year, already been subject to improvements of a similar nature to the kind of upgrade in technology consumers experience in the software sector. In essence, you could call this upgrade the MP4 12C v.1.2. Upgrades in technology will continue to improve the car at a steadily increasing pace, in much the same way that, say, tablet computers keep being released, each one outdoing the performance of the last one.
Just as the original luxury sector relied on an industry-fuelled increase in the number of bourgeois across Europe (an increase most noticeable in the most industrial nations of the time, France and the UK), so the technoluxe sector will rely on a technology-fuelled increase in the number of bourgeois across the planet, which has already happened in emerging economies from Asia to Latin America to some parts of Africa.
The enormous expansion of wealth - which is created when 1 + 1 = 9, 27, 81, etc. - will be most noticeable in emerging economies, which will eventually take over much of the power of global societal interaction, much in the way the industrially empowered bourgeois took over societal interaction in the UK and France.
It is in those economies that you will not only see the biggest growth in technoluxe consumption, but also in technoluxe production. In the technologist age, new technoluxe brands will be born in exactly those countries that were least developed during the industrialist age. We will see Chinese, Latin American and African luxury brands raising the bar and redefining the playing field.
The word luxury’s etymological root is in the Latin word “lux”, meaning “light”. It is no coincidence that the luxury sector was born in an age sometimes referred to as the “Enlightenment”.
Over the coming century, it is clear that many aspects of humanity left untouched by the industrial age of enlightenment will not be left untouched by technology. Technology will ignite a new period of enlightenment. In this context, technoluxe can be defined as luxury evolving into its true, original and etymological purpose: an enlightened life.
Visit the Gallé website at www.galle.com
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Designing Nations: Italy, France and Peru
This essay is the first part of three adaptations of Alexander Gallé's 'Lectures in Lima' series.
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Designing Nations: Italy, France and Perú
by Alexander Gallé
20 June 2012
A culture of creation
I'm going to start this lecture with a picture of a motorbike race held by the Benelli family in 1930. Tonino Benelli, the famous motorbike racer, is the man standing centre-right in the back of the picture.
The Benelli family started in the motorbike sector about 100 years ago, in the town of Pesaro, Italy. They were neighbours of ours when I was a kid and, aside from finding it interesting to see their family name on so many bikes in town, I always found their story quite inspiring…
In the beginning, Benelli was just a motorbike repair shop. Teresa Benelli started it in 1911 when her husband died. She had six sons, a small pension, and figured this was the best way to make sure they would all have a job. Five of her sons started working in the shop, they all learned how to fix motorbikes and the eldest son, who studied engineering, learned how to build spare parts.
The youngest son, Tonino, grew up in this environment and became a race driver. He won a few prizes on motorbikes that were increasingly improved upon by his brothers, until one day, 10 years after the company had first started, it occurred to them that, since they knew how to build every part of the motorbike themselves, they might as well start building their own bikes, under their own name. Tonino rode Benelli bikes and became a national hero, while the company went on to become one of Italy's classic 20th century brands.
It's a story you see echoed throughout Italy, in nearly every sector of commerce. The list is long, very long: Alfa Romeo, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, Malaguti, Piaggio, Aprilia, Lambretta, Ferrari, Fiat, Lamborghini, Lancia, Maserati, to name just a few in the motoring sector. The list goes on: Gucci, Prada, Ferragamo, Fendi, Cerruti, Armani, Max Mara, Dolce & Gabbana, Zegna, Versace, Fiorucci, Benetton, Campari, Martini, Carpano, Lazzaroni, Aperol, Cinzano, Cynar, Fernet Branca, Luxardo, Ramazzotti, Italian wines from Chianti to Barolo, to Montepulciano, to Sangiovese, to Nero d'Avola, Italian cheeses from the world-famous Parmigiano Reggiano to the ubiquitous Mozzarella, Italian hams and cured meats from Bologna to Parma, Italian pasta in all shapes and sizes from Barilla, De Cecco or Giovanni Rana, Italian pizza, Italian pesto made with Italian olive oil, Italian balsamic vinegar from Modena, Italian gianduia from Torino, Italian panettone, Italian Nutella, Italian biscotti di mandorle with Italian espresso coffee by Illy or Lavazza… Everywhere, a culture of families making something with love and dedication, and staking their own good name and reputation to the product they make.
A simple idea: love
Back in the '70s, Italy had just experienced a good decade of economic growth, much like Perú has today, but the image many Europeans had of Italians was pretty bad. If you mentioned Italians to northern Europeans, chances were they didn't think of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Verdi or Fellini, but of pasta-eating, siesta-sleeping mamma's boys and bicycle thieves.
Aldo Moro (the Italian prime minister of the mid-70s) is not remembered for being a great visionary in terms of nation branding. The problems that framed his time in public office were much darker than that, as Italy had a serious problem with terrorism at the time. In fact, Moro himself was kidnapped - and later killed - by the Brigate Rosse, a moment of shock for the nation, and for the world…
And yet, it was under Aldo Moro's leadership that the Italian Ministry for Culture was established. Moro even gave up some of his own prime ministerial office's resources to meet the new ministry's needs. Note that he called it 'Ministry FOR Culture' rather than 'Ministry OF Culture'. The difference marks the way he saw culture, not as something the State should own, but something the State should foster in order to create an inclusive society, wherein all citizens buy into the idea of the nation.
The rationale was as follows: Moro is said to have been a big fan of American movies, and he was aware that America projected - through the movies of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, etc. - an image of freedom and liberty which Italians bought into when they bought a pair of Levi's denims or a packet of Marlboro cigarettes.
Out of this awareness grew the idea of making people – Italians as well as foreigners - fall in love with Italy, which provided the commercial rationale for academic studies such as semantics and semiotics. Nobody called it nation branding in those days, of course, but that is effectively what it was.
It's all the more interesting, because these academic studies of culture had their almae matres in Bologna and Urbino, predominantly left-wing cities and universities. Yet it was their commercial application - the awareness of a 'cultural capital' - that gave Italy its greatest economic value of all, something all Italian companies could ride on, and generate added value from: a nation brand. A simple, highly infectious brand, too: love, from which creation, craftsmanship, style and passion for design are all born.
Every product in the world has an Italian version you can fall in love with. If you've ever watched car critics review an Alfa Romeo, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Every other car may be analysed for its comparative advantages and faults, but when they come to review an Alfa Romeo, they just sigh, turn up the opera music on their car stereos and talk about how much they love the car.
The crowning moment of this exercise was, of course, the World Cup of 1982, when Italy's 'Azzurri' won the title, and many Italians finally fell in love with their own country, developing a wonderful and relatively authentic relationship with their nation that would last for many years. Italians of a certain age remember with nostalgia and affection the tour of glory taken by the winning team, with Enzo Bearzot (the national coach) and Sandro Pertini (Italy's popular president, who was 86 years old at the time) on their shoulders.
Viral ideas vs. Statist programmes
Now, while it may appear that this sort of exercise should need a lot of work and money from government, Italy's example shows that the opposite is true: a simple, infectious idea doesn't need large committees and matching budgets. What you need more than anything is a grassroots-level, decentralised impulse. An infectious idea - the simpler, the better - is all you really need to start it. People and companies get behind the idea, giving them a line along which to position their own brands and products. After that, you just let it grow, subtly helping it along as it grows. Italy's brand development was very organic and spontaneous, in that respect.
To illustrate this difference, let's compare, for example, the success of Italy's cuisine – a simple, popular cuisine rooted in a history of poverty - with that of France. France, too, made a real effort to brand itself when Mitterrand came to power in '81. But through a lethal combination of overpoliticising, lack of accountability to taxpayers and design by committee, a lot of money was spent by central government with remarkably little return on investment.
That's not to say it wasn't successful. An entire generation of women will remember the films 'Jean de Florette' and 'Manon des Sources', which were effectively feature-length adverts for the Provence region of France. Since the 80s, there are entire regions of rural France that are populated with English bourgeoises who, having seen those films, seek to live the chic rustique lifestyle. Their kitchens are lined with copper pans, their dinner plates are padded with straw. French cuisine was, in the '80s, universally regarded as one of the very best.
The point is, however, that the cost of France's nation branding exercise was enormous, precisely because it wasn't based on an infectious idea entrepreneurs could take and run with, but on statist doctrines and top-down, centrally-run programmes. Jack Lang, Mitterrand's Minister of Culture, spent a colossal sum of money on the French film industry throughout the '80s, 10 times more than Britain. It may have seemed very impressive producing so many films at the time, but looking back, it's clear the country got remarkably few bangs for its buck from its nationbranding program. Again, looking at the food sector, French cuisine may be critically acclaimed, but it has failed to capture the hearts of the rest of the world the way Italian cuisine has. There may be a couple of French restaurants in every major city of the world, but there are a couple of Italian restaurants on every major street.
More importantly, open any urban family's kitchen cupboards in the world and you'll find at least a couple of Italian food products. The focus on gastronomy may have seemed obvious for France, but in terms of exports the return on investment will only appear if food products are themselves also manufactured and branded in one way or another. Many of the recipes used in French restaurants around the world do not actually call for products imported from France. When a person orders a canard à l'orange, a tarte normande or even a simple café au lait in a French restaurant in New York, no product or brand is used that actually comes from France, no French brands are exported from France to New York. When, on the other hand, a person orders a prosciutto salad or an espresso coffee in an Italian restaurant, chances are high that the prosciutto will actually be from Parma, and the olive oil and vinegar from Modena. If the restaurant is any good, the coffee will be Illy or Lavazza, too. Therein lies the difference.
Marca Perú
Now… We've discussed the differences between the great pioneers of nation branding. Let's look at Marca Perú.
Clearly, this brand identity is a success. You don't need a Cannes Lion to realise that it has hit all the right notes: rarely has a nation's brand icon been so widely adopted by its people themselves. A year after its launch, you can walk on any street of the most popular neighbourhoods, and find a few people wearing a Marca Perú T-shirt or cap.
But, in the spirit of openness to a learning experience, let's try to look at some of the things we could improve in the overall strategy.
Let's compare, for example, Perú's position today with that of Italy during Aldo Moro's leadership. Italy, as mentioned earlier, had an endless list of manufactured and branded products to offer the world before starting this project. When 'Made in …' becomes a desired brand property and you've got everything from beer brands to fashion brands to car brands ready to ride on the added value you're creating as a nation brand, you're going to do very well in all sectors of your economy, not just gastronomy and tourism.
Tourism and gastronomy are, in other words, the low hanging fruits on the tree: the first ones you reach for, but by no means the only ones.
Aside from this, Perú's trade sector is mostly based on the export of raw materials and on the import of designed or manufactured products. Perú exports unbranded metals and imports branded cars. Perú exports unbranded gold, silver, minerals, copper, petrol-based materials, silicon… and imports branded watches, computers and mobile phones. Perú exports unbranded cotton and imports nearly all of its fashion items. This is a net loss: a kilo of cotton is worth just a fraction of the price of a branded T-shirt, a ton of metal is worth just a fraction of the price of a car.
In other words, Perú's productive sector is missing the very things that would most benefit from a nation branding exercise: designed, manufactured and branded products that the country can export to the rest of the world. You cannot brand corn unless you're making cornflakes. The key word is 'make'.
That's not to say there are no good manufacturers or artisans. On the contrary, Perú has plenty of great artisans, plenty of good mechanics, operators, etc. You can get almost anything made in Lima, from clothes to furniture, so long as you come with a clear design of how you want it. But there are very few entrepreneurs taking this up a level. There are no Benelli families starting up new motorbike brands in Perú.
A brand strategy for Perú
Brands aren't just something you buy into when you buy a product. They serve as a channel of expression for the people making the brand, too. When Patek Philippe put forward the idea that you never really own a Patek watch, you're just looking after it for the next generation, the message was not just adressed to consumers, but more importantly to the great craftsmen at the company, giving them a mission and values to work towards. When we presented Corum's brand philosophy that Corum watches are about 'unlocking your heart and conquering the world', it wasn't just adressed to watch buyers, but to the management and watchmakers themselves, giving them a simple standard of evaluation, a 'Corum prism' to see their actions through: courage. For example, asking the question 'Were we courageous enough with this campaign?' or 'Is this watch design bold enough?' is a good way to put one's work in the big picture of the Corum brand as a whole.
This is the true mission of a brand strategy, designing and expressing the heart and soul of a group of people who get behind an idea and make things that express this idea.
The people working behind Marca Perú are, of course, the Peruvian people themselves. The brand strategy must be oriented in order for them to derive added value from the idea: the culture that is expressed through the things they make. However, it won't reach its full potential if the kinds of product Peruvians try to export are not themselves brandable, as is the case with raw materials. It also won't be achieved through statist programmes that do not originate from them, that are not grassroots programmes.
The role of a nation branding agency is just that of a sower of seeds. In the case of Peru, nation branding exercises are there to sow the seeds of entrepreneurship, of design and manufacture, to encourage Peruvians to take the whole game up a level, so as to express their culture through the products they make.
Peruvian brands, made by Peruvian heroes
The nation branding strategy must therefore be to build a culture of respect for design and manufacture, for people and families staking their good name on the product they make, for people taking the big jump and starting their own business designing and making something better or something new.
This is a cultural challenge as much as anything else, and I believe it is tackled most effectively through the "heroes and icons" approach. We have seen the impact of heroes and icons in the gastronomy sector: hundreds of kids now dream of becoming the next Gaston Acurio or Pedro Schiaffino. And dozens of restaurants are looking to be a part of this gastronomic renaissance the country is going through. This is clearly an approach that works… So, let's create Gastons and Schiaffinos in other sectors, in any sector where know-how is the big differentiator, where 1 + 1 = 3, where things are made.
In 1861, when the various duchies, republics and kingdoms of the Italian peninsula were finally unified, the author Massimo d'Azeglio famously wrote: 'We have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.' pointing to the fact that a cultural change should occur for the Italian nation building project to be successful.
In the spirit of d'Azeglio, I say: 'We have made brand Perú. Now we must make Peruvian brands.'
Friday, 8 June 2012
Chan or the art of luxury
"Chan or the Art of Luxury" - by Alexander Gallé - first published in Luxury Briefing's May 2012 issue.
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Chan or the Art of Luxury
by Alexander Gallé
by Alexander Gallé
This column is going to be part of a series I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. In fact, I first thought about putting it down on paper when China started being talked about as an up and coming economic power. I heard many people in the luxury sector at the time saying things like “the Chinese are all trying to copy our lifestyle, it’s a great opportunity for luxury brands to make their mark”. Entire armies of art consultants and shopping assistants were being sent to China, as if the Chinese didn’t know the first thing about luxury and needed lifestyle consultants from Europe to come over and tell them how to live a luxurious life.
Now, I suppose this holds true if you look at luxury in the shallow sense of the word: the bling, all-you-can-eat, spoilt-teenage-daughter version of it.
On the other hand, you can look at luxury, as we always have at Luxury Briefing, as something more akin to a philosophy, in which case it approaches what the ancient Greeks might have called “the good life”, which as a culture in itself leads to good craftsmanship, thoughtful design, a deeper appreciation of quality, etc. In this case, the Chinese have nothing to envy on us, because they have been studying this in great depth ever since Lao Tzu penned down the Dao De Jing, and they’ve been expressing it in the way they manufacture objects for millennia.
I’ll divide my argument into two parts, the “how” of luxury, and the “why” of luxury. The former relates to craftsmanship, the latter to design.
The “how” of luxury is directly relatable to a core concept in Daoism, which Lao Tzu called “Wu Wei”. It roughly translates as “doing without doing”, or “effortless doing”, or, more precisely, “working with the way life already works”. You might say this, for example, of a woodcutter who, rather than hacking at a piece of wood, first studies it to find the direction the grain is going, and cuts the wood in the grain’s direction so as to get a single, clean cut.
Great musical performers also "do without doing": they just play and the music comes out just perfect. Get their thoughts, their self, in the way and the music goes wrong.
The connection that is thus created between maker and user - via the object or performance - is one which many Western architects will recognise, as it leads to the same principles of honesty of shape and of materials which have guided modernist design thinkers such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe and Richard Neutra. The difference being that we had to unlearn centuries of aesthetic misdirection about the nature of craftsmanship and design in order to get there, whereas the Chinese elevated it to something close to a religion many centuries ago.
To be continued...
Sunday, 1 April 2012
Gallé design new website for Fabergé
Gallé design website for Fabergé, the iconic jewellery brand.
The new Fabergé website was designed to focus on good brand immersion and storytelling rather than bells and whistles. Fabergé is a brand with an incredible history, a rich iconographic tapestry rooted in Russian folk tales, 19th century royalty and artistocracy, impressionist art, modern art, ballet, all of which ended up being weaved into beautiful, elegant illustrations and photography, combined with a website design that was simple, structured and easy to understand. With this kind of imagery and story, there is no need for Flash animation or special effects, just deep research and authentic expression of brand values, combined with disciplined, simple and uncomplicated graphic design. It took us quite a while finding an illustrator who really got this balance of feminine grace and depth of iconography, but the result was certainly worth it, as the beauty of the jewels is complemented by their historic context. The new Fabergé website was a joy to design because it was a journey of discovery and deeper understanding of what authentic luxury is all about..
www.galle.com
Monday, 26 March 2012
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Virtual Icons
"Virtual Icons" was published in Luxury Briefing in February 2012.
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Virtual Icons
by Alexander Gallé
2012 is the year of mobile. Of course, so was 2011, and 2010, and every year since the first internet enabled phones came on the market.
But 2012 is definitely more interesting for mobile, because of the mesh this particular medium – and I am calling it a new medium – is now able to lay over reality as we experience it.
We have all seen the way citizens around the planet used their mobile phones to film and upload footage at demonstrations throughout 2011. Looking at the resulting footage on YouTube, one might even be tempted to say the filming and uploading was the action: for every tiniest bit of police interaction, hundreds of citizen-journalists raised their mobile phones to record the event.
Games will be the leaders in the sector, defining the medium itself. It’s one thing playing a game of shoot-em-up in an imaginary 3D world, it’s something else playing it on your iPad, shooting fictional characters that appear on your screen while you run around the corridors of your own house. On your tablet, a ghost may appear sitting at your kitchen table, using the perimeter and lighting set-up of the real space as you walk around it.
Such interaction would, once and for all, enable the platform to truly become a medium in its own right, with its own, intrinsic idiosyncrasies that stimulate a user engagement of an entirely different kind.
A simple adaptation of this technology for the luxury sector would be a printed paper strap that shows the user what a particular watch might look like on his wrist: just wrap the strap around your wrist, point your phone camera at it and see a 3D file of the watch around your wrist instead. This way, online watch retailers could replicate the in-store experience of trying on a watch.
From here, it’s only a small step thinking that augmented information could be networked, searchable and shareable, enabling you the kind of interaction with reality that is normally associated with web 2.0 websites. Were you ever enchanted by the way experts on Antiques Roadshow manage to weave stories around the antiques placed in front of them, enhancing the emotional connection we have with them? If you were, then you will understand the true potential of this technology and the relevance it has to the luxury sector, a sector in which objects are always iconic, always imbued with some kind of information that reinforces our emotional connection with them.
Visit the Gallé website at www.galle.com
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