Stutterheim marks the Swedish mood

Sent to me by Stefan Engeseth, Stutterheim Raincoats‘ website conveys a very Swedish feel, touching on one of the emotions we don’t always associate with Sweden: melancholy during the winter. The copy on the site even says, ‘Let’s embrace Swedish melancholy.’    With emotive photographs and a very Swedish soundtrack, it helps create an atmosphere […]

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An ideal surfing camera, and why we love the Saab 9-4X more

My friend Gareth Rowson is now review editor for WideWorldMag.com (alongside his design practice). Here is his test of the waterproof Oregon Scientific ATC9K Action Camera, filmed while surfing at Vazon in Guernsey. I thought this was very nicely shot.    Less well shot, but significant, is the official video from Saab USA about its […]

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The “next Google” has to save the web

Spotted on Tumblr yesterday, via Dave Sparks: ‘Why Facebook Browsing Annihilates Web Browsing’, on the Fast Company blogs. The intro pretty much summarizes the whole piece:   Recent research suggests that Facebook is overtaking search engines in terms of “time spent” on the web. Want to see where the trendline is heading? Take a look […]

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How MG Rover mirrored the developments at Lada

I still have Adam Curtis’s The Mayfair Set, a TV series charting the decline of British power and the rise of the technocracy, recorded on video cassette somewhere. I consider him someone who can see through the emperor having no clothes, and in The Mayfair Set, he certainly saw through the Empire having no clothes. […]

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Wellington needs a new brand for a new decade

A very good Vista Group luncheon (Jim, Natalie, self), where we discussed: the Gap rebrand; The Hobbit, unions and the BNZ Centre boilermakers’ strike; and my mayoral campaign.    On the first topic, we concluded that it was down to a simple cock-up. None of us could see any reason for the Gap to rebrand […]

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Paul Henry is only the tip of the redneck iceberg

Yesterday, I began watching the Indian media get hold of the Paul Henry story. Indians are, rightly, up in arms with the TV host’s insult of Chief Minister Smt. Sheila Dikshit’s name—this, plus the incident questioning whether Governor-General HE Sir Anand Satyanand was a New Zealander, shows a pattern where Henry thinks poorly of people […]

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It’s ‘Chevy’—even President Obama says so

Dear Chevrolet: even your own nation’s president calls the brand ‘Chevy’: You might want to rethink that memo. You may also like A whinge about whinging Volkswagen’s scandal won’t spread to other German car groups Johnny Foreigner might be better at running a car company in Shanghai How can we help those fooled into believing […]

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What we need from leaders in the new decade: creativity leads the list

My friend and colleague at the Medinge Group, Ava Hakim, passed on a few papers from her day job at IBM. The first is the latest edition of a biennial global CEO survey, while the second asks the next generation of leaders—Generation Y. The aim: to find out what these groups think about the challenges […]

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Chevrolet doesn’t understand branding

After the chaps at Autocar began following me on Twitter yesterday—after all, I had been reading the magazine since it was part of the Ministry of Magazines, in the post-Iliffe days—I noticed a Tweet about Chevrolet asking its dealers to not refer to the brand as Chevy.    What?    According to Autocar: A leaked […]

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Volvo Cars, a unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.

I haven’t missed the sale of Volvo to Geely, but it wasn’t as momentous as the rebirth of Saab. We knew the deal was coming and the rest were formalities.    The company has said there will be no Geelys badged as Volvos and vice versa. It recognizes the Volvo brand is too valuable to […]

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