The Holmes Report |The 100 most important in-house communicators in the world

The Holmes Report has researched an interesting list of the 100 Most Important In-house Communicators in the World. It is a fascinating compilation of 100 of the most senior corporate communications professionals in some of the world’s largest companies who are responsible for the reputation management of some enviable and challenging brands.

It’s also released the now seemingly mandatory infographic summarising the list (see the end of this post). Some of the key facts on the infographic include:

• Edelman is the most respected public relations agency, followed by Burson-Marsteller, Waggener Edstrom and Weber Shandwick.
• In 60% of the organisations responding to the survey, public relations has primary responsibility for social media, while in 20% responsibility is shared between several departments, including PR. Just 8% have social media led by marketing, with customer service and IT having the lead in 4% each, and the remaining 4% being elsewhere (can’t think where – legal or HR perhaps?)
• Everyone on the list has responsibility for hiring and firing PR agencies, but most are also primary decision makers on digital and social media agencies (79%), event management companies (50%) and sponsorship (46%). Just 25% have a primary role over advertising agencies.

About half of the list are based in the US, but many countries are represented including the UK. I’ve pulled out some of the UK-related names that I found interesting:

Lord Stephen Carter, Chief Marketing, Strategy & Comms Officer at Alcatel-Luncent in France and previously head of strategy for Prime Minister Gordon Brown after being CEO at Alan Parker’s Brunswick.

Sue Clark, Corporate Affairs Director at SAB Miller in London having previously been at Railtrack and Scottish Power.

Thomas Delabriere, Marketing Director at Innocent Drinks is interesting because he’s from one of the smallest companies on the list, but was brought in to bring a “dose of corporate heft” as he’d previously been at PepsiCo, Unilever and Danone.

Dominic Fry, Director of Comms & Investor Relations at Marks & Spencer having previously had similar roles at the Channel Tunnel, J Sainsbury and Scottish Power as well as various heavyweight corporate PR firms.

Pierre Goad, Co-head of Group Comms at HSBC in London.

Peter Henshaw, Group Head of Comms at BP has the enormous challenge of “rehabilitating BP’s battered reputation”. Intriguingly, he’s a lawyer by background and has previously held a variety of both legal and communications roles.

Gaye Hudson, VP, EMEA Corporate Comms for Oracle is unusual because she’s only responsible for EMEA whereas most people on the list have a global remit.

Howell James, Corporate Affairs Director at Barclays is another graduate of Downing Street having worked for two prime ministers – Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Company Secretary and Group Corporate & Legal Affairs Director for Tesco is another who spent significant time working for UK government before joining the corporate sector.

Lucas van Praag, Head of Corporate Comms at Goldman Sachs in London has the unenviable task of working on repairing the reputation of one of the world’s most pilloried investment banks.

Michael Prescott, Group Director of Comms at BT Group in London is the former political editor at the Sunday Times who moved into PR via a stint at Weber Shandwick.

Ben Stewart, Head of Media at Greenpeace in London is one of the NGO’s leadership team that is well placed to teach the corporate sector a thing or two about how to run effective communications and lobbying campaigns.

Michael Stewart, Partner, Global Director of Comms at McKinsey & Company in London has an enviable track record in CSR-related institutions such as the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, the UN Global Compact and the Centre for Our Common Future.

Phil Thompson, SVP Global Comms at GlaxoSmithKline in London is a 15-year veteran of GSK having worked his way through a variety of marketing and public relations roles.

Keith Weed, Chief Marketing & Comms Officer at Unilever is a marketing professional who has sought to unify marketing, corporate communications and sustainability under his leadership. An interesting approach that appears to be at odds with what many other large corporations are doing.

Sky TV Match Fit for Rugby World Cup

Sky Television in New Zealand knows that the Rugby World Cup 2011 is imminent. Will the mighty All Blacksbe match fit? More importantly, will Sky TV’s camera and sound crew be match fit? Gunnery Sergeant Cleaver takes the team through its paces, getting ready to show 48 games. The campaign is online atFacebook and Twitter (@sergeantcleaver). 

Credits

The Match Fit ad was developed at DDB New Zealand by executive creative director Toby Talbot, creative director Regan Grafton, copywriter Gavin Siakimotu, art director Natalie Knight, agency producer Judy Thompson, account director Danielle Richards, account manager Brad Armstrong, and managing partner Scott Wallace.
Filming was shot by director Tim Bullock via Prodigy Films with director of photography Geoffrey Hall, producers Jonathan Samway and Mark Matthews. Editor was Adam Wills. Post production was done atPerceptual Engineering.
Sound was produced at Liquid Studios.

Zaha Hadid architects gets a brand identity

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid, CBE (Arabic: زها حديد‎ Zahā Ḥadīd; born 31 October 1950) is an Iraqi-British architect.

Life and career

Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad, Iraq. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

After graduating she worked with her former teachers, Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, becoming a partner in 1977. It was with Koolhaas that she met the engineer Peter Rice who gave her support and encouragement early on, at a time when her work seemed difficult to build. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught at the Architectural Association. She has also taught at prestigious institutions around the world; she held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture, guest professorships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg, the Knowlton School of Architecture, at The Ohio State University, the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York and the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.^[1] She has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in Austria.

A winner of many international competitions, theoretically influential and groundbreaking, a number of Hadid's winning designs were initially never built: notably, The Peak Club in Hong Kong(1983) and the Cardiff Bay Opera House in Wales (1994). In 2002 Hadid won the international design competition to design Singapore's one-north masterplan. In 2005, her design won the competition for the new city casino of Basel, Switzerland. In 2004 Hadid became the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Previously, she had been awarded a CBE for services to architecture. She is a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, Hadid was honored with a retrospective spanning her entire work at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In that year she also received an Honorary Degree from the American University of Beirut.

Zaha Hadid's architectural design firm - Zaha Hadid Architects - is over 350 people strong, headquartered in a Victorian former school building in Clerkenwell, London.

In 2008, she ranked 69th on the Forbes list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women".^[2] On 2 January 2009, she was the guest editor of the BBC's flagship morning radio news programme,Today.^[3]

In 2010 she was named by Time magazine as influential thinker in the 2010 TIME 100 issue.^[4] In September 2010, The British magazine New Statesman listed Zaha Hadid at number 42 in their annual survey of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".^[5]

Non-architectural work

She has also undertaken some high-profile interior work, including the Mind Zone and Feet zone at the Millennium Dome in London and the Z.CAR hydrogen-powered, three-wheeled automobile. In 2009, she worked with the clothing brand Lacoste, to create a new, high fashion, and advanced boot.^[6] In the same year, she also collaborated with the brassware manufacturer Triflow Concepts ^[7] to produce two new designs in her signature parametric architectural style. Her unique contributions to brassware design and other fields continue to push the boundaries of innovation.

In 2007, Zaha Hadid designed the Moon System Sofa for leading Italian furniture manufacturer B&B Italia.^[8

She won the 2010 Stirling Prize for one of her most celebrated work, the Maxxi in Rome.

Hadid is the designer of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul, South Korea, which is expected to be the centerpiece of the festivities for the city's designation as World Design Capital2010. The complex is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

design and brand strategy specialists greenspace have developed a new identity, bespoke typeface
and website for zaha hadid architects.



DB: how long did greenspace work on the project for?
LD: the original brief was sent to us in july 2009.
we pitched against a number of high-profile agencies and our response focused
in particular on process, collaboration and the potential of the brand – rather than
any creative solutions. we then went through the interview process before starting
the project proper in july 2010 – through to launch in july 2011.

based on the interviews with the zaha hadid studio,
what became clear as the most important thing to communicate with the new identity?
with such a large and complex studio there was clearly a diverse and contrasting
range of opinions.

what was clear to us through both the interviews and the original brief was the need to;
(a) highlight the vast number of projects that have been created and realised
(b) highlight all the talented designers and architects within the practice
(c) communicate ZHA as a company that is world-class, highly-professional
and yet avant-garde in its approach.

clearly all that can’t be achieved through an identity alone and that’s why the
website became our primary focus initially and the main vehicle for the ZHA story.

that said, creating a unique typeface that could be used by everyone on a
day-to-day basis also felt like a nice inclusive way to bring the brand to life.

which aspect of the project proved most challenging?
as a creative process it was truly collaborative and very positive.

the real challenge is hoping you create a piece of work that reflects the client’s
own reputation and high standards.

regarding the branding, it can be hard sometimes when dealing with a client that has
such a strong visual style to find your own path and reasons for doing so.
we hope and believe we did that by creating a look that’s not a pastiche of
the architecture and in fact allows it to be elevated and viewed without distraction.

finally, regarding the website, we set out to create something that has a unique user
experience and sets itself apart from all sites – not just architectural ones.
the level of content, movement, functionality and search capabilities are clearly
complex and when combined with a beautiful bespoke CMS it obviously took a
great deal of thought and an incredible development team to deliver.

we really hope people explore the archive both now and in the future as more
and more content becomes available.



selection of the characters from the typeface designed by miles newlyn with greenspace




----
following text from the official press release:

collaborating closely with zaha’s senior partner, patrik schumacher, greenspace and designer
miles newlyn have developed a brand identity that has a minimal feel. it is inspired by
the contemporary material and construction choices employed by ZHA, visualised through
the use of varying paper stocks, simple highlight colours and carefully chosen print techniques.


'we deliberately didn’t want to create a brand identity that would be a pastiche of any of
the ZHA created works. we wanted the work to speak for itself, not be over-powered by its brand'
adrian caddy of greenspace

dynamic patterns
ZHA use a wide range of computer program scripts combined with parametric theory
when creating buildings and designs. greenspace took inspiration from these to create
a set of patterns that can be used graphically across communication collateral and
to which future patterns can be added as new structures, shapes and forms are developed.
bespoke and unique typeface
as part of the brand revamp, greenspace and ZHA’s patrik schumacher worked closely
to develop a bespoke typeface, called zaha hadid sans.

'the typeface uses two unique features: there is the folded detail, in which joins that are
usually truncated are divided by a slim gap to give the appearance of layering.
the other feature is a carefully stressed curve that flows from vertical to near horizontal
and back again.' - miles newlyn














identity guidelines / overview


















website
the website acts as the ‘ultimate archive’ of everything ZHA has done - both built
and conceptual - with a CSM system that allows the archive to grow indefinitely.
greenspace has designed it to be a purely visual, never the same twice, mesmeric
encounter with the ZHA world.
containing vast amounts of data, the site is an ‘inclusive’, user-friendly experience
that pushes the boundaries of other more traditional architectural sites. it enables the
user to modify, personalise and dictate relevant content. built in HTML 5, avoiding the
constraints of flash for ease of loading to ipad for example, it captures and exposes
everything that is current and ZHA related, worldwide. and it’s been designed to
be practical, so both students and press can download images, information and
biographies about the work and people that make up the ZHA brand.







credits
greenspace design team:
paul blackburn
lee deverill
james taylor
stephanie wilkinson
adrian caddy
miles newlyn (typeface)

zha project team:
patrik schumacher
lars teichmann
bidisha sinha

photographic portraits:
alex telfer

website production:
scott david

Forrest & Bob |DIY

For creating this beautiful ad campaign for new underwear collection Forrest & Bob invited famous fashion photographer Henrik Adamsen and supermodel Sarah Grünewald. The following stunning nude photos are result of combination a sexy model, an amazing photographer and a simple range of lingerie. 
Popout
Forrest & Bob Underwear from Henrik Adamsen on Vimeo.

Journey to the Claussen Pickles

Claussen Pickles' latest campaign features intrepid English supermarket explorer, Sir Edwin Horsham, who comically drives a dogsled around a New Jersey supermarket showing shoppers where to find the pickles in the refrigerated section of the store. The videos are accompanied by a new Facebook contest, asking fans to prove they can conquer the cold by capturing a snapshot of them next to the Claussen Pickles for a chance to win cool cold-weather gear or an all-expense paid trip to Iceland or Alaska. Agency: The Escape Pod, Chicago.

Bupa |By You

British insurance company Bupa is running “Bupa By You”, an integrated advertising campaign promoting the adaptable and affordable nature of its health insurance policies. The television commercial at the heart of the campaign focuses on real people in real situations taking part in unexpected activities. 
An older lady who at first appears to be ironing is in fact waxing a surf board. A young man is filmed lifting a child above his head, when at first he seemed to be lifting weights in the gym. ’Bupa By You’ is a natural evolution of the brand’s ’Helping You Find Healthy’ campaign launched earlier this year which demonstrated that healthy means different things to different people. 
The product meets this ambition by providing customers with the ability to personalise their insurance cover to best reflect their individual health needs, priorities and budget.

Credits

The direct response TV advert, direct marketing and digital advertising have all been created by OgilvyOne, London.

Media buying was undertaken by Carat.

Agent Provocateur| woman(s).. know the power of your Underwear

if this stands true, we need to rethink marketing 3.0

Power of Subliminal Messages

Channel Four's Derren Brown takes two ad execs for a short car ride. During that ride, Derren subliminally implants images/ideas that will be used for his ad campaign, then pitches the product and lets them unknowingly reproduce it. Read more on Subliminal Messages in Internet Marketing here

Power of Subliminal Messages- Derren Brown from Michael Arbach on Vimeo.

Muammar Gaddafi stars in topical ad for Lifebroker

McCann Melbourne has created a tactical campaign for Lifebroker featuring troubled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The ad will run in The Age, The Australian and Sun Herald.
Credits:
Agency: McCann Melbourne
Creative Directors: Julius and Ethal Rosenberg
Planning Director: Felix
Group Account Director: John Bosley
Work Experience Kid: Haley Joel Osment

DHL Express| “International Specialists”

DHL Express, the international express services provider, is running “International Specialists”, an advertising campaign translated into 25 local languages in 42 key markets worldwide with television, print, outdoor, digital and radio features. Two television commercials, “Grow” and “Runway”, introduce the “Speed of Yellow” concept, showing how key events are made possible by DHL, from creating a concept car in Paris, to receiving a circuit board in space, and putting the finishing touches to a designer dress in New York. The focus is on DHL’s expertise in logistics so it can deliver to its customers on time, every time, anywhere in the world. The TV and radio spots are accompanied by a modern cover of the classic anthem “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which first featured in DHL adverts in 1991, now re-recorded by award winning producer Paul Epworth. This re-mixed version is available to download from iTunes.

A scientific breakthrough is made in Hong Kong. The next day it’s aiding research in Tromso.

A dress is stitched in Hong Kong. The next night it’s applauded in Paris.

A contract is signed in London. By 10.30 am the next day it touches down in Wall Street.

A bearing sits in a box in Guangzhou. By the end of the next day it’s in a chassis in Frankfurt.

Credits

The International Specialists campaign was developed at 180 Amsterdam by creative director Stephen Hancock, executive creative director Al Moseley, creative director Galen Graham, art director James Sadler, copywriter Dan Brooks, account directors Nicole Reid and Audrey Lefebvre, planner Mandy Graham, client team director Wolfgang Giehl, and agency producer Eline Bakker

Filming was shot by director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet via Partizan with director of photography Damien Morisot, producer David Stewart, executive producer Joe Togneri.

Post production was done at MPC (The Moving Picture Company). Visual effects were produced by Flame artist Karmen Markov. Editor was Bill Smedley at Work Post.

Sound and music were produced at P&S.

Quebec City Magic Festival

Agency: Lg2, Quebec City, Canada
Creative Director / Copywriter: Luc Du Sault
Art Director: Vincent Bernard
Account Managers: Sandie Lafleur, Eve Boucher
Production Company: Nova Film / David Poulin, Charles Burroughs, Dominik Beaulieu
Production: Quatro Design / Enseignes Otis Image In