Kenny Schachter; art dealer, design critic, car lover, collector and commissioner of culture. His various professional and personal activities give him a unique perspective on design, art and, of course, design as art.

First coming to our attention during a panel discussion on the future of the automotive designer (Kenny thinks the increasing impracticality of cars will see them elevated to objects of cultural desire), there’s little doubt that Kenny’ll provide a provocative perspective on the practical, cultural and economic value of design.

Our usual interview is beyond the jump.

Kenny Schachter will be appearing at CreativeMornings/London on Friday February 24th -sponsored by Forward and Sense Worldwide- at Floor 2, Centro 4, 20 Mandela St, Camden, NW1 0DU. For more information and to reserve tickets, please go to the CreativeMornings London Eventbrite page.

Where do you go when you need to concentrate?

my garage converted into an office, though i still share the space with my cars.

Is it about what you know or who you know?

both

What’s been the most pivotal point in your life thus far?

attending the estate sale of andy warhol at sothebys in 1988

Do you think there’s enough discourse between disciplines?

there is not enough discourse in disciplines, yet between them.

Can you teach innovation?

yes

Dollar or Yuan?

swiss franc looks good to me.

Do you believe in an afterlife?

hardly in this life.

Negative or positive freedom?

freedom, yet

Ideal holiday?

sitting in my garage, see above.

Can you draw?

not a stick figure, never stopped me from trying to make art.

Can you draw us a wave?

^^^^

Individual or state (or both)?

individual but nice to be protected and have your garbage picked up.

Favourite LP?

just about anything beetles

Last book read? book?

more of an avid newspaper, periodical and web site reader. but that would be Marina Picasso, Picasso, My Grandfather. (New York: Riverhead Books, 2001)

The best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

there will always be a lot smarter so just work harder; don’t believe your own lies, don’t over leverage.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be where you are?

don’t worry about how you are not supposed to do things, just do them how you see fit.

I’ll admit it.

I let out a squeal of delight when I first watched this.

And I’ve squealed with each subsequent viewing.

This spot is auto-cultural Mixmastery at it’s absolute chicest.

I know, I know. It’s a fashion ad.

But my world feels a little bit richer for watching it.

And that’s a very good thing.

Please, watch fullscreen at fullvolume for fulleffect.

Recently CreativeMornings founder Tina Roth-Eisenberg a.k.a SwissMiss went to see a talk at the Atlanta chapter.

While she was there she was interviewed by Ron Dawson of Dare Dreamer magazine for the video above.

It’s such a neat encapsulation of what attracted me to CreativeMornings and why I was so desperate to bring it to London way back in 2010.

Hat tip to Tina and Ron

After a CreativeMornings Christmas/New Year break, it gives me enormous pleasure to introduce our first speaker for 2012, David Barrie.

In an era where we’re exhorted to be more active in our communities but struggle -perhaps through lack of practice, perhaps due to a lack of suitable infrastructure- David’s been building the platforms and imparting the knowledge to bring communities back together.

His passionate drive for participative urban regeneration has seen projects launched all over the country, successfully harnessing the latent creativity and capability of citizens to bring about positive change.

With a continued focus on how the creative sector can make a positive contribution to broader society, something that Chris Bangle riffed on at CreativeMornings/London August, David’s sure to make another great contribution to the dialogue.

Read our usual interview with David below and make sure to set your alarms for 11:00 am on Monday, January 23 to secure your tickets.

David Barrie will be appearing at CreativeMornings/London on Friday January 27th at Buro Happold at at 71 Newman St, W1T 3AH. For more information and to reserve tickets, please go to the CreativeMornings London Eventbrite page.

Where do you go when you need to concentrate?
Put my headphones on and listen to either Black Dog or Hammock.

Is it about what you know or who you know?
Who you know.

What’s been the most pivotal point in your life thus far?
When my wife had our first child and when I was imprisoned in Liberia in 2000 on false charges of espionage.

Do you think there’s enough discourse between disciplines?
No

Can you teach innovation?
Yes

Dollar or Yuan?
Dollar

Do you believe in an afterlife?
No

Negative or positive freedom? 
Positive

Ideal holiday?
Beach – or secluded sunny hilltop

Can you draw?
No

Can you draw us a wave?
No

Individual or state (or both)?
Individual

Favourite LP?
Recently, EP. Band called Daughter. EP called His Young Heart.
Best LP. Jesus Zola, Conatus.

Last book read?
Peter Ackroyd, Turner

The best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
It’s all about tone.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be where you are?
Know what you love

During the interminable wait to get on a rescheduled flight to Tasmania I started idly flicking through my blog feeds.

More often than not I hit “mark all as read” rather than actually doing any reading.

But my eye was caught by a post by Steve Jones on the Fast Company blog titled Authenticity Vs. Perfection: How To Brand Like A Rock Star.

A lengthy excerpt from a book, my sleep-deprived, caffeine-addled brain skimmed most of it.

But the central thesis is one that has resonated with me since I started my journey into brand strategy in 2005.

Here’s my riff on it: humans are imperfect but imperfection lends individuals their character. It’s character, our unique mix of our perfect and imperfect qualities, that acts as our emotional magnet, attracting or repelling fellow humans. It could be said that the more honest we are about our mix of perfect and imperfect, the more authentic we’re being. And, in my experience at least, authentic people have deeper, more engaged and longer-lasting relationships.

And so it could be (should be?) with brands.

Because we want brands to be our best friends after all.

Cars being my pet subject, my thoughts turned to Cяazy People, the 1990 film staring Dudley Moore as a deranged ad exec. In one scene he crafts a campaign for Volvo with the strapline They’re boxy but they’re good. To which my brain responds emphatically yes and yes when recalling Volvos of the 90s and earlier.

If I think about the last Volvo campaign I can recall, it went something like Naughty Volvos are coming. To which I though What!?

Volvos aren’t naughty. Never have been. Never could be. Not when you have Lamborghini and Ferrari and Fiat so thoroughly owning the naughty step.

Even Seat is more naughty than Volvo.

To suggest that Volvos are naughty denies their real character, which to my mind is made up of equal parts restraint, warmth, practicality, effortlessness and unselfconscious cool.

And it’s this character that most powerfully differentiates them from their desired competition.

Competing on naughty is competing on the same tawdry terms as so many others.

What could be cooler in a world of wannabe naughty brands (Audi and Mercedes want to own this territory too, if not explicitly in advertising copy then implicitly in their design) than honest-to-goodness Scandinavian chic?

No great fan of current Audi and Mercedes product (also inauthentic in the extreme) I got to thinking that they could perhaps try duff drive but interior quality to make a grown man weep and bruising but with more bling than a Compton hooker respectively.

More seriously though, wouldn’t be refreshing if more car brands acknowledged their true, defining characters? How marvellous if vorsprung durch technik had the same authenticity to it today as it did when the A2 was rolling off the lines. How lovely it would be to know that a best or nothing Mercedes really was the best, as it used to be.

Then we might have a chance to fall in love with new cars just as much as my auto industry mates and I fall in love with old ones, all along citing their wealth of character as their most appealing characteristic.

Knuckled on an iPad. Forgive the typos.

In 1951, a Shell advert proclaimed that one went “very fast very gently in a Bentley”.

In that same year, Bentley’s own advertising proclaimed that theirs was “The Silent Sports Car”.

David Ogilvy, in his imperious advert for the ’59 Rolls Royce, went so far as to say that the Bentley alternative was for the diffident.

And even when growing up in the decade that taste largely forgot – the 1980s – Bentley remained the choice of the discreet.

Indeed, all the way up until 2003 a Bentley was a luxuriously appointed ride under the radar.

Then Volkswagen came along and buggered it all up.

No longer was a Bentley solely the choice of uppers with names like Bunty, Binky or Babe.

New money was Bentley’s target. And new money Bentley made.

With peak sales figures coming close to 10,000 for the GT and its sedan sister the Flying Spur, came a time when the Continental Bentleys were vying with the black Mercedes S-Class for Central London ubiquity.

But, with costs shared with the Volkswagen Phaeton, the cash rolled in and I doubt anyone in Crewe (or Wolfsburg) really gave a damn.

I did. Bentley used to be special.

Now it was common as muck.

I thought salvation might arrive in Crewe’s reposte to the marvellous Rolls Ghost.

What arrived was neither reposte nor salvation.

The Grand Bentley – as the pre-launch press material billed it – arrived as a beautifully-built, pig-faced bruiser called the Mulsanne, a car so vulgar as to confirm Rolls Royce’s new role as the luxury car for the discerning (if not discreet).

I honestly thought the state of Bentley’s brand communications – physical or otherwise – couldn’t get worse.

And then this video came along:

Once for the discreet.

Now for the douchebag.

So long, Silent Sports Car.

Rest in peace, my very fast, very gently Bentley.

This month, we’re over the moon to be presenting Beeker Northam, co-founder and head of strategy at Dentsu London.

Currently turning out some amazing work for Greentomatocars, Uniqlo and Nintendo, she’s also had a hand in the geek-love launch of Google Chrome, the mind-blowingly cool Penki iPad light painting app and the Canon Pixma sound sculptures.

In all of her work there’s something delightfully mad scientist going on. Which is fitting, really.

Read on for the usual interview and make sure you get in quick for tickets on Monday November 28th, it’s gonna be a great one.

Beeker Northam will be appearing at CreativeMornings/London on Friday December 2nd at the amazing Kettner’s at 29 Romily St, Soho, W1D 5HP. The even is co-sponsored by Sense Worldwide. For more information and to reserve tickets, please go to the CreativeMornings/London Eventbrite page.

 

Where do you go when you need to concentrate?
I set a timer.

Is it about what you know or who you know? 
Um, how you know?

What’s been the most pivotal point in your life thus far? 
A meeting in Shoreditch in 2009.

Do you think there’s enough discourse between disciplines? 
I couldn’t say, in general. Discourse between good people is usually a good thing. But then there’s also a lot of not-so-useful chatting that happens. And there are lots of things talking can’t get you to.

Can you teach innovation? 
Yes I think so. Given most innovation is incremental, and based on skill and knowledge of material.

Dollar or Yuan? 
I’ve never seen a Yuan. Dollars are quite nice though.

Do you believe in an afterlife? 
No.

Negative or positive freedom? 
Positive.

Ideal holiday? 
Sea-swimming and mountains.

Can you draw? 
I’m learning.

Can you draw us a wave? 
See above Ed.

Individual or state (or both)? 
Both.

Favourite LP? 
It varies between a few different Glenn Gould recordings. And Rumours.

Last book read? 
Middlemarch.

The best piece of advice you’ve ever received? 
(With regard to work), The only thing that matters is the work that gets made.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be where you are? 
Work out what kind of work you want to make, how to get other people excited about it, and the best people you can think of to do it with. The last two bits seem to come from sussing the first bit out.

CreativeMornings is a monthly speaker series and morning gathering of creative types. Each event includes a 15-20 minute lecture, followed by a 20 minute group discussion. The gathering begins at 8:30am with the topic presentation starting at 9:00am and everyone taking off for work at 10am. CreativeMornings are free of charge and is made possible this month by Kettner’s and Sense Worldwide. There are currently 16 chapters: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Zurich, London, Vancouver, Berlin, Stockholm, Auckland, Atlanta, Boston, Milan, Portland, Seattle and Budapest *phew*

I work across the worlds of communications, branding and business strategy.

It’s pretty easy for people to get confused about what kind of beast I am.

Hell, sometimes -when coffee is conspicuous by its absence- even I get confused.

Thankfully Peter Thomson over at The Economics of Innovation did a vox pops with his strategist mates, helping set everyone straight about just what it is that we do.

Choice nuggets:

What is a strategist?

A strategist develops opinions on the future direction of a company and its brand, based on existing and predicted conditions, other known variables, intuition and research.
- David Lyall, Creative Strategist

A strategist uses big-picture thinking, storytelling, insights, criteria development tools and synthesis in the development of agreed-upon end-goals.
- Randy Deutsch, Design Strategist

A strategist figures out how the various cogs and wheels fit together so that the whole machine hums.
- Meena Kadri, Communications Strategist

What makes a good strategist?

A good strategist is marked out by their ability to use two words: “No” and “Why”.
- David Lyall

A good strategist sees problems through other’s perspectives.
- Randy Deutsch

A good strategist has two core skills; critical thinking and writing; and if they are really good, pattern seeking.
- Josh Levine, Culture Consultant

Randy Deutsch went on to say that

Strategy provides a lens through which to see projects in a certain light…

Given that, I’d go on to say that one of the skills of the strategist is being able to hold up multiple lenses to whatever problem the client needs to solve. The perspectives of the consumer, customer, retailer and client stakeholders are all relevant; it’s our job to created the blended image that brings each stakeholder’s requirements into focus.

P.S. How cool is John Levine’s job title?

Head on over to Peter’s blog The Economics of Innovation to read the full piece.

When I was a kid, the sciences straight-up fascinated me. Early high-school experiments looking at boiling points, the insides of rodents and the creation of artificial flavours and scents meant that science classes were a thrice weekly doorway to enchantment.