THE VIEWING DECK

Digital with a touch of humanity

Earlier this month some of the TRA team had the opportunity to hear international futurist and innovation strategist Anders Sorman-Nilsson give his talk: Digital Disruption, Adaptation & Human Transformation.

Anyone with a few futurist talks under their belt could be forgiven for thinking this would be another hour of the same clichés: drones and self-driving cars taking over the world, computers removing the need for creative thought, and AI replacing all human interactions. Not so – this talk was grounded and practical.

Yes, there is no denying that developing technologies are set to have a big part in our future lives – AI in particular. But Anders’ talk was really about how we resist and then adapt to change, using his mother’s 96-year-old bricks and mortar store in Stockholm as an example. Anders brought a strong worldview on what he believes will constitute a positive future: one that combines the digital minds and analogue hearts of tomorrow’s customer. From our experience working with New Zealand’s largest organisations, we found this vision aligned with what consumers are wanting today. As brands that were highly traditional once upon a time continue to deliver their digital transformation strategies, digital engagement can’t simply be about product features or performance. Rather, progressive digital strategies must bring this technology whilst enhancing the humanity that makes any experience special. Anders says: “the future belongs to brands that are able to seamlessly transition us between the digital world and analogue world and back again.” Our outtake: go digital but never leave behind the human insight.  

A cultural lifeline - the City Rail Link

This article by TRA’s Tim Gregory was originally published in Britomart Magazine’s Winter 17 issue. 

The cultural capitals of the world have always depended on hyper-connected public transport – for Auckland, the City Rail Link has the potential to become a cultural lifeline connecting the exciting community arts and culture scenes emerging across the city. The benefits of Auckland’s City Rail Link (CRL) are often discussed in productivity terms, and while this is immensely important for a city competing internationally, potentially the most transformative benefits of the CRL in the long term could prove to be cultural. 

Auckland is a city regularly critiqued as lacking in culture. But with its young and diverse communities, as well as unique geography, Auckland has as much potential for a truly differentiated and compelling cultural offering as anywhere in the world. The seeds of this are spread across Auckland, from the vibrant markets of Avondale and Otara, to the arts scenes in communities as diverse as Glen Innes and Titirangi, just to name a few. However, they are isolated – for these to grow, connect and contribute to Auckland having a true sense of culture they need to be part of a connected city. It is in fact infrastructure, rather than an inherent lack of culture, that is holding us back. Auckland’s leaders have contemplated the CRL since the 1920’s. Meanwhile, the world’s great cities, icons like New York and London spent the 20th Century defining themselves as cultural meccas. Not in small part thanks to their hyper-connected subway, tube, and underground systems.

In cultural terms, these transport systems enable movement and connection between the city’s people, cultures, and ideas. When you visit or live in these cities, this is clearly evident. Culture follows connection – without it, people, their ideas, communities and cultures are isolated and their potential to bring vibrancy and life to a place is never realised.

In New York the circulation of ideas between the artistic enclaves of more affordable boroughs such as Brooklyn, and the global centre that is Manhattan, has always been facilitated by New York’s Subway. American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was one artist who moved between these locales knowing he needed to connect his art with a wider community.

Auckland’s artists are using the improving transport system to foster our city’s sense of culture. The build of Britomart Station that took place earlier this century was developed as a partnership between art and architecture. Michael Parekowhai worked as a fundamental part of the creative team manifesting the station and its surrounds conceptually as New Zealand’s largest wharenui featuring Parekowhai’s Forest Rangers and The Irish Guards. At the heart ofWithin the Britomart precinct sits Chris Bailey’s “Seven Pou”, a group of carved pou – a meeting of the modern and indigenous that grounds you in the place. For Bailey, a regular visitor to Britomart as he travels from Waiheke via the ferry, and onward to his family in West Auckland whom he visits by train – the pou symbolise Britomart the precinct as a place of converging cultures and ethnicities, where a ‘new city culture’ for Auckland is being formed.

Britomart, as the central node of the transport system, is where we all meet. As the system develops further Britomart will become a platform for connecting Aucklanders, New Zealanders, and international visitors to Auckland’s culture – just as Manhattan was the window connecting the world with the culture of New York.

Gary Silipa, a Glen Innes-based graffiti artist, turned post-graffiti artist and gallery director, believes that with the CRL as thecan be an enabler, . Easy transit can create there is incredible opportunity to create these kind of synergies between a central cultural hubs like Britomart and cultural scenes emerging further out of the city. Silipa, through his gallery The Good, The Bad and in collaboration with Te Oro (Glenn Innes’ impressive arts centre) is helping to foster a vibrant neighbourhood arts scene in Glen Innes, , such as his including the successful Auckland Art Week event: Bradley Lane project which involved (the live painting of 15 outdoor murals around the Glen Innes Town Centre).

He wants to encourage more people to travel from the city centre and experience the emerging scene in Glen Innes: “People don’t realise how easy it is to get here already. It is only three stops from Britomart: Orakei, Meadowbank, then Glen Innes”. Silipa actively promotes how easy it is to get to Glen Innes on The Good, The Bad, website. It is currently a 12-minute ride each way, and with the completion of the CRL, 9 minutes will be shaved off the round journey – a 37.5% time-saving.

But the opportunity presented by the CRL goes beyond speed to destination only. There is a unique opportunity to design new stations as public spaces to exhibit Auckland’s cultural scene (to promote it and inspire people to visit it via the network), whilst also leaving space for spontaneous culture to emerge (by legitimising buskers, street poets, and street artists).

It’s not fanciful to think that in a few years’ time, a community destined for transport oriented development (TOD) and connected with much speedier travel times like Glen Innes, could become a cultural destination for Auckland. In Oakland, California, an event known as First Fridays began with a couple of galleries putting their work out for passers-by to view on a Friday evening. On Fridays to follow local food, music, and art walks were added – and today the event attracts thousands from across the Bay Area, all travelling to Oakland via the BART rail system (ridership increases by 5,000 at the local station on the night of event).

Unravelling the lives of new migrants

There is no denying that our nation is diverse – New Zealand is recognised as being “super-diverse” with over 25% of the population comprised of migrants. Auckland ranks amongst the most culturally diverse cities in the world. With more than 220 recorded ethnic groups living in Auckland, we’re more diverse than Sydney, Los Angeles, London and even New York.

Immigration numbers have steadily risen over the last 5 years. Today, 1 in 4 New Zealanders were born overseas. In Auckland, two-fifths of the city’s residents were born overseas, and 600 new immigrants arrive in the city each week. With this comes differences – in ethnicity, religion, cultural practices, lifestyles, decision making processes, products purchased, and services demanded.

New migrants face a unique set of circumstances and powerful mix of emotions when they come to New Zealand. Adapting to a new town, people and culture requires heightened learning, improvising and dealing with the unexpected. Within this highly emotional context, migrants take an accelerated path to habit formation, meaning that the first brand preferences in their new country become firmly embedded and difficult to change as they settle in. This is a powerful window of opportunity for brands.

Taking a walk in someone else’s shoes

The best way to break down the barriers between organisations and their customers is through immersion research – piecing together what it means to live in today’s world through the eyes of those who experience it.

Immersion research first emerged in post-war Britain when the government realised it had no idea about the lives of ordinary Brits. Cabinet member’s lives were a world apart from everyday citizens, which raised the question of how they could possibly design policy, implement and enforce social programmes, and create a contented and motivated work force. So the government asked people to write about their lives, send letters and keep diaries. The results brought the lives of British people into clear focus, meshing big political themes with deep personal motivations and drivers.

Inspired by this event, the Listening Project uses contemporary multi-media tools and research methodologies to gain insight into the messy, non-linear disorder of people’s real daily lives. Past Listening Projects have looked at young families, SME businesses, and millennials. This time round we will be providing a window into the lives of new migrants – their day-to-day activities, anxieties, frustrations, excitements, and dreams of the future.

Unlocking truly customer-centric strategy and insight

The Listening Project provides brands with the knowledge and tools to become a valued part of their customer’s lives while informing marketing, behaviour change strategies and social policy.

Past clients including Air New Zealand, ASB, Mercury, Nestle, TVNZ, and Lion have used The Listening Projects to develop truly customer-centric strategies based on understanding and empathy, activated by a tactical toolbox comprising language, iconography, social networks and cultural context.

Frances Valintine on why New Zealand businesses aren’t innovative and what they need to do about it.

“Culture matters for reasons good and bad.  First, it is the place to discover advantage, opportunity, and innovation. … Second, culture is the breeding ground of cataclysmic change….  Without a working knowledge of culture, the corporation lives in a perpetual state of surprise, waiting for the next big storm to hit.” – Grant McCracken, cultural anthropologist

With McCracken’s words in mind, we were privileged to invite education futurist Frances Valintine to speak at TRA’s recent Mindframe Breakfast on the theme of culture. Frances is the founder of The MindLab by Unitec and Tech Futures Lab and has been recognised as one of the Top 50 EdTech Educators in the world.

Kiwis have long relied on their ‘number 8 wire’ mentality when it comes to ingenuity and innovation. And with global success stories like Xero, Rocket Lab and the All Blacks, we may be lulled into thinking that this approach is working. However, according to Frances these successes bathe New Zealand entrepreneurship in a light that perhaps gives it more credit than it deserves.

In reality, New Zealand is lagging behind other countries when it comes to innovation. New Zealand ranks 28th (out of 34) in the OECD when it comes to R&D spend by businesses, and last in the rankings when compared to other countries with comparable small populations and similarly advanced GDP levels (Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel, and Singapore). 

Frances suggests that one reason for this is that New Zealand’s legacy businesses, such as dairy and construction, have long relied on government contracts and subsidies. Within this safety net, their drive for innovation has suffered.  In contrast, ground-breaking New Zealand companies operate in the free market – they thrive by innovating and are often boosted by foreign investment. Xero’s biggest investors, for example, come from Silicon Valley. 

On the whole, local businesses are avoiding taking taking a long term view of what’s happening outside of New Zealand. They are failing to consider major global demographic, environmental and economic shifts that will undoubtedly affect New Zealanders in the future – adversely, if we aren’t prepared for them.

Water shortages and population growth threaten the sustainability of our top exports and industries in their current form. Agriculture, dairy, forestry and wine will soon be replaceable by plant and synthetically grown alternatives that are more sustainable and can be scaled to cope with global population growth and environmental demands. Wine, for example, can now be replicated in a lab at the cost of ten dollars.

Not only this, but New Zealand’s population is getting older while the rest of the world is getting younger. In 2011, 19% of the world was middle class; by 2030 that proportion is forecast to be 75%, and it will change the geopolitical power balance and global trade environment unrecognisably.

Though New Zealand currently has a good track record in education, this advantage will suffer if the country falls behind in education for technology and innovation, allowing the future educated middle class overseas to easily outperform and outcompete us.

When asked what New Zealand companies should do as a first practical step to transform themselves into future-focused innovators, Frances urged encouraging and nurturing risk-taking. For instance, paying people by salary and basing 30-50% of it on how much risk they take.

Frances’s talk demonstrated the importance of monitoring changes in technological, social, environmental, political and economic realms as they are the forces that shape how and where culture morphs. At TRA, we call these shifts Cultural Currents. Understanding Cultural Currents and the drivers behind them gives us a more complete, holistic picture of the context of people’s lives in multi-layered ways. We use them to provide more depth and breadth into how and why people are thinking, deciding and behaving the way they do, and to anticipate behaviours and opportunities of tomorrow – what is probable and what is possible.

The Cultural Intelligence Issue

Culture is a Humpty-Dumptyism: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

We use it to describe the arts, to describe sophisticated and well-read people, to encapsulate the unique feel of a company or group, to define ethnically diverse beliefs and values, and to gather up and classify the changes in society, technology and the environment. While the definition of culture is broad, what is clear is that it constitutes the context in which we live our lives and form our beliefs. And it influences even our most hardwired behaviour.

How is it then that culture isn’t higher on companies’ agendas? Why aren’t KPIs and corporate mantras focussed on cultural acumen, and why don’t companies measure their cultural intelligence quotient along with other metrics? The value of cultural intelligence can be seen in many of the world’s great brands and creative campaigns where well-executed cultural marketing has carved a place that is relevant and in sync with cultural movements. We have examples from New Zealand and global companies in Frame - The Cultural Intelligence Issue.

Perhaps the reason why culture doesn’t get enough attention from businesses is that culture is all around us. It’s like swimming underwater – you don’t feel wet when you are immersed in the water, it’s only when you get out that you actually experience the sensation of being wet. The problem with this is that we never step out of the cultural context that surrounds us, so it requires deep analysis to separate ourselves and examine the cultural currents that are influencing our customers and will play a role in their lives in the future.

In this issue of Frame we provide lots of food for thought (literally – a couple of the articles in this issue are on food) and maybe some cultural currents that haven’t hit your radar yet.

Paymark is the payments gateway for around 75% of all New Zealand retailers, processing over 2.4 billion transactions per year at the point of sale.

In 2016 TRA was tasked with transforming one of the largest data sets in New Zealand into a usable and human segmentation that would ultimately change the way the Paymark business operates. Given the size of the data set and the unique business environment Paymark operates in, it was important to move beyond a traditional attitudinal/needs based segmentation and understand retailers through a behavioural lens.

We crafted a truly unique and innovative approach that blended a range of techniques: advanced big data analytics, third party data enrichment, quantitative and qualitative research, with the segments then mapped back to the customer base.

A key challenge of the process was how to make transactional data human. We needed to bring a business and personal aspect to the segmentation that Paymark could work with from a product development and marketing perspective.

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Adobe is promoting its Adobe Stock image collection with a limited edition clothing collection that pays tribute to some gloriously cheesy stock photos from the past.

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Art and taste in the age of the Internet.

Getty Images' Jacqueline Bourke on the visual trends defining 2016

The world is in the midst of a revolution in the generation and distribution of imagery, and the creative photography and advertising world is still absorbing the long-term technological and cultural trends generated by it.

The changes in the visual landscape have meant an overwhelming flow of visual styles through a variety of mediums, with the resulting imagery having an unquestionable impact on advertising and becoming integral to it. 

At Getty Images the creative research team forecasts visual trends by drawing on an extensive set of resources. These include search and buying trends from the millions of visitors to Getty Images’ website each year, local insights from regional offices and expert analysis of the imagery trends in advertising and popular culture.

Using Digital Editing, Designer Places Manhattan Buildings In Desolate Landscapes