You can’t pick up a marketing article without getting that feeling that the big ad agencies are just barely keeping up. That “blog-it-out” guy on the DirectTV ad is hilarious satire, until it hits you that they’d rather talk about themselves (even if it’s about “not getting it”) than listen to their market. We keep hearing the moan that advertising as we knew it is dead, that pumping a product has to make way for listening to consumers and being a part of their tribe. Make your product a brand in the constellation of choices that consumers use in constructing their identity. “Heck”, they say, “now it’s all ‘brand is so last year’”. Don’t create a brand, create a movement. Don’t piggy-back on a movement, be a movement.

Whatever the marketing cris de coeur is these days, one thing is certain: it still is – and always will be – about conspicuous consumption. The thing they need to tune into is that while people may still create their identity from consumer choices like Apple, Starbucks, Virgin and the rest, it’s no longer the products, and the brands they embody, that we are using as a badge to position ourselves; but positions and ideas themselves. We’re becoming our own cultural custodians and we’re becoming rather encyclopedic at it too.

…continue reading

Welcome to Current Issue, the blog from the folks at Stewart and Weill Design, and thanks for dropping by. In our small corner of our web tube here we are reporting on our two favourite topics: design and the city, in particular our city, Toronto, and even more particularly the west-side neighbourhood known by many monikers as West Queen West, Liberty Village, Parkdale, and the Art and Design District. Since we live and work here (yeah yeah, condo -tick, design studio -tick), we see so many changes and developments to a neighbourhood that seems at some times on the brink of greatness and other times, the brink of destruction. Gentrification in these hyper style-y, hyper consumerist times, isn’t easy for designers like us: we want to be enriched by the environment we live in, but can’t help but see how our profession is used to spin and sell it’s best parts off to the  highest bidder (who then sell it off to the lowest common denominator - !?). So basically we want to wade through it all, enjoy what’s out there, and keep it in check. Hope you join us for the trek, so please comment often, and stay tuned for upcoming interactive features.