The trouble with PCs is that they were never particularly personal. You didn’t touch them. Your physical interaction was with a keyboard based on antiquated manual typewriter, or a mouse clogged up with desk lint . They were something you associated with work and offices, indeed many home offices we set up in spare bedrooms and various nooks and crannies to house them. The first wave of consumer personal computing was about replicating work at home, the second wave will be about replicating home at work. The BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] movement will replace WFH [working from home] by making work more like home.

Tablets allow a more intimate relationship. Laptops mainly just heated up your lap. On the sofa, in the kitchen, in your hand, just touch me and I’m ready.
Gesture based interfaces are being developed that move beyond touch, pinch and swipe into the territory occupied by gaming interfaces like Kinect.

But the tablet concept hasn’t quite finished evolving yet. Screen sizes growing and shrinking and some phablets, phone tablet hybrids, like the Galaxy Note 2 are beginning to nibble around the edges. Mobile phones have been on a size roller coaster from Wall Street to Zoolander and back. Even Apple, who tried to halt the demand for larger phones, eventually bowed to industry pressure and grew iPhone. Furthermore Apple has changed their tune on tablets too. They insisted that the original iPad was ‘just right’ but recently adjusted their manufacturing schedules to make more minis than full sized iPads.

So phones are becoming as big as tablets and tablets are shrinking to the size of phones, someone must be getting squeezed. And with Google Glass now a reality and strong rumours of an Apple watch, we might just be seeing the end of the beginning of the smart phone. Personally I think the smart phone has always been compromised, with the demands of screen real estate conflicting with their usefulness as actual phones and powerful processors reducing battery life to hours rather than days.

In the not too distant future I see people taking pictures, making calls and sending messages with some kind of wearable device, watch or glasses. Then when they want to play angry birds, or apply artistic filters to their photographs, or buy stuff they’ll whip their 7” mini tablet. Making phone calls with a brick will be strictly for Gordon Gekko.

Glossy, expensively printed, brochure filled with pages of boring numbers. (Graphic Designer)

Because it is a legal requirement, the company annual report has in the past been a nice source of regular income ford companies. All the creativity and imagery is put on the cover and introductory pages, and then the numbers get arranged as neatly as possible to fill up the rest of the pages. But graphic design should aim to make information legible and understandable, not just put a gloss varnish on the cover.

Forward thinking organizations have always taken the opportunity of using their annual report as a PR vehicle for all their activity both commercial, cultural and social. Now some of these organizations have started to go one step further and produce their annual reports as iPad apps. This can be done very simply, by saving the print artwork as an interactive pdf. It’s a fairly straightforward process to add hyperlinks to the content page.

However, this is missing a trick. The on screen format allows for a much richer media experience with video and interactivity. Those columns of numbers can be brought to life and made to speak. You could add the kind of commentary that a charismatic CEO can deliver to a shareholder meeting or a press launch. Same story, except this time it is universally available. Most of this information is still available on the web, on the ubiquitous corporate .com. But the app experience richer, more focused and easier to access. With the slow but inevitable demise of Flash this is increasingly true. Forward-looking companies are starting with the app experience and then repurposing content for the web.

The other function that these apps can perform is delivering an engaging sustainability report. While not quite a legal obligation yet, information about the way in which companies behave in the ecological sphere is becoming a must have, with ethical investors exerting more pressure, and customers wanting to know how brands behave in every aspect. Like annual reports it’s another case of taking an intimidating array of facts and figures and demonstrating what they mean to individuals and the world they live in.

The iPad has been creeping into the boardrooms of organizations across all sectors as part of a relaxation of IT policy and the BYOD (Bring your Own Device) trend. This is leading more people to acknowledge that business is personal after all; it involves making decisions based on human interaction. These aren’t the same good old boy golf clubhouse style encounters that have held commerce trapped in a time warp in the past. It’s about inspiration, and new ideas. It’s no accident that the some of world’s richest companies, Apple, Google, Facebook put design at their core.

The annual report and sustainability report are often the only major publication that a company produces. Rather than seeing it as a necessary regulatory chore, it should be an opportunity for an organization to show it’s true colours and reveal a personal side to their machine. If you don’t tell your brand story someone else will, and they won’t necessarily get it right.

“Mobile World Congress Barcelona always takes companies by surprise” comments Paul Vinogradoff, Managing Director at Pajama, “in December it feels so far off, but come January it’s panic stations. At Pajama we realise that getting client buy in to ideas is key to keeping the process on track and we have a dedicated 3D team who can produce realistic renderings of all stand designs to make sure everybody is happy at every stage. It also allows us to try more ambitious concepts with confidence.”

I have been waiting for my Pebble e-paper watch for iOS and Android for nearly a year now. “Pebble is the first watch built for the 21st century. It’s infinitely customizable … Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smart phones … we strove to create a minimalist yet fashionable product that seamlessly blends into everyday life.” So went the pitch on Kickstarter. I was hooked.

I got in early and in April 2012 and I paid $125 so I could choose my colour. I wouldn’t want my minimalist yet fashionable product to blend in too seamlessly.

I wasn’t worried that the delivery date was pushed back, from September to October and then from October until the following January. January has come and gone along with the year of the year of the dragon. Still no Pebble.

But I’m not worried. I want my pebble to be perfect in every way. I felt I hadn’t just bought a new gadget but I had invested in the future of a new technology. Wearable computing devices would sweep away the Apple Google duopoly over boring old smart phones. This was my ticket to the future.

In the heat of the moment I choose the orange, but now, I am a bit worried about orange. It might be a bit garish. But it would advertise my creativity alongside my obvious tech cred. I was in early after all how cool was that?

But now there’s a dark cloud on my sunny optimism. Google glass. We all thought it was a joke when they announced it with a spectacular live skydiving stunt in June last year. An amusing bit of sci-fi from a company with more than enough money to book flights to outer space or pitch fantasy products way into the future. But they’ve only gone and made it real already.

I’m still waiting for my Pebble. When I get it, Google glasses wearers will be able to read the augmented reality caption hovering above my wrist: “after a record breaking Kickstarter pitch this product has become an amusing footnote in the wearable technology revolution. They we produced in large numbers so resale value is low. Except the orange, which is extremely collectable”

In my dreams.

Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are desperate to sell you something that, by definition, you can’t put in a box. Personal data storage on the internet or in the cloud. There are two types of name. Wafty, lighter than air clouds, and dynamic, vroom, vroom drives. Clouds are scifi futuristic teleportation devices, while drives are the data equivalent of horseless carriages. All these companies give you a bit of free space to start you off. Currently I have small holdings on Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud, Google Drive, and Microsoft Sky Drive as well as ZipCloud, JustCloud, Mozy, MyPC Backup, BackupGenie, Sugarsync, Box and last but not least, Dropbox. It adds up to about 50Gb altogether.

But my stuff is precious and I need to trust these people, so what are they like, based on their previous products and behaviour? What are their true brand colours?

The cupboard under my stairs is full of precious stuff. The more I stuff in, the harder it is to get stuff out. Amazon feeds my addiction to stuff. They’ve optimised their e-commerce experience to the n^th degree and the cupboard is now full. But now Amazon will rent me space so they don’t even have to deliver my stuff. If I’m looking for a book I read years ago, it’s easier to buy another one from Amazon than find the original. Amazon Cloud Drive … and You’re Done”

On the Apple cloud, everything is bright and white and minimal. Apple want me to live in a perfect world, a heaven on earth, a world where everything is beautiful because it’s been designed by Sir Jony Ive. Of course I’ll need to buy new Apple stuff every year or I’ll fall off this cloud. But I won’t mind because Apple stuff is so pretty.

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. What happens on Google stays on Google. It stays there forever. Google never forgets. They remember where I live, they read my mail, they remember who I fancied at school, what I eat, my darkest fantasies, but they don’t judge. So long as they get to watch and they get all the details. They will look after this information because it is precious. They wouldn’t think of selling to anyone except the highest bidder, as I said before, they don’t judge.

I’d better mention Microsoft Sky Drive. Remember, they used to be rich, and popular. Now they are less rich and less popular. Back in the day, before last April to be precise, they offered an amazing 25 Gb of free space but now they only dangle it as a loyalty reward for the friends they used to have from the good old days. I wasn’t one of them.

When I moved house there were many, many boxes, but one box had the stuff I really needed in it. That box I kept with me, box zero. Some boxes never reached their destination or never even got opened when they did. But I’m fine because I’ve got a box zero. Box zero is scruffy, dented, torn and repaired with tape, like an old friend. This is how I feel about Dropbox.

I could rent a terabyte for £10 a month to store my music, video, and photographs. But all I really need is a couple of hard discs kept in two different places, they’re only £50 each on Amazon. Everything else is in box zero.

Immediate plans include campaigns for autumn and Christmas. At Doro’s recent annual sales conference the agency received a strong endorsement from everyone including CEO Jérôme Arnaud . The agency will also provide strategic brand support for Doro’s broadening offer which now includes telecare, software, and cloud-based services.

Pajama founder and Managing Director, Paul Vinogradoff, said: “We are delighted to have won the Doro account and look forward to supporting them in their drive towards new offers and markets as well as with their core business.” Keshen Teo, creative director and partner, added: “Doro is a company that that has always shown great insight and imagination. We’ve really enjoyed getting to know them and the rapport we’ve developed is extremely positive.”

Founded in 2005, Pajama Consulting operates from a funky office in London’s Shoreditch district, close to the financial centre. Clients include Telenor Group in Norway, E-ON in Germany, GE in the US, MTS in Russia and Wacom in Japan. The partners began their careers in branding and communications at Wolff Olins and Futurebrand.

View Press Release (PDF)

In fact it sounds like something rammed through at committee, rather as London’s Mayor tells us the bikes themselves must be rammed into their docking stations for the system to register their return. The moral is clear: if you label too generically, the people will name it, and it may not be something you like.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. A great company, with a great animating vision at its heart, is very likely to find itself doing more than one thing and there’s no law to say that it can’t do them very well indeed. Sony’s massive consumer offer does not make the brand less respected in professional video and photography, for example.

Yet somehow the Sony brand does not shine as brightly as it once did. I believe the reason is precisely that its products are over-branded, existing in a parasitic relationship to the corporate name. Bravia, Vaio, Cybershot, Walkman, Playstation…the energy and resource that goes into fashioning these champion product brands is partly gained at the expense of the parent. There is no doubt that ‘Sony’ adds lustre to all of these. It’s impossible, in fact, to imagine Bravia or Vaio without Sony in front. This may be less so for Playstation.

The issue seems to be one of, for want of a better word, philosophy. As a group essentially unified around two poles, technology and entertainment, frequently responsible for launching new product categories as well as products per se, Sony may often question the role of the group brand in motivating buyers in different product segments. Depending on the primary buying group, the Sony brand may enjoy more or less perceived esteem and relevance. Where these are relatively low, as with new category products such as Playstation, there must be a temptation to develop a strong brand to command a share of mind and wallet. Unfortunately the stronger this brand becomes, the more it saps the energy of the group brand, making it increasingly a formal ‘umbrella’ rather than itself a motivating and exciting presence in the product’s allure.

Groups like Unilever or P&G whose brand portfolios are crowded with strongly contrasted products and product types, linked only by high level associations and competencies, have a reason to maintain brand equity where it already exists – ie, in the product brands they own. The relative ‘quietness’ of the corporate presence is sensible, given the concentration of expertise within these groups around the individual brands within the portfolio. There is no automatic synergy between these products, either – a deodorant and a breakfast food may be bought in the same supermarket but the fact that one group is responsible for making them is of very little consequence to consumers. Sony products, by contrast, often can be used in combination: video from a camcorder can be played on a TV screen or uploaded to a computer hard drive, for example. Unfortunately, with Sony, one gets the impression that the product divisions practice a kind of brand tribalism, dedicating themselves to the totem of Bravia, Vaio or Playstation and only incidentally acknowledging the presence of the ‘parent’ despite being a wholly owned and legitimate offspring of the group.

In terms of consumer perception Sony has lately begun trying to establish an explicit positioning that unites all its many products and activities. The formula ‘make • believe’ seems to aim at conveying the relevance to consumers of Sony’s technology + entertainment expertise in a would-be inspirationally abstract (some might say poetic) phrase. I hate to say it but this strikes my ear as dangerously close to trivialising Sony. ‘Make believe’ after all, is a pre-existing concept in English, the resonances of which include insufficiency, sketchiness, provisionality, transience, immaturity and unreality. Writing it slightly differently, with a punctuating dot separating the two terms cannot entirely cancel all these negative resonances, at least for native English speakers. To be honest, although less economical, ‘making is believing’ would be a more powerful way of encapsulating this message, playing off the commonplace idea ‘seeing is believing’ in a way that’s surprising and fresh. ‘Making is believing’ also implies, more strongly yet less aggressively, that Sony products are tools that enable consumers to be creative, projecting a relationship with customers that celebrates their creative drive and positions Sony as a partner to the realisation of their dreams.

But the main criticism of ‘make•believe’ must be that it answers the wrong question. Sony’s difficulty is not that consumers can’t understand what their products have in common. Despite their variety, Sony’s product portfolio is far from incoherent or chaotic. What could be problematic, in terms of consumer awareness and loyalty, is the tension between the power and ambition of the individual product sub-brands and the Sony group brand – an institutional and cultural issue within the group.

The challenge may be to rethink these relationships and make the products support rather than compete with the group brand. This may look like a brand architecture issue, but in fact it goes to the heart of a key strategic decision about the commercial productivity of competing approaches to managing the portfolio.  At stake here are a common vision and internal cohesion, a cultural as much as a technical marketing matter.

I remember the days when Sony itself was the focus of excitement, rather than its product lines. I believe, too, that those days could return, and that the company’s fortunes would only improve if they did. But it is a major task for any brand to motivate a workforce of almost 170,00 people worldwide, most of whom are primarily concerned with making only with one product. All the more reason why the energy and resource that fuel Sony’s internal, as much as external, branding should not be diluted by brands themselves so powerful that the Sony connection appears secondary and insignificant. The meaning of Sony is getting lost, not because the group makes many different things, but because some of its products have become such strong brands in their own right. Is this, to borrow a concept from economics, the ‘paradox of heft?’