Bennassar´s Blog

Imagine being in a theatre waiting for the show to begin and suddenly the scenario in front of you starts to turn around itself unveiling an unexpected dimension. The music is loud and, as sound effects support what’s happening in front of you, the entire scene starts moving down, making you feel as if the main floor you’re in is a huge elevator. That’s the beginning of the “Simurg” show. A musical about the wonders of the Ottoman empire, its roots and its influence on the soul of today’s Turkish…read more

Today I downloaded a new email app for the iPhone. Geronimo. Although it’s still having some development issues, it looks really interesting. Specially because it takes advantage of the iphone accelorometer so you can really benefit from gesture to go through the normally tedious mail experience. But from the brand communication and branding prespective, what really got my attention is how the logo moves with your gestures. You can literally interact with the logo by simply tilting your phone. Notice the movement on the “chart looking bars” of the logo…read more

In 2007, the Spanish Creative Club asked me if I would do a 7 minutes tribute video for Luis Casadevall and Salvador Pedreño “c de c de honor” (no need to say what my answer was). So Manolo Valmorisco, in the heat of battle of gathering materials and organizing the event (along with Concha Wert and his team at C de C) sent me the script. And this was the result. Today I wanted to share this video with a friend but I wasn’t able to find it on YouTube….read more

Because if you do, I’m in the right track to be a brand. And depending on the level of trust, even a leader. Let me explain: About a year ago I went to Wuxi, near Shanghai, invited by the Chinese government. And 2 things stroke me hard: The first one, how obedient Chinese people is (and with my occidental point of view, I certainly related it to the many years under such an authoritative government). And the second one, how interested are the authorities are now in building brands, not…read more

“Transparency is no longer a choice. How your brand deals with it is the choice.” That’s one of many interesting quotes from “The Naked Brand: The Future of Marketing”, featuring professionals like Alex Bogusky, Saquille O’Neal, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, Uniliver’s chief marketing officer Keith Weed, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh or an ordinary housewife author of a blog with more than 1,4 million readers. A very interesting 45 min. documentary about how the information society has made corporations, and their incredible influence on the world we live in, accountable not…read more

2013/09/22. How would you like to be able to control channels with a blink of your eyes? Thanks to webcams now it’s possible, but it’s not about the old tv channels but about YouTube channels instead. In fact, it’s about YouTube videos. That’s what the new Virgin Mobile commercial offers. By allowing your webcam to interact with your eyes, every time you blink, you can see a different version of the same commercial message. In fact, it’s the same window with an average of 16 different version of the commercial…read more

A beautiful sentence that Nancy Duarte chooses to start her inspiring TED talk. More than interesting for anyone that might be trying to master its presentation skills. Or, what’s the same thing, anyone interested in communicating in a more effective way. Just to point out some key points, I would underline the following moments: One idea, one image. A classic in art direction or design in general. A presentation is a story, and therefore it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The presenter is the mentor not…read more

Funny enough, in my last 3 presentations I have talked about the things that have changed in brand communication and the ones that have not and never will: “Relations. That’s what it’s all about. In fact, that’s what it’s always been about. Although many behaviours might have changed in that new world, the hearts of the people are still the same. Because the people are still the same. There’s a new environment with new rules but where the actors remain the same.” One difference, for example, is that now we…read more

Of course, barcodes have been among us for sometime now, sticking in each and every one of all market products. But in the recent battle for including these codes in the brand communication work (which is what drives this blog), there were some good application examples for one and the other. Nevertheless, it seams none of them will do. And it was kind of predictable (if I may say so) that between augmented reality and smartphone apps someone was going to come up with interaction between a object (an ad…read more

I’ve been pointing at the wonders and possibilities of social networks like Stickybits for some time now, and presenting them, among other things, to clients like Sony or Pepe Jeans London. Now it’s the time to share a wonderful example of a brand that has used it and in a great way: Tesco, Home Plus in South Corea. It would have probably been much easier to do it with conventional barcodes, but however… congratulations.
 Que hacer mientras llega el metro Llevo tiempo apuntando las posibilidades de redes sociales como Stickybits,…read more

Aproximately 7 years ago, Bassat/Ogilvy asked me to design the worldwide television closing for Telefónica. The last 5 seconds of all the audiovisual comunication for their 8 brands (Telefónica, Telefónica CTC, Telefónica Unifon, Telefónica Data, Telefónica Moviles, Telefónica Móvil, Telefónica MoviStar y Telefónica Celular) in all the 11 countries where the spanish company was operating (España, Argentina, Brasil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Perú, México, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay y USA). During these 7 years, all the spectators of all these countries have seen it every time this telecommunication giant decided to expose…read more

Eric Bailey is the artist. Drea Cooper & Zachary Canepari the filmmakers. And WOOD RICH is the result. A video (a little too weird in my opinion) that in fact presents something about the world of communication, contents and brands deeper than what it apparently seems. In the post before, I also talked about Adidas and how recovering their “original” brand was a great move, but it seems that they’re really aware of the fact that media (tv, press, etc.) as we knew it, has disappeared (or is about to,…read more

2010/06/25. As if it was the new James Bond movie, the french group Pages Jaunes will introduce UrbanDive at the end of 2010 (yes, this year). A new urban virtual visit service that will allow to travel through the streets of a city with a 360º vision, just like in Google Street View but with “a few more interactive options”: go inside businesses, find interesting information in real time (in an augmented reality way) like network friend comments, Wikipedia articles and a whole lot of commercial information that for sure…read more

Impressive! What a great sample of how there’s nothing wrong with copying as long as you take further what you’ve picked up. It’s not about starting from the beginning every time, but about profiting of what has already been travelled to get further every time. Up there, Neruda and Sandburg must be as fascinated with Süperfad as the world is with them. Impresionante! Una perfecta muestra de porque el secreto no está en no copiar, sino en recoger el testigo donde lo encontraste y llevarlo un poquito más allá. No…read more

2010/05/17. What should come first? Why, how or when? Well, it all depends on what part of the brain do we want reach. If we’re talking about brand communication, “why” is the answer. Because, brand communication is all about feelings, trust and loyalty. And to first access that part of the brain, a brand needs to talk about its “why”. Why does that brand exist, and why should anybody care about it. As Simon Sinek brilliantly explains in this fascinating TED talk, the good news is that this is not…read more

2010/03/16. A few years ago I found this video about a kinetic sculpture created for the BMW Museum in Munich by ART+COM. 714 metal spheres suspended and beautifully sinchronized above a 6 m2 of glasse to put on stage a metaphor of the shape research in art and design. A brilliant coreography that I will take advantage of to support my theory of how multidiscipline will soon become crucial in brand communication to reach what above all it has to reach, creating emotions. Although my favorites are not as organized…read more