In the Consulate Two group we are working for (surprise, surprise) the Danish consulate in Shanghai. As some of you might know, there are two separate groups working with the danish consulate as our client.
The consulate has been contacted by a European clothing brand and asked to carry out some market research about target groups, possible locations for future events as well as coming up with possible guerrilla marketing strategies and possible sponsorships.
This was where we came in. First we were asked to carry out the research, which included going to cafés and nightclubs, then make a report around our findings, and if that turned out good, make a version 2.0, which was then going to be taken to Beijing and presented to the client. We have been working really hard, and we’ve had some long nights, but we got really good feedback on the first report, and was thereby charged with making the second one, which would be presented to the client. This presentation took place yesterday, so as of now, we’re waiting impatiently for the feedback from the client.
The consulate is an extremely busy place, and the different information given to us seem to change many times every day. This makes it rather hard to know where to go, and what to do. However, the next step is to get the feedback, hopefully tomorrow, and if it turns out to be good, next step with the consulate is to create a contract specifying more thoroughly what our assignments for the next couple of weeks will be. As things look of now, this assignment is pretty much done, so we’re hoping that they have something new, maybe even bigger for us.
The group is functioning very well internally and we work well together.
Our hopes are, that we’ll get a clear, defined assignment from our client, so that we know exactly what we’re supposed to do for the weeks to come.
But so far we’re very proud and happy about our work and what we carried out. We’re just crossing our fingers that the client thinks the same way.
- Consulate Two
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Project description: Consulate Project
(Written Monday 30th March)
Luxury, design and fashion, experience design and branding are the keywords for the Consulate project. How can we best promote Danish design and fashion to the luxury consumer of China?
The assignment given by the Federation of Danish Textile and Clothing and the Danish Consulate in Shanghai is to design an experience concept for their promotion event in China later this year. The event intends to brand and promote Danish design and fashion in China and to reach the Chinese luxury consumers in a way that will attract attention and create a lasting impression.
This is where we come in. Our assignment is to, based on research on the Chinese elite and Danish companies within the design and fashion industry, develop a concept that allows the target group to experience the Danish products. 'We' are Gorka, Jonas, Erik, Esben, Line and Maja. And we are proud to report that we have just met our first deadline last Sunday (...or Monday morning to be exact!).
With our commissioner we had agreed to incorporate prototyping into our working process towards the final concept, so that the consulate could use our material as soon as possible, but also to ensure that their need was being met. After having spent the first weeks on creating a common platform to work from, we felt capable of understanding and fulfilling the task. We researched and developed and developed and researched and came up with an original concept and a way to best communicate this first draft – all within 3,5 working days. Prototyping is fun, but of course also challenging; in our case the challenges turned our to be concerning our different views on success criteria and quality. On a more appreciative note, we were really efficient within the research phase and managed to be sharp on both language, design and content. If we may say so ourselves, we think we did a great job within the narrow time frames.
Now – after celebrating our success at a mexican restaurant on Thursday - we are just about to take the next step into developing the concept, which we hope will involve setting up a focus group, observing the users, looking into neurolinguistics, doing brand research and much much more. Original Experience Concept v. 2.0 is coming up...
Luxurious love from
The Consulate Group
(Written Monday 30th March)
Luxury, design and fashion, experience design and branding are the keywords for the Consulate project. How can we best promote Danish design and fashion to the luxury consumer of China?
The assignment given by the Federation of Danish Textile and Clothing and the Danish Consulate in Shanghai is to design an experience concept for their promotion event in China later this year. The event intends to brand and promote Danish design and fashion in China and to reach the Chinese luxury consumers in a way that will attract attention and create a lasting impression.
This is where we come in. Our assignment is to, based on research on the Chinese elite and Danish companies within the design and fashion industry, develop a concept that allows the target group to experience the Danish products. 'We' are Gorka, Jonas, Erik, Esben, Line and Maja. And we are proud to report that we have just met our first deadline last Sunday (...or Monday morning to be exact!).
With our commissioner we had agreed to incorporate prototyping into our working process towards the final concept, so that the consulate could use our material as soon as possible, but also to ensure that their need was being met. After having spent the first weeks on creating a common platform to work from, we felt capable of understanding and fulfilling the task. We researched and developed and developed and researched and came up with an original concept and a way to best communicate this first draft – all within 3,5 working days. Prototyping is fun, but of course also challenging; in our case the challenges turned our to be concerning our different views on success criteria and quality. On a more appreciative note, we were really efficient within the research phase and managed to be sharp on both language, design and content. If we may say so ourselves, we think we did a great job within the narrow time frames.
Now – after celebrating our success at a mexican restaurant on Thursday - we are just about to take the next step into developing the concept, which we hope will involve setting up a focus group, observing the users, looking into neurolinguistics, doing brand research and much much more. Original Experience Concept v. 2.0 is coming up...
Luxurious love from
The Consulate Group
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Projects
36 Kaospilots students travelled 9000 km east to spend three months in Shanghai, China. It’s a story many by now have heard. But – what do they do?
We have tried to put together a picture of what it is we’re actually doing in Shanghai.
As with everything else at the Kaospilots – it’s all about having a client, having a project, having a goal, fulfilling a need. Team 14 is working on four different projects.
In the coming days we’re going to present the work, process and thoughts of the four project groups.
It’s the 26.th of March, 2009. We’re two weeks into the project, and we have realized that there is no client, no partner and no budget.
What does this mean to a group of coming project and process leaders?
When the six of us first got together, we were motivated to work with a real Chinese company that apparently had a wish to work with us. This Chinese company is called Sohu and is China’s largest, fastest, coolest, (fill out the blanks) __est, ___est online community. One of their flagship projects is that they were the official sponsor of the Beijing Olympics. As we had learned in the assignment from the school, Sohu wanted us to facilitate workshops and courses for their users, where we would share our knowledge within creative project, process and business design. Wow! What a project - we thought.
After our initial meeting at the “bling-bling” Sohu headquarters, we understood that Sohu wasn’t really a client. Not really a partner either. And they couldn’t really support this project financially at all. What they wanted to do was to write about whatever we did on their home page.
This of course drained our group of energy and motivation. So what to do? Instead of just giving up, we focused on what had brought us together in the first place; curiosity towards creative entrepreneurs in Shanghai and willingness to do something together with this target group. Based on this, we re-formulated our project and Eleonor, being out project leader, planned out a number of phases.
We are now in the Discovery phase, where we individually or in small groups go out in Shanghai to find those creative entrepreneurs and see what they can bring us. In the next phase, we will share what we have discovered and see what project we can formulate out of that. With or without Sohu.
This is a very challenging exercise in staying in the unknown, working without knowing the next steps and being totally on your own, in relation to motivating yourself. There is no deadlines, no meetings, no frames – you have to create everything from scratch. It is tough to work under these conditions, it takes a lot of energy to pull your self up, and try to create something out of nothing. Hopefully the learning will be worth it, though hard earned.
We have tried to put together a picture of what it is we’re actually doing in Shanghai.
As with everything else at the Kaospilots – it’s all about having a client, having a project, having a goal, fulfilling a need. Team 14 is working on four different projects.
In the coming days we’re going to present the work, process and thoughts of the four project groups.
It’s the 26.th of March, 2009. We’re two weeks into the project, and we have realized that there is no client, no partner and no budget.
What does this mean to a group of coming project and process leaders?
When the six of us first got together, we were motivated to work with a real Chinese company that apparently had a wish to work with us. This Chinese company is called Sohu and is China’s largest, fastest, coolest, (fill out the blanks) __est, ___est online community. One of their flagship projects is that they were the official sponsor of the Beijing Olympics. As we had learned in the assignment from the school, Sohu wanted us to facilitate workshops and courses for their users, where we would share our knowledge within creative project, process and business design. Wow! What a project - we thought.
After our initial meeting at the “bling-bling” Sohu headquarters, we understood that Sohu wasn’t really a client. Not really a partner either. And they couldn’t really support this project financially at all. What they wanted to do was to write about whatever we did on their home page.
This of course drained our group of energy and motivation. So what to do? Instead of just giving up, we focused on what had brought us together in the first place; curiosity towards creative entrepreneurs in Shanghai and willingness to do something together with this target group. Based on this, we re-formulated our project and Eleonor, being out project leader, planned out a number of phases.
We are now in the Discovery phase, where we individually or in small groups go out in Shanghai to find those creative entrepreneurs and see what they can bring us. In the next phase, we will share what we have discovered and see what project we can formulate out of that. With or without Sohu.
This is a very challenging exercise in staying in the unknown, working without knowing the next steps and being totally on your own, in relation to motivating yourself. There is no deadlines, no meetings, no frames – you have to create everything from scratch. It is tough to work under these conditions, it takes a lot of energy to pull your self up, and try to create something out of nothing. Hopefully the learning will be worth it, though hard earned.
Articles from Shanghai
We want to bring you pieces of Shanghai, pieces of Homebase and pieces of insight.
In the following weeks we'll put out small articles, interviews and updates on our work an experiences.
Enjoy!
In the following weeks we'll put out small articles, interviews and updates on our work an experiences.
Enjoy!
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