Author Archives: Julian Stubbs

I’ve been down in Switzerland for the past two days at a client’s company meeting, where I’ve been giving a presentation on The Value of Brands. And it’s been an exciting day, as I have been waiting for the announcement regarding this years Nobel Peace Prize winner. In fact it turned out to be winners as three women were jointly awarded the prize this year. For my own company, *UP There, Everywhere, it’s especially exciting as we can now show the work we have been doing for the Nobel Peace Prize Concert company. The concert happens on the 11th December every year in Oslo and we have been asked to create a new identity for this world-wide televised event, including the design of a new website. The concert attracts stars such as Paul McCartney, Sting, Will Smith among many many others. I actually get to go to the concert so that will be pretty cool in itself. Sale Windows 7 Ultimate Sale Windows 7 Ultimate Order Windows 7 Ultimate Sale Windows 7 Ultimate Discount Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Sale Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Discount Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Discount Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus

At *UP There, Everywhere we’ve been working for several months now on a new brand strategy and identity for Airport City Stockholm. We launched it last week at a real estate event called Business Arena in Stockholm, at the Water Front Arena. Traditionally airports were seen as a gateway for the transportation of people and goods from one city, region or country to another. This definition is now giving way to a much wider concept of the airport, and the businesses and communities that surround it, as a destination in their own right. Over the past several years airport cities have been developing around the world as powerful economic commercial hubs. A number of international airport cities are already well established around the world such as Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Amsterdam’s Schiphol. Frankfurt for example already has 500 companies established at the airport complex employing some 70,000 people and is further developing their site with facilities encompassing retail, commercial offices, cargo, entertainment as well as hotel and conferencing to name a few. These modern multimodal transport hubs are paving the way for similar developments and as airport cities grow around the world, finding a focus will become increasingly important in order to establish a true competitive edge and positioning. Over several months *UP There, Everywhere conducted interviews and workshops that enabled us to develop a strategy for Airport City Stockholm that we believe fits perfectly with the regions natural strengths and the unique advantages we have to offer. A focus on sustainability. Understanding and caring for the environment as well as developing sustainable industries is a critical issue facing all nations today. Stockholm and Sweden already have an impressive record in this area and the region is one of the most knowledge intensive and innovative in the world. The vision for the future with the development of Airport City Stockholm would see the current employment base grow from approximately 20,000 jobs up to 50,000 jobs within the next ten years. The development area covers over 800 hectares of land which is owned by the three partners behind the development of Airport City Stockholm; Swedavia, Sigtuna Kommun and Arlandastad Holding. To learn more about Airport City Stockholm and see the new website we developed for the project visit: www.airportcitystockholm.com Order Windows 7 Ultimate Discount Discount Cheap Windows 7 Ultimate Cheap Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Cheap Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Sale Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus

Over the past two or three weeks you’ll have noticed, unless you’ve been walking around with your head in the clouds, that the technology world has had the equivalent of some pretty huge seismic events. The acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google. HP throwing in the towel in the personal computing business. The knowledge that Apple has more available cash than the US Government and could solve the Euro debt crisis on its own. All this followed by the resignation of Steve Jobs. Technology is a great enabler and I’m a huge fan. Possible addicted. My wife once challenged me to go twenty four hours without all of today’s modern ‘toys’. A twenty hour hour non-technology day. We even established a Facebook page (there’s contradiction to begin with) dedicated to the topic. Just twenty four hours with zero technology. A day of darkness. No iPod, iPhone, iPad. Well, iFailed. I cracked after just eighteen hours, which considering I was sleeping for six of those eighteen hours is pretty pathetic. Anyway this brings me all nicely to the subject of this piece. The cloud. Several years ago we started hearing this term and now it seems ubiquitous to our lives. It was this thought that launched *UP There, Everywhere less than nine months ago. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in, run and own a number of advertising and branding companies over the past twenty years and the thought struck me about a year ago that, like the events in the technology business this past two weeks, seismic events were happening in my own business. Applications such as Facetime, iChat, skype, Base Camp, Drop Box, Sprend along with FTP sites enabled by broadband width gave us the capability to work in a completely different and much more productive way than ever before. I was using all these tools and working internationally every day of the week with distributed teams around the world. That was the inspiration for UP*. *UP There, Everywhere. The Global Cloud Based Advertising Agency. The world has changed. Non-technology day page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nontechnologyday Sale Windows 7 Ultimate Buy Windows 7 Ultimate Buy Windows 7 Ultimate Cheap Windows 7 Ultimate Buy Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Sale Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus

Following on from my last blog approach of ‘Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal ‘ this month I happily embezzle a few words from a person I have the great pleasure of knowing well – John Simmons. John is an inspiring creative business writer, who was one of the founders of the Dark Angels writers courses. His contention, rightly, is that business writing is far too often dehumanised and lacking any emotional content. Businesses struggle to find their own voice. This is something we encounter at UP* all too often with corporations. It’s as if they feel threatened by actually saying something in a unique way that could actually make them stand out. So they resort to writing in a way that is similar, if not identical, to the way their competitors write. Safety in numbers I guess. Anyway, some words from John below. ‘Banish any thought that you are writing for a business – either that you are writing on behalf of a business or writing to be read by a business. Ban the phrase ‘business to business’ writing along with that thought. I’m making a simple point: a business does not write to another business. A person writes to another person. Don’t ever think that you’re writing for an amorphous mass, a faceless organisation made up of groups. A business is made up of individuals – you are an individual too. Reach out through your words, make a human connection.’ Recommended reading is John’s book ’26 ways of looking at a blackberry’. More on John at www.26fruits.co.uk/ Discount Sale Windows 7 Ultimate Order Windows 7 Ultimate Discount Discount Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Sale Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Order Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus

Good Artists Borrow, Great Artists Steal. The great Steve Jobs himself has attributed that quote to Pablo Picasso, and I’m happily stealing this blog entry from fellow Dark Angel, friend and all round brilliant writer Elen Lewis. Elen and I were both on a Dark Angels Writers Master Class at Merton College Oxford earlier this year and I’ve happily lifted one of her posts for this blog. By Elen Lewis In the first of a regular series on better business writing, some thoughts on exclamation marks. Unless you live in Westward Ho! or Saint-Louis-du-Ha!Ha! in Quebec, use them sparingly. In Chekhov’s short story The Exclamation Mark, a civil servant trying to get to grips with the rules of punctuation develops a paranoid fantasy, in which everyday objects transform themselves into malevolent exclamation marks. I’m with F Scott Fitzgerald who wrote, “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes.” Elmore Leonard wrote of exclamation marks: “You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.” An exclamation mark is like shouting or whooping. It’s like screaming, ‘I REALLY MEAN THIS’, after you’ve spoken. And in business writing exclamation marks are not to be encouraged, aside from special occasions. Too many emails use exclamation marks, and they’re especially irritating when used in groups of two or three. Admittedly, email has seen exclamation marks make something of a comeback. Before the 1970s, typewriters did not have anything akin to an exclamation mark on the keyboard, which may have been another reason for their rarity. It was a lot of effort to type a full stop, then back space, push the shift key and type an apostrophe. So, when to use exclamation marks? Use them sparingly and then they will have the impact you need. They should be used to demonstrate surprise, anger or joy. That’s all. And, if you’re not sure, use a full stop instead. So is ‘Thanks!!!’ more grateful than thanks? I don’t think so. Buy Windows 7 Ultimate Buy Windows 7 Ultimate Buy Windows 7 Ultimate Buy Windows 7 Ultimate Order Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Order Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection Cheap Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus