Daniel Abadie once commented that Sonia Delauney’s influence on culture was so clear that it was her textile designs that gave the Paris streets their modern look.

Like Delauney, I wanted to design the streets, from chairs to clothes to jewelry but I knew that would take a few lifetimes. However, if I could design the surfaces and work with the master producers of wallpaper, fabrics, furniture, tiles, rugs….etc, than we could, over one lifetime, have an immediate influence over how our culture looked.

I have nothing bad to say about polka dots, stripes and plaid, but there are more forms to be explored. We’ve been living with those shapes for so long. They won’t define this decade. And so Far From Timid was born.

In addition to defining our visual culture with our trademarked patterns made from original works of art, we are formalizing a surface design industry. We are the only company in the United States to sell digital licenses powered by a database much like Getty Images. We are giving manufacturers the opportunity to focus on the production, the process while we focus on the design in hopes of bringing the factories back home.

It is our goal in 2010 to expand our partnerships with the masters and continue to build our archive of superior designs. If you are a private label retailer or manufacturer and are interested in our designs, please email sales@farfromtimid.com.

As many of you know, I recently ran the NYC marathon. So it goes
without saying that I’ve been at the gym 5 days out of 7 for the past
few months. At my gym there is a sandwich shop—it’s run by a separate
company—that makes lovely sandwiches and has really great electrolyte
drinks, hard boiled eggs and fresh market apples. I spend
approximately $25 per week there, at least.

About 2 weeks ago, I went to the gym and, without purchasing anything,
asked one of the workers if I could please have a fork. She was at the
counter, and I’d never seen her before. She told me it would cost
.25¢.

With those words, I felt utterly betrayed by the universe. I am a loyal
customer. I have a relationship with this place and high-five them all
the time. My heart dropped to my already swollen feet.

“What about loyalty?” I said. “What about customer service? I come
here everyday, just ask these guys behind you.”

She apologized, then repeated her demand for .25¢. It was then that I
realized she was the boss of my regulars, who stood there resigned and
powerless to help me.

So I got the name of her boss and called their corporate office from
my cell phone. At this point, you’re probably saying, “Ok, Alona got
the runaround and was jockeyed from one department to the next, and oh
what a waste of time.” Well, you are wrong. I pressed #2 and then #3
and voila. Her boss came right to the phone.

I told him about the situation and explained that I am a regular and
was asked to pay .25¢ for a fork.

“That’s not the right protocol,” he said. Then I asked if he minded
explaining that to his subordinate, and can I put her on the phone.

She was quiet and stiff as he told her what he’d said to me.

When their conversation was done, I reached across the counter to
where the forks were hidden and said, “I’m not just taking one fork.
I’ll take twenty.”

While our agency has been out creating and developing strategic social media modules for clients, I’ve been on a personal media starvation diet for the past 30 days. The marketing benefits of social media are clear. But I wanted to know, mentally, how each person will make room for all of this information. Will our appetites grow, or will we sacrifice something culturally and socially important as we try to keep up? How will we burn off all the information we receive every day? And are all these opinions really good for us?

So for 30 days, I retired my column, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and all news including CNN, but not New York magazine or Jon Stewart—that’s more culture than news. Here’s what happened.

Days 1-5: I feel out of touch. I’ve become a born again existentialist… do I really exist if I don’t post my status updates? I’ll just have to do with whatever Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables has to offer. I am in a client meeting and conversation turns to one of Obama’s recent press conferences. The idea of valiance comes to mind, so I access the only piece of relevant information I can think of: the passage where Jean Valjean admits to the courts that he is the real Jean Valjean and lets the falsely accused go free. Whateves. I thought it was interesting. Awkward.

Days 6-10: I begin the anger phase. Bashing Facebook posters, tweeters, bloggers. Jon Stewart even begins to annoy me (sorry, I love you, Jon). I cannot stand all this information. Everything is the same to me. It is all running together—“The Real Housewives of New Jersey” and the Tiananmen Square anniversary.

Day 11: Finally, some inspiration. I see the title of New York magazine’s May 7 cover article, “In Defense of Distraction.” In the piece, Sam Anderson researches the negatives and positives of all this damn information. I know this article is a part of my journey. But I don’t want anything to poison my mind just yet. So I read the first paragraph and put it away.

Days 12-16: I pick up an old Haruki Murakami book, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and retire Victor Hugo. My brain is flexing its muscles. Literally, the muscles in my brain are flexing. I don’t care what other people are saying. I don’t care what other people are doing. I am enlightened. My thoughts are loud and clear. My focus is indestructible. I am indestructible.

Day 17: I am in a client meeting and we talk about Sotomayor. I don’t know what’s going on, so I talk about another plump girl: the girl in the pink suit and pink shoes in Murikami’s book. Whateves. I walk out onto the street. I take a photo. On every corner, in beautiful patterns, people are texting and tweeting and Facebooking. Everyone’s head is craned. In the future we will morph into neckless humans with pointy fingers.

Days 18-22: I think about Sam Anderson’s article, “In Defense of Distraction,” again. I am ready to read it in its entirety. He utilizes a con (the first 6 pages) and pro (last 2 pages) format.

As he explores the cons of distractions like web surfing, email, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and the like, Anderson quotes the economist Herbert Simon: “We’ve become mentally obese.” David Meyer, the world’s reigning expert on multi-tasking, says that distraction is “a full-blown epidemic, a cognitive plague that has potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought.” I cry. I feel this way. I love you, Herbert.

Day 23-27: Exploring the pros of distraction, Anderson writes that all this restlessness will make us prolific. That the wandering mind can lead us to great places and the truly wise mind can harness the power of distraction. I spend these few days cranking my mind open to this thought.

Day 28: I miss my Facebook. While I used to be inspired by one author or artist for months at a time, I now think about the ideal that this social renaissance is helping to promote: “Everyman is your teacher.” We are living in a time where we are all redefining ourselves, and it makes sense to have these outlets to test our ideas.

Day 29: It’s clear that we are living in amazing times. We need to change with the times lest we become obsolete. But we don’t have to lose ourselves.

Day 30: It’s the last day. As with any diet, if you learn to find a balance and cut out the obvious bad stuff (“The Real Housewives of New Jersey”) and make sure you exercise (read books), you don’t have to give it all up. After all, we need to take control of the information we ingest.

Merlin Mann says, “Where you allow your attention to go ultimately says more about you as a human being than anything you put in your mission statement. It’s an indisputable receipt for your existence.”

We are what we read.

Back To Basics

I went to the National Press Club a few weeks ago for a Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR) awards ceremony. PRNews gave awards to companies and their agencies that successfully protect their interests while protecting the interest of others.

In the morning before the awards ceremony I was finalizing my acceptance speech should I be the winner (I did not win) and began to wonder why companies get awards for being a ruling body AND being morale? It’s funny when the public sees companies and people as accountable for different things. Shakespeare and the Bible teach us ruling bodies and morality do not go together. In the aftermath of Bush, Alan Moore’s theme in his comic book Watchmen, “the watchmen need to be watched,” is so relevant. Corporations, too, “aren’t invulnerable” and need to be held accountable.

CSR is loosely defined by those companies that enforce a philosophy and practice of People/Planet/Profit, triple bottom line. Others refer to it as Stakeholder Capitalism and maintain that a corporation should balance all those that have interest in or a relationship with the corporation: customers, employees, financiers, suppliers, communities, society at large, and shareholders.

Now, 25 years after Watchmen takes place, we ‘re living in a time where it is simply unacceptable for companies or leaders to be solely focused on a single, unbifurcated notion of profit and imperialism. It does seem that CSR is suddenly as stylish as long wavy curls, but there is a long legacy of CSR before it became an actual term.
Let’s look at Cadbury, a company founded by Quakers who are pacifists. During World War I, more than 2,000 of Cadbury’s male employees joined the Armed Forces. Cadbury supported the war effort, sending warm clothing, books and chocolate to the soldiers. Cadbury supplemented the government allowances to the dependents of their workers. When the workers returned, they were able to return to work, take educational courses, and injured or ill employees were looked after in convalescent homes.

Cadbury built the idea of morale + profits into their Corporate DNA.

CSR should be indistinguishable part of the corporate structure as it was with Cadbury. And after doing a little research, some really smart people created a business structure called a BCorp. Sister of the SCorp and Corp. BCorps are companies with “Higher purpose. Higher standards of accountability, transparency, and performance. These leaders across the United States have created profitable, competitive businesses while taking care of their employees, community, and environment.”

I suppose the next step is for companies to do good because any other way is unacceptable or illegal. For now, CSR is better than nothing for those enterprises that want more than the land next to theirs CSR, and may just be a form of feel good advertising and marketing.
Learn more about becoming a BCorp.

I’ll be taking a pseudo-serious look at brands performance on a weekly basis. This is more Cindy Adams than Forrester’s, but after branding companies and people for 15 years, design and branding is my outlook and how I measure things.

While I usually opt for a local coffee shop over Starbucks, I have to give Starbucks the best-dressed brand of the week for their “Starbucks asks Are You In?” campaign featuring MC Yogi. They offer a free cup of coffee in exchange for 5 hours of documented volunteer service in your community. How cool is that? They didn’t say, buy 5 coffees and you’ll get one free. They said do 5 hours of community service and you’ll get a cup of coffee. They can’t make me say “Grand-ay,” but they can make me go, “wow,” in a good way.

Then there other things that make me go “wow,” in a bad way. It’s the Obama memorabilia. We really need to reconsider this stuff. I mean this is The Historical Moment since the beginning of women’s suffrage and there is so much dreque (left).

But there is one person who got it right: Shepard Fairy. he designed an amazing poster (right). Thank you Shepard for spotlighting your otherwise underground talent for the benefit of one of the most historic moments of our life.

Orange you going to ask Tropicana why the heck they redid their packaging? Who are they marketing to? What happened to the good old loud orange and green? Supermarket brands need to have a degree of ugly. We put this stuff IN our bodies, so information and reading is important. It’s too pretty to read. Ask Milton Glaser, he’ll tell you the same. The new packaging is quiet. It whispers. It should have perfume or lotion coming out of it, not juice. Bad idea guys. Bad idea.

Let’s not forget the CNN/Facebook partnership. Bravo both of you. Convergence in such an intelligent way. We back projected the inauguration from our laptop onto the storefront screen. It was a little hard to type and keep the screen from shifting, so maybe a wireless keypad would have been a good recommendation for this to really work.

And Time Warner Cable, you get the worst. Absolute worst brand of the week. You’ll probably be on this list for a long time. You still think it’s ok for customers to put in multiple order numbers and for no one to get back to you. And then when you call to find out status, you don’t have record of any orders. It is unacceptable. Totally. We are tired of your monopoly. TWC policies and decision trees are outdated. They need to fix this. The consumer and people, in general, are getting their **** together. “Yes we can,” also means “Oh No You Don’t” to those big companies long ripping us off. They don’t even get an image.

And finally, let’s end on good note. Epson, we love you. You never over do it. We love your new Epsonality campaign. It’s very customer focused and link builds with other communities. That means you are selling your product by supporting our hobbies. Very smart.

Until Next Week….

Alona Elkayam.

A lot of people have been emailing me some random questions and inquiries on branding and marketing strategies in this unpredictable market. I’ve recommended a pathway to a bigger, stronger brand on a smaller budget:

1. Rewrite for the new economy.
Remember this isn’t 1998. The world changed overnight and so have your customers. Marketers with budgets try gimmicks to shock people when they need to generate business in steadier markets. Not in this landscape, not in your lifetime. Subservient Chicken and Etrade’s vomiting baby may have garnered awards in my industry, but it didn’t sell product (you’ll notice Etrade’s more informative tv commercial now). It’s time to reconsider your brand. How does your brand fit into today’s landscape? Think about what you are selling and how that makes sense for your customer in today’s market. Write these points down, refine them and make it known that you are not just a company, but an entity full of humans with a conscience who will serve up solutions based on current needs.

These points are your new mission. Build support internally and externally and commit to these new messages. It’s important.

After coming back from a job interview at a notable New York, hedge fund, my friend called me to tell me there was a sign in reception on a beautiful easel that announced their new mission and their new positioning.

Remember the world and it’s people have changed overnight. Your message and your brand must stay relevant. And if you are a financial company or a car company, it’s especially important to do this.

2. Be optimistic.
Optimistic. O-P-T-M-I-S-T-I-C. Beeee Optimistic!
Everyone knows the market is down and unpredictable and that things really suck. Shut up about it. Economic tsunami? Deal with it and uplift your fellow existing and potential clients with optimism. When confidence is restored, that is a good first step to creating new economies.

3. Invest your time.
Invest time in your customers if you don’t have your budget yet: If you are restructuring your budget and your numbers are scaling back the most effective and least expensive marketing tool is customer volunteerism. Create an online community around your service. Drupal, Facebook, Blog. You are the experts, so create topics, blogs, volunteerism around your brand. This may not be the only solution, but it’s a good start until you have your budget numbers.

4. Network:
Meet people and encourage your staff to create new relationships. At a time when people are restructuring, networking is a good foundation for Q2 an Q3 business. The networking isn’t under the auspices for nailing business, but with the intent to understand how other business has changed. We aren’t performing in a vacuum.

5. Continue to innovate:
Companies are not all collectively rolling over to die. There is still an economy and business to be had. Be what business you are in. A companys’ character can be created during tough times. And you’ll not be forgotten.

I have been on my knees lately…with my ear to the pavement. Waiting. I hear Change coming and I wanted to see how close it was.

Change is here and I want to introduce it to you. We’ve been talking for about an hour, so I know it a little better now and wanted to point out a few important characteristics of Change.

First of all, the saying “giving the shirt off your back” is no longer what change is about today. No one, in these times, will give you the shirt off their back. Not even your mother. I know now that I would only give you the shirt off my back if I had a spare. The thing is, everyone knows, I always have a spare. Or two. So that means that the person you can count on, the person you should trust isn’t the one who will give you the shirt of their back (which means they only have one), but one who would give you their spare shirt (the one who has 2 or more).

I am not being pessimistic and I don’t have a bad mother (she’s the best in fact). Think more in terms of the airplane oxygen instructions which requires the Giver to have oxygen before it gives to the Taker.

We are living in this false desperate time. I say that because my grandmother was retelling her stories of the Holocaust and in every story there is a profound act of kindness from one of her friends or strangers. There are the relatives from Canada who sent my grandparents clothing and furs to sell after they got out of the refugee camps. Or how about the Chief of Police in Frankfurt in the late 50’s who so kindly educated my grandmother on how to get the hell out of Germany and into our America the Beautiful.

We should not pretend to be a people that we are not. Madoff, who had the reputation of being generous, affable and debonair, was NOT.The strangers my grandmother was telling me about were not secretly wanting to be on The Refugee Reality Show in 1945. And they weren’t waiting to see their names in the paper because of something nice they did. They were waiting to make sure that my grandparents remained alive.

If we were living in really desperate times, we’d see the people come together like that. We aren’t there yet. And we won’t go there again. We have progressed to aspire to a mindset of empirical abundance at all times. Even when there isn’t material abundance, surely there is emotional.

So what if the shirt I give you is form my closet and not off my back, is it any less profound or meaningful a gesture? Let’s accept where we are in evolution and pay attention to Change.

The recent collapse of Wall Street is the first financial crises in our Gen X/Y lifetime where every sector in every city in every country will be affected.

Alas, although I am worried about our economy; I am more worried about the impact to the American culture. People’s response to this recession has caused me more fright and doubt than the recession itself. Successful people, who had once implicitly had faith in the market and in the people around them, speak like traitors of Capitalism. Confidence must be restored. The economy’s bad Public Relations efforts or lack thereof are going to make it worse. I know first hand having spent the past 15 years as an image consultant for global companies, products and celebrities. Morale is the key to productivity. We must not roll-over and die because we are in trouble. And we ARE in trouble.

Our capitalist economy is as much about believing as it is about doing. Can you expect me to believe that Robert Moses and David Rockefeller did not have faith in our system when they built bridges and towers despite the turmoil in the market? The current mood reveals a superficiality and weakness of once respected peers and kind strangers. The economy has brought out their boogeymen and they are on the brink of ruining my mood. They were the ones who had the courtesy and awareness of opening and holding a door, saying excuse me when they coughed, holding an elevator or waiting for me to get into the cab before they continued on their way. They have all lost their grace. Money beat them over with a hammer. A few examples follow:

I recently asked a peer for an introduction to a potential client. His preamble went something like this: “I hope all is well. The economy here is quite bad, and the general mood is not good. I spoke with (name withheld to protect the guilty) in Iceland, and things are extremely bad there. He worked for one of the banks that went out of business. Hopefully things are better in Continental Europe….”

Around the same time, a long-time employee began padding her expenses, among other things telling our bookkeeper that I was now paying for everyone’s car service after 7:30p. Or how the coat check girl at a tony uptown restaurant came to our table three times at the end of our meal to remind us that we had to give her a tip too.

I was in total shock, to say the least, at each of these instances.

I thought people understood money. I thought we were all believers of the political economist Adam Smith, even if many didn’t know who he was directly. I was wrong. We will all need to commit to proselytizing the most important part of a healthy economy: Faith. We all need to do a better job at being the economic cheerleaders of our time: Go World Go!

You see, when I am involved in rebranding a valuable product or person, we have to hone in on the combination of history, relevance and value of the person or product. We need to synthesize the legacy around what the brand has delivered to our culture and what it can stand for in the future and craft optimism and loyalty. Take Macy’s, JP Morgan Chase or even Britney Spears for that matter. Are we going to abandon Britney and the truth around her true talent just because she shaved her head and doesn’t wear underwear? Just like many brands ups and downs, so, our economy too has its ups and downs.

And oops, it did it again.

Remember, capitalism is not about putting the dollar on a pedestal, it is about putting our intelligence and resources on a pedestal. Pat yourself on the back and then your neighbor and then your colleagues and do your job. And if you don’t have a job for some unfortunate reason or another, go and have a beer with your neighbor and do something good for the community for someone who’s in worse off shape than you.

From now until after the inauguration we will need to ramp up our moods. Get in the habit of having faith. And if the economy has robbed you of your faith, and if the election of an Black president has not given you hope, then I suggest you check your pulse or expatriate.

Go World Go.

About the author:

Alona Elkayam
Founder and Chief Creative Officer
321 Takeoff®
Far From Timid™

As Chief Creative Officer of 321 Takeoff, Alona sets the tone for the creative approach and the award-winning brand strategy work that 321 delivers. She draws from her diverse background and illustrious career as inspiration, converting client strategies into strong corporate identities that serve as the foundation for distinctive and consistent communications.

Her ability to convert strategic thinking into strong creative solutions and her relentless attention to detail has put her in demand by companies such as LexisNexis, Sony, The Pod Hotel, Pringles, Lawyers.com, iCrossing, and Datran Media to name a few.

Over the course of her career, Alona has worked at some of the industry’s premier advertising, design and branding firms such as Citigate Albert Frank, Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Mather, Razorfish and Grey, where she worked on significant global brand strategy assignments and major product launches for companies such as BusinessWeek, Levitra®, BotoxCosmetic®, UBS, CoverGirl, ING, MSNBC.com and Pfizer.

During her career, Alona has been recognized by some of the world’s most prestigious design organizations. She has received a Clio award as well as recognition for her work and contributions to the world of branding from Women in Advertising, Society of Illustrators, Museum of Modern Art and American Institute of Graphic Arts, among others.

Additionally, Alona is the founder of Far From Timid — a surface design company that transforms original works of art into powerful surface patterns for use in home and fashion. The collections Alona has designed are sold worldwide.

Alona is also a devoted student of kung fu, an accomplished painter and is fluent in Hebrew and French. She received her BA from American University and continued her education at School of Visual Arts.

It is my pleasure to announce the opening of my new showroom, Far From Timid. It would make Alexander Giraud very proud.

321 Takeoff, our branding company, is still going strong and as one of the leading branding firms in New York, we are poised to help retailers and hoteliers build their brands. And not just with our strategy and execution, but with designs that can help them express their style.

Far From Timid will use fine works of art, whether it be photography or dance or painting and capture small areas of the pieces to create its patterns. This technique allows for moments and nuances to be captured and isolated. The application of “repeating” these areas make the intention tangible and tactile.

Far From Timid was the bridge connecting my 2 obsessions. The aerial view with its unexpected harmony despite the lack of repetition in its form and unexpected rhythms that the view from above creates. And the pattern, complex arabesque or the simple deco geometry, and the echo that can almost be heard by the repetition.

In our Pretty Little Inch collection we used my last series of abstracts that were interpretations of topographies (aerial view). We zoomed into little different areas of the painting and then repeated them using different algorithms

We’ve got 100’s of patterns to share with you and I wanted to take time to thank all of the designers, project managers and developers for getting this out there.

Warmly,

Alona Elkayam