Refused to pay $7000
for seaplane rescue

Our latest list of inane musings from the Brainstorm office white board:

Top 20 Things That May Have Killed Ed in the Boundary Waters

1. Minnesotan’s unfailing politeness
2. The guys from Deliverance
3. Massive oil spill
4. Refused to pay $7000 for seaplane rescue
5. Minnesota wading coyotes
6. A run-in with Locke (smoke monster)
7. Inability to update his Twitter stream
8. Eaten by a Northern Pike
9. Not knowing what’s going on at Brainstorm
10. Ran over by a deer
11. Elk
12. Bear
13. Moose
14. Wild dawgs
15. Lyme disease
16. A Flash sideways
17. Malaria
18. Snake bite
19. He’s not dead, just lost
20. Unfiltered water
21. Starvation

See the entire white board

United, one of three identities (see below) developed by Brainstorm for Abraham’s Oasis

“We’ve developed brand identities for many Fortune 100 companies, but this had immediate brand impact—potent and direct.”

- Jenni Roberts Associate Creative Director, Brainstorm

The Oasis

In a tiny village in the arid and often perilous region of Ethiopia is a refuge called Grace Village, which was featured on NOVA’s A Walk to Beautiful. It is one of several initiatives of Abraham’s Oasis, an organization focused on farming, health and childcare projects in Ethiopia.

At Grace Village, dispossessed women—women labeled social pariahs—find significance in raising abandoned or forgotten refugee children. It’s a symbiotic relationship that offers the children a nurturing and sustaining resource sorely lacking in their lives.

Karin van den Bosch, the driving force behind the village, is emphatic that these are not outcasts and this is no forgotten outpost; it is an Oasis. She doesn’t intend for the women and children who live there to simply survive; she wants them to thrive. But ensuring that happens is a challenge.

“The uniforms and identities Brainstorm provided help the youth ‘belong to a group,’ to be able to play a sport and forget about their problems for a while, giving these children hope and a way to turn their frustration and pain into joy.”

- Karin van den Bosch Abraham’s Oasis

A Hedge Against Uncertainty

Another childcare project of Abraham’s Oasis is a refugee camp, where they are protecting, clothing, feeding and educating nearly 700 minors who fled Eritrea without relatives. With 1,500 more on the way in the coming months, their budget is stretched thin despite funding from UN’s UNHCR agency.

Soccer, Cows and Schoolhouses

During a speaking engagement in the US, van den Bosch was asked whether the children of Grace Village might be rescued by adoption. She replied, “We do not export Ethiopia’s most valuable resource.”

When asked what Grace Village needed most, her reply was “Prayer.” Eventually she was cajoled into disclosing more tangible needs and their relative costs.

“The milk of a single cow currently meets the village’s needs, but two or three more cows would allow us to meet the ongoing operational costs of our schoolhouse facility,” she said. “That and uniforms for three village soccer teams at our refugee camp: Athletic, United and Oasis.”

Athletic. United. Oasis. Brainstorm’s identity designs for the new faces of Abraham’s Oasis soccer teams.

If a Thing’s Worth Doing

Brainstorm wanted to get involved. Our experience in sports branding and connections to soccer made designing logos and providing the teams’ soccer uniforms seem like the perfect first step.

“We’ve developed brand identities for many Fortune 100 companies, but this had immediate brand impact—potent and direct,” said Jenni Roberts, Associate Creative Director at Brainstorm. “We felt like the Abraham’s Oasis refugee soccer teams deserved identities of the same caliber as our corporate clients. Brand identities either add to, or detract from, any organization’s brand equity value. Large or small, we want to do it right.”

A Measured Significance

Playing before an audience of villagers, goats and milking cows, the Abraham’s Oasis soccer teams measure their brand’s significance by the confident smiles of their players. How do you measure your brand’s significance?

For more information or contributions visit the Abraham’s Oasis contact page.

“Let’s get small.” -Steve Martin

Get Smart, Get Small

While worldwide mobile phone sales slowed in early 2009, media-rich smart phone sales are on the rise both globally and in the United States.

In ever-increasing numbers, across a wide spectrum of demographics, people are plying the web primarily on mobile devices. If your site and digital strategies are not mobile capable and/or optimized to load properly - your brand, for many, may not exist.

“Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units [in Q2 2009], a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year.” - Gartner

Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 269.1 million units in the Q1 of 2009 - an 8.6 per cent decrease from Q1 2008. However, according to Gartner, Inc., “Smartphone sales surpassed 40 million units [in Q2 2009], a 27 per cent increase from the same period last year.”

In three days Apple sold over a million iPhone 3G S smartphones and 6 million people downloaded the new iPhone OS 3.0 update after it released.

Add sales of the iTouch and other portable phone-less devices to these statistics and you have a significant emerging market for your brand messaging.

2008 Smart Phone Sales (US)†

† RCRWireless | .think Nov 2009

A Medium in Motion

Many early adopters are opting to invest in mobile applications first - desktop applications second. In fact iPhone Facebook application interfaces have been said to navigate better than Facebook’s own standard web version.

And mobile-based interactive media delivery is here to stay. Flash Lite, Adobe’s mobile-ready Flash player, is already deployed on over a billion mobile devices - with plug-in versions licensed to many popular mobile browsers and an Apple iPhone version rumored in the works.

Just this past week, at the Adobe MAX 2009 conference, Adobe demoed CS5–the next version of it’s widely popular creative suite of applications. Flash CS5 will soon offer customers the ability to export Flash-developed content as native iPhone applications to be distributed through the iTunes app store. Just one more reason why any excuse to avoid mobilizing your brand just won’t fly.

Small Interfaces, Big Variations

Whether developing a mobile app or formatting your current site for mobile delivery it’s important to account for a wide range of mobile screen dimensions to ensure proper readability.

Additionally browsers have greatly varying abilities. Modern smartphones like the iPhone and phones running Google Android have fully functional browsers - other smartphones, do not. As with any digital development testing is crucial. Online emulators can be helpful in assuring your media is suited for delivery vehicles - your audiences’ preferred mobile devices.

Mobile Watering Holes, Captive Audiences

If your customer, constituent, or product base is built heavily on affinity groups, or community, developing a smartphone application can prove particularly beneficial in terms of engagement and retention.

Developing a branded smartphone-ready application or tool, such as an Phone app, can help promote your brand messaging via promotion platforms such as AdMob (mobile ad medium), AdWhirl (mobile ad aggregator) and Mdotm (iPhone app promotion), help facilitate a mobile extension of your brand, messaging and campaigns - often to a new mobile-inclined user base.

Get a Move On

The confluence of exploding smartphone use, video, music and text sharing popularity, and the proliferation of every imaginable mobile game, tool and app means your audience can encounter your brand messaging or purchase your wares just about anywhere.

Assuming you are there to greet them.

Contact Brainstorm for more information on taking your brand mobile.

Image: Miss Karen

“Because we think harder.”

My daughter and her friend Fouzan dropped in for a short-lived fall break from college last weekend. Fouzan was raised overseas and therefore largely unfamiliar with American holiday traditions, so we decided to visit a pumpkin patch and introduce him to pumpkin carving.

A Side Trip

On the way back from the pumpkin farm my daughter suggested we drop by Brainstorm and give Fouzan a quick tour of our offices.

Fouzan was immediately taken by Brainstorm’s logo design - fascinated by the simple elements and concepts it symbolized: A power outlet, a thought or dialog bubble, a head, a user interface, a monitor or television, a brain, a spark, an idea… a brainstorm. He remarked about it several times, seeing the tie-in to what Brainstorm does as well as the potential brand and service talking points the mark might inspire.

“Because we think harder,” he mouthed, noting our tagline.

Seeing Symbolism in Tradition

Afterward we returned home and retired to my kitchen to butcher the pumpkins. Almost at once everyone became engrossed with their respective pumpkins - particularly Fouzan.

Fouzan’s pumpkin carving and the Brainstorm icon

A gEEk’s Carving

At last Fouzan unveiled his carving. He smiled broadly as he turned his pumpkin toward me. And there it was, an interpretive work - the Brainstorm icon. “Not bad for an electrical engineer,” I said. “There are double “EE’s” in gEEk for a reason - and that’s a gEEk carving,” I joked, impressed.

He had planned to take his creation back to college then offered it to me instead, encouraging me to place it outside prominently on Halloween night where it would get more brand exposure than the stoop at his college abode.

Engineer? I think Fouzan may have a nose for business and a natural brand agent sensibility.

Hollywood comes to Indianapolis

The annual Heartland Film Festival kicks off a 10-day run in Indianapolis today. This year’s festival features a record 87 films from around the world.

Heartland Truly Moving Pictures
is a non-profit organization that seeks
to recognize and honor filmmakers
whose work explores the human journey
by expressing hope and emphasizing
the best in human spirit.

The Festival will award cash prizes totaling $200,000 to winning dramatic, documentary, short, and student films at the Crystal Heart Awards ceremony on Saturday, October 17th. Audiences rate movies and vote for their favorites throughout the Festival and Audience Choice Awards are presented at the end of the Festival.

The Heartland Film Festival awards ceremony

“We’re excited about the number of opportunities film lovers have to experience the Festival this year,” said Jeff Sparks, Heartland Truly Moving Pictures President and CEO. “If someone has never attended the Festival before, this is definitely the year to give it a try.”

Over the past year, Brainstorm partnered with Heartland Truly Moving Pictures on the architecture, design and development of their Truly Moving Pictures website and we’re proud to be a 2009 Premier Level sponsor of the Festival.