In class today, Stephen Bennett from Juniper Park was nice enough to come in to Sheridan and share with us his experience in the industry. Stephen Bennett is currently the creative director at Juniper Park. He loves everything that is digital as well. He started out as a traditional designer like most of us, who worked with brand identity, print design, and traditional advertising. He realized that there was a big potential space to grow with the Internet and digital mediums, which caused him to move onwards to working with digital design.
Juniper Park itself is a company that is a little over 3 years old. It has over 75 employees and their major clients include, Fritos Lays, Pepsico, Quaker, Mrs Vickies, Sun Chips, Lays and Virgin Mobile. Juniper Park is a company who uses the vendor model. They are a company who focuses on the creative side of a design, coming up with ideas, and then outsourcing their production work to other companies. There is very minimal production work that is created at Juniper Park. They understand that it is no longer just about advertising for client, but it is about designing solutions for clients.
He also taught us what pure play and Integrated companies meant in the industry.
Pure play – Companies that work with pure digital media for their designs. Henderson BAS, Blue Zone, Ninedots, Mod7, Blast Radius are all examples of pure play companies.
Integrated – The traditional agencies that work with every medium of design. McLaren McCann, Grip Limited, and Juniper Park are all examples of integrated companies.
Stephen showed us a model of the three primary thinking that comes into play when it comes solving design problems. He says that it is important that these three elements integrate together when it comes to thinking about design solutions.
IF YOU WAKE UP TOMORROW AND THEY WERE GONE, WOULD YOU CARE?
It’s not likely we’ll care if a certain product is gone from our lives. This is because the brand was not connected to us. But a good company will have a brand that is connected to our lives and if it’s gone from us, we might care. This was a good question that was brought up during the presentation. Stephen taught us that it’s not always the products that make up the brand, it’s rather the idea you create that makes the brand. Company sells products and the brand sells the idea. Stephen says that it is important that we can create stories that can be shared to people and it is important to come up with ideas that can be talked about. The brand is very important and it matters a lot to companies. And this is what Juniper Park does, establishing emotions to a company’s brand.
A great example for a well-established brand: Apple
Apple saw the idea that everyone wants to be creative in a way, but they can’t because they lack the tools to do so. Therefore, Apple came out with the solution that their products would be the easy accessible tools for these people to be creative in their lives. Apple provided us with a creative lifestyle.
When Juniper Park worked on Quaker, they established the fact that mornings are the time of the day where great things happen. With that idea, they came up with the concept that amazing mornings lead to amazing days. They then got Bob Harper to become the Quaker coach, who was young and attractive, to coach their targets to how they can create this amazing morning and also to build the Quaker brand in a different perspective. Another brand they worked on was Sunchips. Sunchips was always a brand that was healthy and ecofriendly. It was a significantly different compared to other chip brands. They built around that idea because they knew everyone wanted to better their lives easily. Being said that, they placed Sunchip in a position to being the “small thing” we have in our lives that can better it and better the world without having to give up much.
Some advice Stephen gave us to remember when we step into the industry:
It’s not about whom you know, but who knows you – we have to get out there and meet these people; bombard them with emails (if we have to). It is the only way these creative people will remember you and find you right away when they are looking for a new creative.
Digital is in a healthy place right now. It’s expanding. – The digital world right now is expanding; there is plenty of room to grow. It’s not just about the Internet and websites. There are all forms of digital media that is growing. We should always be up to date about it.
Make friends – It’s always the best way to stay connected to the industry. Goes back to making sure they know who you are.
Be curious – Expand on your tools. Find out what’s going on. You have to be curious in order to be innovative.
Take your time – Don’t expect to be a creative director over night. Everything takes time to grow. You must start from the bottom to get to the top.
Execution is everything – a great idea will always be useless if you cannot execute it perfectly. Small mistakes add up.
What’s your story? Always take into consideration with what story you want to tell people in this industry. You are your own verbal brand.
Stephen is a guy who loves the ipad. He thinks it’s a great idea to approach new digital technology. He feels that it’s product that stands strong between an iphone and a macbook. He isn’t much of a fan for facebook, but because he knows it’s related to a lot of digital innovations, it’s inevitable to be away from it. He says that facebook is a site where the content changes often, because they control most of their own content. He advises us that if we were to work with facebook apps, we need to be aware of its frequent changes and our digital solutions need to adjust to them. (Example, building a microsite on facebook)
Latency and Culture latency is something we should always keep in mind. Latency is the moment something initiates and the moment the thing we’ve initiated takes into effect. Culture latency is when something takes into effect, the amount of time it stays relevant and interesting.
It is important that we stay relevant. New innovations are happening everyday that cultural latency doesn’t last long enough anymore. We are so open today with new ideas and new things happening, we have to stay on top and updated to stay relevant.
All together, Stephen’s presentation was really informative and interesting. It was great listening to him and it was good that he gave us advice we will find useful to us in the future when we want to step into the industry.
Info:
website: www.juniperpark.com
email: stephen.bennett@juniperpark.com
