Desde el fin de la semana en Barcelona trabajamos en Grecia sobre un plan general para el perfil de la MM con todos los temas referidos de una campaña grande. Los resultados y las propuestas de este trabajo en ingles y español están aquí:
http://www.agora9b.org/MMCreative/profileMM(KostasKlokas).zip
Propuesta para el Perfil de la Campaña MM
Publicado por Kostas Klokas | Tuesday, July 29, 2008 | Perfil | 1 comentarios »
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Hello Kostas.
I believe your Proposal raises some very interesting - and I might add, even foundational - points for all the creative and communicational work in this campaign we're beginning to develop.
I'd like to comment on all of them at length but unfortunately nobody would read so much theoretical stuff these days, so instead I'll try and synthesize my main impressions in a few points:
1. I think this thing of "merging diversity" that you mention at the beginning of your writing is absolutely essential, not only as a "doctrinary" content of the March but as an essential component of our way of communicating, our language.
I believe the diversity of forms, in its music , its images, its styles, etc.. are living proof of how universal this campaign is.
2. As far as doing everything in a "professional" level., I totally agree that this - although not seen as a limitation or obstacle for those who want to participate- is also a very important part of how we should be doing things.
At this point I believe it would be convenient to have at least a definition of what do we mean by "professional level". You use as a reference on this topic a conversation between Mario and Rafa. I will add my own interpretation of this particular, based on a conversation had this year with Mario as well this year. In here we are talking about "doing things right", for instance, if we want to be in Television we have to have productions that will be accepted in TV at the highest level, if we want to distributed printed materials to government or other institutions, such material should be up to the standards. All of this means that we should have a minimum number of skilled people in charge of preparing all this material. This thing of "professionalism" in our ranks has often been confusing from the fact that we, as a movement have been able to afford only volunteer "pro bono" work from our own people, mostly at an amateur level, and whenever possible. In this respect, we have depended on people's availability, priorities and skill. What we need now is a significant amount of professional work, meaning teamwork, a certain amount of experience in the field, capacity to meet goals and deadlines, regardless of wether this work is paid or not.
On the other hand, I believe that "professional" level could also be defined by the system in their own terms, a definition of what excellence is, based on a scale created by the Madison Ave crew, multinational Ad agencies, etc.... You can see the top of this crop in the different Ad Annual Awards coming out of NYC, art directors societies and such.
In this respect I should think this is definitely not a reference for us in terms of professionalism, since this whole environment is definitely associated and perceived by the public as whole, with a globalized marketplace who sets the rules (and sweet lies we live by). I believe is is not in our interest to try and mimic or "fit in" this particular sensitivity but rather we should try to go beyond it. We have nothing to sell since our product is free, and moreover, it's a total winner. Anybody who comes in contact with the world March experiences an immediate interest in knowing more and even participating in it. Therefore our main labour as communicators should be -again, in my view- to let the world know we're here and open our doors for everyone to participate, in the simplest possible way: no gimmicks, no clever tricks, simply tell them what our plan is.
3: I do believe a "slogan" or a set of them is an important part of our communications' strategy. The slogan has a dual presence: Visual and Audio, and thus goes far beyond an image which is only graphic, such as a logotype. In this sense I propose to start a discussion on this particular, with our people proposing slogans, especially those that could become "universal" as you point out in your writing. The one thing I would not agree is to define for our March the english language as "the" language, since its universality is - again, forgive me for banging this over and over- doubtful for many cultures around the world. English is universal because is the language of business, and this is so in the so called "western democracies". Not the case in the Muslim world, Middle-East, most of Africa, South America, China and other regions in the world where anything in English comes with a certain amount of suspicion. Therefore, in this particular matter I'd tend to disagree with you. I believe the slogans should be written and said in whatever languages work best in each place and culture we're touching at one given time.
Well Kostas, I hope that these comments can be helpful in opening a new discussion on these important matters you have raised with your proposal.
a big hug
Rafa E.