Blog

C&binet on Huff Post

Alastair | 04 Dec 2008, 17:19

Andy Burnham marked the international expansion of the Huffington Post today with a blog posting about c&binet. 

Blogging alongside the international humanitarian campaigner, Queen Noor of Jordan and John Kerry, the former Presidential Candidate, Andy Burnham argued that creativity has never been more important and that now is the time for the creative industries to move from the margins to the mainstream.

Andy Burnham said that the “International debate has not kept pace with the speed of technological change and globalization.” He also alluded to some of the themes that are beginning to gain momentum such as the role of education in fostering creativity and more philosophical questions around whether creativity is a function of business or simply about having fun. It’s going to be interesting to see how these debates play out and which ones make onto the agenda for October next year.

In the beginning…

C&binet | 28 Nov 2008, 18:31

Last week, 17 of the c&binet ambassadors came together with the Director General of the BBC Mark Thompson, the CEO of BBC Worldwide John Smith, the CEO of Ingenious Media Patrick McKenna and the Secretary of State Andy Burnham and Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism Barbara Follett at a dinner in Liverpool.

The purpose of the meeting was to debate the biggest issues facing the creative industries and, from there, begin to map out an agenda for c&binet and gather ideas for the 2009 forum. The speed of change that every creative business faces was a unifying theme and the discussion lasted long in to the night and carried on over breakfast the next day.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing the 2009 agenda here and throwing open issues for wider debate. For now, we’ve uploaded some photos to our Flickr group from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where c&binet was launched.

The launch of c&binetforum.org

C&binet | 20 Nov 2008, 19:01

By Andy Burnham

Welcome to c&binetforum.org, the website for c&binet – a new forum to debate the opportunities and pressures common to innovative, creative businesses.

Our aim is simple: to maximise the economic power of creativity through better dialogue between the creative and commercial worlds.

But, in the digital age, that dialogue must be international if we’re to find durable answers to the key questions, such as:

How best to protect and exploit intellectual property?

How to raise finance for innovation and where to find commercial partners?

How to unlock talent on an international scale?

How to find new ways for the public and private sectors to work together?

On an international level, this debate has lacked focus and leadership. C&binet aims to change that.

It seeks to promote dialogue at every level – business to business, business to government, government to government – commensurate with the growing importance of creative industries in the new world economy.

Twenty-three influential and internationally-respected figures – names such as Nicholas Coleridge, Satjiv S Chahil, Tom Dixon, Nancy Tellem, Jatin Das and Jocelyn Stevenson – have agreed to act as global c&binet ambassadors, leading the debate.

I will be contributing to this website regularly. As the debate unfolds, and as this website grows, I expect the ambassadors – and other guest bloggers – to provide insight and direction. You will also find industry news, relevant articles and think-pieces here, and opportunities to comment and contribute yourselves.

As the founding hosts and funders of c&binet, my department expects to spend more time listening than talking – and, in time, to relinquish ownership so that c&binet becomes an active network owned by the creative community and run on a not-for-profit basis.

Tonight, c&binet ambassadors will meet for the first time in Liverpool, the European Capital of Culture, at an event I am hosting with Barbara Follett, the Minister for Culture, Creative Industries and Tourism.
We will be laying plans for the first c&binet annual conference, set for October 2009. The aim, in time, is to create one of the most significant and relevant events in the international business calendar – a Davos for the creative industries.

Thanks for reading – I hope you find the site interesting and informative. I look forward to your contributions.

Branding c&binet

C&binet | 20 Nov 2008, 11:47

By Martin Lambie-Nairn

Creating c&binet was a really interesting process because the brief was to create a brand that works for me and pretty much everyone I’ve ever worked with. I’m someone who built a business – Lambie-Nairn – that sells creativity. And now I’m trying it all over again with MLN, starting from scratch.  So what could c&binet do for me?

There’s so much excitement around this project that the first challenge when we got the brief was to strip away all the peripheral ideas and focus on the basic elements. We needed to say, in as few words as possible, what it’s for and what it will do.

So here’s what we got it down to:

The reason c&binet exists is to act as a catalyst between creativity and commerce – to make things happen. What it will do is drive the growth of the creative economy by unleashing the power of creativity.

So the brand celebrates the power of creativity. It’s something I believe passionately in.

And it’s a meeting place for the whole of the creative economy – not only “creatives” but people with the ideas, money and commercial scale to make things happen.

There were some other things we had to keep in mind too. Although born in the UK, it’s an international network which will have an international perspective. That meant we weren’t going to be draping it in the Union Jack.

And this is a property that will be owned by creative people themselves. So it had better be good.

A brand has to work on an objective basis, not just a subjective one. It doesn’t matter if someone thinks the name sounds silly or the logo’s the wrong colour – nothing’s more worrying to a brand consultant than when the client announces at the start of the process that they dabble in art and have a few thoughts of their own (I’m happy to say that didn’t happen in this case).

What matters is whether it does what it needs to do, set against some definable criteria.

Before we developed c&binet, we drew up a list of things the brand had to be able to do – some technical, some strategic. If you can agree the criteria in the brief and you come up with a solution that ticks all the boxes, then you know you’re on to something. With c&binet, we knew we were on to something very early on.

C&binet suggests people coming together. The ampersand is the expression of that process – sitting between the ‘c’ of creativity and the ‘b’ of business.  All of the design work featuring the brand will use the ampersand to link images which symbolise creativity and commerce.

Over time, the “Creativity and business international network” bit will fade and the brand will simply exist as c&binet, with the ampersand becoming more and more prominent.

And is it any good?  I hope so. But creating the brand is only the first step. The name and the logo are just a badge. The next – and more important – bit is to live up to the brand values. For c&binet, the test will be whether it does bring people together in new ways, start new conversations and give birth to new creative enterprises.

This site is part of that brand promise, so I’m delighted to be one of the people getting the conversation started.