To kick off the new year, we held business breakfasts across three of our European offices in early January. Each breakfast yielded spirited discussion among the participants. We had guest presenters at some locations, and even had a live broadcast between the offices.

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One of Steve Jobs’ last designs was not a device, but an office–the Pixar Headquarters where Jobs wanted something different. He created an open floor plan, just like Vivaldi’s—but with a catch – just one set of bathrooms, right in the center. Jobs’ thinking was simple: Innovation comes when great minds from different areas cross paths.

Vivaldi’s New York office “2012 in Review, 2013 in Preview” holiday party did the same. Blue and grey LED-balloons, gas-lit flame tanks, floor lights, and cocktails and catered fare welcomed over 50 top marketers and experts from multiple fields: healthcare, packaged goods, consumer foods, financial services, publishing, telecom, education, dramatic arts, industrial adhesives and not-for-profit. A deck of Social Currency strategy cards designed by Josip Marsan and Inga Folta and conceived by the Vivaldi Partners and Fifth Season teams were engineered to bring our guests together, share knowledge unique to their fields and prognostications on the trends for 2013. Read More »

Winning in the Digital Revolution is a prerogative for all branding corporations. On the way to find answers and inspiration, the Vivaldi Partners Group offices in Munich and Zurich started off a series of Webinars on December 8th. Read More »

Yesterday, GE launched the Industrial Internet in San Francisco. Check out the Twitterhandle #industrialinternet, it is an ambitious effort. Read More »

Vivaldi Partners Group CEO and Founder Erich Joachimsthaler spoke with Beet.TV about the new Social Currency 2012 Report and used Burberry as a case study. The original post has been republished below, with permission.

By making its London and Paris runway shows “shoppable” in a special streaming video preview for its 15 million Facebook fans, London’ fashion house Burberry is transforming the entire “value chain” fashion retailing, says Erich Joachimsthaler, CEO of Vivaldi Partners Group, a global brand consulting firm, in this interview with Beet.TV.

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Now that the runways are dismantled and the fashion world is heading across the pond, we can finally reflect on what we learned during our Social Currency retail safari and other learnings during Fashion Week. Here are a few things we learned during Fashion Week — all while walking around in Soho:

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Last week, I was speaking at the annual CMO conference in Johannesburg. The “big challenges” ahead for the CMO are always similar and revolve around a mix of changing customer behaviours, new formats to interact with them, and using (big) data to understand if what you did made an impact. In fact, during the event, the latest IBM CMO study was launched. These studies are often used to prove that CMO’s today are totally overwhelmed with all the new challenges. However, the savvy CMO will look at the studies and use it as an opportunity to examine his or her own unique organisational mandate. Fundamentally, it is a simple question has haunted CMO’s for a while: how do you add value? Read More »

New York City is buzzing with fashionistas and designers as they descend for New York Fashion Week. Social media is similarly lighting up with fashion news (and requisite celebrity sightings) on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and everywhere else.  But does social media presence really translate to growth? Read More »

This year has been incredibly exciting so far – we opened a Chicago office, sponsored two major conferences (one in branding and one in innovation), and hired an exciting new director for Vivaldi Fifth Season. So we’re really pleased to announce more good news: Vivaldi Partners Group has been named to the Vault Consulting 50 of 2013! We are really honored to be on the list, since it is created by surveying over 5,000 consultants in various firms in North America. Read More »

I am often asked to speak about Turnaround Management. The most common flaw in most restructuring processes is waiting too long. Companies, especially ones with years of steady profits and well-known products, can become too comfortable and end up staying the course. It’s wise to remember that preventive care can help companies avoid a restructuring process that becomes necessary, instead of voluntary.

Companies are best off redefining themselves as markets change, and not being content to go along with what has worked. Too often, you see companies that need to restructure the entire organization and do turnaround management at greater costs of time, people, and resources. That’s why we at Vivaldi Partners Group help our clients constantly innovate for growth, so that major turnarounds are never needed.

It’s easy to spot the brands that have failed to innovate in time. What all companies must realize is that no one has the right to survive. Think of Sony or Kodak. At one point, Sony was synonymous with portable music with its popular Walkman. No one could imagine any company being more cutting edge in music technology. Kodak was similarly the leader in photography. Kodak was even part of the vernacular as consumers often had “Kodak moments.” But it’s not only the “older” brands that failed to innovate in time. You can see many former leaders in tech and social networking among the fallen – most famously, Myspace. Hard to remember, but at its peak, Myspace was valued at $12 billion and consistently beat Facebook in traffic.

What is a great example of a brand that evolves before being at a point where it is needed? Madonna. She is constantly evolving and stays one step ahead of all the other pop stars. But you don’t need to be a pop icon to look for a role model in innovation.

Nike may have started making shoes and sporting apparel, but then it became more than just a manufacturer of clothes. Nike started to connect people through its running clubs – and became about a community and how to live a better life through running. It was an inclusive community – since you could join the running club even if you were wearing Adidas. Then Nike progressed into Nike+, which broadened the community from local to global. You could compare runs with anyone in the world. Now the latest innovation from Nike is its Fuelband with its tagline, “Life is a sport, make it count.” Nike has moved beyond just sporting to the realm of health insurance companies. By innovating around an adjacent category, Nike is winning. Similarly this is why Sony failed and Apple won – Apple had the foresight to innovate around an adjacent category and has now become the most popular MP3 player and also quickly became the phone of choice.

Not that Nike is the only company to do this well, or even the only sporting goods company that is reinventing itself. Reebok has partnered with CrossFit, rebranding some gyms as “Reebok CrossFit” and sponsoring the CrossFit games.

Reebok was smart enough to realize that no company is too big to fail. After being a top fitness brand in the 1980s, they are now a subsidiary of Adidas. With new competitors like Lululemon coming up with a growth rate of 40% a year, Reebok is highly motivated to constantly innovate, lest they slip again.

Innovation, however, isn’t limited to just products. You can see a growth playbook in action with a company like Google. Google knows how to innovate around all three major markets: core, adjacent and new. Google doesn’t just create new products; unlike other companies, they have the right strategies in place to make sure they are always innovating.

Too often we see many companies which do not have a real innovation strategy nailed down. But the most successful companies are the ones who know they need to be constantly innovating.

- Hartmut Heinrich, Partner