In Asia, hand cleanliness is almost an obsession.
People even eat their sandwiches and burgers with knives and forks to avoid having to pick them up.
OK, so maybe that’s the case everywhere and I’m just showing my common Nottingham roots … but I still find it fascinating.
Everywhere you go, there’s hand sanitisers.
I’m not just talking in hospitals, I’m talking restaurants and all sorts of other places.
Recently, I saw this on my wife’s bag.
Yep, it’s a portable hand sanitiser.
But I’m not saying this because it highlights how long we’ve been in Asia, I’m saying it because making a product that can attach easily to a bag is an act of simple genius.
For a culture that doesn’t want to just wash their hands, but have them truly germ free … this little idea has big appeal.
Sure, there’s other products on the market that do a similar thing, but having something that attaches to your bag gives a peace of mind that wipes hidden in your bag, just can’t do. Plus being permanently on display helps advertise the brand to all who see it. Nice.
I’ve said for a while that I feel designers are doing things in more interesting ways than ad agencies and ultimately that’s down to one simple difference of approach.
Designers want to solve problems whereas ad agencies want to communicate problems.
Not all agencies are like this.
Not all agency employees are like this.
But right now, the design industry is kicking our ass and I swear it’s because we are holding on to remuneration models that reward ‘the old ways’ rather than finding ways to get paid for what we are truly capable of if given the freedom to do it.
[That and the fact adlands creative department hiring policy is still primarily based on art and copy rather than embracing different types of creative people/thinkers/doers]
We will have to wake up soon, otherwise the bullshit we churn out for Cannes – that we claim is ‘creative problem solving’ will become the benchmark for our standards and when that happens, we may as well pack up and go home.
But I have faith it can be done, if only because I saw The Kennedys Shanghai consistently solve problems in imaginative and innovative and intriguing ways for 9 months.