For our third guest post we invited Camilla Grey, Digital Strategist at Moving Brands, the award-winning global branding agency to write about how MB met MD.

Mat Dolphin and I initially bonded over a bunny. A Lindt chocolate bunny. I had posted a Twitpic of my bunny on the Moving Brands Twitter, and Mat Dolphin responded with a snap of his. Before we knew it, we’d sparked a mass of bunny poses from around the Twitterverse. It was one of those sweet, serendipitous moments that got people talking and gave that vital human face to our respective creative companies.
(See MD previous post)

A ‘tweetup‘ followed and Mat has kindly invited me to take a moment away from the Moving Brands blog, to do a guest post here. I think our bunnies going ‘tweet’ lays the perfect groundwork for a post on collaborative culture. Much has already been written, hypothesised and critiqued on the platform for sharing that social media provides. If the Internet shrunk the world, social media got it chatting. Moving Brands saw the power of the platform first hand last Summer, when we openly pitched to create a Brand for London using Twitter and a public blog to canvas opinion and feedback on our ideas. What started as a fun idea, quickly snowballed into a new approach to creativity which rumbled through the design industry. If we were applying the ‘freemium’ model to our branding offer, what did that mean for design as a whole?

The answer is the same answer that many other industries are facing up to – the world is changing exponentially and unrecognisably and future-ready companies need to be the change if they’re going to make it through. As an agency, Moving Brands have always applied a co-creative approach to branding – developing identities with our clients rather than doing the big “Ta da!” once all the creative has been done. The Brand for London pitch, our blog and our other digital platforms are an extension of that. We show a lot our thinking upfront, opening ourselves up to our potential and existing clients, our peers, our competitors and the general public. In a recent talk, game developer Jesse Schell pronounced that “Privacy is Dead. We just killed it”. And, if Facebook’s recent activity is anything to go by, that is a truth well learnt sooner rather than later. On a professional, as well as a personal level, we are all learning to navigate this new mode of behavior. We see brands collaborating with their consumers, just as we see Twitterers crowd-sourcing answers to their questions and publicly “checking in” as they move around town.

Which takes me back to the bunnies. Mat Dolphin are a creative agency, just like Moving Brands. Only the old business model believes we should put walls up between us, glare at each other from our respective tables at awards ceremonies. In the new model, the “Moving World” model, we follow, friend, feed, #ff and “like” each other. We may exist in the same industry, but we’re different. We do different work and our blogs exemplify our different styles, influences and approach. Friendly communication between us infiltrates at every level – the industry becomes more cohesive, while those looking for creative suppliers can better understand the creative options available to them. Across platforms, everyone’s a winner.

Now, pass the Lindt!

Big thanks to Camilla for taking time out to write a guest blog. Make sure you follow her @MovingBrands on twitter.

We’ve got plenty more guest posts lined up in the future, but if you’ve got a project you’d like to let our readers know about and you’d like to be involved, feel free to get in touch. Or you might just wish to send us chocolate, which is fine too.

Thanks for reading.

Mat