Shoreditch Insight Hunters

This week 99Shoreditch went to visit another local company bursting with new ideas and a unique perspective on the world.

BAMM describe themselves as a Global Consumer Insight Agency, who advise clients on brand strategy worldwide. Whilst this sounds very impressive, we didn’t really understand what made them different until they showed us how they go about gaining these insights. And that’s kind of the point - they are Visual Thinkers, people who think in pictures as well as words. People who like to actively show and tell, rather than passively report.

                                                                                   

In the old days of research a big qualitative study of consumer behaviour might have involved lots of focus groups in sterile research facilities, with clients eating curly sandwiches behind a two way mirror. BAMM have disrupted this market by embracing two key elements – creativity and technology.

BAMM properly get under the skin of consumers by adopting an ethnographic approach – spending time with people and observing not just what they say, but what they do (often without them even knowing it). All of this is captured on film and then edited into something simple and engaging to watch. 

It is interesting that it is not just small, forward thinking companies who use BAMM’s insights, they also have plenty of big corporate clients looking for new ways to connect with their customers. HSBC, Unilever, Shell and Nike all recognise that as the world is changing, so must the way we research, analyse and record that world.

The example that Anthony Martin, co-founder, gave us was a worldwide project examining people’s complex relationships with luxury brands. It is a given that these consumer goods function as status symbols, but the way people interact with them around the world has subtle differences. For example, did you know that in France the way you really show discernment is through the lemon curd you buy? Whilst mass manufactured goods can be appropriated by anyone with enough cash, real taste is apparently knowing high end niche producers that are recognisably ’the best’ within certain social groups. 

There are also regional differences that only a more anthropological approach can discover. Respondents in Europe and Asia may be buying into the same Gucci brand, but until you have been through their wardrobe and asked them to pull together an evening outfit, you would not know that the more extrovert Europeans wear their branding discreetly on the inside, whilst the more introverted Asian market wear theirs on the outside with pride. 

And the best thing about these little insights is that they get turned into beautifully made films and gorgeous stills for presentations to show to all stakeholders across the business – from the FD to the factory floor. As Anthony explains ‘you can say a lot in a 3 minute video, plus it is instantly available to markets all over the world at the same time.’

BAMM admit there is still a long way to go and many companies still revert to the default focus groups, but they want to open clients’ eyes to all the amazing possibilities that there are out there – from life logging to motion sensors cameras.

New technologies and creativity are the reasons BAMM chose to work in Shoreditch. “It seemed like a place where things were happening  - like it held promise. It was 2008 and we were a new, small company – we knew we wanted to do things differently and so it suited our ethos and approach, plus the rents were cheap! The creative flair here also means we have a big pool of talent to dip into when we need great freelance videographers or photographers.

BAMM are very aware of how Shoreditch is changing, “It will be interesting to see if the area can reinvent itself and retain its edgy cool with all the big brands and companies moving in. There are different areas that people are starting to talk about – Southwark  has some interesting stuff going on, so I couldn’t say for sure where BAMM will  be in the future”. 

We liked meeting BAMM, one of the hundreds of small to medium sized businesses that still make Shoreditch a hub of creative and independent thinking. Plus, we liked their philosophy of ‘See More’ – we left their offices with our eyes just a little bit wider and a bit more aware of everything going on around us.

Watch their film here or contact them http://bammlondon.com/about/


Photography by @BAMM and @shootbernard

 

Graffiti Guy

We first came across Attai’s @butch_attai graffiti on the streets of Shoreditch and then on the roof of Jealous Gallery. Intrigued to find out more about him, 99Shoreditch tracked him to a coffee shop in the neighbourhood and quizzed him about turf wars, wading waist-deep in dubious waters for your art and never quite learning to draw hands properly.

Growing up in a small town outside Birmingham, he got into graffiti in his late teens. "I was a skateboarder and the two things went together...loads of skaters seemed to be writers too. The best skate spots were usually in rundown areas, and some of the best graffiti happened to be appearing in these kind of places too... This was in the pre-internet days when there were hardly any legal walls, everything had to be painted at night or in some hidden derelict building". Attai talks animatedly of these early days, when fresh work would appear every week along the miles of train lines that led into the heart of the city. There was a huge secret society at work, all with the same teenage urge to rebel and get their slice of fame.

For many of his peers the need to keep painting dissipated over time, but for Attai it continued as strong as ever. After leaving school he decided to channel his passions via art school. It was here that he studied sculpture and started to think about the form of the letters he was painting. Skip forward 20 years, the letters became more and more broken down and increasingly mechanical, with an eye on fragmenting shapes into smaller and smaller forms. Tiny houses incorporated themselves and later became the central focus of his walls. The stilts were a later addition - prompted by the winter floods of 2013 and a handy artistic device to add complexity to his wall compositions.

There is also a political slant to the houses "the people with money are getting further and further away from the rest of us, it’s about the haves and the have nots. The city is changing and there's a real chance London could lose its creative edge". 

The stilt houses have been Attai's 'thing' for the last 2 years, working out new ways to depict this symbol can be testing. Although he is enjoying having a consistent visual identity, he strives to keep his work constantly evolving and changing in response the things he sees around him.

As well as challenging himself to find new ideas for his work, he is also exploring different locations in which to paint. He recently found himself knee deep in a tidal river in the small hours, armed with a headtorch, emulsion and some bitumen spray paint, “I wanted the stilts to get covered by the rising tides, I'm interested in the effects of time and nature on my work, the way things change and decay over time.”

I ask whether he is perhaps interested in developing pieces for the art world, so he can record some for posterity, rather than see it painted over. He explained he has done some work on canvas he is proud of, but sometimes it loses the spontaneity and magic of painting on the street. He has just bought one of his own pieces from a builder on a Shoreditch building site so that he could capture a part of this phase of his artwork.

 

We talked about the differences between street art and graffiti and he explained there has always been a healthy rivalry between the two camps. With his art school education he can identify with both sides, but still sees himself very much as a graffiti artist. “All forms of graffiti are valid and we shouldn’t get too precious about it. You need new recruits who are feeling their way around and doing it how they want, because these are the people who will ultimately be bringing something new to the scene.”

He feels the current trend may be moving away from polished street art pieces, with the pendulum swinging back to classic graffiti writing. There is a sense of things coming full circle as lettering, over imagery, becomes more prevalent again.

He is a big fan of the Shoreditch scene, but is worried the places and spaces to paint are becoming fewer and fewer. The Lennox Street and Willow Street hoardings won’t be there forever and he wonders where people will go after that, “It would be a shame to clean everything up to the point of it being too sanitised. We need raw culture untouched by commercial influences and we need things to stay dirty – it’s part of Shoreditch’s charm.” 

After challenging him to create a great little piece especially for 99shoreditch on Blackall Street, we enquired what the best thing about being a graffiti artist. His reply, “genuinely doing something for yourself and the fact that you are anonymous and can be anyone”. So with that we left him to melt back into the crowd.

@butch_attai
theattaipress.com 

 Photography by shootbernard.com