We’re looking for a bright, well-organised and experienced studio co-ordinator to cover maternity leave.

You will be supporting all aspects of the business and its projects, so you will need to
have a flexible approach with solid experience in a similar role.  You must have an approachable personality with natural enthusiasm. You’ll be working with an eclectic mix
of people and must have the ability to cope under pressure.

The role has two main functions:

1. Studio Management 
2. Account Team Support  

 
1) Studio Management

You are responsible for the day-to-day smooth running of the studio. This includes basic bookkeeping, the ordering of all supplies, post, couriers, answering the telephones, greeting guests and preparing for meetings (managing and setting up the meeting room, ensure meeting room is tidy, make tea/coffee, purchasing biscuits etc), managing petty cash and keeping the studio clean and tidy. You will oversee all contractors: this includes any cleaners, maintenance, suppliers and IT support.

Book-keeping; managing expense inputs, purchase orders and supplier invoices.

IT & Telephony: responding to problems as they arise and liaising with IT and telephone suppliers + support.

2) Support to Account Manager

Ad-hoc support to our AM; assisting with research, brainstorming input and presentation preparation as required

Design input – on house brand issues, the occasional literature and smaller aspects of client concept work and presentations.

In detail:
Responsibilities include:
* Book keeping: raising purchase orders, invoicing, project expenses, liaising with accountants for supplier invoices
* HR: maintaining staff records, holiday records etc
* Company/Client entertainment, including booking business lunches, office parties etc.
* Arranging couriers and office supplies
* General Health and Safety
* Manage communications: Telephony & IT, including liaising with both IT support and internal network providers.

Key Skills:
* Well-organised and excellent ability to time manage
* Keen to learn and a hands-on approach to work
* Self-motivating, willing to take initiative and be flexible
* Excellent communication skills, including a professional phone manner
* Perfect written and spoken English preferable
* Computer literate, must be familiar with Apple Mac.
* Strong knowledge of Microsoft Office including Word, Excel & PowerPoint
* Interest in design and branding
* Some book-keeping experience
* Knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator etc. would be advantageous

The Team
We’re Ergo, a small but very supportive team, independently owned, and have been going strong for over 15 years. We work with clients such as The Coca Cola Company, Carlsberg and Speedo. Home for us, is a bright and airy studio along the Grand Union canal in West London, a stone’s throw away from Paddington Station.

We have a very open culture, a hands-on work place with the opportunity for all employees to become involved in all aspects of the company. You may well find yourself in creative naming brainstorms, pulling together mood boards for positioning concepts or designing communications elements.

Handover: 1 week

Contract length: From 3 to 6 months

Salary:  £20 - 24K pro rata (depending on experience)

Days: Mon – Fri | 9 -6pm

Please send your Covering Letter & C.V. to hello@ergo-id.com  

Last night we attended The Annual Recommended Agency Register Awards (RAR), and we're pretty excited to share that we won, in the category of Brand Strategy! 

This achievement is thanks to all of our lovely clients, whom we owe special thanks to – without you this would never have been possible, especially those of you who took the time to write such warm recommendations! THANK YOU! 

The RAR Awards highlight the agencies that have been highest rated by their clients – the brand owners! http://www.recommendedagencies.com/agency-awards/2013/winners/544/ 

We are looking for a smart and creative-thinking Mid-weight Planner, to join our brand strategy team. We’re looking for someone with equal experience and enthusiasm for brand and consumer research (Qual and Quant). Perhaps your career began in research and has developed into brand planning, or vice versa.

Either way, you possess a refined intellect, mixed with boundless positive energy and well-developed social skills.

The work is in branded consumer goods and services, involving understanding clients business, analysis of their brand, the market and their consumer. It covers innovation and renovation, in single markets and across international markets. 

Specifically, your role will include:

- Market Analysis: reviewing, analysing and structuring existing business, market, consumer and trend data.

- Brand Analysis: assessing the specific dynamics, equities and values of the brand and its competitive set.

- Consumer Analysis: devising, commissioning and managing consumer research programmes; advising clients on research programmes both qual. and quant, online and real world. Occasionally conducting research with consumers and clients for specific issues.

- Idea Development: recognising, assessing, developing, structuring and expressing powerful brand ideas in a collaborative environment; objectively analysing ideas for potential.

- Managing Workshops: designing and running stimulating and productive team workshops on business, brand and creative issues.

- Presentation and Report: developing clear, structured and stimulating reports at each stage of the project, giving lucid and compelling presentations of the ideas and recommendations.

- Project delivery: presenting to client teams, managing expectations and input, facilitating decisions and assisting implementation plans. (You will be supported by a PM).

The role is a full-time, hands-on role. You’ll need to have experience in developing, managing and implementing brand strategies, working directly with clients.

You must have 3 years + experience in strategic brand planning and consumer research, proven analytical and structural thinking skills, and an ambition to manage and develop your clients’ projects balanced with social/collaborative abilities.

Initially you’ll be working closely with our Head of Strategy, with the opportunity to learn and develop your specific knowledge and skills as you progress and grow into a senior role.

So, you probably want to know a bit about us… We’re Ergo a small but very supportive team, independently owned, and have been going strong for over 15 years. We work with clients such as; The Coca Cola Company, Carlsberg, Speedo. Home for us, is a bright and airy studio along the Grand Union canal in West London, a stone’s throw away from Paddington Station.

This is a great opportunity for an ambitious mid-weight brand planner, wanting to truly develop their skills, and ready to take more of a lead role in an agency.

We offer a salary of £35K-£50K depending on skills and experience, plus an annual bonus based on contribution and success.

Please send your covering note and C.V. through to hello@ergo-id.com 

It seems like it was yesterday that I was writing my introductory blog, and now it's my last day at Ergo. I feel like I was just taking my coat off and getting settled in…and now it's time to go? Time flies. It’s bittersweet leaving the place and people I’ve learned from, and come to know and admire.

It’s been a crazy, exciting whirlwind. When I first arrived, I had to constantly remind myself that I live in London, halfway across the world. Never did I think that living here would feel so…normal. My first blog was all about embracing London’s quirks, but those differences are now familiar. After playing tour guide for visiting friends and exploring London’s diverse neighborhoods, I am entirely comfortable navigating my way around—even if it means wandering around lost for 20 minutes, what seems like an eternity in the pouring rain. I power walk down the left-hand side of the pavement. I cringe when loud tourists step into the tube. I know that 'you alright' isn't an expression of concern, but rather a common way to greet someone. I can spot a black cab from a half-mile (umm…kilometre) away. 

But if I had to sum it up, some clichés do apply. The most applicable one being ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ As I touched on in my first blog, residents in every city love to complain about the weather and public transport. London's weather over the past month has made it easy to long for Boston, notorious for its long, tundra-like winters. Unseasonably, London this spring has looked more like Boston in January—overcast skies and on-and-off snow flurries. Besides missing the sunshine, I've longed for New York City's 24-hour Subway system after being stranded on many nights waiting for the night bus.

London has claimed a piece of my heart, and as with all matters of the heart, it can get complicated. At times, our relationship was strained, by bad weather and transportation woes. But at the end of the day, our love is mutual and strong. 

My abroad experience has been full of adventures, lessons, and surprises. It's been anything but run-of-the-mill. During my time here, I've done things that I never thought I’d do. I attended Easter Mass at St Paul's Cathedral, had a drink with the Queen's horse guards, sat in the same pub as James McAvoy after watching him star in Macbeth, fell asleep during La Boheme, coasteered on the Welsh coast, and tasted a Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurry for the first time—and all without Instagramming.  While I don’t have a filtered, virtual scrapbook, the memories made are now a part of me.

With six European cities under my belt and seven more on the horizon, I’m embarking on further adventures with a broader perspective. Like anyone's study abroad experience, mine has been a time of discovery. Whether it’s uncovering new places, reaffirming my love for theatre, realizing that I don’t care for opera, or discovering out how I work best, I will treasure these four months as some of the best times of my life.

Angela Huang 

“Where are you from?”

“The States.”

“No, where are you originally from?”

“I’m from New Jersey, but my parents were born in China.”

I’m not used to this exchange. While the US is a melting pot of all ethnicities, Americans tend to associate more with what state we come from. As a first generation ABC (American-born Chinese), when someone asks about my background, it often comes with prejudice undertones. It’s not ‘What’s your background’, it’s ‘What are you?’. Here in London though, it’s completely different. London is incredibly diverse, both socially and culturally. Neighborhoods are mixed. Races are mixed. I’ve lived near New York City all my life and never have I experienced ethnic diversity like I have in London. Asking about someone’s ethnicity isn’t unusual; it’s something to be celebrated. It’s a welcome change and I’ve been reaping its benefits reflected in London’s diverse neighborhoods.

My name Angela Huang, and I’m going to be interning at Ergo until mid-April. I’m music junkie, food lover, and design enthusiast. Currently I’m studying at Boston University on the London abroad program. London has been my home for the past two months and I’m loving every minute.

London is an incredible city with infinite treasures in every corner. Wherever I go, I discover a charming shop, café, or new market unlike the last. London’s diversity is best seen in its markets. Just ask anyone who has spent the day on Brick Lane, home to one of London’s best. The Sunday UpMarket features ethnic foods from Sri Lankan to Thai to French crêpes all under one roof. Not to mention, one of the greatest perks of studying in the UK is its proximity to continental Europe. Apparently I have a thing for B cities as I’ve already been to Budapest, Brussels, and Barcelona and I plan to travel to Berlin, Bordeaux, Prague, Amsterdam, and Wales before the semester is through.

While I’ve experienced more culture shock in the rest of Europe, where embracing diversity isn’t as commonplace, it’s been a smooth transition from Boston to London. Bostonians and Londoners both love caffeine (whether it’s coffee or tea), we love to complain about the weather and public transport (the Tube is far superior to the MBTA), and we walk at lightning speeds. Sure, they’ve had their differences in the past (Boston Tea Party, anyone?), but Londoners and Bostonians are unified by the love they have for the cities they call home. I’ve noticed some subtle quirks between the two metropolises, but those quirks are what make the cities interesting. Let’s celebrate those differences.

The accents might sound funny to outsiders, but Bostonians and Londoners both speak English. Bostonians pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd. Londoners, on the other hand, have a spectrum of accents from posh to Cockney. However, as George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘England and America are two countries separated by a common language’. Amidst some confusion deciphering accents, I’ve come across a new British English term at least once a week. The one I’ve heard the most is ‘queue’. I love this efficient word, a counter to Americans’ ‘line up’. I also like the phrase ‘top up’, meaning to refill something. You can top up your Oyster card, or top up your wine glass. Easy peasy. These differences are so subtle that I’d never thought about these phrases until I encountered them in my daily life.

Here are just a few of them I enjoy:

Another similarity is that Boston and London are both walkable cities. However, I thought being a pedestrian in Boston was dangerous; London drivers give Bostonians a run for their money. Coming from a city where everyone jaywalks, often precariously, I’ve had to adjust to nearly being hit every time I step into the street. I probably would have been hit by a car already if not for the clear road markings, ‘look left/right’. Here there’s no legal offense for jaywalking, so it’s anything goes when you cross the street.

On the surface, words and roads are the two biggest differences I’ve noticed between Boston and London. But every day, I am becoming more acclimated to life as a Londoner.

Since working at Ergo, I drink no less than two cups of tea per day, complete with milk and sugar. I know the proper Tube and bus routes, and crossing the street is becoming second nature. I catch myself using words like ‘delighted’ and ‘quite’ more often in regular conversation. Each day, I’m embracing the quirks. After all, it’s what makes us interesting.

Written by Angela Huang

Hurrah! We’re top 10 finalists in two categories for this years RAR Awards!

Thanks to our lovely clients for rating us so highly!

We've also managed to maintain our listing on the Recommended Agency Roster till 2014, thanks again to our lovely client testimonials! 

Google Stores Showrooms
(Showrooms are for Trying, Stores are for Buying) 

If you’re like most consumers in the UK, you’ve probably bought a thing or two online. Toothpaste, perhaps? That’s easy; you know what to expect. If the reviews are good and the price is right, there is very little risk. What about an expensive augmented reality heads-up display? Probably not without trying it on first. (Or consulting a dictionary, for that matter.)

Google has such a product in development, Project Glass, and, by the end of the year, will have its own stores to sell them in. It has other hardware too - Nexus phones and tablets, the Chromebook Pixel laptop, plus a plethora of other manufacturers’ devices running on its Android, Chrome OS, or Google TV platforms. Soon, it will have a place to showcase them altogether.

It may seem counterintuitive for an internet giant to open brick & mortar stores while countless brick & mortar chains close their doors due to the rise of online retail. But if you think of the impending Google Stores more as showrooms than traditional stores, the move starts to make good sense.

For all of online retail’s advantages (price, comparison shopping, customer reviews, etc), consider its shortcomings. You can’t reach out and touch a product on your laptop screen. You can’t play with it, pretend that it’s yours, and resolve what doubts you may have. When the product is a £3 tube of toothpaste, that’s all fine. When it’s something expensive and unfamiliar like Google Glass, online fixtures like flashy video demos and product reviews won’t always cut it. Google needs to get Glass in prospective customers’ hands (or on their heads, rather). The same goes for its new $1,300 Chromebook Pixel and $200 Nexus 7 tablet alike.

What Google lacks isn’t a place to sell its wares; it has that online. What it needs is to showcase them and get them in prospective buyers hands. The showroom isn’t really a new retail paradigm but an increasingly important one, a model pioneered by Apple over a decade ago. It’s been vital to new Apple product launches ever since. The iPad, for example, wasn’t so different than Google Glass. It was a revolutionary product in a category that was unfamiliar and foreign to most consumers. For ordinary folk to determine why they should want an iPad, they needed a casual and commitment-free place to try it. In fact, Tim Cook himself credits the iPad’s success to the existence of Apple Stores.

The lesson to be learned is that of reducing friction. Advertising can drive consumers to a website. That website can do many different things to try to convert that visit to a sale. But when the product is a high-involvement purchase like a heads-up display called Glass or a touchscreen computer called iPad, even the smallest bits of uncertainty create powerful friction that can only be resolved experientially. So don’t think of Google Stores as places for transactions but as places for trial. Put another way, they will be for trying, not (just) buying.

Written by Stephen McVerry 

We're looking for a freelance planner/strategist to work with us on a really exciting project.

Your an experienced thinker and will be working with our Head of Strategy, CD, Designer and a Project Manager to re-launch a consumer brand.

We're looking for someone who can take consumer insight, and create brand positioning’s - and see a strategy through to the end, to design and implementation, ensuring the core of the idea is kept alive. You think about how a product has to live in store and on shelf, and you will be experienced in building and presenting your ideas to clients. 

We're a bright and friendly bunch looking for a fresh input!
 

Your Availability:

We'd like to get you inducted and briefed into the project from w/c 25th Feb.
 

A Bit About Us:

We're a specialist brand consultancy with a focused client list, offering senior-level strategic services in brand development and innovation. Our clients are a judicious mix of big-name brand owners and smaller emergents with big potential. They are based mainly in Europe and the UK, with markets in North and Eastern Europe, Asia and the US. 

We help them find, define and realise areas of potential beyond the obvious.

Ergo is designed to allow us to focus our time, intellect and energies on our clients business. Fewer internal meetings and less administration means more productive thinking.

We are based in a bright, airy studio overlooking the Grand Union Canal at Great Western Studios.

Please send your CV to hello@ergo-id.com  | www.ergo-id.com

PLANNING DIRECTOR

Where are you?

We are looking for an ambitious, bright mid-weight brand strategist: a smart-thinking individual with experience, energy and talent to join the team here at Ergo.

You’ll have 5 or more years experience in strategic brand planning, ideally in a branding or design business involving consumer research, analytic and structural thinking and presentations to senior clients. Your ambitions include developing great thinking for your clients’ projects, working collaboratively. Your cognitive abilities are nicely balanced with smart social and communication skills.

You can spot a great idea – whether your own or not; you know how to build it and are bloody good at getting it across to a range of audiences.
 

Who are we?

We're a specialist brand consultancy with a focused client list, offering senior-level strategic services in brand development and innovation. Our clients are a judicious mix of big-name brand owners and smaller emergents with big potential. They are based mainly in Europe and the UK, with markets in North and Eastern Europe, Asia and the US.  

Our clients tend to come to us with projects that don’t fit systematic big agency processes; challenging or unusual projects, requiring original thinking, intelligent constructs, a big idea and (on occasion) specific implementation. We help them find, define and realise areas of potential beyond the obvious.

Ergo is designed to allow us to focus our time, intellect and energies on our clients business. Fewer internal meetings and less administration means more productive thinking.

We are based in a bright, airy studio overlooking the Grand Union Canal at Great Western Studios, a building shared with artists, designers and architects.
 

The Role (Skills and Experience):

This is a full-time hands-on role to develop, manage and implement brand strategies working directly with senior clients. You will be working with the team alongside our MD / Head of Strategy initially, with the opportunity to develop your own specific clients - and skills - as you progress. You should be free to travel to markets and clients internationally, as required.

The Package:

We offer a starting salary of £40,000 – £55,000 commensurate with these skills and experience, plus an annual bonus based on contribution and success.

Interested? Please forward your C.V. along with a covering letter to hello@ergo-id.com 

2013 is here, and on the wings of its arrival, has come 'the Quiet Revolution', something I have quietly been yearning for, for some time.

With so much noise in our daily lives, and increasing on a day-by-day basis in a collusion with digital media, it's seemed to have reached a critical mass, and heralded a movement to hush it – consumers are becoming increasingly choosy as to when and where they feel ‘noise’ is appropriate in their lives.
Social noise - in the form of Facebook, and its constant "friendly" updates... I don't care!
Visual/brand noise - in the essence of poor design... I don't like it!
Advertising - in its many brain thumping guises... I don't want it!
Not to mention, 'actual' noise - the type that reaches your ears, the only one of the five senses that we can't voluntarily switch off. We're powerless to ignore it, so instead, action is being taken against  it. 

The Movement
Last year, 2012, saw a trend emerge, detachment from ‘social noise’; social networking sites – most notably Facebook. It seems, however dear the friendship, we're no longer impressed with the bombardment of their presence. Before Facebook, I don't recall her ever having called me to tell me that she'd just made a sandwich. What possesses her to tell me now? The mind boggles. Social media has created somewhat of an unsocial, yet noisy beast, in a misguided quest to prove our sociability.
2012 was the year that the movement took off, with a considerable number of people closing down certain social media accounts, encouraged by high-profile commentators such as WIRED Magazine, in their how-to article 'How to quit Facebook’, and CNN’s iReport on ‘Living without Facebook’. Will 2013 see this number grow?

2012 also saw the release of the book 'Quiet' by Susan Cain, who argues for our noisier counterparts (extroverts) to ’listen, rather than speaking up’. Introverts have a different kind of wisdom, and a different approach to problems compared to extroverts, but today’s noisier culture has favoured the loud approach, resulting in extroverts being heard, and introverts being ignored, even misunderstood. Susan Cain’s 2012 TED Talk explains a quieter approach should be valued more in today’s society.
2013 has already seen the book's uptake grow, and is now racing up the bestsellers lists.

Brands and Design
So there’s a clear movement to remove the noise in our lives, but what does this mean for brands, our experience with brands and design?

This month (Jan 2013), has seen the London's best loved retailer Selfridges launch it's ‘No Noise’ campaign in collaboration with Headspace. It looks to celebrate the power of quiet directly, in the creation of a less stressful retail environment, but also in consumer’s lives in general – promoting the benefits that can arise from moments of peace. One way in which they are demonstrating this, is by removing the ‘brand noise’ from a selection of curated products ranging from food to clothing accessories. The Quiet Shop, as it is called, which houses these products in store, celebrates both the minimalism and the symbolism of these products without their logos. (See the ‘No Noise’ site here)

And so onto design...

Windows 8 OS was released last year, 2012, and given the time and space to amass reviews, it is coming out unfavourably. But why? It’s a fresh, modern take - and people are always adverse to change. But, on this occasion the key seems to lie in the design. In an attempt to thrust itself in into the heart of our age of media consumption, Microsoft have designed an desktop operating system (OS) which mimics the operating systems found on media consumption products such as tablets and smart phones. What we’ve since discovered however, is that tablet style OS design does not smoothly translate to a desktop computer, the needs of the consumer are different, and they are driven to buy either product for very different reasons. Tablets: primarily and often purely for media consumption on the move – consumers want quick access to applications, and feeds. Computers: primarily for heavy-duty multi-tasking, and the creation and completion of tasks.
The new Windows OS is proving to be too complex, and consumers are negatively responding to it. Rather than reducing, it creates more noise (in the form of distractions; tiles which cover the screen, windows which takeover the screen, and functions that do not correlate to natural desktop use), in an environment which we require to be uncluttered and fuss free – fundamentally, this is not what consumers want from a desktop operating system.
In this case, the point boils down to understanding when and where ‘noise’ is appropriate in the consumers’ world.

To illustrate the point, I direct you to a YouTube video by Brian Boyko ‘Windows 8: the Animated Evaluation’. Incidentally, he's very 'loud' - but his point and his message to Microsoft is clear. Cut out the noise, cleaner, better design, happier consumers.
So, to refer back to my earlier statements, rather than "I don't care, I don't like it, I don't want it". Perhaps then, you’ll get "I care, I love it, I want it" from the consumer.

Of course the Apple brand have historically offered a masterclass in the less is more approach, creating consumer desire through simple and minimalistic design. The approach runs through the brand, throughout its advertising, and critically, into the palms of the consumer's hand in their product design.

In conclusion; yes there is a trend towards ‘quiet’ this year, but ultimately I think the message that is coming though loud and clear from consumer to brands, is to take into account and understand when and where ‘noise’ is appropriate in their lives.