Posts tagged Monkey Business
Seriously Yellow.
Jun 26th
Monkey Business keeps getting critics from the people who doubt our possibilities to be a ”real company” as we are. One day it’s about the unpromising name, the other day it’s about the seemingly small amount of work we do. One critical friend shared his opinion about the color, too: no serious company has a yellow brand! Yellow is associated with fun, joy, play, holiday…but not with serious business. ”Name me a serious company having yellow as a brand color?”, he challenged. Not that I’d be obsessed with a question, it just turned out that looking for serious yellow companies became a fun habit 
Now, in the sunny yellow lightness of one of these Finland’s midsummer nights, I want to share some of these yellow findings, for example:
SOL Palvelut, a big grown Finnish service business offering laundry, clean-up and staff leasing services, employing 9000 people in 4 different countries and having made a turnover of 157 million euros in 2009. In SOL yellow means the sunny positivity and the culture of freedom and responsibility. Employees can decide how they want to work and what kind of working environment they like. They were in charge of the decoration in the headquarters, too, and therefore SOL City, the uniquely and wildly designed headquarters of the company, is one of the most desired visiting destinations for the international business groups visiting Helsinki. In the past I worked for SOL Palvelut, and still remember the very positive working culture in there. I felt like part of the team and responsible, but free from the 8am to 4pm routines and having all the power to improve my work and be in direct contact with our partners every day. It was seriously yellow.
DHL Express, a German transportation company offering tailored, customer-focused solutions for managing and transporting letters, goods and information. This company made it to this list for two recent reasons. Firstly because we spotted it’s yellow transporter at our yellow office parking place, delivering goods for one of the companies we are neighboring, and secondly because it offered us a smooth solution for serving our superheroe guest when she left to Paris forgetting her iPhone in Finland. DHL delivered it to her to Paris overnight, taking a service time of 10 hours with a price of 155,55 euros. 7 hours delivery would have also been available. Why DHL is recommendable for anyone in need of express delivery? 1) It transports phone batteries, unlike the express delivery operator recommended by the Finnish main post service Itella, for example. 2) Even being a German company, has it’s web pages nicely in Finnish unlike it’s US competitor FedEx, for example. These primary reasons made us to choose for DHL, and surely we supported the yellow color, too.
Eniro with yellow Pages. Not so long ago I received a phonecall from Eniro, the leading contact search company in the Nordic media market listed in Swedish stock. Eniro was renewing it’s Yellow Pages direct search media, and asked if Monkey Business wanted to be found from there. It could have been a traditional sales call, but the first line, a question of Eniro’s agent, changed the system radically. She asked: What is this Monkey Business doing? I went: We make the world more yellow by improving supportive communication systems. She replied: Hhmmm…ahhaa, sounding like trying to construct a thought in her head before voicing it out: “Then we are in the same business! Eniro Yellow Pages is trying to make the world more yellow by improving the communication systems by creating the connections between people.” It was a good talk with the senior sales agent of Eniro who made me think that in fact it would be cool to do one joint project with Eniro. As a company, Eniro plays in another league, but we share the yellow!
These were just some examples of the yellow and serious brands. What we as Monkey Business mean and want to communicate with the yellow color is that we are all about serious fun, positivity and good vibes in communication. Yellow is the mood of action that produces good feeling and good results by empowering people.
Can you name and describe more examples of the serious yellow companies?
With all my yellow (as Johanna would say!),
Henna Monkey
P.S. Bananas are yellow, too. And very serious business, too.
Renewed Elevator Pitch: Help with Interaction Culture
May 4th
Monday morning was good for us. I think it was because last week we had had a busy week working with some customer projects. We learned a lot.
We visited Design Factory at the Aalto University in Espoo and met Inka (in the picture below on the left) there. Actually, she was already a friend of Henna’s since Paphos seminar last summer but we didn’t know that before Tatu gave her our Banana business card. She is also a designer, also for material but nowadays more and more for intangible. Very interesting place that Design Factory.
I am sure the visit to Design Factory contributed to our learning. What we learned for example that we are at our best when creating the interaction culture. We can create an environment for learning, and an environment where people can talk with one another. And that probably is the core of our business.
Here are first three development versions of our elevator pitch, first one was: We are Monkey Business and we first thought that we ignite collectives. Hä? Now that doesn’t say much, right? Let’s try again… We are MB and we are learning designers. Hmm. Still pretty broad and doesn’t really tell what we do. Ok, we worked a bit more and with the time came the idea of MB building learning environments. That was quite ok, but many times people associate learning environment with something virtual and happening with computers. So not so good for us. So finally we came up with this…
We are Monkey Business and we help our customers to build a better interaction culture.
How does that sound to you?
Monkeys on the road!
Feb 5th
” I visited your website and didn´t just get what you do? ” Typical comment from our friends. What do we do? What have been doeing lately? Are we REAL entrepreneurs? How are we making world more fun and yellow?
Every Monday Morning is Monkey Monday. Or sometimes it´s Tuesday. But we need to be in face to face contact to learn, laugh and live. Last week I and Ville hoasted four hours in Lahti University of Applied science. Our hidden plan was to encourage two hundred students towards creative economy and entrepreneurship. But our visible goal was to run the best and most enjoyable schoolday of year 2010. We used stories, dialogue, mental models game and punisher vs. pyromane -exercise. In the end about 90% of students answered YES! So it was “good tennis” from us. Good Job.
Thursday Janne went to coach three days session for start up entrepreneurs in a 1,5 year long process in Central Finland, Laukaa area. And now he is ending a one similar process in Northern Finland, Posio area. Janne is our specialist for long processies. I was working for a day in Helsinkin with Brand Brothers Finland for Tammi publishers. Our task was challenging: “do what feels right”. So we worked as interaction fakirs to make some atmosphere magic…
Henna and Johanna has had several meetings around issue of HUB Jyväskylä in Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Tampere. Henna is fighting hard to save her home region, Iisalmi by entrepreneurship. And aside Henna has closed some related deals. Johanna has found a surprice for us. It´s red? We´ll see it on monday…
Ville the Fox, our geek has been coaching two days in University of Oulu with Zestmark. Aside Ville takes care of our connections to the virtual world. And he is also the brains for Monkey Business with his ideas, precence and jazz. Francis Francis X1, yellow, arrived to our office on Tuesday. And we were really exited. Not a single cup of espresso was made. Cos it was ESE(easy serving espresso) model and we returned it at the same day. The biggest failure of the week. Wednesday we had a deep three hour dialogue with Innovation Professor Antti Hautamäki from University of Jyväskylä. Themes were creative economy and cultures meaning for an area. Results will go to parliaments future forum and we are one example…
So here we go. Again. And again. Something will be remembered and alot forgotten. Take it yellow!
Tantourist.
Richard St. John’s 8 Secrets of Success
Feb 2nd
Today we heard from a potential partner that “you should delete your webpage” and get some concrete going on. Also we should get “some more meat around the bone”. Whuh. Heavy stuff. At the same time he cancelled our meeting planned for Thursday morning. Well, we kind of had a feeling that this may be a tricky partnership but still the reaction from him was little surprising.
Anyways, it was about time to hear some negative comments because Tom Peters on his book Project50 says something like this: “Think sometimes if you have pissed off people lately, because if you haven’t, then you are either not working hard enough or not being radical enough.”
And this is what also Jari Parantainen says in his Finnish blog that we need not to be afraid to divide people into two groups because if we get haters then we also got lovers.
Furthermore, practically the same thing from Guy Kawasaki: Do not be afraid to polarize people (point no. 4 in his post about the Art of Innovation).
The third similar minded comment is in this excellent and inspiring TED video by Richard St. John. This is actually what I wanted to share in the beginning. See the video below.
He says that one secret of success is persistence. He says that if we want to succeed we need to persist CRAP – which stands for Critisism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.
And this is what we say when people ask us about the marketing: Be brave, dare to make marketing that may piss off people. But I have to admit, that when the guy calls you and tells you to delete your website and get some more experience, it doesn’t feel good and kind of it puts me down. Anyways, I am happy to know we got loads of supporters out there and this is probably just one guy, who didn’t get what this Monkey Business is all about, maybe?
Keep it yellow everyone! Peace, Ville
MonkeyTV online now in Qik and Youtube!
Jan 25th
MonkeyTV now online here in https://qik.com/monkeybusiness!
As part of our Social Media strategy – “you have to give chance an opportunity” again inspired by Matti Nykänen and made famous by E.Saarinen – we have started a MonkeyTV. It’s an online TV Channel that will have for example monkeying around, short interviews, book reviews, live reporting from events and parties and so on what ever we find fresh and worthy being online. We have been online for a month or so, but until now I wasn’t sure if we had got the real essence of the MonkeyTV recorded. But here we are, ladies and gentlemen, see the video below!
You will know us from the following logo:
It is drawn by Pernan Goni, an illustrator and inspiring entrepreneur from Bilbao. He’s got a blog, too. I met him over in Bilbao last October and I am very happy he promised to co-operate with us for the MonkeyTV and also in future. Moreover, he is an excellent cartoonist – see a MonkeyTV video here where he explains one quick cartoon about creativity in Basque Country. Thanks a lot Pernan for the great work!
Currently we operate MonkeyTV with Qik. It’s linked to our Youtube channel, so if you are there feel free to connect with us.
Have a yellow week everyone! Ville
X-mas Calender day 13 – What is this Monkey Business?
Dec 16th
That´s THE question. Here are some quotes from people whom we have met while chewing bananas:
*Experienced Business Coach, woman: “Monkey Business is formed around easy customers who buy what ever these Monkeys sell.”
*Senior Business Coach, man: ” Monkey Business is nothing, it´s just a tribe of fifty people or so.”
*Manager for International Affairs, man: ” Do these people know what Monkey Business means? How can their thinking be that low?”
*Innovation Manager, man:” You can´t be the best in the world. It is not possible.”
So, what do you think? What is this Monkey Business?
Tantourist -giving big warm hug to our supporters around the world. THANK YOU!
Monkey Calendar Day 11.
Dec 11th
We have a tradition in Monkey Business: Of every month first Monday we have Mondays are for Monkeys evening in the Poppari. There is Monday Club then. Many times in there has been played Elina and Matias and also they were there at the last time. This time they played old Finnish hits!
We love Monday Clubs and here is for you a video from there. So here you go! Enjoy of the music!
First reply to our legendary letters!
Dec 11th
YES! I got a letter yesterday. Chritmas card in an envelope, with printed address sticker. Text was written by hand. And I was sooo exited to realize it was from Jaana Venkula. I wrote to her 14th of September – it´s also in our blog, here.
Jaana thanks me for the splendid letter which she got and wellcomes us to be in contact with her later. And all the best for 2010.
Jaana – this was really uplifting! THANKS!
Tantourist.
X-mas Calendar Day 24th
Dec 10th
Don´t hesitate – don´t open it yet! Oh you did it allready. Is everyday like Christmas eve for you? Life as a gift?
We got a suberb surprise yesterday: we were kicked out from our office. Gotta be out until March. How can they kick us out? We don´t have any rent agreement made. We have been squatting here. What do we do now?
We give you a present. Order us to your office. For a week – month – year? To work with you. To help you. To boost you. What? Like office nomad. All we need is your kind invitation.
Or buy us to collaborate with you. We could:
*make a promotour to Lappland with cyclable electrical cars to work as an instant helpdesk for entrepreneurs(LeTim loves this idea)
*clean your carage
*organize a week long adventure for children of your employees
*?
“Life is like a banana – the longer you wait the sweeter it gets. Until it turns brown.” -Forrest Gump
Tantourist.
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