Why perspective?

21Tanks is, apart from being a team of terribly handsome individuals, an ideation and execution company, with the primary objective of offering perspective.

What's our gig? Well, simply put, while the world is arguing the virtues of left vs. right-brained thinking, 21Tanks are selling the best of both. We sell an innovation product that is one part creative to one-part research. However, what you're buying is both neatly wrapped up in a little perspective, and that’s really the key ingredient.

Perspective Lab

You know when you’re sitting at your boardroom table trying to solve a problem but it’s just not happening? Well what we do is help you see the problem from a different perspective.

21Tanks, along with key selected members from our Brain Trust, work with you and your team to identify the objectives and constraints of what you’re trying to achieve (funnily enough, that’s the hard bit) and then generate ideas to solve the initial problem. Good times.

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An example:

Medstra wanted to create a medical scheme that will appeal to the youth, with the result being they migrate to a mature, dedicated product once they leave the scheme under their parents. 21Tanks, along with child psychologists and other experts, worked together with Medstra to generate ideas (merging our collective perspective) that will benefit both company and consumer.

Other examples of Perspective labs include guerilla marketing tactics for Nokia N96, internal marketing strategies for Hollard, loyalty schemes for FNB, marketing concepts for 2010 World Cup for Octagon, insurance products for Indwe Risk and a bunch more.

Creative concept development

Struggling with a concept for a specific project?

Through research and a creative process, 21Tanks will run an internal perspective lab to generate ideas and concepts for your project, and present these findings and ideas back to you.

Lab facility

The 21Tanks Base is a great space for innovation and inspiration. Have your brainstorm, creative meeting or off-site in our ‘Gallery of Great Ideas’ for a fresh approach when doing business. Seating for 8-10 pax. Check the Lab out here.

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Why you’d want this:

Status meetings or ideation sessions run from the same boardroom week in and week out can become draining on creative spirit. Using a different off-site venue, particularly one with lots of inspiration to draw from at every turn, will add to your thought flow, which is what you need. Heck, we’ll even throw in some tea and biscuits. Awesome.

Newsletter

Trend reports / newsletters

Monthly innovation trend reports on any subject you’d feel enhances your knowledge in your, or your client’s, business sphere, a “Trend Economics Zeitgeist” of sorts.

A zeitgeist is the intellectual, cultural, ethical and political climate, ambience and morals of an era or also a trend. In German, the word has more layers of meaning than the English translation, including the fact that Zeitgeist can only be observed for past events.

We feel this encompasses the core of what we’re trying to achieve. Finding, correlating and giving perspective on all trends, emerging or otherwise. You could say we’d like to view trends as an economist views numbers. Also included will be our predictions on where we foresee certain trends heading.

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The purpose of the report is two fold:

1. To deliver great, and relevant content

2. To keep you up to speed on the latest trends in this space

You see, each report article will have a 'more info' button. This allows you to request info on a particular subject, and would let us see what hot buttons are...well...hot!

There will also be a ‘quote me’ button, which will get us out of our seats to find the best suppliers to deliver that specific requirement.

Apart from trends in your specific category we’ll also be looking for, and including, other trends happening in the world today. From marketing, to business models, to guerilla tactics, all of which could play a role in the way we think going forward. Heck, even fashion could help in the way design is headed. Good times.

Perspective Merchants

Need a little perspective in your next brainstorm session? 21Tanks offers our perspective, as guests, to sit in your meeting or session to offer our thoughts on your specific problem or ideas.

You can hire us to speak at your next conference too, bringing in a fresh perspective on your event objectives.

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When you’d need this:

You’ve arranged an internal brainstorm with yourself and your team, or perhaps facilitated by an outside party, but need the expertise of a smart mo’fo’, particularly someone who can see your business from an outsider’s perspective.

Execution

Coming up with great ideas is the easy bit, putting them into practice is the challenge.

21Tanks will work with you over a period of time to carry ideas and innovation throughout your business, using effective methods of implementation. In doing so, we’ll invent or enhance products, services, brands or customer experience, depending on what needs to be done.

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An example:

Hollard Insurance were launching an internal communications campaign within the organisation. They were so close to the inner workings of the project, and had been working on it for so long, that they needed an outside perspective on how to launch the campaign, as well as keep the momentum going within the team, and obviously the entire organisation. 21Tanks spent 6 months working with the marketing division to create and manage initiatives within the business, including a tour of Johannesburg explaining the importance of architecture, and how that relates to the architecture of a brand like Hollard.

Culture Dynamics

A big part of introducing new initiatives and processes within an organisation is to create a culture that accepts the change, takes it as their own and, above all, builds on it. Initiatives are nothing without buy-in from top-down, and creating a culture of people who are willing and excited on building this with you can only create a winning formula for a successful rollout.

21Tanks runs an open lab to achieve just this. We listen to what your company needs, and we deliver solutions to solve it.

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An example:

Your business merges departments, divisions or perhaps with another company. A unified culture needs to be defined, it’s that simple. Our open lab, along with pre-recorded vox on video, opens up conversation to where the company culture sees itself at the moment, and where it wants to go. This mechanic often opens up very important issues that employees are holding back, and this is where we move forward and fix those.

Dedicated research

with added perspective

21Tanks packages research into two product offerings, individual company-specific research and industry specific research.

Individual company-specific research would focus on gathering information about your company in your own environment. Think of it as internal research, with added perspective and flair. We work closely with your staff to gather as much information about a particular subject, if not more, and present that back to you with ideas on how to streamline specific processes.

Industry specific research would then focus on customer and general industry trends, pricing models, demographics, new technologies and any other topic that might contribute to the understanding of competitors and innovators in a specific industry. This can be presented to you as a once off, or through an ongoing ‘trend report’.

So pick one quickly and get added to our client list.