Evolving gently with
Evolving gently with time… The Ultimate in Dynamic Aesthetics – adding value to any Plasma or LCD TV. Each one of these digital works is a “creative matrix” that informs and regenerates its surrounding environment. ... welcome to the wonderful world of ArtDisplay... bringing art and emotion to y o u r walls. Come to visit us at IFA: Hall 24 - stand 102 (Cleverdis stand)
NEWS LG Design Strategy “WAF”: The Wife Acceptance Factor The overall theme from LG this year is “Design meets technology”. According to the company, they wanted to highlight the emphasis they are placing on design. We met with Tae Bong Kim, Leader of DD&M Design Research Lab and Chi Eun Lee, VP – Digital Display Marketing Europe, and asked them why there has been such a change of track. “It’s all about lifestyle” It’s mainly because we have realized that as well as continuous enhancement of picture technology, another trend is that more and more women are having a much greater say in the choice of a TV. So given the rising influence of women in how the TV will look in the living room, we have decided that this will be an important decision factor for TV purchase, and therefore we are taking into account this IFA International is a CLEVERDIS Publication • 65 avenue Jules Cantini - Tour Méditerranée - 13298 Marseille • France • Tel: + 33 4 42 77 46 00 • Fax: + 33 4 42 77 46 01 • SARL capitalised at €128,250 - VAT FR 95413604471 • RCS Marseille 413 604 471 • E-mail : info@cleverdis.com • www.cleverdis.com During IFA : Press Center – Hall 6.3 / 105 • Tel: +49 (0)30 3038 81136 • Fax: +49 (0)30 3038 81146 • E-mail : info@ifa-international.org • www.ifa-international.org Publisher: Gérard Lefebvre (gerard.lefebvre@cleverdis.com) • Publishing Director: Jean-Guy Bienfait (jeanguy.bienfait@cleverdis.com) • Project Manager: Bettina Spegele (bettina.spegele@cleverdis.com) • Editor-in-Chief: Richard Barnes • Editorial team: Paul Andrews, Mark Dezzani, Gregoire Fleurot, Gary Smith • Photos & videos: Sacha Le Coroller • Design & Page Setting: Hélène Beunat, Valentina Russo • Photographer: Konstanze- Paula Grüning To contact them : first name.last name@ifa-international.org • Printing: Möller Druck und Verlag GmbH (Berlin, Germany) • With the participation of: Katharina Mendel, Jean-François Pieri, Raphaël Pinot © CLEVERDIS 2007 - Registration of Copyright August 2007 - ISSN pending Information presented in this publication is purely indicative in order to illustrate subjects contained therein. 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The publishers and editorial staff decline all responsibility as to opinions formulated in this publication by those interviewed or cited therein. Their opinions are entirely their own, and are included with the understanding that they contain, to our knowledge, no malicious intent. The inclusion of all texts, photographs and other documents supplied by those included in the encyclopaedia imply the acceptance by their authors of their free publication therein. Documents and photographs will not be returned. It should be understood that this publication contains forwardlooking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include assumptions relating to the timing of the recorded date. If any of these risks or uncertainties materialises or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the expectations outlined in these statements. Cleverdis assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements during the period of publication. Photo Credits and Copyright: All Rights Reserved. “wife acceptance factor” by making even more designoriented products. What is different today about the design? We are seeing a lot of black for example. What is different about LG design? One of the main overall concepts of LG design is to actually apply art to the design of the products. On the refrigerators and air conditioners, there are actual works of arts integrated on the surface of the products. The unique thing about the TV designs is that we have decided to highlight the TV stand, which was usually regarded as the least important part in the design of a TV. The stand is not only there to hold the TV, it is also there to look good, which is why we introduced the ring concept with curved lines and unique shapes. This gives the impression that the TV is floating on the stand. According to our consumer research, despite the fact that people often want to hang their TV on the wall, the vast majority of them actually don’t, so the TV has to look good even when it is on the stand. This means the stand actually has to look good. We want to create a harmony between the TV, the stand and the surroundings. There is also a unique feature behind the TV, where no one actually looks, that allows you to organize all the cable straps… There has been a lot of work done on details, we attach a great importance to them. We want to address the consumer’s need for a neat TV that blends in the surroundings. How does the design of the LG TVs happen? We have our main team of designers at the headquarters in Seoul, but we also have offices in Milan, New Jersey and Tokyo. In addition to that we also work with a lot of design firms around the world. We have a design competition where we bring all the ideas of leading design firms together and select the best ones. The ones that are selected are then actually produced. So there is a heavy filtrating process that leverages all the leading designers around the world. We also have a whole department dedicated to research in lifestyles in order to find out what people want functionally as well as emotionally. We realize that different markets will have different tastes, especially in Europe, which is a very fragmented market. IFA 2007 – Beyond Expectations IFA 2007 is turning out to be a great vintage. Jens Heithecker, Director, Messe Berlin, gives us an update on how the show is going... We are very happy that IFA 2007 is growing compared to the last shows. We have a new record level in the participation of exhibitors: we welcome 1212 exhibitors this year. We also expect more visitors and importantly more international visitors. Also we expect a lot of trade visitors, buyers and retailers. We are very optimistic because so far the numbers are very good. As you said, an important aspect is the trade visitors. IFA is really making a push to try and encourage trade visitors to come to the show, what is being done to encourage them? We have done a lot of smaller and bigger things. We have IFA representatives in every country worldwide in charge of informing our potential clients, potential trade visitors and exhibitors of course. In addition, we have informed the international press at our big press event in Monaco a few months ago. We work in close official cooperation with the most important buying groups in Europe, who officially invite their members to IFA. This is one reason why we were very optimistic this year. IFA has restructured in terms of how it is presenting things this year and this is very much in line with the way the industry is restructuring as well. Tell me a little bit about the restructuring of the categories at the IFA this year… We try to be in line with the industry. The CE market is developing very quickly and is very complex. We try to find simple solutions for the segmentation of sections at IFA. We wanted to address three questions: what is the content people want to use (public or personal?), which application do they want to use and how to bring this content to the application and to transmit it between applications. The idea behind this is then to create segments: the segment for content is My Media, for the applications it is Home Entertainment and HiFi and for the transmission of content between the applications we created the IFA Communication segment. Last but not least we have a segment Technology and Components for our international exhibitors and for the IT industry. As you were just saying, things like the sound section and so on are becoming more and more important. It is very interesting to see imaging and photography because it is merging with other CE devices. This trend is becoming very important now… I think it is becoming more important for IFA and IFA is becoming more important VIDEO than ever for the photo industry. The reason behind this is quite simple: photography used to be much more for professionals than for the mass markets, but the digital revolution transformed photography into a mass market product. And if you want to be successful in the mass market as a producer, you need retailers and distribution structures. All these distribution structures can be found here, all the retailers and buyers for the mass market, not for the specialists. We deliver this access to European mass market to the photo industry. 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