All the parents out there will hopefully agree that being a parent is wonderful but tough going at times. So when I was told about these hotels that specialise in family breaks I was instantly intrigued.

A quick Google search – naturally, showed me this isn’t one or two hotels but hundreds up and down the country – suddenly I’d had my eyes opened to the ‘Family Luxury’ market. Catering for those couples that want to stay in a nice hotel where the kids are welcomed. We are staying in the New Park Manor, a wonderful 17th century old building with indoor/outdoor pools, spa, sauna, crèche, baby listening service, play room, an amazing restaurant and truly wonderful staff. At £285 a night it doesn’t come cheap but it really does tailor itself perfectly to the families that work hard, want a family break and like the occasional bit of pampering.

You might be asking yourself ‘Why is he writing about family breaks?’ – Am I on net-mums by mistake?!

The issue is not the luxury nor is it the family element – my beef is that Family Luxury is a flawed concept;
- My daughter normally sleeps through the night, but these past 2 nights she has been restless, the unfamiliarity, so as great as the bed is I’ve not spent much time in it,
- At all meals times, in the wonderful Stag Restaurant, I’m surrounded by screaming children throwing food, mine included,
- Our room is lovely with lots of period features and antique furniture, very luxurious, but within 2 minutes of arriving my daughter had emptied all drawers and pulled everything off the shelves,
- It’s 7am, I have been up since 4 with a sleepless child, I can hear other screaming babies – I won’t be the only one at breakfast with bags under their eyes!

I could go on and on pulling out examples, the simple fact is that children and luxury don’t go together yet this hotel has been running for 30 years, it is obviously doing something right. There is clearly a market that can be segmented, marketed at, sold to and potentially repeated – and at nearly £900 for a 2 night stay it’s clearly a profitable market.

How is it possible that a service industry can charge a premium for a service that the customer doesn’t really experience and still be a booming growth sector? This is why I love marketing, advertising and all things creative – there is no rationale to this most human of oxymorons!

Oh, Sophie has just gone to sleep, perfectly timed for breakfast.

Paul

I run a design agency in the City, and at the very heart of everything we do is creativity. It’s why clients pick up the phone and ask us to solve their problems – creativity is the fuel that drives us forward. So when Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove wanted to push creative subjects to the sidelines in his proposed EBacc shake-up of GCSE education, it was only natural for the creative industries to start jumping up and down making a lot of noise. Fortunately with pressure from movements like #IncludeDesign and Bacc For the Future, Gove was forced to backtrack on some of his proposals.

I admire Gove. I really like some of the work he is doing and the fact that he has ambitious plans. I like that he is prepared to fail if it means shaking up the status quo but I don’t agree with the centre of his strategy that our children should learn the ‘basics’ and only once these have been mastered should they then progress onto such things as exploring. His rationalethat education should be a two stage process: firstly building up a reservoir of knowledge;then getting creative and imaginative with these basics.

I completely agree that our children should be able to read, write, spell, add, subtract, multiply, read Shakespeare, draw with Pythagoras, test Darwin’s theory and understand Einstein’s theory of relativity – but I do not agree these should be taught like a 1950sthrowback to basics whilst stopping the student from actually thinking. Students should be encouraged to test, explore and innovate as they learn the basics. We shouldn’t be afraid of letting them fail as they explore, and what drives this exploration? Creativity. The greatest minds in the world once thought the world was flat, but this status quo was challenged and disproven. Britain is only going to be the nation to discover the cure for cancer, developaffordable green energy technology or design the next iPhone if we encourage creativity.

Britain is not going to produce the next Prof Brian Cox, Sir James Dyson or Sir Jony Ive if our children are churned out with the just the ‘basics’. As an employer I want graduates to have had a well-rounded and balanced education. If they don’t have the basics nailed they are going to struggle to cope with a fast-paced, changeable and innovation-led business, but if they haven’t been encouraged to think creatively, to challenge the status quo then howshould we expect them to do it when employed. Creativity should be ingrained, coming naturally to a school-leaver or graduate.

Do the numbers stack up? There are a number of companies that place more than lip service to creativity by placing it at the heart of their business: Apple, Google, ARM, Dyson, andAmazon as well as London firms such as Huddle, OpenGamma, Hotels.com, Fianium, Foster+Partners – all truly innovative companies that encourage creativity and are generatingserious revenues. The government’s own Tech City is a prime example of the types of businesses that put creativity at their heart, at the last count some 40,000 businesses all crammed around a roundabout.

As one might expect from a designer I have a particular interest in keeping Design & Technology as a core subject within the curriculum. Gove and his team tried to kick D&T to the curb though, hopefully, the great work from Joe Macleod at #IncludeDesign has put a stop to that and the Government consultation ends in April so it’s all hands to the pump at the moment. I want to see a properly structured, relevant, rigorous and meaningful curriculum. Clearly creative skills are a fundamental element of D&T, but as with all important and core subjects the creative and problem-solving skills encouraged in D&T are used in Maths, English and Science. Bel Reed at the Design Council has developed five principles of design education which I fully support as they clearly demonstrate the transferable skills of D&T.http://blog.designcouncil.org.uk/2013/02/27/the-5-principles-of-design-education/

The best schools are the ones whose teachers are allowed to get on and teach. So my message to Michael Gove is: keep doing the many things you’re better than anybody else at doing but don’t get your prescription pad out to give the wrong medicine to the education system. Let teachers create an environment of exploration – a beautiful blend of knowledge and creativity. As Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

Paul Mellor is design director at Mellor & Scott

So whats different you ask? Well Mozilla are positioning this as an operating system with true open web standards at its heart – the very essence of Mozilla’s brand has been focussed and driven into a mobile OS that uses html 5 as a user facing proposition. A very commendable undertaking, because developing an OS that doesn’t step on anyone’s toes (those heavyweights have very large and sensitive toes!) whilst delivering a user experience that the users actually like is a very difficult task.

We haven’t checked out the OS yet, but we like the relative simpliicity of the core value. If its aligned with Open Web Standards then it’s in, if it’s not then it’s out. As you would expect a smashingly nondescript exectuive has come out with some crap,

“Every device is better if it’s social and we’re excited that Firefox OS users will have easy access to the mobile Web-based version of Facebook that will take advantage of our current and future features,” said Vaughan Smith, VP of Mobile Partnerships at Facebook.”

But what really actually counts is the following;

1. Does it deliver as promised?

2. Is it different?

3. Is it disruptive?

4. Can I work it intuitively from the first moment I pick up a device?

We’ll know the answers to these questions fairly soon and we’ll be reporting our thoughts. Until then, its over and out

Mel

EMAIL 7
From: Michael Fallon
To: Paul Mellor
Date: 18 January 2013, 14.38pm
Subject: Re, Creative Education in the new Ebacc

Dear Mr. Mellor,

Thank you for writing.

There is a finite amount of time that schools have in their timetables. Therefore more time spent on one subject inevitably means there is less time for others. As such the Government wishes to focus on delivering the basics first. As such I think we are in violent agreement – we both want to make sure children have the right skills and those skills are the core academic ones rather than the vocational.

I do not claim to be an expert on education; on that I must defer to my colleagues at the Department for Education. However, I recognise the importance of having schools teach what businesses value and one way we are doing this is through the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) which brings councils and businesses together. LEPs will have a new role in setting skills strategies for their local area and we are encouraging LEPs to have a seat on FE colleges’ governing bodies, with colleges represented on LEP boards. LEPs’ skills priorities will be published to help potential learners choose the right course or training programme. I would suggest, given your passion for education, that you may be interested in the work of the South East LEP (http://www.southeastlep.com/) which covers the Sevenoaks area.

Best wishes,

Michael Fallon
__________

EMAIL 8
From: Paul Mellor
To: Michael Fallon
Date: 21 January 2013, 14.23pm
Subject: Re, Creative Education in the new Ebacc

Mr Fallon,

Thank you for your email.

We both want children to be given the best education to start their careers but we differ in our approach, if you think this means we are in ‘violent agreement’ then so be it – I disagree.

The ‘basics’ can be taught without the need to reduce other important subjects. Unfortunately it is an easy and potentially lazy argument to make that ‘more time spent on one subject inevitably means there is less time for others’.

You are the Minister for Business and Enterprise, above all else I would expect you to know what UK businesses expect from the education system. It is not my job to get involved with organisations such as the LEP’s as you suggest (I have previously been involved in college and FE education). It is your job to have your finger on the pulse of the UK economy, and with this specific issue, feedback these views to the Department of Education.

Perhaps we should meet to discuss this in more detail, as I believe this to be a very large problem and one that needs to be addressed immediately.

Paul Mellor

See below for the emails.

EMAIL 5:

You can see from the email exchange that unfortunately my local MP – Michael Fallon – doesn’t agree with all my points within our argument, which is a shame as he is the Minister of State for Business and Enterprise in the department of Business, Innovation and Skills, so whilst this is an immediate education issue it affects the future of creative businesses as a whole. So it is imperative we as an industry keep up the pressure on the Government and make our voice heard. You can sign the petition here, you’ll see some well-know names from the international design industry.

I’ll update with any further responses I receive from Mr Fallon.

Email 1:

The research predict that 119 million tablets will be sold in 2012, 70% of them will be iPads. This will give rise to 169.6 million iPad sales in 2016, say that number again – 169.6 million.

They predict that the effect on e-commerce will be huge, there has already been a 348% increase in traffic from tablets in one year.

Tablets have grown to account for 6.52% of all website visits in 2012, which doesn’t sound lot but Desktops visits has dropped below the magic 90% mark for the first time to 88.12%. With the predicted explosion of tablet sales these numbers are sure to continue on this trend and we will eventual see tablet visit numbers in the 50% region…..MASSIVE NEWS.

But the research that gives all of this context for the marketing man is that 96% of users currently shop on their tablet whilst sitting on the couch. The question to ask is what other thing do most people spend their time doing whilst on the couch (only clean thoughts count!), the answer is watch TV. So we have a captive audience sat on the couch watching Madmen (other TV shows are available) and you have these same people doing the huge majority of their online shopping (on the only device they will own) whilst watching the TV. This as they say is a marketing man’s dream!

The brands that apply some proper creative thought into how they are going to leverage more sales from this perfect storm are the ones who will make the most cash – the possibilities are endless. Get in first and you steal market share – big market share. We at Mellor&Scott have already got a few ideas we’ll be pitching to a client or two.

Paul

How do we feel about it? Well I can’t say I’m too impressed from what we’ve seen so far. First of all let’s cut to the chase, Microsoft is not the power house it once was and has half the market capitalisation of its eternal rival Apple (yet still dominates the PC market in terms of volume). Therefore Windows 8 is going to have to be a game changer in terms of experience and functionality for it to regain lost ground and ultimately some customer traction against Apple & Samsung is the future Smartphone/Tablet wars.

Historical elements such as the ‘Start’ button have gone and along with the tab system along the bottom, it’s very close to the remarkably well reviewed Windows Mobile OS. However I feel they have missed the point of the digital lifestyle with gaudy colours and an ‘App Jigsaw’. You don’t have to be bullish to create something new and different and that’s the trap Microsoft’s top guys have fallen into, it looks like they are trying to be different for the sake of it rather than really considering what their beleaguered yet still massive influential customers actually want.

They want a User Experience that is compelling and intuitive but most of all they want to find hidden surprises – this is what the customer wants. Yeah sure they will be content with an integrated system that allows them to switch easily from playing FIFA on their Xbox to sitting infront of a desktop to then hunching over the phone on Facebook for some good honest stalking. But they expect that as a matter of course and it shouldn’t be your driving force and listening to Windows President Steven Sinofsky and looking at the preview you get the feeling that creating an ‘integrated system’ was their goal and unfortunately that isn’t going to get the public’s juices going.

An integrated system with the same navigation and UI across their hardware is very Apple, yet Microsoft seem to have failed to hit the right note because they weren’t doing it for the right reason. They were doing it to create one look-n-feel as opposed to thinking about creating some magic and giving their customers a stify.

I expected more as the noises coming out of the Windows team and Microsoft over the last couple of years after Windows Mobile OS have been encouraging.

Their other big problem is Nokia and no matter how good your relaunch’s are, if you’re stood on the deck next to Captain Nokia on the Titanic you’re only ever going to sink. A partnership with Nokia is strategic suicide.

Have a smashing day, Paul