Experiencing The Experimental: Speaking to the Tidball Brothers about Vollebak
The body of work from Steve and Nick Tidball, over the years, could quite mistakenly be considered somewhat experimental. The sheer magnitude of a recent Airbnb project, with a rental floating down the Thames, for example, underscores the notion that their work is squarely outside of the expected. Then again, the paths that the twin brothers have taken - from cutting edge architecture schools and research institutes to advertising, - is unexpected as well.
“We both felt academia was going to be too narrow, and advertising looked like the chance to do and say things that people might actually talk about,” said Steve Tidball. “The only thing that’s changed radically over the last five years or so, is the type of work we’ve been making. Basically, we love thinking about the way brands should behave and what good design should look like. So we’ve made that our world. If you take D Rose Jump Store we did, for example, it’s a cool design idea, but it only started to get awesome, fun and visceral once you had kids jumping for those shoes who wanted them really badly. That idea of physical interaction and touch has become increasingly important to our work.”
What has really driven the brothers over the years, besides the quest for exceptional work, is competition — specifically, more extreme endeavours such as ultra-marathons, Ironmans and adventure contests. If there is a daredevil’s bent to it, the Tidballs are always up for the challenge. With that in mind, a new frontier is emerging this week as they begin their journey away from the advertising world and launch their first adventure brand, Vollebak.
Welcome to Vollebak. https://t.co/3Lku6Bsiev is now live. Your choices are chilling out, or evading death. pic.twitter.com/hCl41LlucW
— Vollebak (@vollebak) November 10, 2015
Instead of going with a large-scale, high street approach, Vollebak’s starting point is a very limited run of two highly technical products: the Condition Black Jacket and the Baker Miller Pink Hoodie. Each product is specific in its use and purpose. In both cases, it’s about survival in the most extreme of conditions.
The Condition Black jacket gets its inspiration from the military elite term, “condition black,” a moment in which the subconscious must choose between fight or flight. More directly, it’s the color code of “you’re about to die.” The product itself is designed for survival in the mountains and cold-weather conditions.
On the other end of the color spectrum, the Baker Miller Pink Hoodie is built for the high-pressure waiting periods in adventure sports and expeditions, when the ability to relax can be key to success or survival. Its influence comes from a series of psychological experiments that demonstrated how just 15 minutes of exposure to the color could suppress violent and aggressive behavior in prisoners and delinquents – calming their minds and tranquilizing their muscles.
According to Steve, Vollebak intends to be the world’s most experimental adventure brand, with the products and experiments (best done in a dark room with headphones) for each that push physical and cognitive limits in new and unimagined ways.
Thank you @WiredUK The Baker Miller Pink Hoodie has now launched. https://t.co/B1P90v1YAo pic.twitter.com/rU9GXVibwQ
— Vollebak (@vollebak) November 10, 2015
The experiment for the Condition Black Jacket aims to increase the chances of survival by enhancing sensory perception in life and death situations. Designed to combat the hearing loss and distorted vision that typically accompanies these ‘condition black’ moments, it uses light and sound to trigger the Gamma brainwaves one experiences in extreme situations, before forcing the senses to train at the limits of cognition.
The goal for the Baker Miller Pink Hoodie experiment is to help one get into the optimum state of relaxation before or after sport, using color and sound to slow down the heart rate, breathing and brainwaves. Combining the exact color of the original psychological tests with a soundtrack composed from elements of pink noise (downloadable from the site to listen to while wearing the hoodie), the experiment activates the part of that central nervous system that promotes rest and recuperation, helping conserve energy and speed up recovery time.
The brand’s name, Vollebak is Flemish and translates to “all out,” which is certainly in line with the ethos and character of its founders.
“I just love the attitude it embodies, both in terms of how we approach sport and creativity.” said Nick. “It’s about that perfectionism point, which there is no compromise. It just summarized everything we thought and looked awesome.”
The aforementioned point about perfection is germane in that the products themselves can truly be the difference between life and death.
“In our past work in advertising,” noted Steve. “We did our best work when we shared the same elements of perfectionism. In our case here, athletes are putting their bodies and lives on the line, and that means that perfectionism is vitally important. If you’re working in an ice cream van, you don’t need to be a perfectionist. If you’re an engineer at SpaceX, the rocket you’re building is going to be putting people into space. We’re squarely in the latter camp because the stakes are high.”
That attention to detail was three years in the making in even finding the right manufacturer for the products. The clear choice was Petratex in Portugal, widely considered the leading technical factory in the world and known for making the most complex and challenging clothing for high-end fashion and sport.
“Getting them to even talk to us wasn’t easy,” chuckled Steve. “But we accepted the fact that it was going to take time because this really is all about putting the best products and ideas into the market.”
Even though The Brothers Tidball spent 13 years in advertising at the likes of AMV, Grey, CHI, Fallon, Dentsu and TBWA (winning scads of awards for their work), they found inspiration (and patience) in a seemingly unique place outside of the industry.
“We've tried to look at other industries because we come from one particular industry. Here's advertising. Here are advertising time scales. What we've turned to a lot, actually is the world of high-end gastronomy and we've looked at their time scales,” Steve explained. “For instance, someone like Fat Duck or El Bulli or Noma. Dishes might take two or three years to get on the menu. What we've had to let go of is this idea that ‘hey, we take a brief and six months later, we see our work out in the world.’ We've had to get much more comfortable with this notion of ‘okay, we're going to have this idea three years ago and over the course of the next three years, you're going to mould it, grow it, develop it, put it through R&D and then put it out into the world.’”
Even though they’ve looked outside the ad world, from the initial conversations to launch, both found that some of their work in advertising was actually meaningful in keeping the entire project focused and on track.
“I think where it informed us most heavily is in process and how we work,” noted Nick. “Effectively in launching a brand and in launching the floating house for the Airbnb project, you're pulling together a huge number of ever-shifting factors and so what you have to get very, very good at is prioritization and streamlining — and what is the most urgent thing that needs my attention now. The stuff you pull from is not about creativity — so much of it is simply about executing your original vision and staying true to that.”
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Vollebak
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The truth in Vollebak’s vision is a critical component in the actual target audience. Much like the products themselves, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach but more of a “you either get it or you don’t” feel that is not the classic early adopter cycle.The Tidballs feel that the audience will likely self-select — and be made up of highly creative, successful, intelligent people who push themselves to the limit and put their lives on the line in adventure sport.
“There's a particular image that the media are very comfortable with of what extreme sport is and it's quite rad and young — an adrenaline junkie and not giving a shit kind of tongue out to the camera vibe,” said Steve. “The audience that we’re looking at asks very deep questions about themselves, what they’re capable of, what they believe in and essentially, who they are. In really simple terms we wanted to make a brand that we knew we and our friends like that would want. So our target market is guys like us.”
Unlike most sports marketing, there will most certainly not be a “go-to” athlete or traditional “formula” for the foreseeable future, in keeping with the experimental mindset.
“There won’t be a talisman for this brand,” said Steve. “I understand the way that works, and it's been incredibly successful for how brands have traditionally set themselves up, but it's just not what we're about. What we want to be able to do is bring together all of the most interesting elements in the world like material technology, neuroscience, biohacking, the latest learnings from physiology — whatever element of any discipline that we think we can make better athletes out of.”
The real power in the evolution in the brand (and its marketing) is about an extraordinary niche, forward-thinking consumer who is willing to use the product and entrust Vollebak with, essentially, their own bodies as a platform of sorts.
“We're not just asking you to adopt,” stated Steve about the service. “We’re asking you to chuck yourself in headfirst. We're basically saying ‘look, you've never heard of us, but do you mind if we re-engineer your brain for 20 minutes?’ As a brand chat up line goes, it's pretty unique.”
Watch the Tidball brothers discuss their Cannes Lions winning work on D Rose Jump with The Drum in the video here.