The Lancia Flavia Sport
Jolie-laide: why worry about being beautiful when you could be interesting?
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The Lancia Flavia Sport
Jolie-laide: why worry about being beautiful when you could be interesting?
31 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
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metacool:
What should we (your readers) say to all those marketing people
who are going to glance at the title of All Marketers are Liars in an airport
bookstore and get offended? What's the elevator pitch for this book
that gets people over the "liars" hump?
Seth Godin:
This is a terrific question. If I had taken my own advice and written a
book that matched the worldview of the largest possible portion of the
business-book-buying public, I would have called it THE GREEN
KANGAROO--HOW TELLING STORIES HELPS TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS. But I
didn't, largely out of creative desire and arrogance. That said, I
think the "lying" story is very spreadable, because it starts loud
(you're a liar) and then gives the teller enough space to actually tell
the story.
My hope is that in meetings, people will ask the questions I outline at
the end of the book. Stuff like, "what's our story?"
metacool:
Seth, thanks for taking the time to talk about your new book. Thanks also to my friends Anthony & Tom for help with the brainstorming. And thanks to YOU for hanging out at metacool.
Seth's Business Blog Tour party for All Marketers are Liars continues tomorrow at Brand Mantra.
26 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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metacool:
Good organizational design often begets good design thinking.
What are some ways to organize the "product generation" part
of a company so that it can design experiences and the business
communication and branding strategies (AKA "lies") required to bring
them to market, all in an authentic way?
Seth Godin:
The best stories come from organizations that tell the story FIRST. The
founder or manager or whomever really and truly believes it. Really
wants to make it happen. Then the product matches the story. What if
Altoids weren't strong? What if JetBlue was just cheap, not better?
You can't slap a story on later. Doesn't work.
26 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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metacool:
In All Marketers are Liars you provide lots of examples of offerings with great stories. If we were to spend a day in your shoes, what are the great products with great stories that make up the life of Seth Godin? What do you dig?
Seth Godin:
Even though I'm a little more attuned to marketing bullshit because
that's what I write about, I still like to believe it. I like to
believe that food from the Union Square Market tastes better. I like to
believe that the small advantage in UI that the Mac delivers is cause
for joy. I like to believe that driving a Prius instead of a Lotus
Convertible is an important contribution to our planet's longevity.
Psychology is filled with cleverly constructed tests that demonstrate
that even when people "know" the truth, they choose to believe a story
instead.
26 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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metacool:
I'm a big fan of Donald Norman's book Emotional Design, and was
happy to see it on your recommended reading list in All Marketers are Liars. What's the connection between Don's thinking and your own?
Seth Godin:
I met Don at TED and was blown away at how deeply he understood the
'why' behind design. Not to make things pretty, but to build an
emotional story into what we do and how we feel about it.
26 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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metacool:
What happens once everybody can create goods stories for their
brand? Will consumers become desensitized to 'story' and crave
'story-free'?
Seth Godin:
Story-free is still a story, in a twisted sort of way. The way that
black and white generic canned peaches (which appeared to be without
marketing) were actually filled with a story.
The story doesn't happen without the consumer. People feel compelled to
tell themselves stories about everything. That's why they are
superstitious, believe in religion and cry at the movies. So, while
certain stories go out of vogue, it's inconceivable to me that human
beings will suddenly become hyper-rational.
26 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Seth Godin is gracing the pixels of metacool today from The Business Blog Book Tour to talk about creating cool stuff, remarkable stuff, and his new book All Marketers are Liars.
I'll be posting Seth's answers to my questions over the next few hours, so let's get started, and be sure to check back later for more of his thinking.
metacool:
Can a good story be used as a substitute for bad design? Many of
the examples in All Marketers are Liars communicate their story through good design, from message to product to package. Does a good story make up for lousy aesthetics and/or functionality?
Seth Godin:
A story is worthless without authenticity. You can't say, "Well, this
was designed by Phillipe Starck, therefore it's easy to use," and
expect that to work if, in the long run, people hate using it. Sure,
some people will fall for it, but what really delivers is something
like OXO. The OXO design is totally overdone, emphasizing at every turn
just how USEFUL this must be. But it IS useful! So the story works.
There are plenty of products where bad design is part of the story. The
Drudge Report, say, or the Hummer.
26 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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"It's much harder to make stuff versus just talking about it like you know what you're doing."
-- John Maeda
23 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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Seth Godin will be discussing the state of the art of marketing remarkable stuff here at metacool on May 26.
Mark your calendar, check the air pressure in your brain lobes, and be sure your RSS reader is gassed up.
20 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Next time your hear someone couching innovation in terms of
complex processes, jargon, and esoteric management theories, challenge them
with this simple question: how do you plan to enable people here to
enjoy their work?
The more I learn about innovation, the more I believe that the organizations who innovate year over year over year are those who treat people well, who build cultures where enjoying one's work -- routinely reaching a state of flow -- is not the exception, but the rule. If you want to be sustainably innovative, these places teach us, then solve for human happiness. Think JetBlue. Gore. Honda.
Or even Ferrari. Ferrari, the grandest brand in the world, red speed incarnate. Because it operates within the byzantine world of Formula 1 racing, where teams spend upwards of $200 million per season to design, build and campaign two tiny cars around the globe, Ferrari could easily be a nasty, brutish place to work. But it isn't, and therein lies the secret to its formidable record of victory: helping its people get into flow. Jean Todt, the scuderia's leader, says this about his approach to culture:
People will give their best at work if they are happy. If people respect their co-workers, both professionally and personally, they will want them to be happy too, and will help each other when there are problems.
Could enjoyment really equal innovation? Yes. It's as simple (but difficult) a proposition as this: to innovate well, treat your people well.
19 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (2)
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I'd like to tell you about a new aesthetic term called "beausage". It sounds French but it's not; instead it's a synthetic combination of the words beauty and usage, and describes the beauty that comes with using something.
Beausage is:
How, you may ask, is beausage any different than patina? Well, it's certainly related, but different. Patina is really more about surface level changes happening at a chemical level: oxidation, chemical stripping, and so on. Beausage describes changes that happen in 3D where atoms get torn and stripped away, as occurs with scratches, tears, chips, and wear marks. I used to say "patina" when what I really meant was "beausage". It's nice to have both.
I wish I could say I coined it, but the term beausage is the brainchild of Grant Petersen, grand pooh-bah of Rivendell Bicycle Works and probably the single most brilliant, holistic, and intuitive brand creator out there. I mention Grant not only for intellectual attribution, but because he's going to help us bring this back into the world of creating cool stuff. Grant states that "In general, real materials develop beausage, and synthetics look like old junk. It's like a cowpokes's old denim jacket, versus an old polyester leisure suit...".
Beausage is something for all products and their designers to aspire to. When the chrome on the back of my iPod scratched away, the resulting exposed grey plastic made the thing feel cheap and ephemeral -- the opposite of what a good chrome finish should have done. Imagine an iPod that looked better (beausage) the more it got used. When you start to conceive of finishes not as veneers but as reservoirs of meaning via beausage, then you're giving your customers something that will continue to provide satisfaction through the ages.
16 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (6)
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A few weeks ago I wrote a post called "What's Good Enough?"
Which is why I positively love this idea: Good enough is the new perfect
13 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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My friend George sent me a link to this great set of joke product concepts from the Onion.
It's very funny stuff -- but also a good reminder that bringing non-trivial value propositions to market is often a non-trival undertaking.
11 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
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AutoWeek has a great "compare and contrast" profile of Jesse James (from Monster Garage) and Paul Moller (Mr. Skycar). Their respective forays into the realm of flying cars represent two very different approaches to venture design.
In one corner, we have Moller, who has spent millions and millions and years and years developing Skycar. He has a PhD, and his venture is very much a left-brain, Master Plan kind of effort: lots of costly (time + money) engineering and analysis, supported by a huge machine for consuming large of amounts of money with big, complex prototypes. So far he's gotten the Skycar to hover a few feet off the ground. It looks cool, though.
In the opposite side of the ring, we have Mr. James, ace welder and intuitive designer, an entrepreneur who knows his way around an English Wheel. If you've ever seen Monster Garage, you know that Jesse is all about building things now, and doing things to the hilt. Talk is cheap in the land of Jesse, and its a place where you build to know. In stark contrast to Moller, Jesse's flying car venture was a two-week, multi-thousand dollar affair, and it resulted in a Panoz Esperante that flew 350 yards.
Who learned more? Big budget, big schedule, or lean budget, scrappy schedule? Ventures that seek to crack open new market spaces (like flying cars -- not a good market, mind you, but a new market nonetheless) face a central challenge of closing critical information gaps. If you have suitcases of cash, and a lot of extra time on your hand, try the Moller model. Otherwise, as a proponent of appropriate venture design, metacool has no choice but to endorse Mr. James.
09 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)
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The CarBone carbon fiber pet bowl
06 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
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Virginia Postrel has written a wonderful NYT piece about the meaning of wires. She writes:
One of the best places to find wireless glamour isn't in ads for high-tech products. It's in images of stylish lamps in catalogs for companies like Crate & Barrel and Chiasso. Whether through careful composition or a little digital magic, the lamps seem to have no cords. Like bills piled on the kitchen counter or muddy footprints on the floor, the utilitarian realism of electrical wires would break the spell of domestic perfection. Glamour's grace is the art that conceals art... What is truly glamorous about wireless technology is the fantasy that it requires no wires.
Is it possible to tell an authentic story made up of little lies? I'm not so sure... a good story, maybe, but authentic, no. Perhaps I don't need to be told an authentic story to get me to buy a lamp or a laptop, just a good one. I wonder.
04 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Alex Pang of IFTF tells this charming tale of brand fractalness:
"At Stanford Shopping Center yesterday, we walked by this fine retail establishment.
Apple Store, Stanford Shopping Center, via FlickrAs we passed, my son (who's three) shouted, "HEY! THAT'S THE IPOD STORE!!!"
Update, 28 April 2005: This morning I asked him, "How did you know the iPod Store was an iPod store? Did you see the iPods in it?"
He said, "No! It looks like an iPod!"'
He's right. It does look like an iPod. When you're doing this fractal brand thing right, everyone knows it. Especially three-year-old, precocious design critics.
03 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
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A few months ago we were talking about Scoble's observation to the effect that any marketing website without a RSS feed should be flushed down the toilet.
He's right, and here's why: synthetic fables created by ad firms simply can't compete with honest, soulful stories told direct to you and me from another human being.
Case in point: if you're a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, do you feel more soulfully connected to the brand if you read this or this? The answer is clearly the latter. Why? Because RSS combined with authentic, human content signals a new paradigm of marketing communications. The brands and people who will succeed in this new paradigm are the ones with real stories and the guts to tell them without the mediocrity-inducing filter of marketing "professionals". Good marketing takes guts.
02 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (2)
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"It's the vehicle's design that first forges that emotional bond between product and consumer... So often it simply boils down to this:
'Do I like the way this car looks or not?'
And I think that's part of the reason this industry is headed for a new golden age of design. That's great news for all of us who dream about beautiful cars and trucks. It makes it a very exciting time to be in this business. Because we're getting back to what it's all about: Building the stuff that dreams are made of."
- Bob Lutz
01 May 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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