Can design thinking be used to further the careers of various hip hop artists?
We'll find out tonight.
Can design thinking be used to further the careers of various hip hop artists?
We'll find out tonight.
10 May 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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What are you really selling? A product? Goods? Services? An Experience? A Story? Community?
How about all of the above?: Peet's Global Journeys
08 May 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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Tom Guarriello hits the nail on the head: The Long Tail of Reputation
04 May 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (1)
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Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, keeper of the fantastic Orange is the New Pink blog, and a fellow reader of Oprah magazine, has a really cool article in this month's Wired called Rise of the Neo-Greens. In it he describes the rise of the green aesthetic, whose adherents "...are charting a third way, triangulating between the hippies and the hip." Of course, it's more about the stories people tell themselves than it is about the actual eco-impact of the offerings they consume. As he notes:
But regardless of age or income, consumers buy cars with gas-electric engines primarily because of what the vehicles say about them - to themselves and to everyone else.
If all marketers are liars, then all consumers are believers. That's not a value judgment so much as it is a insight to guide design work. We live in an age where marketing -- the process of deciding what to make -- is overlapping with the design process. If you're only designing the object and not paying attention to the story surrounding it, you're abdicating your opportunity to craft something that's truly infectious.
01 May 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (3)
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We're holding a mini-conference this coming Thursday, May 4 as part of our Stanford d.school class on Creating Infectious Action. We're starting at 3:30 and will run until 7pm. Our current speaker lineup is:
If you're interested in attending, contact me and I'll send you more info.
29 April 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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Wow! We held another session this evening of Creating Infectious Action at the Stanford d.school. And I have to say that my hat was knocked into the creek.
Two weeks ago the six student teams were charged with the assignment of spreading Firefox to a target population of non-consumers. This was not a fictional project. The masterminds from Mozilla were in class the day we assigned the project, and any marketer out there knows how hard it is to go after people who really could care less about using your offering.
So.
Since this is a class taught in a design school, we asked the students to use design thinking to come up with human-centric solutions that will help spread Firefox to audiences not currently using it. Here are some of the solutions -- remember, these represent just two weeks of work. Done by people who just met each other and were assigned to teams. And who have lots of other classes to attend to.
In the solution category of making Firefox more accessible by linking it to pop culture:
From the school of tipping-point-maven-connector theory:
Targeting a specific, highly connected, maven-centric psychographic lifestyle segment:
Tapping into the "sheep that shit grass" dynamic:
And, one team of students put together an ambitious and compelling paper-based campaign to promote Firefox adoption in a viral, pass-along way: www.firefoxkids.org
Two weeks. That's a lot of innovation and discovery.
28 April 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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I'm normally not one to kiss and tell, but yesterday's session of Creating Infectious Action really knocked my hat into the creek. It's a cliche for a teacher to say that they learn from the process of teaching their class, but with this one it's really true. The intellectual ferment in the room was palpable.
Bob Sutton and I like to say that we're running the class "Letterman Style", which means that we're there with a monologue (dialog?) at the start and end of the show, and between those two points it's all about guests from industry, our illustrious panel of team coaches, and the students.
Leading off was Professor Chip Heath from Stanford, who told us a scintillating story about how to design ideas that stick. Then we had the incredible opportunity to hear Asa Dotzler and John Lilly from Mozilla tell us the story of how they spread Firefox. We're all figuring out this creating infectious action thing together, and I hope you'll see the evolution of that idea here and in other places around the web.
14 April 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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A big part of future marketing efforts will be accomplished using an open-source approach.
See the future today at Firefox Flicks.
12 April 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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The gonzo motorcycle masters at Ducati -- quite possibly the stewards of the world's greatest brand -- have started blogging, and it just makes perfect sense from every angle. Ducati goes to market using something called "tribal marketing", which is shorthand for applying the majority of their marketing spend not on silly pieces of advertising in order to lure in people who come from an unfriendly world view, but on things and activities which amplify the natural world-of-mouth tendencies of the tribe of desmo, the Ducatisti. It works.
Federico Minoli is a dream blogger for a passion-driven company like Ducati. He is to Ducati as Bob Lutz is to GM (and you know that Lutz is the heart and soul of GM's Fastlane blog), except that, unlike Lutz, Minoli's setup at Ducati also gives him the power to call the shots that bring to market the essential product goodness which he knows so well. They're both great marketing and product minds, and it's a delight to live in a time where it's so easy to hear them thinking out loud.
Blogging is an essential part of the modern marketing mix. B2C, B2B -- I think it's critical to both. If your marketing site doesn't have some sort of RSS feed, fire your CMO. Or at least accelerate their firing process.
And.... so as not end on a down note... Forza Ducati!
photo via Flickr
21 March 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (1)
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A while back I wrote about BMW's initiative to build a "new" 1972 2002tii, a tangible brand mantra, from original parts. This is a very pure form of brand building which comes from a position of strength: if you got it, it ain't braggin'. Flaunt it.
Honda has it, too. That's why this stunning commercial, called Impossible Dream, is in fact an exercise in tangible brand mantras. They're simply reminding us of all their soulful technical achievements. Here's more about the making of the commercial. Turn up the volume, and smile.
01 March 2006 | Permalink | TrackBack (2)
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The best piece of Super Bowl marketing today won't be found on a TV.
In terms of keeping it real, delivering something unique and remarkable, and just plain being interesting, nothing can hold a candle to Ben Roethlisberger's blog.
Marketing can be, could be, should be, a mouthpiece for The Truth. It's very hard for a synthetic piece of advertising to live up to that ideal. Sure, Rothlisberger's blog isn't something every player could produce, but it's a worthy standard of measure. 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.
05 February 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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If you've spent any time at all wandering the halls of metacool, you know that I actively shun cynicism and empty criticism. Design thinking, after all, is all about being generative, optimistic, and forward-looking.
But sometimes I just have to wonder what's wrong with a universe where things like this can happen: Ferrari Barbie
Enzo would not be pleased.
23 December 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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A while back I mused that "Nano is the new Turbo".
I was wrong: Zepto is the new Nano.
My wish for 2006 is that some marketer, somewhere, brands something "Zepto", and that a competitor quickly ups the ante to "Yocto". I really want to own something called "Yocto". Yocto Yocto Yocto
07 December 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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As usual, Seth and I are in violent agreement. Substitute "design thinker" for "architect", and you've got the blueprint for the stuff that creates good, generative marketing: Great Marketers are Architects
30 November 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Yesterday in the class I teach at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (aka "the d.school") we had a fascinating discussion about how Ducati creates meaning in the marketplace. The starting point for the discussion is a Harvard Business School case by Giovanni Gavetti which asks the question "to cruise, or not to cruise?" In other words, should Ducati enter the lucrative market for cruiser motorcycles at the risk of diluting an intensely meaningful brand built up over 60 years?
For me, the best part of running this class is the support I get from the folks at Ducati North America and some local owner's clubs. Not only did we have a wide variety of Ducati motorcycles on display for the class, we also had the pleasure of having Ducati North America CEO Michael Lock provide us with his thoughts and insights about the process of creating and celebrating meaning. If the measure of a good teaching experience is the learning you glean from the process, then for me this session was a bumper crop.
And the roar of those Desmos wasn't half bad, either!
Here's hoping that the new Ducati Hypermotard concept (above) makes it to market. It's a stunning, gutsy, and... wow!
29 November 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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No matter how carefully you design a brand experience for customers, bad things will happen. Some will simply be beyond your control. Recent heart bypass surgery recipients will waltz into your store, try to use the restroom, and end up glued to the toilet seat in a lonely stall.
No, this isn't something out of The Onion: Man's glued ass spurs lawsuit
The only question is, how far would you be willing to go to rectify this?
03 November 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)
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Consider these tidbits:
Why engage in these expensive endeavors?
Well, if a brand is an expression of everything you do in the world, then why not literally build the brand again in front of the world. These are tangible brand mantras, intensely meaningful. And probably better at saying "this is our brand" than a written positioning statement ever could be.
As such, they're priceless.
18nov05 update: here's a nice overview of the 2002 project, written by Matt Davis (superb as always)
02 November 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)
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Clap. It’s a verb, but it’s also a noun highly correlated with another popular verb which I can’t use within the limits of metacool’s PG-13 language decency protocol. And, as I’ve just learned, Clap is also the brand name of an automotive engine therapy product which supposedly features nanotechnology.
Just what were the Clap marketers thinking? Now, over the years I’ve been known to apply scatological appellations to certain things I've run across in the product development funnel, but never have I ventured into the realm of social diseases as a source of naming inspiration. But maybe -- and this is a bit of a stretch -- maybe there's a touch of genius at work here. As a brand name, Clap is so bad it’s good, and – who knows? – it just might be the magical message which really connects with the demographic/psychographic market segment of males who really believe engine treatments will work wonders on their clapped-out Chevy smallblocks. Good marketing takes guts.
24 October 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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I'm happy to say that I'm now writing a column for BusinessWeek Online
Here's my debut: Saturn's Rust-Proof Brand
20 October 2005 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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I'm writing an extended essay on the subject of "How far? How?". I'm building off the Saturn story from my earlier blog post, but would love to hear about other remarkable ways that companies express their brands.
Please send me an email if you've got a good story.
Mahalo!
21 September 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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When I first began this blog my day job was marketing web software, and I was obsessed with figuring out how to make ideas more likely to spread across the web. Though part of the reason for blogging was long tail self-expression, much of it was about building my professional chops. I'm a big fan of knowing by doing.
I'm no longer making my dough as a web marketer, but I'm still fascinated by the mechanisms of thought contagion on the web and elsewhere. I love sifting through web logs to see who is visiting and linking to metacool.
Imagine my delight earlier this week when PubSub indicated that metacool was the 14th strongest website out there (out of 16 million sites tracked!!) in terms of link strength and buzz. Sure, I'm happy to be up in the quantitative ranking, but really turns me on is the prospect of figuring out what makes PubSub tick as a measure of contagion. To that end, I need your help:
Thought contagion is so cool, eh?
17 September 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Such is the case with the iPod nano, and that is why I believe that nano is the new turbo, another technical term appropriated by marketing people and applied in so many ways as to make it meaningless.
Nothing wrong with this, of course, for the truth is all marketers are liars. But it really rankles the engineer in me. And delights the marketer in me.
12 September 2005 | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack (3)
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A few weeks ago I lamented the fact that I couldn't order a Freitag Murse online. Of course, many of you are lamenting the fact that I want a murse, but for me the lamentation stems only from my continuing state of murselessness. Each morning as I try and squeeze my gadget-stuffed pockets into the seat of my car, I remind myself to find a way to get out to the Freitag store in Davos.
Salvation came in the form of an email from a nice person at Freitag called Manuela, who told me that, while the object of my murse lust won't be available online until late September, it is possible to purchase one today without jetting off to Davos. How? Well, if you consider the designed-as-a-one-of-a-kind-object premise which forms the essence of the Freitag brand, then the solution is obvious: log into a web cam in the Davos store and have a living Freitag salesperson show you each bag until you find one you like.
Seriously. You must see it to believe it.
It's kind of cool and brand-enhancing, eh? But I still don't have my murse. The tyranny of the wallet has yet to cease.
07 September 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
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The other day I was asked to name the person I'd most like to have evaluate the design of a website. A few designer names swept through my head, but then I thought, "No, I'd want a marketer who thinks like a designer who thinks like a marketer. Seth Godin."
Over the past five years I've had a hand in architecting and building five major websites, and Seth's thoughts on permission marketing, sneezing, and remarkability played no small part in shaping their design. This one was done on less than a shoestring budget but got nominated for a Webby. This one is built around getting people to a permission asset, and as a bonus gives sneezers a handy little manifesto for cocktail parties, too.
Seth just wrote a new guide to creating websites that work. It's free, it's here, it's Knock Knock
01 September 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Last week, while strolling through the wilds of Silicon Valley on my way to "work" (I love my job too much to think of it as work; I refer to it instead as "flow central", but that's fodder for another post), I passed by a Muzak cargo truck. Yes, that Muzak, of tunes and elevators.
The broad tall cargo wall of the truck was emblazoned with the Muzak logo:
And I couldn't help but think that the Muzak "m" felt a lot like the "m" logo found on the side of a bottle of Method soap:
Yes, to a graphic designer they're quite different, but to everyone else they're pretty close. They are, for all intents and purposes, doppelgangers. I find this notion of brand doppelgangers quite intriguing. Is this good? Bad? Irrelevant? I'm not sure yet, but I'd like to think more about it.
Can you think of other examples of brand doppelgangers? Drop me a line or leave a comment.
Mahalo.
22 August 2005 | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)
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Are you a connected maven in a slice of the world that cares about remarkable ideas?
Then check out Seth Godin's influencer campaign for The Big Moo. Very clever promotional thinking for the insights of the The Group of 33.
14 August 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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"Atelier De Cannes" by Pablo Picasso, original crayon drawing, 1958
Yours for only $129,999.99 today at www.costco.com
Yes, at Costco. I don't know about you, but this changes, at least a bit, the way I think about Costco. Your brand is an expression of what you put out in the world, and this ain't no bulk pack of toilet paper.
Personally, I'd go for the Miro.
(thanks to Carlos for the link)
09 August 2005 | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)
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If your brand is the sum total of all the things you do in the world, then how far would you go to live up to the expectations of people in that world?
Would you do something like this?
And how would you grow a culture to enable this kind of brand expression?
Good questions to ponder... and act upon.
08 August 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Twice in the last week I've had an encounter with the Toyota Prius brand which left me uttering a slack-jawed "Huh?"
Encounter No. 1: While tooting along down the highway at just over the speed limit in my own car, some dude in a Prius blows by me doing about 95 mph. What's wrong with this picture?
Encounter No. 2: Trundling along through rush hour urban traffic, a person in a Prius in a BIG hurry tailgates me for one long minute, then finally whips out against oncoming traffic in a desperate attempt to get somewhere on time.
Now, the percentage of impatient leadfoots driving a Prius is probably quite low, but they're a good reminder that, for all the time and money you spend crafting the story behind your offering, your customers are going to write at least a few additional chapters in the book of your brand. And those are the pages that matter to the world. Know-nothing yuppies turned BMW from a driver's car into a social-climber's bauble. Porsches used to be driven by people with quick wrists (the better to catch that oversteer!), but now the story is about SUV's for suburban wrists with, ahem, extra padding.
Who is going to write those chapters for your brand?
21 July 2005 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (1)
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In the weeks since hitting my recent big ship date commitment, several people have asked me how fatherhood has affected my view of marketing and product development and design.
Yes, I suppose it has. Here are my two personal epiphanies, as it were:
14 July 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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If marketing is about figuring out what people want, making what they want, and finding the best possible way to let them know that you're making what they want, then Bodygroom by Philips is a textbook case of Good Marketing.
Think back to the Visceral-Behavioral-Reflective model of meaing creation. Bodygroom the product and Bodygroom the story have each been designed with all three levels in mind to create a total offering experience that just sings if you already have the "I've got to shave" worldview (not that I've ever used it, mind you... but I believe it would work...). The visceral-reflective sublimiity of scissors chasing dual kiwis -- well, that's marketing genius.
11 July 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | 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:
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 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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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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John Maeda of MIT's Media Lab wrote a delightful post about meaning and design, and how deep meaning can be embedded into a designed offering. And as he tells the story, meaning can even be designed into something as mundane (yet vitally important) as a restroom door:
There is nothing more powerful in the visual vocabulary of an artist than the power of establishing contrast. Anything big and fat appears bigger and fatter when placed next to something flaccid and skinny... Thus the contrast between the Mens Room and Ladies Room at The Plaza Hotel reaches epic proportions in this architectural statement that doubles as a political statement of old... Nothing could be appreciated in a simpler way than these gilded restrooms of New York City.
Chew on that stew of thoughts for a moment: how could you use the concept of contrast as a way to embed helpful, behavior-shaping information into your next design, be it a website, a camera, or a flower vase? I love Maeda's notion of contrast because of its all-encompassing nature; it demands that one consider all the levels of design that create meaning: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.
27 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Tap this one into your calendar: come May 26, Seth Godin will grace the pixels of metacool to talk about (among other things) his new book All Marketers are Liars. This appearance is courtesy of the Business Blog Book Tour.
Since I'm a market-centric kind of guy, please let me know what topics, issues, themes you'd like to see Seth address (if he wants to) during his metacool sojurn. I'm all ears.
Until then, check out Seth's blog about the book.
26 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Earlier this month I pondered the existence of the Bu'wicked Special in Polyphony's GT4 video game, and whether this was an intentional product placement by Buick or just a happy accident.
Ford gets it. They played an active role in placing the new Mustang in GT4 (and also the Ford GT, which is an integral element of GT4's branding). In a recent Automotive News story, Killol Bhuta, assistant marketing manager for the Mustang, said, "One out of every four Mustangs we sell is
to an individual under the age of 34. Chances are very
good they are also game players". Myself, my first test drive of the Mustang came in GT4.
What are all the virtual places where your offerings could live in order to help people understand your brand?
25 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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$600 jeans? That's the power of reflective design
22 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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As my good friend Alex pointed out to me today, "How could these guys NOT start a cool company?"
The dude with the Superman "S" on his chest is Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia. You know the rest of the story.
How much of your organization's brand is in you? And vice versa? Patagonia still vibrates in sync with every fiber of Chouinard's body. That's brand fractalness -- I think if you're doing things right, you are your offerings, and your offerings are you and everyone else who produces them and adopts them into their own lives.
15 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
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First things first: this is not a post about cars. This is a post about good marketing.
Do you know this car? Not the make of car -- it started life as a vanilla 1962 Buick -- but this car, which its owner/builder calls "Bu'wicked"?
Chances are you don't, unless you own a PlayStation 2 and are an avid player of Gran Turismo 4. But there are millions of video gamer ten-year-old kids who positively worship this car, even though it's a Buick. Why? Because it's fast fast fast fast, and stomps Jaguars and Corvettes and Porsches around the world's (virtual) racetracks like nobody's business.
But how, you may ask, does a crazy old Buick hot rod wind up parading around a 21st century video game? Chalk it up to a clever promotional strategy on the part of the producers of GT4, who awarded its builders, Ted and Sue Richardson, the honor of having their car digitized and placed in the game after it was awarded Best in Show at SEMA last year. In the game, the car ends up looking like this:
Gran Turismo introduces cars and brands to kids and young adults who don't own cars. In many ways it's the ultimate marketing sampler machine -- play hard for a while and you'll have the (virtual) money to buy and drive any car on the planet. It made the Subaru WRX and the Mitsubishi Evo into total cult cars in the US even though they weren't yet sold in this country. So when those cars were finally introduced here a few years later, they sold like hotcakes. I'd wager very few marketers think of video games as part of their promotional mix, but the smart ones are already out there using them to tell authentic stories about their products.
Is some clever Buick brand manager ultimately behind the GT4 Bu'wicked? I doubt it, but if I were a marketer trying to put some luster back into that brand, I know what I'd be doing, and it has nothing to do with big, expensive magazine ads.
13 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (3)
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09 April 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Each day on my way to work, I walk by the big glassy windows of Darshana Yoga. What's unusual about Darshana is that the yogis and yoginis do their practice in an airy room just behind these windows.
Most yoga studios that I know of are kind of like massage parlors -- there's the shingle out front, but the activities within happen behind closed doors. I can understand this need for privacy; were I doing a downward-facing dog pose, I wouldn't want everyone on the street ogling my rump.
But by being mindful of theirr appearance to the street, Darshana turns these windows into a wonderful marketing opportunity. Just as the white earbuds on an iPod signal to the world that you're a Jobsian rip-mix-burner, Darshana's window makes private yoga consumption a public act. When I see other Silicon Valley technogeeks doing Virabhadrasana behind those panes, I start to believe that I could be a yogi, too.
The icing on the cake is the fact that glass is translucent to kindness. Walk by Darshana, and if you catch the eye of owner Catherine De Los Santos, she'll give you a nice, warm smile.
28 March 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The folks at MBDC are marketing a baby blanket that's fully compliant with their cradle-to-cradle environmental design guidelines. Designed for the cradle, this blanket's value proposition also has everything to do with cradle-to-cradle design thinking:
... using only the highest quality and healthiest available materials and chemicals... It's safe enough to eat (if you need the roughage) and can be safely composted after use, to build healthy soil.
And though MBDC is not doing a good job of marketing it (no reach, zero awareness!), the blanket itself is rather compelling from a marketing point of view. Yes, the graphic design they chose is hard ugly, but there's some beauty underneath, to wit:
First, the value proposition is awesome. Think about it: a blanket that's safe enough to eat, safe enough to plant as fertilizer in case.... er, em... in case it ever becomes so impregnated with fertilizer of the baby kind as to become unwashable. Which makes it something you'd feel very comfortable putting next to your new baby's skin. No weird, endocrine-disrupting chemicals. No worries at all.
Second, this blanket demonstrates the value of storytelling as a way to market environmentally sound products, be they "sustainable" or "cradle-to-cradle" or whatever. Why? It isn't making the mistake of trying to change the worldview of a parent who drives a Suburban. Instead, it tells a story of total ecological integrity perfectly tailored to an audience of Prius-driving parents worried about a world where you can't eat the fish, can't play in the grass, and can't wear chemically-grown cotton. With that ugly MBDC logo woven into the blanket, it's a rolling advertisement for cradle-to-cradle thinking, and it will trigger storytelling wherever it goes. It's a story these parents are ready to hear and transmit, and that's all that matters.
That's great marketing.
21 March 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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