A Better Course

• Neuromarketing » Green Marketing Doesn’t Work
  At some level, I was convinced that a paint-stripper loaded with dangerous, smelly ingredients and a page full of safety cautions was likely to be faster and more effective than some wimpy green alternative. What the manufacturer of the green product should have done was label their package with some test data showing that it was equally (or more) effective than the traditional product.
  (tags: neuromarketing neuroscience marketing green )
• katy lindemann | kitschbitch.com » Blog Archive » Online identity and our personal histories
  Our online identities aren’t who we are – they’re just one window into our personalities, and who we are in life may be very different from who we are online. But for those who aren’t able to record their own histories, an online identity is pretty bloody powerful.
  (tags: kitschbitch history identity online )

I came back from dConstruct yesterday, with lots to think about – bigger posts about all of the below coming soon, but in the meantime –

• Steven Johnson talked about “The eyes on the street”, which made me think about the streets with fewer eyes to see them; the almost unknown pathway through the city and – by extension of that metaphor – the almost unknown pathways though data. What does exploring look like in our own datasets, and what new ideas can we get from what we think we know?
• Informational relationships and not social ones; I heard Joshua’s talk criticised for being about copywriting rather than design, but in the case of Dopplr‘s conscious avoidance of the word ‘friend’ in its language, copy decisions can be design decisions. Incidentally, I would also agree that Joshua’s talk was more about copywriting, but predictably enough enjoyed that.
• The rich culture in niches and the rich culture in niches outside the ones we know.
• This leads into something else that felt very clear after the conference; the need to look outside of what we already know. If, as Matt Jones, posited, execution is more important than ideas, we’re going to need an understanding that is based on people who are not us, and that understanding is going to have to incorporate all the richness of what they know, how they model their worlds, and how they model their interactions with the world around them.

• Make Marketing History: Padded Bra. Padded Justification.
  what annoyed me was the creative director's justification; "Smart brands now know that it is increasingly pointless just to talk at your market. Today it's much more about involving them in the whole process of marketing." Yes, they'd like to be involved in the sense of being seriously listened to. […] Sticking them in a poster is not involving them in the marketing process.
  (tags: advertising wonderbra makemarketinghistory women marketing )
• Only Dead Fish: Make The Logo Bigger
  Pasche ignored the client. The result – the single most iconic band logo and one of the most recognisable identities in the world. Few band logos are widely identifiable from a logo that doesn't feature lettering. And yet, this image is The Rolling Stones.
  (tags: onlydeadfish branding advertising logo )
• I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community » Volkswagen Caddy Maxi: Painter, Electrician
  “Relax while working.”
  (tags: ibelieveinadvertising advertising volkswagen )
• This Blog Sits at the: Nike: new branding approaches
  "curation" isn't anything like the museum version of this activity. But as a means of meaning manufacture, it's pretty good. It takes the "retro treatment one better, by digging into the actual bits and pieces of the cultural debris field. Budweiser is now running ads that are or appear to be antique and they are now using a can design from the 1930s. And as a meaning making strategy, curation multiplies the aesthetic possibilities open to us. It gets rid of that modernist embargo on things that are old fashioned and "out of date."
  (tags: cultureby brand nike corporate anthropology marketing branding uk )
• Economists: selfish bastards – Boing Boing
  A study by Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames found that students of economics are indeed much more likely to free-ride in experiments that called for private contributions to public goods. Their basic experiment involved a group of subjects who were given an initial endowment of money, which they were to allocate between two accounts, one “public,” the other “private.”
  (tags: economics research boingboing phsychology conditioning )

• Bob Sutton: The Pixar Touch: A Great Book by David Price
  One strategic direction after another — many of which seemed unlikely at the time — was embraced with vigor and intensity by Jobs, and his ability to at least briefly convince others that it was right and certain to work (using his famous reality distortion field) is interesting and impressive. But in many ways, I am more impressed with Jobs' ability to quickly drop an old strategy when there was good evidence it was failing
  (tags: bobsutton stevejobs strategy leadership pixar management )
• The brandgym blog: Vitamin Water's painfully poor consumer feedback
  "one category Coke loose on hands down is consumer feedback. Now, many brands are bad at this. But boy oh boy oh boy, Vitamin Water have plumed new depths. This is a Titanic-esque sinking of brand goodwill." — a terrible response to a complaint letter to Coke
  (tags: branding brand cocacola vitaminwater wheresthesausage customerservice )

• A Marketing Move the ‘Mad Men’ Would Love – NYTimes.com
  Smarter marketing strategy prevailed, and the accounts were restored. “We’re delighted with the Twitter profiles,” Ellen Kroner, an AMC spokeswoman, said. (Mr. Draper’s character would surely be impressed by the free advertising the accounts provide.)
  (tags: madmen marketing twitter nytimes television )
• I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community » Los Inrockuptibles: Stairs, Dog, Bike
  “A magazine about music, movies, books, etc.”
  (tags: ibelieveinadvertising advertising magazine print lesinrockuptibles )
• Bob Sutton: A Stuffed Bear Reads The No Asshole Rule
  it is one of those strange things that people send me. But it is kind of cute.
  (tags: bear bobsutton cute )

• potlatch: surplus value at lunchtime
  In Bataille's terms, Pret is never going to employ good people in good jobs to make good food. There is no equilibrium. Two plus two does not equal four… but it could equal three.

  Imagine a Pret poster saying the following: 'Great jobs, great people… making good food!' Suddenly you'd be looking at an entirely different cultural-economic model.

  (tags: potlatch politics pretamanger marxism georgebatailles culture economics capitalism britain )

• LEGO-powered Project Time Management | FlowingData
  it's time management with my favorite childhood pastime – LEGOs! Each row represents an hour and each color indicates a different project
  (tags: lego graph flowingdata physicalgraph timemanagement awesome )
• Tom Fishburne: Brand Camp cartoonist and marketing guy: truth in labeling
  the inner workings of a plant always seem like a stark contrast from the persona put across on the label. Particularly if the brand has any kind of provenance. Ingredients just don't look as premium when you see them in jumbo totes. The "family recipe" doesn't seem so homey when it's being blended by a guy wearing a beard net.
  (tags: tomfishburne marketing authenticity food comic )

• Data-driven, realtime advertising: The aura of approach « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
  4.7 minutes was the average time the 842 customers we asked told us it took them to pass through Security yesterday, between 6am and 2pm. We had to stop at 2pm so we could make this ad.”

  That last line, even apart from its annoyingly coy self-awareness, reads like a dispatch from some rapidly obsolescing culture, doesn’t it?

  (tags: speedbird marketing advertising data datadriven adamgreenfield britishairways )

• I’ll Take My Infographic in Bright Orange, Men’s Medium | FlowingData – The Shirt Project, by Rich Watts and Louise Ma, takes the infographics out of the newspaper and puts them onto brightly colored tshirts. They put out a new shirt every couple of months
• I’ll Take My Infographic in Bright Orange, Men’s Medium | FlowingData
  The Shirt Project, by Rich Watts and Louise Ma, takes the infographics out of the newspaper and puts them onto brightly colored tshirts. They put out a new shirt every couple of months
  (tags: visualization data tshirt fashion flowingdata )

• Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: this is not my beautiful house – Just as the words consumer and user are condesending to people, the word experience is condesending to the activity of people, or life. And it’s condescending to the people who work hard to create the products and services
• Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: this is not my beautiful house
  Just as the words consumer and user are condesending to people, the word experience is condesending to the activity of people, or life. And it’s condescending to the people who work hard to create the products and services
  (tags: experience userexperience hr management technology service customerservice antimega )