A Better Course

• This Blog Sits at the: Adam Smith and the American corporation
  the corporation… perhaps they will in respond to the market place by seconding some of their essentials to the world out there. This would be another way of saying that networks so dominant in personal matters may be poised to transform even the institu
  (tags: business corporateculture anthropology cultureby adamsmith)

The best advertising campaign I’ve seen recently comes from match.com. Instead of focussing on the benefits of a happy relationship (which, despite their “find someone special in six months” guarantee, no-one can actually guarantee), it posits a single alternative to joining match.com – waiting for Cupid and Fate, which the campaign helpfully personifies.

The main conceit – that Cupid and Fate are feckless flatmates who really don’t care whether or not you find a partner – is funny, and I think the campaign is well executed. However, what is even better about this is that the ultimate message – why not? – feels like it’s been well based in customer research. It’s not showing you what you want, and promising it; it’s showing you what you don’t want, and promising an alternative. Which, coincidentally, is a lot funnier.

• Sustainability: Nike’s (clean) Air Jordans – Jan. 10, 2008
  The Air Jordan XX3 demonstrates that environmental considerations need not require compromises in design or performance. Her hope, she said, is that the new sneakers will influence not only other Nike shoes, but the rest of the footwear industry, too.
  (tags: sustainability design nike brand fortune)
• Luxury Shoppers Shut Their Purses | Business Week
  The weak performance of luxury retailers reinforces a perception among some experts that the pain is spreading beyond the most vulnerable consumers. Well-off consumers in no danger of losing their home to rising mortgage payments are nonetheless nervous.
  (tags: businessweek luxury retail)
• Forced to be stupid | RANDOM RANTINGS
  There is research on where firms choose to locate their new plants, whether or not they enter a particular market… etc. Consistently, managers are led by one simple question: “what are my competitors doing?” And then just do the same thing.
  (tags: management strategy psychology freekvermeulen peerpressure)
• The Myth of Brand Engagement | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
  For all our ruminations and advocacy on the blogosphere, the goals of marketing today are the same as they’ve always been: Interruption and Transaction. They are just dressed in a different garb.
  (tags: marketingprofs web2.0 brand marketing)

• Neuromarketing » Neuromarketing Shoots Itself in the Foot
  Marketers do split-run tests all the time to compare different ads, products, prices, etc. How difficult can it be to run this kind of test in conjunction with some neuro-data collection to take data interpretation beyond the realm of guesswork?
  (tags: neuromarketing psychology marketing testing)
• The Hot Dog Professor | Business Week
  Former students such as Dan Council, who plans to forgo traditional retirement to sell hot dogs to fishermen from his boat on Lake Wisconsin, credit Reitman with helping them build a foundation for a successful business.
  (tags: food retail businesseducation businessweek)
• Bringing Passion to Starbucks, Travelocity | Business Week
  Starbucks is the quintessential experience brand and [it] is brought to life by our people…we have no patent, no secret sauce… The competitive advantage we have is our relationship with our people and the relationship they have built with the customer
  (tags: businessweek starbucks howardschultz branding brand coffee experience)

• FT.com / In depth – Television gets boost from campaign adverts
  “Television advertising is still the most effective method to reach and persuade voters,” said Michael Bassik, vice president at MSHC Partners, a political advertising firm. “That’s why campaigns are spending the majority of their money on TV.”
  (tags: advertising politics america ft election 2008)
• Online Privacy’s Call to Arms | Business Week
  “There is a sense that big companies are out to get consumers more than before, and you get the sense that consumers are getting fed up with it”
  (tags: businessweek sears privacy online)
• McDonald’s vs Starbucks vs Ray vs Beef | grep
  RAY:Check it out, dude! McDonald’s is gonna wipe Starbucks off the map by havin’ baristas and fancy coffee drinks! BEEF:Man that is baloney the Venn diagram of their customer bases looks like an eight RAY: Say what you want. McDonald’s plays to win.
  (tags: achewood blog comic mcdonalds starbucks strategy roastbeef coffee marketing customerservice)

• advergirl: Target Corporate Responsibility Ads: A miss?
  We’ve been trained by advertisers to believe ‘click to watch’ means just that – a video will begin playing in the window. And, we appreciate that functionality – because it gives us the choice rather than overwhelming us with noise.
  (tags: advergirl online bannerad advertising target)
• Critics Wallop Wikia | Business Week
  In response to a query for “Abraham Lincoln,” 3 of the top 4 search results linked to schools bearing Lincoln’s name. Google’s results for the same query led with Wikipedia’s entry about the former President—absent in Wikia’s own results.
  (tags: businessweek wikia search google)
• Starbucks’ CEO Refill | Business Week
  Schultz was blunt in making the point that Starbucks had lost sight of the mission upon which it was founded, losing for many customers “the romance, warmth and theater” […] Schultz said. “Much of the problem we have is self-induced”
  (tags: businessweek starbucks business brand branding retail)
• I Believe in Advertising | Advertising Blog & Community » Gaia: Animals Torture
  Remarkably uncomfortable ambient advertising.
  (tags: advertising ambient ibelieveinadvertising discomfort)

• napkin vs. towel (tecznotes)
  It’s a beautiful answer to the variety of wiping cloths we use day-to-day… No more difficult to manufacture than a regular towel, modifiable with just a pair of scissors, and addresses a mundane, universal situation.
  (tags: design tecznotes everyday sustainability)
• FT.com / Companies / Media & internet – Wikipedia founder launches search engine
  In an interview, he said that his aim was “to build a completely freely licensed, open-source search engine” that would be far more transparent than Google and other existing services, which keep their algorithms for ranking search results a secret.
  (tags: wikipedia jimmywales google opensource ft)
• Put Buyers First? What a Concept – New York Times
  After assuring himself that I had never actually touched or seen the PlayStation, he had a replacement on the way before the day was out. It arrived on Christmas Eve. Amazon didn’t even charge me for the shipping.
  (tags: amazon nytimes customerservice)
• Why Non-Obvious Brand Icons Work | O’Reilly
  They are counter intuitive, but not unintelligible. In the first moment of exposure, we don’t quite get them…and this prevents them from washing over us and out into that sea of forgettable branding and marketing.
  (tags: o’reilly firefox branding brand psychology marketing)
• Last.fm – the Blog · Geekery in Las Vegas
  “The beauty of the official Logitech version is that it’s in the software from the start, so there’s no need to download and install a plug-in – so that opens up Squeezebox scrobbling to a much wider audience.” Exciting!
  (tags: last.fm squeezebox product marketing)
• Neuromarketing » Cosmetic Neurology: Brain-Boosting Drugs
  In the world of classical music, beta blockers l have become nearly as commonplace as metronomes. The drugs block adrenaline receptors in the brain, heart and blood vessels, helping to control arrhythmias and high blood pressure.
  (tags: neuromarketing brain pharmaceutical marketing)

Only days after I posted about last.fm and the squeezebox, both my and my father’s sales pitches become a lot more compelling as last.fm announce their partnership with Logitech, makers of the Squeezebox –

we’re excited that one of the announcements at the [Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas] … is our shiny new partnership with Logitech. They’re our first ever official hardware partner, building Last.fm scrobbling directly into their rather lovely Squeezebox. This is just the start of our master plan to allow you to scrobble music wherever you’re listening to it.

Mike Migurski has a fantastic post about designing for sustainability, using the example of NIIMI’s Towel With Further Options. From the blurb for the towel (emphasis mine):

Towels take every day dirt and gradually become damaged. In accordance with such changes, you can downsize the towel with “further options” from a bath towel to a bath mat, and then to a floor cloth and dust cloth. The towel has a vertical and horizontal textured surface that does not produce pile-fabric waste when cut with scissors. The lines act as a marker for cutting and form square modules that let you imagine other uses, encouraging you to re-use it.

Mike says:

It’s a beautiful answer to the variety of wiping cloths we use day-to-day, and the place each occupies on a “dirt gradient” from snowy white bath towels to the pile of old rags under the kitchen sink. No more difficult to manufacture than a regular towel, modifiable with just a pair of scissors, and addresses a mundane, universal situation.

Another important aspect of this design is the fact that it make the right thing easy to do, because it’s obvious – what else are you going to do with a line that appears perforated, other than cut it? What else are you going to do with something you’ve just made, other than use it? There are also interesting questions here about what makes sense, for marketers as well as for designers, in trying to make the right thing easy to do.

Part of what makes the design work is its simplicity – it’s still just a towel, but one with gridlines on it. To return to my post about the everyday, things need to be simple if they’re going to work as intended. The last thing anyone needs is information overload from their bathroom linen. This is even more the case for marketers, where endless conflicting messages are (rarely willingly) consumed every day; I’d love to see marketing that could solve problems as elegantly as NIIMI. If you could solve just one of the problems people in your target market face, what would it be? What’s the most basic change you could make that would make a difference to them?

• russell davies: the smokes of kilimanjaro
  Since the cigarette pack form is so nicely evolved it’s good to see it being used as a force for good. It makes you wonder why other things haven’t evolved towards the cigarette pack shape.
  (tags: russelldavies design book)